"Of course it is. But you don't laugh. You never do laugh now. My own

sober conviction is this; Stapledon's in love with you and doesn't know

it. Don't fall off your pony."

"Christopher! You've no right, or reason, or shadow of a shade for

saying such a ridiculous thing."

"There's that in your voice convinces me at this moment."

"Doesn't he know we're engaged? Would such a man allow himself for an

instant----?"

"Of course he wouldn't. That's just what I argue, isn't it? He stops

on here because he doesn't know what's happened to him yet, poor devil.

When he finds out, he'll probably fly."

"You judge others by yourself, my dearest. Love! Why, he works too hard

to waste his thoughts on any woman whatsoever. Never was a mind so

seldom in the clouds."

"In the clouds--no; but on the earth--on the earth, and at your elbow."

"He's nothing of the kind."

"Well, then, you're always at his. Such a busy, bustling couple! I'm

sure you're enough to make the very singing birds ashamed. When is he

going?"

"When his money is laid out to his liking, I suppose. Not yet awhile, I

hope."

"You don't want him to go?"

"Certainly I don't; why should I?"

"You admire him in a way?"

"In a great many ways. He's a restful man. There's a beautiful

simplicity about his thoughts; and----"

"And he works?"

"You're trying to make me cross, Christo; but I don't think you will

again."

"Ah! I have to thank him for that too! He's making you see how small

it is to be cross with me. He's enlarging your mind, lifting it to the

stars, burying it in the bogs, teaching you all about rainbows and

tadpoles. He'll soak the sunshine out of your life if you're not

careful; and then you'll grow as self-contained and sensible and perfect

as he is."

"After which you won't want me any more, I suppose?"

"No--then you'd only be fit for--well, for him."

"I don't love you in these sneering moods, Christo. Why cannot you speak

plainly? You've got some imaginary grievance. What is it?"

"I never said so. But--well, I have. I honestly believe I'm

jealous--jealous of this superior man."

"You child!"

"There it is! It's come to that. I wasn't a child in your eyes a month

ago. But I shall be called an infant in arms at this rate in another

month."

"He can't help being a sensible, far-seeing man, any more than you can

help being a----"

"Fool--say it; don't hesitate. Well, what then?"

Honor, despite her recent assertion, could still be angry with

Christopher, because she loved him better than anything in the world.

Her face flushed; she gathered her reins sharply.

"Then," she answered, "there's nothing more to be said--excepting that

I'm a little tired of you to-day. We've seen too much of one another

lately."

"Or too much of somebody else."

She wheeled away abruptly and galloped off, leaving him with the last

word. One of her dogs, a big collie, stood irresolute, his left forepaw

up, his eyes all doubt. Then he bent his great back like a bow, and

bounded after his mistress; but Yeoland did not attempt to follow. He

watched his lady awhile, and, when she was a quarter of a mile ahead,

proceeded homewards.

She had chosen a winding way back to Bear Down, and he must pass the

farm before she could return to it.

The man was perfectly calm to outward seeming, but he shook his head

once or twice--shook it at his own folly.

"Poor little lass!" he said to himself. "Impatient--impatient--why?

Because I was impatient, no doubt. Let me see--our first real quarrel

since we were engaged."

As he went down the hill past Honor's home, a sudden fancy held him,

and, acting upon it, he dismounted, hitched up his horse, and strolled

round to the back of the house in hope that he might win a private word

or two with Mark Endicott. Chance favoured him. Tea drinking was done,

and the still, lonely hour following on that meal prevailed in the great

kitchen. Without, spangled fowls clucked their last remarks for the day,

and fluttered, with clumsy effort, to their perches in a great holly

tree, where they roosted. At the open door a block, a bill-hook, and a

leathern gauntlet lay beside a pile of split wood where Sally Cramphorn

had been working; and upon the block a robin sat and sang.

Christopher lifted the latch and walked through a short passage to find

Honor's uncle alone in the kitchen and talking to himself by snatches.

"Forgive me, Mr. Endicott," he said, breaking in upon the monologue;

"I've no right to upset your reveries in this fashion, but I was passing

and wanted a dozen words."

"And welcome, Yeoland. We've missed you at the Sunday supper of late

weeks. How is it with you?"

"Oh, all right. Only just now I want to exchange ideas--impressions.

You love my Honor better than anybody else in the world but myself. And

love makes one jolly quick--sensitive--foolishly so perhaps. I didn't

think it was in me to be sensitive; yet I find I am."

"Speak your mind, and I'll go on with my knitting--never blind man's

holiday if you are a blind man, you know."

"You're like all the rest in this hive, always busy. I wonder if the

drones blush when they're caught stealing honey?"

"Haven't much time for blushing. Yet 'tis certain that never drone

stole sweeter honey than you have--if you are a drone."

"I'm coming to that. But the honey first. Frankly now, have you

noticed any change in Honor of late days--since--well, within the last

month or two."

Mr. Endicott reflected before making any answer, and tapped his needles

slowly.

"There is a change," he said at length.

"She's restless," continued Christopher; "won't have her laugh

out--stops in the middle, as if she suddenly remembered she was in

church or somewhere. How d'you account for it?"

"She's grown a bit more strenuous since her engagement--more alive to

the working-day side of things."

"Not lasting, I hope?"

"Please God, yes. She won't be any less happy."

"Of course Myles Stapledon's responsible. Yet how has he done it? You

say you're glad to see Honor more serious-minded. Well, that means you

would have made her so before now, if you could. You failed to change

her in all these years; he has succeeded in clouding her life somehow

within the space of two months. How can you explain that?"

"You're asking pithy questions, my son. And, by the voice of you, I'm

inclined to reckon you're as likely to know the answers to them as I am.

Maybe more likely. You're a man in love, and that quickens the wits of

even the dullest clod who ever sat sighing on a gate, eating his turnip

and finding it tasteless. I loved a maid once, too; but 'tis so far

off."

"Well, there's something not wholly right in this. And they ought to

know it."

"Certainly they don't--don't guess it or dream it. But leave that. Now

you. You must tackle yourself. The remedy lies with you. This thing

has made you think, at any rate."

"Well, yes. Honor isn't so satisfied with me as of old, somehow. Of

course that's natural, but----"

"She loves you a thousand times better than you love yourself."

"And still isn't exactly happy in me."

"Are you happy in yourself? She's very well satisfied with

you--worships the ground you walk on, as the saying is--but that's not

to say she's satisfied with your life. And more am I, or anybody that

cares about you. And more are you."

"Well, well; but Myles Stapledon--this dear, good chap. He's a--what?

Why, a magnifying glass for people to see me in--upside down."

"He thinks very little about you, I fancy."

"He's succeeded in making me feel a fool, anyhow; and that's unpleasant.

