intellect again roused itself. Then chance, quickening propensities
that had for ever remained asleep in another environment, swept the
woman to action.
*CHAPTER XIV*
*DAVID AND RHODA*
Dawn brought forth a wonder in the sky and lighted accumulations of
little clouds that ranged in leagues under highest heaven. Like flakes
of mother-o’-pearl upon a ground of aquamarine the cirri were evenly and
regularly disposed. Seen horizontally, perspective massed them until
they hid the firmament, but overhead the pale interstices of space
appeared. Like a ridged beach at low tide was the sky--like a beach at
break of day when morning twinkles, between bars of wave-woven sand and
touches the transparent green water there. A glory irradiated heaven,
and each of the myriad cloudlets moving above the sunrise was streaked
upon its breast with amber. Then the herald light fell from them into
earth-born mists beneath.
These phenomena were reflected in the eyes of Reuben Shillabeer; and for
a moment they roused within him thoughts of the gates of pearl and the
streets of gold that belonged to the haven of his hopes. He had risen
before day, and now moved across the Moor with his mind steadily
affirmed. The journey concerning which Margaret had babbled to her
husband’s brothers, this old man now meant to make. But he had hidden
his secret close, and those who knew him best supposed that his mind had
entered a more peaceful and contented road of late. They were right.
After decision came great calm. His affairs were in order; his work was
finished. He walked now as one who had already taken his farewells of
the earth and all that belonged to it. The sky pleased him with its
splendour, for it promised happiness. He thought of his wife and
supposed her behind the dawn, moving uneasily, eagerly, full of
excitement and joy, counting the minutes that still separated him from
her. He was going up to Crazywell to drown himself.
On his way the man stood still before one of his own messages. Black
along the top bar of a gate, a text confronted him: the same that had
led Bart Stanbury to hasten his proposal of marriage.
"_Now is the accepted time._"
The old prize-fighter was well satisfied at this omen. He tramped
through mist and over frost-white heaths among the ruined lodges of the
stone men; he breasted the gorse-clad hill above Kingsett, and presently
stood and looked down into the cup of the pool, and saw the fire and
flame of the morning sky mirrored sharply there. A thin vapour still
softened the reflections from above and hung about the water, and a
scurf of ice lay round the edges of Crazywell. The place was deserted.
Winter had made a home here and darkness of sleeping vegetation
encompassed all, save for the silver frost and the splendour of the sky
above. Heath, furze, grass, alike slumbered.
Shillabeer was panting with his exertions. Now, very cautiously he
trusted his huge body on a path winding down to the water, and presently
he stood at the brink of the pool and trod the sandy beach. Crazywell
was supposed to be of fabulous depth; tradition declared that all the
ropes from the belfry of Walkhampton church had not plumbed it. Reuben
reflected upon this story. "No call to sink so deep as that," he
thought. "Please God; come presently, they’ll fetch me out and let me
lie beside her; not that it matters much where they put this here frame,
so long as the thinking soul be joined to she. Still--till Doom--I’d
like to bide with her; and I hope parson will be large-minded enough to
allow it."
For some little time he walked beside the water, then suddenly addressed
himself to action.
"’Tis no good messing about," he said aloud. "I’ve got to go through
the pinch, and the sooner ’tis over the better."
He took off his coat and hat, moistened his hands with his tongue, as
one about to do some hard work, clenched his fists, snorted like a bull,
and plunged in up to his knees. He felt his boots sinking upon the mud,
but the water was still shallow. Not far distant at the edge of the
pool, on the further side, a great stone rose. "I’ll drop in off that,"
said the man; "’twill throw me out of my depth and make a quicker job of
it."
He emerged, walked round the margin of Crazywell, and clambered on to
the stone. Beneath it, where the water was more than four feet deep,
light fell full and radiant, and made all crystal-clear.
Shillabeer was about to jump when he found himself not alone. Separated
from him only by the smooth surface of the pool, there appeared a
fellow-creature. A woman seemed to be looking up quietly at him from
beneath.
The recent past, forgotten since he had slept, turned back upon him and
he remembered that Margaret Bowden was missing on the previous night.
He glared down at her now.
"Well might they fail to find you!" he said. "Poor lamb--her of all
women! Whatever should take her in the water? And how long have she
been there?"
