THE FARMER COMES HOME
Hilary Woodrow returned home during the latter part of May, and
Ruddyford rejoiced to see him. But despite his assurances, all found
him a little changed. He was tolerably active and cheerful, yet
thinner than of yore, and his love of the saddle had decreased. He
rode abroad less than formerly, and he read more; but he showed no
indifference to the minor questions of the passing hour. Of old,
nothing was too small for him to bestow thought upon it; and he still
liked to be consulted as to the affairs of his farm.
Yet in certain particulars it seemed that he had slightly changed his
attitude to most things.
"'Tis more like a visitor in the house, somehow, than the master,"
said Peter Lethbridge to Daniel; and the other admitted it.
"Too easy for a master now," he answered. "'Tis a very bad sign in
my opinion, and I shall have a tell with him about it."
He was as good as his word, and explained his uneasiness in very
clear language.
"I feel I'm largely the cause of this," he declared while once they
walked together homeward from the railway station of Lydford. "It
hurts me terrible--'tis as though you felt Ruddyford was gone
already. I wish to God you'd burn them papers, and put dying out of
your mind. If I may say so, you'm a man running to meet the end of
life. And you, please Heaven, with thirty years of usefulness before
you."
"I like you to say these things, Dan; because it shows you're the
same always. You don't change. I wish we were all as steadfast.
But to be honest with you, I'm come to a time when the rest of the
road can be seen pretty clear. The things that make life worth
living shrink very small as soon as life ceases to be worth living."
"Life's worth living while we've got the power left to think a good
thought."
Woodrow did not answer for some time. Then he said:
"I want you to go to Bristol for me next month. Don't think I've
lost interest in my farm and my stock. There's a sale there of
pedigree stuff, and I've ideas. I'll buy three beasts--a bull and
two heifers."
"They'll cost a mint of money."
"Why not?"
Brendon rejoiced.
"A pity there ban't more with your great ideas on Dartymoor. The
place is the best grazing ground in England, yet who knows its worth?
I'll go, and gladly. You must put a limit on the purchases if 'tis
an auction."
"I'll tell you to-night, if you'll come in for an hour. How's little
Gregory this morning?"
Daniel's animation waned somewhat.
"Not all us could wish--fretful seemingly, and off his food. Sarah
Jane be going to have doctor to him if he ban't better next week."
"Don't put it off."
"He's growing that fast."
"A very good lad--more like you than his mother. You'll make a
farmer of him, Daniel?"
"I mean to. 'Twas my hope us should have had another boy to grow up
with him--but----"
"Plenty of time."
A month later Brendon started for Bristol. It was a great incident,
and his wife and he felt much excited about it. She had so far seen
but little of Hilary since his return; now, during the three days'
absence of Daniel, it became possible to spend some hours in the
master's company.
By appointment they met in the old peat-works, but the relation
between them was different from of old. Woodrow's fever had departed
with possession; his appetence had quite faded. Now he loved her,
with all his soul rather than with all his heart. The words were his
own, and she questioned them.
"'Tis a higher thing, no doubt, and I'm thankful you feel so," she
said. "'Twill surely grow up so great in you that all else will be
forgot. I wish I could see more of you, and look to your comfort
closer. Tabitha's a kind woman, but hard at the edges."
They sat in the great empty drum at the peat-works. It was dry and
littered with sweet fresh fern, for Sarah Jane sometimes climbed
thither to reflect and think upon the dead, when leisure served. She
brought the child with her to play in the peat, and liked to see him
at his games, because she knew that his grandfather would have loved
the sight. On these occasions he was allowed to play with the famous
knife. Then Sarah Jane hid it safely until their next visit.
Where now they sat, she could see the little figure busy with rusty
tools that a man had used in earnest, though in vain. Upon Gregory
Friend's death the last spark of human life departed from Amicombe
Hill, and now only Nature worked there.
Woodrow reclined beside Sarah Jane, and stroked her hand. From time
to time came the thud of a hoof, where his horse was tethered close
by.
"And yet," she said, "to hear you put your soul afore your heart be a
wonder, Hilary, for 'twas only a little time agone that you'd have
none of the word. I be glad and sorry both to hear you say it. Glad
because it makes you a thought happier."
"Why sorry?" he asked.
"I don't know--down deep in me I be. Can't find a word for it. 'Tis
giving up something in my feeling to put anything afore our bodies
When I think of father, I see his round shoulders and beard and
shining eyes. I'm so small-minded, I can't fancy them I love save in
their dear flesh."
"You beautiful thing! Well may you say it--such a queen of the flesh
as you are! But for me 'tis different. A pain-stricken wretch,
sinking away back to the dust so fast."
"Don't say that. 'Tis only your hands be thinner, because you never
use 'em save for turning the pages of books. I do wish you'd be on
your horse more."
"I know--I know. Man cannot live by books alone. I'll do
everything. But think--what a great, precious thought--to believe
there's a time after! Aren't you glad I've got to believe that?"