Tell me what to do, Mr. Endicott. Where shall I begin?"

"Begin to be a man, Yeoland. That's what a woman wants in her

husband--wants it unconsciously before everything. A

man--self-contained, resolute--a figure strong enough to lean upon in

storm and stress."

"Stapledon is a man."

"He is, emphatically. He knows where he is going, and the road. He

gets unity into his life, method into his to-morrows."

"To-morrow's always all right. It's to-day that bothers me so

infernally."

"Ah! and yesterday must make you feel sick every time you think of it,

if you've any conscience."

"I know there isn't much to show. Yet it seems such a poor compliment

to the wonderful world to waste your time in grubbing meanly with your

back to her. At best we can only get a few jewelled glimpses through

these clay gates that we live behind. Then down comes the night, when

no man may work or play. And we shall be an awfully long time dead. And

what's the sum of a life's labour after all?"

"Get work," said Mark, "and drop that twaddle. Healthy work's the first

law of Nature, no matter what wise men may say or poets sing. Liberty!

It's a Jack-o'-lantern. There's no created thing can be free. Doing His

will--all, all. Root and branch, berry and bud, feathered and furred

creatures--all working to live complete. The lily does toil; and if you

could see the double fringe of her roots above the bulb and under it--as

I can well mind when I had eyes and loved the garden--you'd know it was

so. There's no good thing in all the world got without labour at the

back of it. Think what goes to build a flash of lightning--you that love

storms. But the lightning's not free neither. And the Almighty's self

works harder than all His worlds put together."

"Well, I'll do something definite. I think I'll write a book about

birds. Tell me, does Honor speak much of her cousin?"

"She does."

"Yet if she knew--if she only knew. Why, God's light! she'd wither and

lose her sap and grow old in two years with Stapledon. I know it, in

the very heart of me, and I'd stake my life on it against all the

prophets. There's that in close contact with him would freeze and kill

such as Honor. Yes, kill her, for it's a vital part of her would

suffer. Some fascination has sprung up from the contrast between us;

and it has charmed her. She's bewitched. And yet--be frank, Mr.

Endicott--do you believe that Stapledon is the husband for Honor?

You've thought about it, naturally, because, before she and I were

engaged, you told me that you hoped they might make a match for their

own sakes and the farm's. Now what do you say? Would you, knowing her

only less well than I do, wish that she could change?"

The other was silent.

"You would, then?"

"If I would," answered old Endicott, "I shouldn't have hesitated to say

so. It's because I wouldn't that I was dumb."

"You wouldn't? That's a great weight off my mind, then."

"I mean no praise for you. I should like to chop you and Stapledon

small, mix you, and mould you again. Yet what folly! Then she'd look

at neither, for certain."

"Such a salad wouldn't be delectable. But thank you for heartening me.

I'm the husband for your niece. I know it--sure as I'm a Christian.

And she knew it a month ago; and she'll know it again a month hence, I

pray, even if she's forgotten it for the moment. Now I'll clear out,

and leave you with your thoughts."

"So you've quarrelled with her?"

"No, no, no; she quarrelled with me, very properly, very justly; then

she left me in disgrace, and I came to you, hoping for a grain of

comfort. I'm a poor prattler, you know--one who cannot hide my little

dish of misery out of sight, but must always parade it if I suspect a

sympathetic nature in man or woman. Good-bye again."

So Christopher departed, mounted his horse, and trotted home in most

amiable mood.

*CHAPTER IX.*

*THE WARNING*

There was a custom of ancient standing at Bear Down Farm. On working

days the family supped together in a small chamber lying off the

kitchen, and left the latter apartment to the hands; but upon Sunday

night all the household partook at the same table, and it was rumoured

and believed that, during a period of two hundred years, the reigning

head of Endicott's had never failed to preside at this repast, when in

residence. Moreover, the very dishes changed not. A cold sirloin of

beef, a potato salad, and a rabbit pie were the foundations of the

feast; and after them followed fruit tarts, excepting in the spring,

with bread and cheese, cider and small beer.

Two days after Honor's quarrel with Christopher, while yet they

continued unreconciled, there fell a Sunday supper at which the little

band then playing its part in the history of Endicott's was assembled

about a laden board. But matters of moment were astir; a wave of

excitement passed over the work folk, and Myles, who sat near the head

of the table on Honor's left, observed a simultaneous movement, a

whispering and a nodding. There were present Mr. Cramphorn and his

daughters, who dwelt in a cottage hard by the farm; Churdles Ash, Henry

Collins, the red-haired humorist Pinsent, and the boy Tommy Bates. Mrs.

Loveys took the bottom of the table; Mark Endicott sat beside his niece,

at her right hand.

A hush fell upon the company before the shadow of some great pending

event. The clatter of crockery, the tinkle of knives and forks ceased.

Then Myles whispered to Honor that a speech was about to be delivered,

and she, setting down her hands, smiled with bright inquiry upon Mr.

Cramphorn, who had risen to his feet, and was darting uncomfortable

glances about him from beneath black brows.

"D'you want to tell me anything, Cramphorn?" she inquired.

"Ma'am, I do," he answered. "By rights 'tis the dooty of Churdles Ash,

but he'm an ancient piece wi'out gert store o' words best o' times, an'

none for a moment such as this; so he've axed me to speak instead,

'cause it do bring him a wambliness of the innards to do or say ought as

may draw the public eye upon un. 'Tis like this, mistress, we of

Endicott's, here assembled to supper, do desire to give 'e joy of your

marriage contract when it comes to be; an' us hopes to a man as it may

fall out for the best. Idden for us to say no more'n that; an' what we

think an' what we doan't think ban't no business but our awn. Though

your gude pleasure be ours, I do assure 'e; an' the lot of us would do

all man or woman can do to lighten your heart in this vale o' weariness.

An' I'm sure we wants for you to be a happy woman, wife, mother, an'

widow--all in due an' proper season, 'cordin' to the laws o' Nature an'

the will o' God. An' so sez Churdles Ash, an' me, an' Mrs. Loveys, an'

my darters, an' t'others. An' us have ordained to give e' a li'l

momentum of the happy day, awnly theer's no search in' hurry by the look

of it, so as to that--it being Henery Collins his thought--us have

resolved to bide till the banns be axed out. 'Cause theer's many a slip

'twixt the cup an' the lip, 'cordin' to a wise sayin' of old. An' so

I'll sit down wishin' gude fortune to all at Endicott's--fields, an'

things,[#] an' folk."

[#] Things = stock.

Mr. Cramphorn and his friends had been aware of Honor's engagement for

three months; but the bucolic mind is before all things deliberate. It

required that space of time and many long-winded, wearisome arguments to

decide when and how an official cognisance of the great fact might best

be taken.

