I. The Beech Tree
II. Bear Down Farm
III. A Wise Man and a Wise Woman
IV. The Kiss
V. Pagan Altars
VI. Anthemis Cotula
VII. A Badger's Earth
VIII. Out of the Mist
IX. The Warning
X. Three Angry Maids
XI. Partings
XII. The Definite Deed
XIII. Snow on Scor Hill
XIV. The Wisdom of Dr. Clack
XV. Sun Dance
XVI. A Shelf of Slate
XVII. Spring on Scor Hill
XVIII. Roses and Rosettes
*BOOK II.*
I. The Seeds
II. Cherry Grepe's Sins
III. A Secret
IV. The Wisdom of Many
V. In Spring Moonlight
VI. Sorrow's Face
VII. Plots against an Orphan
VIII. A Necklace of Birds' Eggs
IX. An Old-time Prescription
X. Oil of Man
XI. A Clean Breast of it
XII. Light
*BOOK III.*
I. Vanessa Io
II. The Meeting of the Men
III. Flags in the Wind
IV. Drifting
V. A Hunting Morning
VI. Love of Man
VII. Lapses
VIII. The Round Robin
IX. Red Dawn
X. A Man of Courage
XI. The Road to Peace
XII. Peace
XIII. A Sound of Suffering
XIV. From Words to Blows
XV. Watern Tor
XVI. Threnody
*BOOK IV.*
I. The Passage of Two Years
II. No After-glow
*BOOK I.*
*SONS OF THE MORNING*
*CHAPTER I.*
*THE BEECH TREE*
Above unnumbered sisters she arose, an object noteworthy even amid these
aisles, where, spun from the survival of the best endowed, fabrics of
ancient forest enveloped the foot-hills of the Moor and belted heather
and granite with great woodlands. A dapple of dull silver marked her
ascension and glimmered upwards through the masses of her robe. From
noble girth of moss-grown trunk she sprang; her high top was full of a
silky summer song; while sunbeams played in the meshes of her million
leaves and cascades of amber light, born from her ripening harvest,
streamed over the dark foliage. She displayed in unusual perfection the
special symmetry of her kind, stood higher than her neighbours, and
fretted the blue above with pinnacles of feathering arborescence, whose
last, subtle expression, at that altitude, escaped the eye. Her midmost
boughs tended from the horizontal gradually downward, and the nether
branches, rippling to earth like a waterfall, fashioned a bower or
music-making dome of translucent green around about the bole. Within
this arbour the roots twisted down their dragon shapes into the dark,
sweet-scented earth, and fortified the beech against all winds that
blew. So she stood, queen of the wold, a creation loved by song-birds,
a treasure-house for squirrels, pigeons, and the pheasants that, at
autumn-time, strutted gorgeous in the copper lake of her fallen leaves.
Beneath her now, cool and moist in twilight of shadows, grew delicate
melampyre that brought light into the herbage, stood the wan
seed-vessels of bygone bluebells, and trailed grasses, with other soft,
etiolate things that had never known direct sunshine. The pale trunk
was delicately wrought with paler lichens, splashed and circled upon its
bark; while mossy boulders of granite, lying scattered within the
circumference of the tree's vastness, completed this modest harmony of
grey and silver, lemon and shadowed green.
Woodland roads wound at hand, and in a noontide hour of late July these
paths were barred and flooded with golden sunlight; were flanked by
trunks of gnarled oak and wrinkled ash; were bridged with the far-flung
limbs of the former, whereon trailed and intertwined festoons of ivy and
wreaths of polypody fern that mingled with tree mosses. Through this
spacious temple, seen under avenues of many a pillar, sparkled falling
water where the sisters Teign, their separate journeys done, murmured
together and blended their crystal at an ancient bridge. Henceforth
these two streams sweep under hanging woods of larch and pine, by
meadows, orchards, homesteads, through the purple throat of oak and
fir-crowned Fingle, and so onwards, by way of open vales, to their
sad-coloured, heron-haunted estuary. Hand in hand they run, here moving
a mill-wheel, there bringing sweet water to a hamlet, and ever singing
their changeful song. The melody of them deepens, from its first baby
prattle at springs in Sittaford's stony bosom, to the riotous roar of
waterfalls below; lulls, from the music reverberated in stony gorges, to
a whisper amid unechoing valleys and most placid pasture lands. Finally
salt winds with solemn message from the sea welcome Teign; and mewing of
gulls on shining mud-flats; and the race and ripple of the tides, who
joyfully bring the little stream to that great Lover of all rivers.