He forgot his own purposes absolutely. He lowered himself into the pool
until his feet were at her side. Then he drew a long breath, dived in
his arms and head and groped round till he held her. A touch brought
her to the surface: in the water she weighed nothing; it was only
afterwards, when he dragged her out, that he found even his strength
only equal to carrying her body to the bank.
How long she had been dead he knew not; but her face he found not
unhappy. It was impossible to bear her single-handed to her home, and
Shillabeer now climbed out of the cup and started to the adjacent farm
of Kingsett. But he marked a man by the leat and he shouted to him and
attracted his attention.
Twenty minutes later Simon Snell and the innkeeper carried Margaret
Bowden between them on a hurdle. Mr. Shillabeer’s coat covered the
corpse. They proceeded slowly and at last came in sight of ’Meavy Cot.’
"I’ll go so far as the wicket," said Snell; "but no further. I couldn’t
face that chap--not with this load."
"’Tis I that have been told off for the purpose. ’Tis I that have found
her, though ’pon a very different errand, I assure you. Yet not
different neither, Simon, for I went to meet death; and when I looked
down in the water, there was death, sure enough, glazing up at me."
"And yet just as if she was no more than sound asleep--poor young
woman--save for the blueness," said Mr. Snell.
"And so she looked, poor creature, when first I seed her. But death be
the name for sleep under water."
"What was you doing up over, ’Dumpling’?"
"There again! The ways of the Lord be past finding out, Simon. My wife
waiting at the golden gate--waiting and watching for the sight of a
certain man--namely me--and instead this young Margaret comes along."
"My word!" said Mr. Snell. "Was you going for to make away with
yourself, Mr. Shillabeer? Please don’t say so, for I’ve had as much as
I can stand this morning. I’m quivering to my innermost inwards."
"I was going to do it; but not now--not now. Abraham found a ram in a
thicket, you’ll remember; I find a woman in the water. The Lord works
with strange tools, Snell."
"Without a doubt He do; and here’s the gate. I’ll take her no further.
David Bowden can come out and lend a hand hisself now."
"And you’d best to let it be known far and wide," said Shillabeer. "And
doctor ought to see her, though of course no good. Still ’tis the
fashion. And crowner will sit--here’s the man!"
David Bowden appeared and Simon Snell ran away. For a moment Shillabeer
set himself between the dead and living.
"’Tis I found her--Madge. She’s gone to glory--she’s drownded
herself--dead. Lord’s will, David."
"Found! Thank God--where?" asked the husband. He had only heard the
word ’Madge.’
"If you can thank God, ’tis a good thing, Bowden. ’Twas long afore I
could, when this happened to me," answered the other. "Come. She’s
here--behind the edge of the wall. ’Twas the best I could do."
David had passed him, and when Shillabeer turned, the husband knelt
beside the hurdle. A moment later he tore at the clothing of the corpse
and pressed his hand over her heart.
"Us must go for doctor as a matter of form, and he’s at Princetown
to-day--his day there from eleven o’clock till two--so I’ll traapse up
over and tell him to call. And I’ll ax you for a dry shirt afore I
start, poor man."
"She’s dead!" said Bowden.
"And cold. There’s nought in all nature so cold as them that die by
drowning. But you must think of her as far ways off from here."
"Dead--dead. God help me!"
He rose to his feet and stared down.
"You take it wildly, same as I did," remarked the elder. "When my wife
died, ’twas all three strong men could do to tear me off her. And when
the two old women comed to do what was right, I nearly knocked their
grey heads together, for I said, in my mad way, what business had them
to live to grey hairs and my wife die afore a lock was touched by time?
Brown her hair--pale brown to the end. Let me help you. She’m
water-logged--poor blessed creature."
Margaret Bowden was brought to her little parlour and laid upon the
sofa.
David said nothing; Shillabeer maundered on.
"Like a dog on a grave you’ll be, my poor David. And time’s self will
find it hard to travel against your heart. You’ll dare him to push on.
I know--I know. And to think that I’d have been back with her--my own
wife--but for this. Ess fay! Crazywell would have me if it hadn’t had
she. But you mustn’t speak about that. One be taken and t’other left."
"She killed herself!" burst out the other man suddenly. "Mark me--this
was no accident. She took her own life--and to think that I was there
calling to her and she past hearing by then."
"Yes, she went her way. She knowed, I suppose--but what did she know?