The mistress of Bear Down briefly thanked everybody, with a smile on her

lip and a tear in her eye; while the men and women gazed stolidly upon

her as she expressed her gratitude for their kindly wishes. When she had

spoken, Mr. Cramphorn, Collins, and Churdles Ash hit the table with

their knife-handles once or twice, and the subject was instantly

dismissed. Save in the mistress and her uncle, this incident struck not

one visible spark of emotion upon anybody present. All ate heartily,

then Honor Endicott withdrew to her parlour; Mrs. Loveys and Cramphorn's

daughters cleared the table.

The men then lighted their pipes; Mark Endicott returned to his chair

behind the leathern screen; the deep settle absorbed Churdles Ash and

another; Jonah took a seat beside the peat fire, which he mended with a

huge "scad" or two from the corner; and the customary Sunday night

convention, with the blind man as president or arbiter, according to the

tone of the discussion, was entered upon. Sometimes matters progressed

harmoniously and sleepily enough; on other occasions, and always at the

instance of Mr. Cramphorn, whose many opinions and scanty information

not seldom awoke an active and polemical spirit, the argument was

conducted with extreme acerbity--a circumstance inevitable when opposing

minds endeavour to express ideas or shades of thought beyond the reach

of their limited vocabularies.

To-night the wind blew hard from the west and growled in the chimney,

while the peat beneath glowed to its fiery heart under a dancing aurora

of blue flame, and half a dozen pipes sent forth crooked columns of

smoke to the ceiling. Mr. Cramphorn, by virtue of the public part he

had already taken in the evening's ceremonial, was minded to rate

himself and his accomplishments with more than usual generosity. For

once his suspicious forehead had lifted somewhat off his eyebrows, and

the consciousness of great deeds performed with credit cast him into a

spirit of complaisance. He lightly rallied Churdles Ash upon the old

man's modesty; then, thrusting his mouth into the necessary figure, blew

a perfect ring of smoke, and spat through it into the fire with great

comfort and contentment.

Gaffer Ash replied in a tone of resignation.

"As to that," he said, "some's got words and some hasn't. For my paart,

I ban't sorry as I can't use 'em, for I've always thanked God as I was

born so humble that I could live through my days without never being

called 'pon to say what I think o' things in general an' the men an'

women round about."

"Least said soonest mended," commented Pinsent.

"Ess fay! 'Tis the chaps as have got to talk I be sorry for--the public

warriors and Parliament men an' such like. They sweat o' nights, I

reckon; for they be 'feared to talk now an' again, I'll wager, an' be

still worse 'feared to hold theer peace."

"You're pretty right, Ash," said Mr. Endicott. "It takes a brave man to

keep his mouth shut and not care whether he's misunderstood or no. But

'tis a bleating age--a drum-beating age o' clash and clatter. Why, the

very members of Parliament get too jaded to follow their great business

with sober minds. If a man don't pepper his speeches with mountebank

fun, they call him a dull dog, and won't listen to him. All the world's

dropping into play-acting--that's the truth of it."

"I didn't make no jokes howsoever when I turned my speech 'fore supper,"

declared Mr. Cramphorn; "an' I'm sure I'd never do no such ondacent

thing in a set speech. Ban't respectful. Not but what I was surprised

to find how pat the right word comed to me at the right moment wi'out

any digging for un."

"'Tis a gert gift for a humble man," said Mr. Ash.

"A gift to be used wi' caution," confessed Jonah. "When you say 'tis a

gift, last word's spoken," he added, "but a man's wise to keep close

guard awver his tongue when it chances to be sharper'n common. Not as I

ever go back on the spoken word, for 'tis a sign of weakness."

Myles Stapledon laughed and Mr. Cramphorn grew hot.

"Why for should I?" he asked.

"If you never had call to eat your words after fifty years o' talkin',

Jonah, you're either uncommon fortunate or uncommon wise," declared the

blind man. "Wise you are not particular, not to my knowledge, so we

must say you're lucky."

The others laughed, and Jonah, despite his brag of a tongue more ready

than most, found nothing to say at this rebuke. He made an inarticulate

growl at the back of his throat and puffed vigorously, while Henry

Collins came to the rescue.

"Can 'e tell us when the weddin's like to be, sir?" he inquired of

Stapledon, and Myles waited for somebody else to reply; but none did so.

"I cannot tell," he answered at length. "I fancy nothing is settled.

But we shall hear soon enough, no doubt."

"I suppose 'tis tu inquirin' to ax if you'll bide to Endicott's when

missis do leave it?" said Samuel Pinsent.

"Well--yes, I think it is. Lord knows what I'm going to do. My home's

here for the present--until--well, I really cannot tell myself. It

depends on various things."

There was a silence. Even the most slow-witted perceived a new

revelation of Stapledon in this speech. Presently Churdles Ash spoke.

"Best to bide here till the time-work chaps be through wi' theer job.

Them time-work men! The holy text sez, 'Blessed be they as have not

seed an' yet have believed'; but fegs! 'tis straining scripture to put

that on time-work. I'd never believe no time-work man what I hadn't

seed."

"Anybody's a fool to believe where he doesn't trust," said Mark

Endicott. "You open a great question, Ash. I believed no more or less

than any other chap of five-an'-twenty in my young days; but, come

blindness, there was no more taking on trust for me. I had to find a

reason for all I believed from that day forward."

"Was faith a flower that grew well in the dark with you, uncle?"

inquired Myles, and there was a wave of sudden interest in his voice.

"Why, yes. Darkness is the time for making roots and 'stablishing

plants, whether of the soil or of the mind. Faith grew but slowly. And

the flower of it comes to no more than this: do your duty, and be gentle

with your neighbour. Don't wax weak because you catch yourself all

wrong so often. Don't let any man pity you but yourself; and don't let

no other set of brains than your own settle the rights and wrongs of

life for you. That's my road--a blind man's. But there's one thing

more, my sons: to believe in the goodness of God through thick and

thin."

"The hardest thing of all," said Stapledon.

Mr. Cramphorn here thought proper to join issue. He also had his own

views, reached single-handed, and was by no means ashamed of them.

"As to the A'mighty," he said, "my rule's to treat Un same as He treats

me--same as we'm taught to treat any other neighbour. That's fair, if

you ax me."

"A blasphemous word to say it, whether or no," declared Ash uneasily.

"We ban't teached to treat folks same as they treat us, but same as we

wish they'd treat us. That's a very differ'nt thing. Gormed if I ban't

mazed a bolt doan't strike 'e, Jonah."

"'Tis my way, an' who's gwaine to shaw me wheer it fails o' right an'

justice?"

"A truculent attitude to the Everlasting, surely," ventured Myles,

looking at the restless little man with his hang-dog forehead and big

chin.