Leading from dingles on the eastern bank to interspaces of more open
glades beside the great beech tree, a bridge, fashioned of oak saplings,
still clothed with bark and ash-coloured lichen, crossed the river; and,
at this sunlit moment, a woman stood upon it and a man shook the frail
structure from his standpoint on the bank. His purpose was to alarm the
maiden if he could; but she only laughed, and hastened across
sure-footed.
Honor Endicott was two-and-twenty; of tall, slight habit, and a healthy,
brown complexion. Her face betrayed some confusion of characteristics.
In repose the general effect suggested melancholy; but this expression
vanished when her eyes were lighted with laughter or her lips parted in
a smile. Then the sad cast of her features wholly disappeared and, as
the sky wakes at dawn or sunset, Honor was transfigured. A beholder
carried from her not the impression of her more usual reserve, but the
face, with its rather untidy black hair, pale brown eyes and bright lips
all smile-lighted. Happily she laughed often, from no vain
consciousness of her peculiar charm, but because she possessed the gift
of a humorous disposition, in the modern acceptation of that word, and
found the world, albeit lonely and not devoid of grey days, yet well
stored with matter for laughter. This sense, than which heredity--that
godmother, half fairy, half fiend--can bestow no better treasure on man
or woman, kept the world sweet for Honor. Her humour was no paltry
idiosyncrasy of mere joy in the ridiculous; but rather a quality that
helped her to taking of large views, that lent a sense of just
proportion in affairs, that tended to tolerance and leavened with
charity her outlook on all things. It also served to brighten and
better an existence, not indeed unhappy, but unusually lonely for a
young woman.
She held up a pretty brown hand, and shook her head at the man.
"Christopher," she said, "supposing that your bridge had broken, and I
had tumbled in?"
"I should have saved you, without doubt--a delicious experience."
"For you. What a subject for a romance: you, the last of your line; I,
the last of mine, being swept to death by old Teign! And my farm would
be desolate, and your woods and hills and ancestral hall, all bundled
wretchedly into Chancery, or some such horrid place."
"On the contrary, I save you; I rescue you at great personal peril, and
we join hands and lands, and live happily ever afterwards."
"There's a heron! You frightened him with your folly."
The great bird ascended from a shallow, trailed his thin legs over the
water, then gathered speed, rose clear, steered with heavy and laborious
flight amid overhanging boughs, and sought a lonelier hunting-ground
elsewhere.
"Brutes! I always walk right on top of them when I'm not carrying my
gun. I hate to think of the number of young trout they eat."
"Plenty left to grow big and be caught all the same," said Honor, as she
peeped down to watch grey shadows, that sped up stream at sight of her
and set little sandclouds rising under the clear water where they
flashed away.
"Nothing like a Devon trout in the world, I think," she added. "I
caught a half-pounder in the Wallabrook last night, just at the end of
the evening rise, with that fly, like a 'woolly bear' caterpillar, you
gave me."
Christopher Yeoland nodded, well pleased. He was a broad and tall young
man of thirty, and he walked through woods and beside waters that had
belonged to his family for years without count. Ardent in some things,
sanguine in all, and unconquerably lazy, he had entered the world to
find it entirely a problem. Succeeding upon several generations of
shiftless and unpractical ancestors--men of like metal with himself--he
stood the penniless possessor of a corner of Devon wherein Nature had
exhausted her loving resources. He clung to the involved home of his
fathers, and dreamed of retrieving the desperate position some day. He
lived an open-air life, and spun courses of action, quite majestic in
their proportions, for the succour and restoration of his property; but
the taking of a definite step in any direction seemed beyond his powers.
In theory he swept to action and achievement, and, if words could have
done it, Godleigh had been freed from all encumbrance thrice in every
week; but practically Christopher appeared content to live from hand to
mouth at his old manor house, to keep one horse in the huge stables, two
dogs in the kennels, a solitary old woman and one man in his echoing and
empty house, where, aforetime, more than half a score of folk had
bustled away their busy lives.
Godleigh, or Godbold's Leigh, as it was first called after its earliest
Norman owner, may be identified among the Domesday manors of Devon; but
it is almost beyond parallel to find possessions descending through a
line of commoners so unbroken as in this case. To Yeoland's ancestors,
none of whom had ever been ennobled, this place accrued soon after 1300
A.D., during the reign of the second Edward; but since that period the
original estate had been shorn of many acres, and sad subdivisions and
relinquishments from century to century were also responsible for its
diminution. Now hill and valley immediately around Godleigh, together
with those tracts upon which stood the village and church of Little
Silver, with sundry outlying farms, were all that survived of the former
domain, and even these pined under heavy mortgages held by remote
money-lending machines with whom Christopher's father had been much
concerned throughout the years of his later life. The present old
fifteenth-century house, built on foundations far more ancient, peeped,
with grey mullioned windows and twisted chimneys, from forest of pine on
a noble hill under the eastern ramparts of Dartmoor. Granite crowned
this elevation, and Teign turned about, like a silver ribbon, far
beneath it.