Weren’t she useful no more? ’Tis only failure of usefulness allows this
deed."
"Useful! What have I done? God knows what I’ve done. ’Tisn’t
me--’tisn’t me, I tell you--there’s nought between us and never
was--nought but faithful love. There’s another have done it--some
other--and I shall never know--and her dead. Is she dead? Maybe
there’s a flicker in her yet, if we only knowed what to do."
"Don’t distress yourself," said Shillabeer; "only Christ could raise her
from the dead. I know death. She was lying like a woman asleep under
the water. She’s dead enough, and as a thinking man who knows trouble
very close, I’ll tell you for why. ’Tis along of’ being childless--all
because she had no child."
"What folly and wickedness to think so! If I didn’t mind--why should
she?"
"But they all mind, and the less sense, the more they take on. It was
just the same with mine; and only her large belief that God couldn’t
make no mistakes kept her quiet."
"Go--go!" suddenly cried David. "Who am I to bide here talking to you,
and that woman dead behind the door?"
"I will go--this minute--’tis natural and quite proper, poor David, that
you feel like this. Break away from man you must; but don’t break away
from God. Kneel beside her body and pray your heart out. ’Tis the only
thing will keep your brain steady. Work and pray--work like a team of
bosses and pray like a team of saints. Out of kindness I say it. I’m
gone-- She saved my life, mind. You must let me share the praying, for
by God’s grace her death kept me alive. A pity you might say, poor man,
in your black misery and ignorance. But God knew which was wanted most.
I must live--He only knows why; and this young lovely thing, in full joy
of health and happiness, must cut her thread. ’Tis too much to expect
we can understand; but we ban’t expected to understand all that happens.
I tell you the longest life ban’t long enough to explain the way of God
to man, David. Now fetch me a wool shirt while I draw off this one.
Then I be going to catch doctor. And I must look at her once more."
He went into the other room and David, having brought him a dry garment,
followed him.
"A picture of a happy creature," said Reuben, as he stripped to the
waist and dried his huge body. "Remember that. This be only a perishing
bit of clay now, David--blue-vinnied, you see--ready to sink into
earth--but Madge--a very different tale. A lovely, shining angel is she
singing over our heads, along with my wife and all the good dead women.
You keep that in mind and say no more cruel words against Heaven than
you can help. They will out, but fight ’em down, same as I did."
A few minutes afterward Shillabeer went away; but he was still talking
aloud to himself, rolling his head and waving his arms.
Then David, left alone, strove wildly for some faint sign or promise
that his wife was not dead. He stripped her, fetched blankets, lighted
a fire, thrust hot bricks to her feet, and strove to warm her body.
Thus he laboured only that he might be doing something, and through
physical exertion cheat mental torture. He knew that all efforts were
vain, and presently he abandoned them, left his wife in peace, and went
into the kitchen and sat down there.
Nobody came to him for some hours. Then the doctor arrived, expressed
deep sympathy, and promised to see those in authority. He departed in
less than half-an-hour and the man was left alone again.
Two women came presently, did their office for the dead, and went away
again.
Bowden’s thoughts rose and fell like an ebbing and flowing sea. They
wearied him and sank away, leaving his mind a drowsy blank; then, with a
little rest, intellect gripped the catastrophe once more and the tide of
suffering flowed and overwhelmed his spirit. He connected Rhoda with
this event. The more he considered the more he suspected that something
terrible must have happened between the women. He went several times to
the door to look for Rhoda. But she did not come.
She had taken her nightly way with the search parties and at dawn she
was in Sheepstor. There, too weary to return home, she had gone to the
wife of Charles Moses and slept in her house. For several hours they
had not wakened her, but suffered her to sleep on. She rose a little
before midday; and then she heard that Bartley Crocker had left England
very early on the previous morning, about the same time that her
sister-in-law disappeared.
All search for Margaret had proved fruitless and news of her death did
not reach Sheepstor until Rhoda left it. Several met her and asked for
news, but none knew the truth. She believed now that the facts were
clear and she strung herself to tell her brother what had doubtless
happened.
At dusk she returned to ’Meavy Cot’ and found David, with his head on
the kitchen table, fast asleep. Outside it was growing dark and some
chained, ravenous dogs were barking loudly; inside all was silent.