"Who's afeared, so long as he'm on the windy side o' justice? I ban't.

If God sends gude things, I'm fust to thank Un 'pon my bended knees, an'

hope respectful for long continuance; if He sends bad--then I cool off

an' wait for better times. Ban't my way to return thanks for nought.

I've thanked Un for the hay for missus's gude sake a score o' times; but

thank Un for the turmits I won't, till I sees if we'm gwaine to have

rain 'fore 'tis tu late. 'No song, no supper,' as the saying is. Ban't

my way to turn left cheek to Jehovah Jireh after He's smote me 'pon the

right. 'Tis contrary to human nature; an' Christ's self can't alter

that."

"'Tis tu changeable in you, Cramphorn, if I may say it without angering

you," murmured Collins.

"Not so, Henery; ban't me that changes, but Him. I'm a steadfast man,

an' always was so, as Mr. Endicott will bear witness. When the Lard's

hand's light on me, I go dancin' an' frolickin' afore Him, like to David

afore the ark, an' pray long prayers week-days so well as Sundays; but

when He'm contrary with me, an' minded to blaw hot an' cold, from no

fault o' mine--why, dammy, I get cranky tu. Caan't help it. Built so.

'Pears to me as 'tis awnly a brute dog as'll lick the hands that welts

un."

"What do 'e say to this here popish discoorse, sir?" inquired Churdles

Ash; and Mark answered him.

"Why, Jonah only confesses the secret of most of us. We've got too much

wit or too little pluck to tell--that's all the difference. He's

blurted it out."

"The 'state of most of us'?" gasped Mr. Collins.

"Surely, even though we don't own it to our innermost souls. Who should

know, if not me? It makes a mighty difference whether 'tis by pleasant

paths or bitter that we come to the throne of grace. Fair weather

saints most of us, I reckon. I felt the same when my eyes were put out.

God knows how I kept my hands off my life. I never shall. Before that

change I'd prayed regular as need be, morn and night, just because my

dear mother had taught me so to do, and habit's the half of life. And

after my eyes went the habit stuck, though my soul was up in arms and my

brain poisoned against a hard Providence. And what did I do? Why,

regular as the clock, at the hour when I was used to bless God, I went

on my knees and lifted my empty eyes to Him and cursed Him. 'Twas as

the psalmist prayed in his awful song of rage: my prayer was turned into

sin. I did that--for a month. And what was the price He paid me for my

wickedness? Why, He sent peace--peace fell upon me and the wish to

live; and He that had took my sight away brought tears to my eyes

instead. So I reached a blind man's seeing at the last. I've lived to

know that man's misty talk and thought upon justice is no more than a

wind in the trees. Therefore Jonah is in the wrong to steer his life by

his own human notion of justice. There's no justice in this world, and

what fashion of stuff will be the justice in the next, we'll know when

we come to get it measured out, not sooner. One thing's sure: it's not

over likely to be planned on earthly models; so there's no sight under

heaven more pitiful to me than all mankind so busy planning pleasure

parties in the next world to make up for their little, thorny, wayside

job in this."

"The question is, Do we matter to the God of a starry night?" asked

Stapledon, forgetting the presence of any beyond the last speaker. "We

matter a great deal to ourselves and ought to--I know that, of course,"

he added. "We must take ourselves seriously."

Mark laughed and made instant answer.

"We take ourselves too seriously, our neighbours not seriously enough.

It's the fault of all humans--philosophers included."

"An' I be sure theer's immortal angels hid in our bones, however,"

summed up Mr. Ash.

"If so, good," answered Stapledon with profound seriousness. "But

thought won't alter what is by the will of God; nor yet what's going to

be. The Future's His workshop only. No man can meddle there. But the

present is ours; and if half the brain-sweat wasted on the next world

was spent in tidying the dirty corners in this one--why, we might bring

the other nearer--if other there be."

"You'll know there's another long before your time comes to go to it, my

son," said the blind man in a calm voice. Then the tall clock between

the warming-pans struck ten with the sonorous cadence and ring of old

metal. At this signal pipes were knocked out and windows and doors

thrown open; whereupon the west wind, like the voice of a superior

intellect, stilled their chatter with sweet breath, soon swept away the

reek of tobacco, and brought a blast of pure air through the smoke. All

those present, save only Myles and Endicott, then departed to their

rest; but these two sat on awhile, for the old man had a hard thing to

say, and knew that the moment to speak was come.

"How long are you going to stop here?" he asked suddenly.

"I can't guess. I suppose there's no hurry. I've really not much

interest anywhere else. Why do you ask?"

"Because it's important, lad. Blind folks hear such a deal. And they

often know more than what belongs to the mere spoken word. There's an

inner and an outer meaning to most speech of man, and we sightless ones

often gather both. It surprises people at times. You see we win

nothing from sight of a speaking mouth or the eyes above it. All our

brain sits behind our ear; there's no windows for it to look out at."

"You've surprised me by what you have gleaned out of a voice, uncle."

"And I'm like to again. Not pleasantly neither. I've thought how I'd

found something on your tongue long ago; but I've kept dumb, hoping I

was mistaken. To-night, my son, there's no more room for doubt."

"This is a mystery--quite uncanny."

"I don't know. 'Tis very unfortunate--very, but a fact; and you've got

to face it."

"Read the riddle to me," said Stapledon slowly. His voice sounded

anxious under an assumption of amusement.

"Do you remember after supper how Pinsent asked you whether you would

stop on here when his mistress was married? You answered that the Lord

knew what you were going to do. Now it was clean out of your character

to answer so."

"I hope it was; I hope so indeed. I was sorry the moment afterwards."

"You couldn't help yourself. You were not thinking of your answer to

the question, but the much more important thing suggested by the

question. That's what made you so short: the thought of Honor's

marriage."

"I own it," confessed the other. A silence fell; then Mark spoke again

more gravely.

"Myles, you must clear out of here. I'm blind and even I know it. How

much more such as can see--you yourself, for instance--and Honor--and

Christopher Yeoland."

Stapledon's brow flushed and his jaw set hard. He looked at the

sightless face before him, and spoke hurriedly.

"For God's sake, what do you mean?"

"It's news to you? I do think it is! And it has come the same way to

many when it falls the first time. The deeper it strikes, the less they

can put a name to it. But now you know. Glance back along the road

you've walked beside Honor of late days. Then see how the way ahead

looks to you with her figure gone. I knew this a week ago, and I

sorrowed for you. There was an unconscious tribute in your voice when

you spoke to her--a hush in it, as if you were praying. Man, I'm

sorry--but your heart will tell you that I'm right."

A lengthy silence followed upon this speech; then the other whispered

out a question, and there was awe rather than terror in his tone.