Here the last of his line passed with Honor Endicott beside the river,
and she mourned presently that the sole care of such noble woods rested
with the Mother only, and that never a forester came to remove the dead
or clear overgrowth of brake and thicket.
"Nature's so untidy," said Honor.
"She is," Yeoland admitted, "and she takes her own time, which seems
long from our point of view. But then there's no pay-day for her, thank
God. She doesn't turn up on Saturdays for the pieces of silver and bite
them suspiciously, like some of your farm folk you lent to help save my
hay last week; and she consumes all her own rubbish, which is a thing
beyond human ingenuity."
This man and woman had known each other from early youth, and were now
left by Chance in positions curiously similar; for Honor Endicott was
also an orphan, also came of ancient Devon stock, and also found her
patrimony of Bear Down Farm--a large property on the fringe of the Moor
and chiefly under grass--somewhat of a problem. It was unencumbered,
but hungered for the spending of money. Concerning the Endicotts, who
had dwelt there for many generations, it need only be said that they
were of yeoman descent, dated from Tudor times, and had of late, like
many a kindred family all England over, sunk from their former estate to
the capacity of working farmers.
Honor, who had enjoyed educational privileges as a result of some
self-denial on the part of both of her parents, now reigned mistress at
"Endicott's," as Bear Down Farm was commonly called. At first sovereign
power proved a source of pleasure; now, blunted by nearly a year of
experience, her rule occasioned no particular delight.
Presently Christopher led his companion beside the great beech and
pointed to a leafy tent beneath it.
"Come into my parlour! I found this delicious place yesterday, and I
said to myself, 'Mistress Endicott may take pleasure in such a spot as
this.' Here will we sit--among the spiders with bodies like peas and
legs like hairs; and I'll make you laugh."
"It's late, Christopher."
"Never too late to laugh. Just half one little hour. What are thirty
minutes to two independent people who 'toil not, neither do they
spin'--nor even knit, like your uncle? There--isn't it jolly
comfortable? Wish the upholstery on some of my old-world furniture was
as complete. By the way, you know that sofa thing with dachshund legs
and a general convulsed look about it, as though the poor wretch had
been stuffed with something that was not suiting it? Well, Doctor Clack
says that it's worth fifty pounds! But he's such a sanguine brute. Yet
this granite, with its moss cushions, is softer than my own easy chair.
There are no such springs as Nature's. Look at heather, or a tree
branch in a gale of wind, or a----"
"Now don't begin again about Nature, Christo; you've talked of nothing
else since we started. Make me laugh if I'm to stop another minute."
"Well, I will. I was looking through some musty old odds and ends in
our muniment-room last night and reading about my forefathers. And they
did put me so much in mind of the old governor. Such muddlers--always
procrastinating and postponing and giving way, and looking at life
through the wrong end of the telescope."
"I've heard my father say that Mr. Yeoland was such a man."
"Yes; and money! He never paid anything in his life but the debt of
Nature, dear old chap; and if he could have found a way to make Nature
take something in the pound, he'd be here pouring his wisdom into my
ears yet."
"We're all bankrupts to her, I suppose."
"He only made one enemy in all his long life; and that was himself."
Christopher reflected a moment, then laughed and drew a paper from his
pocket.
"That reminds me of what I set out on. We are most of us Yeolands much
like the governor. As I tell you, I rummaged in the archives to kill an
hour, and found some remarkably ancient things, ought to send them to
Exeter Museum, or somewhere; only it's such a bother. Couldn't help
laughing, though it was a sort of Sardinian chuckle--on the wrong side
of my face. We're always yielding up, or ceding, or giving away, or
losing something. Here's a scrap I copied from a paper dated 1330.
Listen!"
He smoothed his screed, looked to see that Honor was attending, then
read:--
"'Simon de Yeolandde, s. of John Geoffrey de Yeolandde, gives to Bernard
Faber and Alice his wife his tenement at Throwle'--that's Throwley, of
course '_i.e._ my hall and my orchard called Cridland Barton, and my
herb garden, and my piece of land south of my hall, and my piece of land
north of my hall as far as Cosdonne, and the reversion of the dowry his
mother Dyonisia holds.' There--the grammar is rocky, but the meaning
clear enough. Here's another--in 1373. 'Aylmer Yeolande'--we'd given
away one of our 'd's' by that time, you see--'Aylmer Yeolande releases
to William Corndone 4*d.* (four pence) of annual rent, and to Johanna
Wordel all his right in the hundred of Exemynster.' And here's just one
more; then I'll shut up. In 1500 I find this: 'Suit between Dennys
Yeolandde'--we'd got our 'd' back again for a while--'Gentleman, of
Godbold's Leigh, and Jno. Prouze, Knight, of Chaggeforde, as to right of
lands in Waye and Aller--excepting only 12*s.* (twelve shillings) of
chief rent, which Dennys Yeolandde hath; and the right of comyn of
pasture.' Of course my kinsman went to the wall, for the next entry
shows him climbing down and yielding at every point to the redoubtable
Sir John. We're always fighting the Prouzes, and generally getting the
worst of it. Then their marriage settlements! Poor love-stricken
souls, they would have given their silly heads away, like everything
else, if they could have unscrewed them!"