"Do you believe it?"
"I do."
"I'll say no hard thing against your books no more then.
Somehow--after what fell out--I wanted to be the same as you. I was
torn in half between Dan and you; and sometimes I thought heaven
would be good, and oftener I couldn't see how. Then I felt as if the
sleep without end and without dreams that you trusted to was best.
But if you and Daniel both think for sure that there's a time coming
will find us alive for ever, and no growing old in it--then I'll
believe it too--I must."
"Believe it," he said. "'Tis worth anything. We call death endless
sleep and all the rest of it, to make it sound less terrible; but
that is only playing with words. Death is dust if it is the end. I
prayed to God--the God I didn't believe in--to make me believe. Such
vain things will a sad heart do. Not vain either, for He heard and
answered. The sea it was that fetched the answer. Miles and miles I
tramped along lonely shores and watched the waves. They brought the
idea of endlessness so near to me. My watch in my pocket ticked
time; but the great, sad-coloured waves beat out eternity. I want to
walk on that beach with you and see the water-scythes sweep round and
mow the sand. And when the sand sighs I feel it is the sigh of the
weary earth, that knows no rest from the unwearying sea. The sea's a
better lover than I was. Twice a day he worships the shore."
"I might come maybe when autumn's back. A change would do the child
good belike."
"Well thought. What more natural? Somehow I want you there--just to
walk over the sand and hear the long sob and hopeless sigh of sea
against stone. It will force you to believe in your soul, Sarah
Jane."
"Do it make you glad--this new feeling?"
"Yes, it does. It opens out so many doors to hope. It teaches so
much. I told you once that if there was another world, there was a
God. It is so."
"Do it make right and wrong plainer?"
"In time--in time it will. I've flung over a lot of old opinions
already. 'Tis like parting with the very stuff of your brain; for my
thoughts were my life--till you came into it. But you--you've taught
me such a lot too. You taught me that truth was beyond our
reach--that was a great piece of learning. Once hold that and
comfort grows out of it--a sort of desolate comfort to a hungry
heart--still comfort. Truth's got to be softened behind a veil for
things with no more intellect than we have. The stark, naked light
would blind us for ever and make us mad. God knows that. Truth is
God's face, Sarah Jane."
She was secretly amazed at this great mental change in him. For his
sake she was glad, because he had evidently welcomed the possibility
of a new belief that was strong to throw hope over the present desert
of his mind. With weakened physical circumstances, reason had also
weakened; but Woodrow believed otherwise and told himself that
unimpaired intellectual powers, working unceasingly on the problem he
conceived to be paramount, had at last purged his understanding and
lifted him into a purer belief. He was, moreover, proud that he had
attained to this triumph by the exercise of what he believed to be
pure reason. He doubted not that such faith as he had now attained
was the only faith worthy of mankind.
But in the woman's heart lurked something akin to regret. She could
not name the emotion; she lacked words to analyze it; but she knew
that it was there; and while her nature leapt to gladness--because
Hilary was glad--behind the joy persisted something of disquiet and
even distrust.
"I'll be well pleased to think like you do, then," she said;
"but--but, oh, Hilary, for God's sake don't you grow to think like
Daniel do--else--else----"
He shook his head.
"Never fear that--that would be to go down the hill--not up it. It's
cost the life-work of my brains to get where I have got, dear heart.
I shan't go backward now."
Presently she left Woodrow and went to her child. Then Gregory and
his mother set off homeward.
The farmer watched them sink--a large spot and a little one--into the
waste. Presently he rose and mounted his horse. He thought long
upon Sarah Jane and that last note of fear--so foreign to her
fearless voice. He reflected, too, upon his own altered attitude and
sublimated affection for her. He supposed that belief in immortality
must be a force very elevating to the human mind; he doubted not that
it lifted glorious flowers when once the root struck down and
flourished. He considered the great matter from divers points of
view, but not from one. He did not know that decaying physical
circumstances frequently open the door to superstition and make a
fading intellect succumb before what, in full vigour of intellectual
life, it scorned.
The day chimed with his mood, and he told himself very honestly that
none could gaze upon this outspread world and believe that it
represented but a display of natural laws, a casual compact of heat
and light and substance, a chance conglobation of matter whirling
beautifully about the sun's throne at the moment of summer solstice.
The light of noon shone over the world. Cloud shadows flew along the
silvery planes of the earth's surface, and life teemed in a myriad
shapes even to the pinnacles of the land. Day herself scarcely died
now, and night was a shadow rather than a darkness. Even in the
midnight watches, light, like a ghost, stole under the stars and
behind the northern hills until day returned. So spirits might haunt
the nether gloom, he fancied, ere they vanished again at the glorious
advent of day.
To Woodrow, gazing upon the June world, it seemed that he was the
only faulty thing in the visible universe; and he longed to cast his
slough and also be without fault.