David slumbered uneasily owing to his position, but his sister hesitated
to wake him. First she mended the fire and made tea. She drank to
fortify herself. Then she went out, fed the dogs, and loitered until
darkness gathered upon the earth. Then she came in and lighted a lamp.
Still her brother slept. She reviewed the words that she must speak,
and then she wakened him.
Reluctantly, irritably, he returned to consciousness and stared at her.
"What the devil--?" he said; then he rubbed his eyes and yawned.
"Take a dish of tea," she said. "I’m back. There’s no news of her yet,
but I believe--"
Slowly he began to connect his thoughts and link himself up with life
again.
"I believe--I’m afraid I know--I’m almost certain I know."
"What do you know?" he asked. Then the truth returned to him in a wave
that submerged him.
"My God, my God!" he cried out.
"’Tis bitter enough, but maybe the best that could have happened--for
you, David."
Rhoda arrested him. She was looking straight into his face.
"Make yourself clear," he said. "What do you know--or what do you think
you know? What’s done be done, anyway."
"’Tis done---and better done, since it had to be."
"What do you know?" he repeated harshly. "Don’t beat about. How much
do you know? D’you know why? What’s the reason? I can’t go on with my
life till I know who have done it. She never did, I’ll swear to that.
’Twas forced upon her from outside."
"Maybe I can’t tell you more than you’ve found out for yourself, if you
speak so," she answered. "Yet ’twas she and only she could have done
it. None else had the power to."
"Stop!" he cried out. "Don’t play no more with words, if you don’t want
to see me go mad afore your eyes. Speak clear and tell me exactly
what’s in your head. I can’t stand no more cloudy speeches. My mind’s
a frozen fog. If you’ve got the power to throw one ray of light, then
do it. Light, I say--but there’s no more light for me in this world
now."
"Don’t speak like that, David. Who can tell? Say nothing till time
works its way. If I hurt to heal, forgive me; and if I’m wrong, I’ll
beg for you to forgive me. But I’m not wrong. It all joins together
very straight and smooth. She’s gone beyond finding, else they’d have
found her by now."
"Gone beyond finding."
"Surely. There’s not a brake or pit this side of Princetown, and not a
house and not a ruin that some man haven’t hunted through and through
for her. But they’ll have to hunt the ships of the sea afore they’ll
find your wife that was. She’s gone---she went the same time that
Bartley Crocker went--to an hour. Oh, David, she’s with him! Find him
and you’ll find her. That’s the awful truth of it--clear--clear as truth
can be, and ’tis the worst that have ever fallen to me that I had to
tell you. But only I knew, and too well I knew through the bitter
past."
He stared at her and laughed.
"What a clever woman you are--and so wonderful understanding!"
"She’s happy enough, if that’s anything. She’s got what she played
for--she’s--"
His voice rose in a sudden yell.
"Leave her name alone! Don’t you take her name in your mouth again or
I’ll silence you for evermore!"
"I’m not afraid," she answered. "I’m doing what God Almighty drives me
to do. If I fail, I fail. I knew ’twas life or death. You can silence
me when you please and how you please. And the sooner the better; for
if you’re going to hate me, I’d want to die as quick as you can put me
out of the way."
"Go on," he said quietly. "I’m sorry I roared. You needn’t fear me.
Say what you want to say. Explain just what you think you know."
"I’ve said it. O’ Sunday night, when I came back from Ditsworthy, I
spoke out to her. I couldn’t hold it in no more. ’Twas poisoning me
heart and soul. I was going to tell you, but there came the boys and
father’s sickness held my tongue. Then I met her--your wife with that
man--Crocker--and he kissed her--God’s my judge if I don’t tell you
truth. And that night I spoke to her and told her all I knew and all
I’d seen. I’d watched them many a time--spied if you like--but only for
you--only for your honour’s sake. And I taxed her with it--with being
untrue to you."
He put up his hand and she was silent. He struggled to master himself
and succeeded for one moment more.
"And what did she answer?"
"She denied it, but--"
"And Christ will deny you, you wretch!" he thundered out. "All’s
clear--all’s clear now! You thought to damn her; but you’ve damned
yourself--damned your own soul through the blazing eternity of hell!"
He leapt up and she faced him without flinching.
"I know what I know," she said.
"Then know a little more than you know!"
He seized her by the wrist and dragged her into the adjoining room. It
was dark. Only blankets that covered the dead made a streak of pallid
light in the gloom.