"So would you," said Honor Endicott. "You laugh at them; but you're a
Yeoland to the marrow in your bones--one of the old, stupid sort."
"I believe I must be. The sixteenth and seventeenth century chaps were
made of harder stuff, and went to the wars and got back much that their
fathers had lost. They built us into a firm folk again from being a
feeble; but of late we're thrown back to the old slack-twisted stock, I
fear."
"That's atavism," declared Honor learnedly.
"Whew! What a word for a pretty mouth!"
"I was taught science of a milk-and-water sort at school."
"Smother science! Look at me, Honor, and tell me when you're going to
answer my question. 'By our native fountains and our kindred gods'; by
all we love in common, it's time you did. A thousand years at least
I've waited, and you such a good sportswoman where other things are
concerned. How can you treat a Christian man worse than you'd treat a
fish?"
She looked at his handsome, fair face, and lost sight of the small chin
and mouth before a broad, sun-tanned forehead, curly hair, and blue
eyes.
"You knew the answer, Christo, or you'd never have been so patient."
"On the contrary, how can I know? I hang on in a storm of agony."
"You look a miserable wretch enough--such a furrowed cheek--such a
haggard gleam in your eyes."
"I say, now! Of course I don't wear my heart on my sleeve, or my awful
suspense upon my face. No, I hide my sufferings, go on shaving and
putting on my best clothes every Sunday, and worshipping in church and
carrying the plate, and all the rest of the dreary round. Only the
sunrises know of all I endure. But once refuse, and you'll see what
despair can drive a man to; say 'No' and I fling everything up and go
off to Australia, where lives the last relation I've got in the
world--an old gentleman in the 'back blocks,' or some such dismal
place."
"You must not dream of that. Men have to work there."
"Then you'll do the only thing to stop me from such an awful fate?
You'll take me for better for worse? You'll join your fat lands to my
lean ones? You'll----"
"Don't," she said, rather bitterly, "don't laugh at me and mine in the
midst of a proposal of marriage. Somehow it makes my blood run cold,
though I'm not sentimental. Yet marriage--even with you--has a serious
side. I want to think how serious. We can't go on laughing for ever."
"Why not? You know the summing-up of a very wise man after he'd devoted
his life to philosophy? Nothing is new, and nothing is true, and nothing
matters. God bless my own--very own little brown mouse of an Honor!
Somehow I had a sneaking hope all along that you would say 'Yes'!"
"I haven't yet."
"Kiss me, and don't quibble at a moment like this. You haven't kissed me
since you were fifteen."
But Honor's humour for once deserted her. She tried to conjure thoughts
proper to the moment and magnify its solemnity; she made an effort, in
some measure pathetic, to feel more than she really felt.
"You'll be wise, clearest Christo; you'll think of me and love me always
and----"
"Anything--anything but work for you, sweet," he said, hugging her to
himself, and kissing her with a boy's rapture.
"Oh, Christopher, don't say that!"
"Then I won't; I'll even work, if you can steel yourself to the thought
of such a spectacle as Christo labouring with a sense of duty--like an
ant with a grain of corn. God bless and bless and bless your dear
little warm heart and body, and soft hair and eyes and everything! Work
for you! You wait and see."
"I knew this was coming," she said a little drearily. "Ever so long ago
I saw it coming and heard it coming. And I rehearsed my part over and
over. Yet the thing itself is an anti-climax, Christo. I should have
said 'Yes' the second time you asked me."
"The first time, my pearl."
"Perhaps so. It's like flat cider now."
"Don't say that. We've been courting continuously, if you look back,
ever since we were children. Then you had dear little tails down your
back--two of them--and I used to get you birds' eggs and other useful
things. When will you marry me, sweetheart?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Honor. "When I can afford a cake."
But there was a tear in her eye that he did not see.
"There speaks again my own brave, heroic Honor! We will have a cake; but
why should you pay for it?"
"I must--there's nobody else to do so. You can't. Come, it is time, and
more than time, that I went home."