"You mean I'm coming to love her?"

"I do--if only that. Remember what you said the first day you came here

about the false step at the threshold."

"But she is another man's. That has been familiar knowledge to me."

"And you think that fact can prevent a man of honour from loving a

woman?"

"Surely."

"Not so at all. Love of woman's a thing apart--beyond all rule and

scale, or dogma, or the Bible's self. The passions are pagans to the

end--no more to be trusted than tame tigers, if a man is a man. But

passions are bred out nowadays. I don't believe the next generation

will be shook to the heart with the same gusts and storms as the last.

We think smaller thoughts and feel smaller sentiments; we're too careful

of our skins to trust the giant passions; our hearts don't pump the same

great flood of hot blood. But you--you belong to the older sort. And

you love her--you who never heard the rustle of a petticoat with

quickened breath before, I reckon. You're too honest to deny it after

you've thought a little. You know there's something seething down at

the bottom of your soul--and now you hear the name of it. Go to bed and

sleep upon that."

Stapledon remained mute. His face was passive, but his forehead was

wrinkled a little. He folded his arms and stared at the fire.

"God knows I wish this was otherwise," continued Mark Endicott.

"'Twould have been a comely and a fitting thing for you to mate her and

carry on all here. So at least I thought before I knew you."

"But have changed your opinion of me since?"

"Well, yes; I did not think so highly of you until we met and got to

understand each other. But I doubt if you'd be a fit husband for Honor.

There's a difference of--I don't know the word--but it's a difference in

essentials anyway--in views and in standpoint. Honor's a clever woman

to some extent, yet she takes abundant delight in occasional

foolishness, as clever women often do. 'Tisn't your fashion of mind to

fool--not even on holidays. You couldn't if you tried."

"But she is as sober-minded as I am at heart. Under her humorous survey

of things and her laughter there is----"

"I know; I know all about her."

"We had thought we possessed much in common on a comparison of notes now

and again."

"If you did, 'tis just what you wouldn't have found out so pat at first

sight. There's a great gulf fixed between you, and I'm not sorry it is

so, seeing she's another man's. Yeoland looks to be a light thing; I

grant that; but I do believe that he understands her better than you or

I ever could. I've found out so much from hearing them together.

Moreover, he's growing sober; there's a sort of cranky sense in him, I

hope, after all."

"A feather-brain, but well-meaning."

"The last leaf on an old tree--even as Honor is."

"At least there must be deep friendship always--deep friendship. So

much can't be denied to me. Don't talk of a great gulf between us,

uncle. Not at least a mental one."

"Truly I believe so, Myles."

"We could bridge that."

"With bridges of passing passion--like silver spider-threads between

flowers. But they wouldn't stand the awful strain of lifelong

companionship. You've never thought what that strain means in our class

of life, when husband and wife have got to bide within close touch most

times till the grave parts them. But that's all wind and nothing.

She's tokened to Yeoland. So no more need be spoken on that head.

You've got to think of your peace of mind, Stapledon, and--well, I'd

best say it--hers too. Now, good-night. Not another word, if you're a

wise man."

Mark Endicott was usually abroad betimes, though not such an early riser

as Myles, and on the following morning, according to his custom, he

walked in the garden before breakfast. His pathway extended before the

more ancient front of Bear Down, and in summer, at each step, he might

stretch forth his hand over the flower border and know what blossom

would meet it. Now there fell a heavy footfall that approached from the

farmyard.

"Good morning," said Stapledon, as he shook Mark by the hand.

"Good morning, my lad."

"I'm going on Saturday."

Mr. Endicott nodded, as one acknowledging information already familiar.

"Your loss will fall heavily on me," he said, "for it's not twice in a

month of Sundays that I get such a companion spirit to chop words with."

*CHAPTER X.*

*THREE ANGRY MAIDS*

Upon the day that Myles Stapledon determined with himself to leave

Little Silver, Christopher's patience broke down, and he wrote to Honor

concerning their protracted quarrel. This communication it pleased him

to begin in a tone of most unusual severity. He struck the note in jest

at first, then proceeded with it in earnest. He bid his lady establish

her mind more firmly and affirm her desires. He returned her liberty,

hinted that, if he so willed, he might let Godleigh Park to a wealthy

Plymouth tradesman, who much desired to secure it, and himself go abroad

for an indefinite period of years. Then, weary of these heroics,

Christopher became himself on the third page of the note, expressed

unbounded contrition for his sins, begged his sweetheart's forgiveness,

and prayed her to name a meeting-place that he might make atonement in

person. With joke and jest the letter wound to its close; and he

despatched it to Bear Down upon the following morning.

Mr. Gregory Libby happened to be the messenger, and of this worthy it

may be said that, while now a person well-to-do in the judgment of

Little Silver, yet he displayed more sense than had been prophesied for

him, kept his money in his purse, and returned to his humble but

necessary occupation of hedge-trimming. He was working about Godleigh at

present, and being the first available fellow-creature who met Yeoland's

eye as he entered the air, letter in hand, his temporary master bid

Gregory drop gauntlet and pruning-hook that he might play postman

instead for a while.

The youth departed then to Endicott's under a personal and private

excitement, for his own romance lay there, as it pleased him to think,

and he was conducting it with deliberate and calculating method. Libby

found himself divided between the daughters of Mr. Cramphorn, and, as

those young women knew this fact, the tension between them increased

with his delay. Upon the whole he preferred Sally, as the more splendid

animal; but the man was far too cunning to commit himself rashly. His

desires by no means blinded him, and he looked far ahead and wondered

with some low shrewdness which of the maids enjoyed larger part of her

father's regard, and which might hope for a lion's share of Jonah's

possessions when the head-man at Bear Down should pass away. In this

direction Mr. Libby was prosecuting his inquiries; and the operation

proved difficult and delicate, for Cramphorn disliked him. Margery met

the messenger, and gave a little purr of pleasure as she opened the

kitchen door.

"Come in, come in the kitchen," she said; "I'm all alone for the minute

if you ban't feared o' me, Mr. Libby."

"Very glad to see you again," said Gregory, shaking her hand and holding

it a moment afterwards.

"So be I you. I heard your butivul singing to church Sunday, but me,

bein' in the choir, I couldn't look about to catch your eye."

"Wheer's Sally to?" he asked suddenly, after they had talked a few

moments on general subjects.

The girl's face fell and her voice hardened.

"How should I knaw? To work, I suppose."

"I awften wonder as her hands doan't suffer by it," mused Libby.

"They do," she answered with cruel eagerness. "Feel mine."