"With Crocker--eh? Happy--eh? Go there! Get on your knees,
murderess--look under that blanket and then ax yourself whether your
carcase be fit to feed dogs!"
She realised in a moment the thing that had happened. She moved the
blanket; she touched; she recoiled; but she made no sound.
"Your work--your filthy, lewd work, to drive that angel of goodness to
make an end of herself. She couldn’t breathe the same air with you no
more. Murder, I say, if ever murder was. You--you--to think that
you--behind my back--in my home-- You thrust her in the water--you held
her down under it! Get out of my sight to hell--hide yourself--call the
hills to cover you afore the decent world finds what you are and tears
the flesh off your bones!"
He flung himself on the dust of his wife, and Rhoda went out of the
room.
*CHAPTER XV*
*NIGHT TENEBRIOUS*
Aimless, almost mindless, Rhoda Bowden dragged herself away from the
valley under Black Tor. She knew not where to turn. But there awakened
no desire to escape from the tyranny of existence; she suffered rather
from a mental palsy that blocked and barred every channel of thought or
outlook on action.
She moved through the night-hidden valley of Meavy, and found herself
presently at Sheepstor village. The place slept and she drifted among
the darkened cottages, forgetting all else but the problems that now
cried vainly to be solved before the coming of another day. By instinct
her weary body obeyed the call of least resistance, and she sank down
the hill instead of climbing upward. Mechanically she descended, as
water seeks its own level, and by a footpath presently reached the
bottom of the valley and stood at Marchant’s bridge, a mile under
Ringmoor Down. Across that wilderness lay her nearest way home; and now
it seemed to her, as she became conscious again of her vicinity and
physical condition, that her goal must indeed be Ditsworthy. She was far
spent and the time now approached midnight.
The hour was dark, mild, very still under a clouded moon; and for a
moment, thinking upon the length of the way, Rhoda doubted her strength
to reach the warrens. She drank of the river and bathed her face. Then
she began the long climb upward to the Moor. Where her path left the
main road and ascended easterly, through furze-brakes beside a wood, a
tall grey shape, full eight feet high, stood silent by the way. It was
Marchant’s Cross that appeared there on her right hand underneath an ash
tree; and the monument’s high, squat shoulders and dim suggestion of
alert and watchful humanity startled her. Then she remembered what it
was, and climbed on.
At the edge of the woods reigned sleep universal, and not one of the
common voices of night broke in upon it. The firs had ceased for a
moment their eternal whisper; the bare boughs of oak and larch were
still. The hour was breathless and so silent that the world seemed dead
rather than asleep. Once only a small creature hurried from Rhoda’s
path and rustled in the leaves beside her; but for the rest no cry of
night bird, no bay of hound, no whinny of roaming horse broke the great
peace. Only the river lifted its voice like a sigh in the dimness, but
other murmur there was none. Diffused light scarcely defined a way amid
the black hillocks of the gorse. Earth under these conditions quite
changed its contours and withheld its tones. Such colour as persisted
was transformed and only the palest things--tree trunks and boulders
streaked and splashed with quartz--still stood forth in the vague blur
of darkness. Such obscurity and obliteration, with its hint of unseen
dangers and obvious doubts, had been sinister, if not terrific, to many
women; night’s black hand upon the extinguished world had driven most
feminine spirits even from grievous thoughts to present dread; but for
Rhoda darkness was only less familiar than noonday. There existed
nothing in this immanent concealment to distract her torments, and all
the formless earth was distinct, clear, explicit as contrasted with the
chaos of her soul.
Upon Ringmoor she came at last, and there some faint breath of air
seemed to be stirring by contrast with the stagnation beneath. It
touched her forehead and she sucked it in thirstily. Here the mighty
spaces of the waste were faintly lighted within a little radius of the
wanderer, but beyond, the naked earth rolled away into utter darkness at
every side. The sky, while luminous in contrast with the world beneath
it, was entirely overcast. A complete and featureless cloud, without
rift or rent to break its midnight monotony, spread upon the firmament.
Even the place of the moon might not be perceived. Below, Ringmoor
soaked up the illumination to almost total extinction; above, the
sombrous air hung heavy and clear, permeated evenly by lustre of the
hidden moon. Only at the horizon might one perceive the immense
difference between the light of earth and sky, and the large
illumination spread by the one and swallowed by the other.