"Wait," he said; "on a great, historic occasion like the present one
marks the day with a white stone. This spot is henceforward sacred to
every subsequent Yeoland or Endicott. It may become the shrine of
family pilgrimages. So I'll set a true lover's knot upon this venerable
beech bole, together with the initials H.E.--that's God's feminine
masterpiece--and C.A.Y.--that's Christopher Aylmer Yeoland--not a divine
inspiration, I grant you; but a worthy, harmless child of Nature, taking
him all round. Hark to my best-loved poet:--
'And in the rind of every comely tree
I'll carve thy name, and in that name kisse thee.'"
He cut and chattered; then, his work completed, bid Honor inspect the
conventional bow with their united initials staring white and naked from
the bark.
"Nature will tone it down and make it pretty later on," he said.
"I hope she will make you wise later on."
They departed then and wandered upward by a woodland track to Godleigh.
His arm was round her; her head rested against his shoulder, and her
spirits rose a little. They laughed together, each at the other's slight
fancies; and then a vision of death met them. In a glade beside the
way, where honeysuckle hung pale lamps about the altar of sacrifice,
appeared a fallen cloud of feathers that warmed from grey to
golden-green. There a hawk had slain a woodpecker, and nothing remained
of the victim save the under-down and plumage, with his upper mandible
and a scattered feather or two from his crimson crest.
"That's unlucky," said Honor.
"Very--for the bird," admitted Christopher. "Poor beggar--I'm sorry. I
like the green woodpeckers. They've such a sense of humour, and love a
laugh as well as I do myself."
*CHAPTER II.*
*BEAR DOWN FARM*
The lovers passed through Godleigh, and then, entering the main road
that ran from Little Silver to those high regions above it, pursued
their way by Devonshire lanes whose lofty hedge-banks shut out all view
of the grass lands extending upon each side. Here and there, however,
gates opened into the hayfields, and from one, where two of Honor's
ricks were slowly rising, came hum of voices. The scene was set in
silver-green wisps of hay; a sweet scent clung to the air; two horses
rested on the shady side of the rick; an elm or two whispered into the
haze of summer; and, hard by, sat above half a dozen persons taking
their midday meal under the hedge. Speech was hushed; the nearest men
touched their hats, and a girl dropped a curtsey as Honor walked by at
discreet distance from young Yeoland. And then, upon their passing, the
haymakers broke into a new subject with ready tongue.
A man, smartly attired and apparently not of the working party, winked
as Christopher and his lady moved out of sight.
"'Tis a case for sartain sure," he said.
"Have been this many a day, if you ax me," answered a young woman near
him. She wore a sun-bonnet of faded blue, and a brown dress dragged up
to her belt on one side over a rusty red petticoat.
"They've been tinkering arter each other ever since I can mind, an' I be
nineteen," she added.
Another spoke. He was a tall labourer, clad in earth-colour, with a big
nose, a long neck, large, sun-blistered ears, and black hair.
"Might be a happy thing belike," he said; and to him a smaller man
replied--a man whose bristly beard was nearly grey, whose frowning, dark
eyes and high, discontented forehead promised little amiability.
"'A happy thing'! A happy fiddlestick, Henry Collins! Godleigh's
sea-deep in debt, an' so much a land of the Jews as Jerusalem's self, by
all accounts. An' missis--better her bide a maid all her days than marry
him, I reckon. She's a jewel tu precious for the likes of that
gude-for-nothing. An' I've my doubts, but--Sally, give awver, will 'e,
an' remember you'm a grawed gal!"
This sudden exhortation Mr. Jonah Cramphorn cast at his daughter, the
maiden who had first spoken; and necessity for such rebuke appeared in
the fact that Sally, a ripe and plump damsel, with red lips, grey eyes
and corn-coloured hair, was now pelting the youth beside her with hay,
while he returned the compliment as best he could.
Gregory Libby, in his well-fitting garments with neat gaiters and cap to
match, though formerly a worker, enjoyed holiday to-day for reasons now
to appear. He was a mean type of man, with sandy locks, a slight
hare-lip, and a low forehead; but to Sally's eyes these defects were not
apparent. Mr. Libby could sing charming songs, and within the past week
he was richer by a legacy of five hundred pounds. On the previous day
he had come back from London to Little Silver, and now, still putting
off his return to work, stood among the folk of Bear Down and posed as a
person of some consequence. Sally's conduct woke indignation elsewhere
than in her father's breast. Mr. Henry Collins glared at the grey
figure of Gregory. The big-nosed man was a new hand at Bear Down; but
one fortnight in the company of Sally had served to enslave Henry's
maiden heart. He was in love with Miss Cramphorn, but thus far had
hidden his secret.