She pressed her palms into his, considering that the opportunity

permitted her so to do without any lack of propriety. And he held them

and found them soft and cool, but a thought thin to his taste. She

dropped her eyelids, and he looked at her long lashes and the thick

rolls of dark hair on her head. Then his eyes ranged on. Her face was

pretty, with a prim prettiness, but for the rest Margery wholly lacked

her sister's physical splendours. No grand curves of bosom met Mr.

Libby's little shifty eyes. The girl, indeed, was slight and thin.

He dropped her hand, and she, knowing by intuition the very matter of

his mind, spoke. Her voice was the sweetest thing about her, though

people often forgot that fact in the word it uttered. Margery had a bad

temper and a shrewish tongue. Now the bells jangled, and she fell

sharply upon her absent sister. She declared that she feared for her;

that Sally was growing unmaidenly as a result of her outdoor duties.

Then came a subtle cut--and Margery looked away from her listener's face

as she uttered it.

"Her could put you in her pocket and not knaw you was theer. I've heard

her say so."

Mr. Libby grew very red.

"Ban't the way for a woman to talk about any chap," he said.

"Coourse it ban't. That's it with she. So much working beside the men,

an' killin' fowls, an' such like makes her rough an' rough-tongued.

Though a very gude sister to me, I'm sure, an'----"

She had seen Sally approaching; hence this lame conclusion. The women's

eyes met as the elder spoke.

"Wheer's faither to, Margery? Ah! Mr. Libby--didn't see you. You'm up

here airly--helpin' her to waste time by the look of it."

"Theer's some doan't want no help," retorted the other. "What be you

doin' indoors? Your plaace is 'pon the land with the men."

"Wheer you'd like to be, if they'd let 'e," stung the other; "but you'm

no gude to 'em--a poor pin-tailed wench like you."

"Ess fay! Us must have a brazen faace an' awver-blawn shape like yourn

to make the men come about us! Ban't sense--awnly fat they look for in

a female of coourse!" snapped back Margery; and in the meantime the

cause of this explosion--proud of his power, but uneasy before the wrath

of women--prepared to depart. Fortune favoured his exit, for Honor

appeared suddenly at the other end of the farmyard with some kittens in

her hands and a mother cat, tail in air, marching beside her and lifting

misty green eyes, full of joy.

Libby turned therefore, delivered his letter, and was gone; while behind

him voices clashed in anger, one sweet, one shrill. Then a door slammed

as Margery hastened away upon a Parthian shot, and her sister stamped

furiously, having no word to answer but a man's. Sally immediately left

the house and proceeded after the messenger; but a possibility of this

he had foreseen, and was now well upon his way back to Godleigh. Sally

therefore found herself disappointed anew, and marked her emotions by

ill-treating a pig that had the misfortune to cross her stormy path.

Another woman's soul was also in arms; and while Margery wept invisible

and her sister used the ugliest words that she knew, under her breath,

their mistress walked up and down the grass plot where it extended

between the farm and the fields, separated from the latter by a dip in

the land and a strange fence of granite posts and old steel rope.

Honor had now come from seeing Myles Stapledon. Together, after

breakfast, they had inspected a new cow-byre on outlying land, and, upon

the way back, he told her that he designed to return to Tavistock at the

end of that week. Only by a sudden alteration of pace and change of

foot did she show her first surprise. Then she lifted a questioning

gaze to his impassive face.

"Why?" she asked.

"Well, why not? I've been here three months and there is nothing more

for me to do--at any rate nothing that need keep me on the spot."

"There's still less for you to do at Tavistock. You told me a month ago

that there was nothing to take you back. You've sold the old house and

let the mill."

"It is so; but I must--I have plans--I may invest some money at

Plymouth. And I must work, you know."

"Are you not working here?"

"Why, not what I call work. Only strolling about watching other

people."

Honor changed the subject after a short silence.

"Did you see Christopher on Sunday? I thought you were to do so?"

"Yes; the linen-draper from Plymouth has been at him again. He's mad

about Godleigh; he makes a splendid offer to rent it for three years.

And he'll spend good money upon improvements annually in addition to

quite a fancy rent."

"Did you advise Christopher to accept it?"

"Most certainly I did. It would help to lessen his monetary bothers;

but he was in one of his wildly humorous moods and made fun of all

things in heaven and earth."

Honor tightened her lips. Their first great quarrel, it appeared, was

not weighing very heavily on her lover.

"He refused, of course."

"He said that he would let you decide. But he vows he can't live out of

sight of Godleigh and can't imagine himself a trespasser on his own

land. He was sentimental. But he has such an artist's mind. 'Tis a

pity he's not got some gift of expression as an outlet--pictures or

verses or something."

"That can have nothing to do with your idea of going away, however,

Myles?" asked Honor, swinging back to the matter in her mind.

"Nothing whatever; why should it?"

"I don't want you to go away," she said; and some passion trembled in

her voice. "You won't give me any reason why you should do so, because

there can be none."

"We need not discuss it, cousin."

"Then you'll stop, since I ask you to?"

"No, I cannot, Honor. I must go. I have very sufficient reasons. Do

not press me upon that point, but take my word for it."

"You refuse me a reason? Then, I repeat, I wish you to stay.

Everything cries out that you should. My future prosperity cries out.

It is your duty to stay. Apart from Bear Down and me, you may do

Christopher much good and help him to take life more seriously. Will

you stay because I ask you to?"

"Why do you wish it?" he said.

"Because--I like you very much indeed; there--that's straightforward and

a good reason, though you're so chary with yours."

She looked frankly at him, but with annoyance rather than regard in her

eyes.

"It is folly and senseless folly to go," she continued calmly, while he

gasped within and felt a mist crowding down on the world. "You like me

too, a little--and you're enlarging my mind beyond the limits of this

wilderness of eternal grass and hay. Why, when Providence throws a

little sunshine upon me, should I rush indoors out of it and draw down

the blinds?"

He was going to mention Christopher again, but felt such an act would be

unfair to the man in Honor's present mood. For a moment he opened his

mouth to argue the point she raised, then realised the danger and

futility. Only by an assumption of carelessness amounting to the brutal

could he keep his secret out of his voice. And in the light of what she

had confessed so plainly, to be less frank himself was most difficult.

Her words had set his heart beating like a hammer. His mind was

overwhelmed with his first love, and to such a man it was an awful

emotion. It shook him and unsteadied his voice as he looked at her, for

she had never seemed more necessary to him than then.

"Don't be so serious," he said. "Your horizon will soon begin to

enlarge with the coming interests. I've enjoyed my long visit more than

I can tell you--much more than I can tell you; but go I must indeed."

"Stop just one fortnight more, Myles?"

"Don't ask it, Honor. It's hard to say 'No' to you."

"A week--a little week--to please me? Why shouldn't you please me? Is

it a crime to do that? I suppose it is, for nobody ever thinks of

trying to."