Beside the rising hayrick, sitting in sunshine with his face to the
others, an old, bald labourer ate bread and onions and drank from a
little cider barrel. His countenance showed a marvellous network of
wrinkles; his scant hair, reduced to tufts above his ears, was very
white; his whiskers were also white, and his eyes, blue as the summer
sky, wore an expression of boyish frankness. His small, clean-shaved
mouth was pursed like a young child's.
"'Tis pity," he said, resuming the former topic, "'tis pity as missis
can't find a way to mate wi' her cousin, Maister Myles Stapledon, him
what be comin' to pay a visit presently. A snug man they say, an' a
firm-footed--solid every way in fact. I mind last time he comed
here--more'n ten year ago. A wise young youth even then."
"Ban't purty Miss Endicott's sort by the sound of un," said Gregory
Libby; then, accepting a drink of cider from a horn mug which Sally
brought him, he drew forth a cigar from a yellow leather case. This he
presently lighted, marched about, and puffed with great show of
satisfaction, not oblivious to the attention he attracted.
"A strange fashion way to take tobacco," said the ancient, who was
called Churdles Ash.
"So it is then," assented Mr. Cramphorn; "an' what's more, I ban't
gwaine to allow 'tis a fit an' proper way of smokin' for the likes of
him. What's five hunderd pound when all's said?"
"'Twill blamed soon be five hunderd pence, if the man's gwaine to
broadcast it away 'pon fantastic machines like them, as awnly
gentlefolks have any business with," said Samuel Pinsent, another
labourer, who passed for a great wit, chiefly by reason of a
Merry-Andrew power to pull remarkable faces. He was a red man with weak
eyes; and his fellows alleged him impervious to all feminine
attractions.
"For Sundays an' high rejoicings a cigar may pass now an' again," argued
Henry Collins. "Not as I'm saying a word for Greg Libby," he added in
violent haste, as he caught Sally's eye. "He'm a puny twoad an' always
was--brass or no brass. What do the likes of him want wi' stiff collars
'pon week-days? Let un go back to his job, which was hedge-tacking, an'
not done tu well neither, most times."
"He'm the monkey as have seed the world," said old Ash, lighting a black
pipe and crossing his hands over his stomach.
Mr. Collins mopped his forehead, and looked up from where he sat. Then
he tightened the leather thongs that fastened in his trousers below the
knees and answered as he did so--
"Seed the world! Him! I knaw what he seed. He seed a cheap tailor in
the Edgware Road, Paddington way; an' he seed a wicked back street or
two; an' no doubt a theayter----"
"That'll do, if you please, Henery," said Mr. Cramphorn. "Me an' Ash, as
weern't born essterday, can guess all the rest. I ban't in nature
suspicious----"
Then in his turn Jonah was interrupted.
"Ess fay, you be, my son," declared Mr. Ash.
"Anyway," answered the parent, darkly scowling, "I see my darter pulling
eyes at the fule an' I won't stand it--wouldn't for twice five hunderd
pound."
"No need to fright yourself," said Churdles Ash, shaking his head.
"Libby's not a marryin' man--tu selfish to marry while his auld mother's
alive to slave for him an' kiss the ground he walks on. Besides,
there's your other darter--Margery. He'm so set 'pon wan as t'other;
but 'tis all philandering, not business."
"He'll end by havin' a sore back anyways if I see much more of it.
Sally to marry him indeed! Shaw me a purtier gal than Sally this side
Exeter an' I'll give 'e a gawlden sovereign!"
"An' I'll give 'e another!" declared Mr. Collins.
At this moment Jonah's second daughter, together with one Mrs. Loveys,
housekeeper at Bear Down, appeared. The latter was an ample, elderly
widow. She had a capacious bosom, bare arms, and a most kindly face.
Her late husband, Timothy Loveys, after a lifetime of service at
Endicott's, passed within a year of his master; and upon his death Mr.
Cramphorn had won promotion and was now head man. As for Margery, a
thin, long-faced girl, cast in mould more fragile than her sister, she
worked as dairymaid at the farm. She too was personable, but her
slimmer contour, reserved manner, and sharp tongue contrasted ill, in
masculine opinion, with Sally's physical exuberance and good temper.
The women who now came to fetch empty utensils and baskets stayed
awhile, and Mrs. Loveys asked a question.
"An' what for be you offerin' gawlden sovereigns so free, Henry
Collins?" she inquired with a side glance.
"To find a purtier maiden than Sally, ma'am."
Margery laughed and blushed, with her eyes on Mr. Libby.
"What about missis?" she asked.
"Missis," answered Jonah, "be a lady. She'm built on a different
pattern, though with like material. No disrespect to her, as I'd shed
my life's blood for, but the differ'nce betwixt she an' my Sally's the
differ'nce betwixt sunlight an' moonlight."