"I cannot alter my plans now. I must go on Saturday."

"Go, then," she said. "I'm rewarded for being so rude as to ask so

often. I'm not nearly proud enough. That's a distinction you've not

taught me to achieve with all your lessons."

She left him, but he overtook her in two strides, and walked at her

right hand.

"Honor, please listen to me."

"My dear cousin, don't put on that haggard, not to say tragic,

expression. It really is a matter of no moment. I only worried you

because I'm spoiled and hate being crossed even in trifles. It was the

disappointment of not getting my way that vexed me, not the actual point

at question. If you can leave all your interests here without anxiety

and trust me so far--why, I'm flattered."

"Hear me, I say."

"So will the whole world, if you speak so loud. What more is there to

hear? You're going on Saturday, and Tommy Bates shall drive you to

Okehampton to catch the train."

"You're right--and wise," he said more quietly. "No, I've nothing to

say."

Then he made a ghastly effort to be entertaining.

"And mind, Honor, I shall be very sharp if my cheque does not come each

quarter on the right day. A hard taskmaster I shall be, I promise you."

"Don't, Myles," she answered instantly, growing grave at his simulated

merriment.

A few minutes afterwards she left him, sought out the squeaking kittens

to calm her emotions, presently deposited them in a sunny corner with

their parent, and, taking Christopher's letter, walked out again upon

the grass.

A storm played over her face which she made no attempt to hide.

Tear-stained Margery, peeping from the kitchen window, noticed it, and

Samuel Pinsent, as he passed from the vegetable garden, observed that

his salute received no recognition.

Honor Endicott knew very well what she now confronted, and she swept

from irritation to anger, from anger to passion before the survey.

Ignoring the great salient tragedy that underlaid the position, she took

refuge in details, and selecting one--the determination of Myles to

depart--chose to connect Christopher Yeoland directly with it, decided

to believe that it was at Yeoland's desire her cousin now withdrew. The

rectitude of the act added the last straw to her temper. The truth

perhaps was not wholly hidden from her; she had been quick to read Myles

by light thrown from her own heart. And here, at a point beyond which

her thought could not well pass, she turned impatiently to the letter

from her lover, tore it open, and scanned the familiar caligraphy.

Half a page sufficed, for her mood just then was ill-tuned to bear any

sort of reproof. Anger had dimmed both her sense of proportion and her

knowledge of Christopher; round-eyed she read a few lines of stern

rebuke and censure, a threat, an offer of liberty, and no more. The

real Christopher, who only began upon a later folio, she never reached.

There was a quick suspiration of breath, a sound suspiciously like the

gritting of small teeth, and her letter--torn, and torn, and torn

again--was flung into the hand of the rough wind, caught, hurried aloft,

swept every way, scattered afar, sown over an acre of autumn grass.

"This is more than I can bear!" she said aloud; and after the

sentiment--so seldom uttered by man or woman save under conditions

perfectly capable of endurance--she entered the house, tore off her

gloves, and wrote, with heaving bosom, an answer to the letter she had

not read.

*CHAPTER XI.*

*PARTINGS*

When Christopher Yeoland received his sweetheart's letter at the hand of

Tommy Bates, he read it thrice, then whistled a Dead March to himself

for the space of half an hour.

He retired early with his tribulation, and spent a night absolutely

devoid of sleep; but Nature yielded about daybreak, when usually he

rose, and from that hour the man slumbered heavily until noon. Then,

having regarded the ceiling for a considerable time, he found that Honor

had receded to the background of his mind, while Myles Stapledon bulked

large in the forefront of it. To escape in their acuteness the painful

impressions awakened by his letter, he destroyed it without further

perusal; he then wandered out of doors, and climbed above his pine woods

to reflect and mature some course of action. He retraced the recent

past, and arrived at erroneous conclusions, misled by Honor's letter, as

she had been deceived from the introductory passages in his. He told

himself that she had yielded to his importunities through sheer

weariness; that in reality she did not love him and now knew it, in

presence of this pagan cousin, sprung up out of the heather. From

finding herself in two minds, before all the positive virtues of

Stapledon, she was doubtless now in one again, and he--Christopher--had

grown very dim, had quite lost his old outline in her eyes, in fact had

suffered total eclipse from the shadow of a better man.

To these convictions he came, and while still of opinion--even after the

catastrophe of her letter--that no more fitting husband could have been

found for Honor than himself, yet was he equally sure, since her

indignation, that he would never ask her to marry him more. Thus he

argued very calmly, with his body cast down under the edge of the pine

woods, his eyes upon the dying gold of oak forests spread over an

adjacent hill. Against Honor he felt no particular resentment, but with

Stapledon he grew into very steadfast enmity.

Under his careless, laughter-loving, and invertebrate existence Yeoland

hid a heart; and though none, perhaps not Honor herself, had guessed all

that his engagement meant to him, the fact remained: it began to

establish the man in essential particulars, and had already awakened

wide distaste with his present uncalculated existence. Thus Honor's

promise modified his outlook upon life, nerved him, roused him to

responsibility. He was not a fool, and perfectly realised what is due

from any man to the woman who suffers him henceforth to become first

factor in her destiny. Yet his deeply rooted laziness and love of

procrastination had stood between him and action up to the present. All

things were surely conspiring to a definite step; but events had not

waited his pleasure; another man now entered the theatre, and his own

part was thrust into obscurity even at the moment when he meditated how

to make it great. But the fact did not change his present purpose.

Ideas, destined to produce actions during the coming year, were still

with him, and recent events only precipitated his misty projects. He

resolved upon immediate and heroic performance. He began by forgiving

Honor. He marvelled at her unexpected impatience, and wondered what

barbed arrow in his own letter had been sharp enough to draw such

serious wrath from her. There was no laughter in her reply--all

thunder, and the fine forked lightning of a clever woman in a passion on

paper. He felt glad that he had destroyed the letter. Yet the main

point was clear enough, though only implicitly indicated; she loved him

no more, for had she done so, no transient circumstance of irritation or

even active anger had been strong enough to win such concentrated

bitterness from her. He did not know what had gone to build Honor's

letter; he was ignorant of Stapledon's decision, of the fret and fume in

his sweetheart's spirit when she heard it, of the mood from which she

suffered when she received his note, and of the crowning fact that she

had not read all.