"Between a wind-flower an' a butivul, full-blawed cabbage rose,"
hazarded Mr. Collins.
"Yet theer's them as would liefer have the windflower," said Margery,
who secretly believed herself very like her mistress, and dressed as
near to Honor as she dared. Mrs. Loveys nodded approval of this
statement; Mr. Cramphorn stoutly questioned it.
"What d'you say, Churdles?" asked Pinsent; "or be you tu auld to call
home the maids you felt kind-like towards in last century when you was
full o' sap?"
"I say 'tis time to go to work," replied Mr. Ash, who never answered a
question involving difference of opinion between his friends. "Come,
Collins, 'Thirty Acres' to finish 'fore sundown, an' theer's full work
'pon it yet! An' you, Tommy Bates; you fall to sharpenin' the knives
for the cutter, this minute!"
He rose, walked with spreading feet and bent back across the road, then
dipped down into a great field on the other side. There lay a
machine-mower at the edge of the shorn hay, to the nakedness of which
still rippled a russet ocean of standing grass. Colourless light passed
in great waves over it; the lavender of knautias, together with
too-frequent gold of yellow rattle, flashed in it; and the great
expanse, viewed remotely, glowed with dull fire of seeding sorrels.
Above, danced butterflies; within, the grasshoppers maintained a
ceaseless stridulation; and soon the silvery knives were again purring
at the cool heart of the undergreen, while ripe grassheads, flowers,
sweet clovers, tottered and fell together in shining lines, where
Churdles Ash, most just embodiment of Father Time, pursued his way,
perched aloft behind two old horses. At each corner the jarring ceased
a moment, and the old man's thin voice addressed his steeds; then an
angle was turned, and he tinkled on again under the dancing heat.
Elsewhere Tommy Bates prepared another knife, and sharpened its
shark-like teeth with a file; Pinsent brought up a load of hay from a
further field; Cramphorn ascended one rick, and took the harvest from
the forks; while Sally and Collins turned the drying grasses at hand,
and pursued the business of tossing them with dexterity begotten from
long practice. Mr. Libby crept about in the near neighbourhood of the
girl, but conscious that Jonah, from the high vantage of the rick, kept
sharp eyes upon her, adventured no horseplay, and merely complimented
her under his breath upon her splendid arms.
Meanwhile, Christopher Yeoland had seen Honor to her home and so
departed.
Bear Down lay in the centre of hay lands immediately beneath the Moor.
Above it stretched the heather-clad undulations of Scor Hill, and
beneath subtended forest-hidden slopes. The farm itself was approached
through a little avenue of sycamores, whose foliage, though it fell and
turned to sere, black-spotted death sadly early in most autumns, yet
made dimpled play of cool shadow through summer days on the great
whitewashed barn beneath it. Then, through a grass-grown yard and the
foundations of vanished buildings, one reached a duck-pond set in
rhododendrons, and a little garden. The house itself was a patchwork of
several generations, and its main fabric stood in shape of a carpenter's
mitre, whose inner faces fronted east and south. Each portion had its
proper entrance, and that pertaining to the frontage which faced dawn
was of the seventeenth century. Here a spacious granite doorway stood,
on one side of whose portal there appeared the initials "J.E.", set in a
shield and standing for one John Endicott, who had raised this stout
pile in the past; while on the other, a date, 1655, indicated the year
of its erection. The fabric that looked southwards was of a later
period, yet each matched with the other well enough, and time, with the
eternal mists of the Moor for his brush, already began to paint modern
stone and slate into tune with the harmonious warmth of the more ancient
wing. Behind the farmhouse were huddled a dairy, outbuildings, and
various erections, that made fair medley of rusty red tile, warm brown
wood-stack, and silver thatch. A little lawn rolled away from the
granite walls of the farm front, and the parterres, spread snugly in the
angle of the building, were set with rough quartz and gay under
old-world flowers. Here throve in many-coloured, many-scented joy
martagon lilies--pale, purple, and lemon--dark monkshoods,
sweet-williams, sweet-sultans, lavender, great purple poppies,
snapdragons, pansies, stocks, and flaming marigolds. Along the
streamlet, coaxed hither from Scor Hill to feed the farm, grew ferns and
willow-herbs, wild geraniums of varied sorts, wood strawberries, orpine,
and other country folks. The garden was a happy hunting-ground for
little red calves, who wandered bleating about it in the mists of early
morning; and for poultry, who laid their eggs in thickets of flowers,
scratched up dust-baths in the beds, and hatched out many a clutch of
chicks or ducklings under sheltered corners. Against the weathered
forehead of its seventeenth-century wing Endicott's displayed an ancient
cherry tree that annually shook forth umbels of snowy blossom about the
casements, and, later, jewelled these granite walls or decorated the
venerable inscription on the lintel with ruby-red fruit seen twinkling
through green leaves. Elsewhere ivy and honeysuckle and everlasting pea
climbed on a wooden trellis, and in one sheltered nook stood a syringa
and a great japonica, whose scarlet brightened the cloud-coloured days
of early springtime, whose pomaceous harvest adorned the spot in autumn.
Within doors the farm was fashioned on a generous plan, and contained
large, low-ceiled rooms approached through one another by a method most
disorderly and ancient. Once, in the heyday of Endicott prosperity,
these chambers had been much occupied; now, as became practical farmers,
the men--generation by generation--had gradually drifted from the
luxuries of many dwelling-rooms. Their wives and daughters indeed
struggled against this defection, but masculine obstinacy won its way,
until the huge and pleasant kitchen began to be recognised as the
house-place also, while other apartments became associated with Sunday,
or with such ceremonious events as deaths and marriages might represent.
Almost to the farm walls each year there rippled some hundreds of acres
of grass, for no other form of agriculture served the turn so well at
that high altitude. Roots and corn they grew, but only to the extent of
their own requirements. Of stock Bear Down boasted much too little; hay
was the staple commodity, and at this busy season Honor watched the
heavens with a farmer's eye, and personally inspected the undergrass,
its density and texture, in every field.
A late, cold spring had thrown back the principal harvest somewhat
during the year in question; yet it promised well notwithstanding. Mr.
Cramphorn alone declared himself disappointed; but seldom had a crop
been known to satisfy him, and his sustained discontent throughout the
procession of the seasons counted for nothing.
Honor, despite education and reasonable gift of common sense, never
wholly pleased her parents. Her father largely lacked humour in his
outlook, and he had passed doubly sad: in the knowledge that the name of
Endicott must vanish from Bear Down upon the marriage or decease of his
daughter, and in the dark fear that one so fond of laughter would never
make a farmer. Indeed, his dying hope had been that the weight of
supreme control might steady the girl to gravity.
Now, Christopher gone, Honor entered her house, and proceeded into the
kitchen. A little separate parlour she had, but particular reasons led
to the spending of much time in the larger apartment. Nor was this an
ordinary kitchen. You are to imagine, rather, a spacious, lofty, and
comfortable dwelling-room; a place snug against the bitter draughts
which often bulged up the carpets and screamed in the windows throughout
the farm; a chamber warm in winter, in summer cool. Peat fires glowed
upon its cavernous and open hearth, and, like Vesta's sacred brands,
they never wholly died by night or day. Above the fireplace a granite
mantel-shelf supported shining metal-ware--brass candlesticks and tin
receptacles polished to splendour; a pair of old stirrups were nailed
against the wall, with a rack of guns--mostly antique muzzle-loaders;
while elsewhere, suspended in a pattern, there hung a dozen pair of
sheep-shears. Oak beams supported the roof, and from them depended hams
in canvas bags. At one corner, flanked by two bright warming-pans,
stood a lofty clock with a green dial-plate and ornate case of venerable
date; and about its feet there ranged cream-pans at this moment, the
crust of whose contents matched the apricot tone of kitchen walls and
made splendid contrast with the blue-stone floor where sunlight
brightened it. The outer doorstone had yielded to innumerable
steel-shod boots; it was worn clean through at the centre, and a square
of granite had been inserted upon the softer stone. Beside the fire
stood a brown leathern screen, and beneath the window, where light,
falling through the leaves of many geraniums, was cooled to a pale
green, there stretched a settle.
The kitchen was full of sound. A wire-haired fox-terrier pup worried a
bit of rabbit-skin under the table, and growled and tumbled and gurgled
to his heart's content; crickets, in dark caves and crannies behind the
hearth, maintained a cheerful chorus; and from behind the screen came
tapping of wooden needles, where sat an old man knitting yarn.
"Honor at last," he said, as he heard her feet.
"Yes, uncle Mark; and late I'm afraid."
"I didn't wait for you. The dinner is on the table. What has kept you?"
"Christo has been asking me to marry him again."
"But that's an everyday amusement of his, so I've heard you say."
"Uncle, I'm going to."
The needles stopped for one brief moment; then they tapped on again.
"Well, well! Almost a pity you didn't wait a little longer."
"I know what's in your head--Myles Stapledon."
"He was. I confess to it."
"If only you could see his photograph, dearest. Oh so cold, hard,
inscrutable!"
"I remember him as a boy--self-contained and old-fashioned I grant you.
But sober-minded youths often take life too seriously at the start.
There's a sort of men--the best sort--who grow younger as they grow
older. Mrs. Loveys told me that the picture he sent you makes a
handsome chap of Myles."
"Handsome--yes, very--like something carved out of stone."