So Christopher made up his mind to go away without more words, to let

Godleigh to the enamoured linen-draper for a term of years, and join his

sole surviving relative--an ancient squatter in New South Wales--who

wrote to his kinsman twice a year and accompanied each missive with the

information that Australia was going to the dingoes and must soon cease

to be habitable by anything but a "sun-downer" or a kangaroo. Hither,

then, Christopher determined to depart; and, viewed from beneath his

whispering pines, the idea had an aspect so poetical that he found tears

in his eyes, which set all the distant woods swimming. But when he

remembered Myles, his sorrow dried, scorched up by an inner fire; and,

as he looked into the future that this stranger had snatched away from

him, he began to count the cost and measure the length of his life

without Honor Endicott. Such calculations offered no standpoint for a

delicate emotion. They were the difference between visions of billowing

and many-breasted Devon, here unrolled before him, glorious under red

autumn light, and that other in his mind's eye--a sad-coloured

apparition of Australian spinifex and sand.

His anger whirled up against the supplanter, and he forgot his former

charitable and just contentions uttered before this blow had fallen.

Then he had honestly affirmed to Honor that in his judgment Stapledon

was in love with her and scarcely realised his position. That utterance

was as nearly true as possible; but in the recollection of the woman's

anger he forgot it. How the thing had come about mattered nothing now.

To inquire was vain; but the knowledge that he had done no deed to bring

this storm upon himself proved little comfort. His patience and humour

and philosophy went down the wind together. He was, at least to that

extent, a man.

To Honor's letter he returned no answer; neither did he seek her, but

avoided her rather and pursued an active search for Myles Stapledon.

Accident prevented a meeting until the morning of the latter's

departure, and, wholly ignorant that his rival was at that moment

leaving Bear Down for good and all, Christopher met him in a dog-cart on

the road to Okehampton, not far from the spot where had fallen out their

first introduction.

The pedestrian raised his hand, and Myles bid Bates, who drove him, pull

up.

"Well met," he said.

"Would you mind giving me a few minutes of your time, Stapledon?"

inquired Christopher coldly; whereupon Myles looked at his watch, and

then climbed to earth.

"Trot on," he said to his driver, "and wait for me at the corner where

Throwley road runs into ours. And now," he continued, as the vehicle

drew out from ear-shot, "perhaps you won't mind turning for half a mile

or so. I must keep moving towards Okehampton, or I shall miss my

train."

They walked in step together; then Yeoland spoke.

"You'll probably guess what I've got to say."

"Not exactly, though I may suspect the subject. Hear me first. It'll

save you trouble. You know me well enough to grant that I'd injure no

man willingly. We must be frank. Only last Sunday did I find what had

overtaken me. I swear it. I didn't imagine such things could happen."

"Don't maunder on like that! What do I care what's overtaken you? You

say you suspect the thing I want to speak about. Then come to it, or

else let me do so. When first we met you heard that I was the man your

cousin had promised to marry. You won't deny that?"

"You told me."

"Then why, in the name of the living God, did a man with all your

oppressive good qualities come between us? That's a plain question

anyway."

A flush spread over Stapledon's cold face and as quickly died out. He

did not answer immediately, and the younger spoke again.

"Well? You're the strong man, the powerful, self-contained, admirable

lesson to his weak brethren. Can't you answer, or won't you?"

"Don't pour these bitter words upon me. I have done no deliberate wrong

at all; I have merely moved unconsciously into a private difficulty from

which I am now about to extricate myself."

"That's too hard a saying for me."

"It is true. I have wakened from an error. I have committed a terrible

action in ignorance. A blind man, but not so blind as I was, showed me

my stupidity."

"Say it in so many words. You love Honor."

"I do. I have grown to love her--the thing farthest from my thoughts or

dreams. I cannot help it. I do not excuse it or defend myself. I am

doing all in my power."

"Which is----?"

"Going--going not to come back."

"It is too late."

"Do not say so, Yeoland. What could I be to her--such a man----?"

"Spare me and yourself all that. And answer this one question--on your

oath. Did she tell you of the letter she wrote to me?"

"She did not."

"Or of my letter?"

"Not a word."

"One question more. What did she say when you told her you were going?"

"She deemed it unnecessary at the time."

"She asked you to stop?"

Stapledon did not answer immediately; then his manner changed and his

voice grew hard. He stood still, and turned on his companion and

towered above him. Their positions were suddenly reversed.

"I will suffer no more of this. I have done you no conscious wrong, and

am not called upon to stand and deliver at your order. Leave a man, who

is sufficiently tormented, to go his way alone. I am moving out of your

life as fast as my legs will carry me. I mourn that I came into it. I

acknowledge full measure of blame--all that it pleases you to heap upon

me; so leave me in peace, for more I cannot do."

"'Peace!' She did ask you not to go?"

"I have gone. That is enough. She is waiting for you to make her your

wife. Don't let her wait for ever."

"You do well to advise--you who have wrecked two lives with

your--'private difficulty'!"

Yeoland stood still, but the other moved hastily on. Thus they parted

without further words, and Christopher, at length weary of standing to

watch Stapledon's retreating shape, turned and resumed his way.

He had determined, despite his sneer, to take Stapledon's advice and go

back to Honor. The bonds woven of long years were not broken after all.

How should events of a few short weeks shatter his lifelong

understanding with this woman? Recent determinations vanished as soon

as his rival had done so, and Yeoland turned and bent his steps to Bear

Down, resolved that the present hour should end all and place him again

in the old position or dethrone him for ever. His mind beat like a bird

against the bars of a cage, and he asked himself of what, in the name of

all malevolent magic, was this man made, who had such power to unsettle

Honor in her love and worship, to thrust him headlong from his high

estate. He could not answer the question, or refused to answer it. He

swept on over the sere fern, with the soft song of the dead heather

bells in his ear; but the message of stone and heath was one: She had

asked the other man not to go.

Before that consummation his new-kindled hope faded, his renewed

determinations died. The roads of surrender and of flight were all that

stretched before him. To Honor he could be nothing any more; and worse

than nothing if he stopped. Complete self-sacrifice and self-effacement

seemed demanded of him if his love was indeed the great, grand passion

that he had imagined it to be. Impressed with this conviction he passed

from the Moor and sought his nearest way to Godleigh; and then the mood

of him suffered another change, and hope spoke in the splendours of

sunset. Myles Stapledon had certainly gone; and he had departed never

to return. That was his own assurance. Honor at least might be asked,

and reasonably asked, to tell her mind at this crisis in affairs.

And so he changed the road again and set his face for Bear Down. A dark

speck met his gaze while yet he was far distant; and he knew it for the

mistress and hastened to her, where she walked alone on the little lawn.

Coming quietly over the grass Yeoland surprised her; she lifted a

startled face to his, and he found her moist of eye while in her voice

was a tremor that told of tears past.

"Why d'you steal on me like this?" she asked suddenly, and her face

flushed, and her hands went up to her breast. "You frighten me. I do

not want you. Please, Christopher, go away."

"I know you do not want me, and I am going away," he answered gloomily,

his expectations stricken before her words. "I'm going, and I've come

to tell you so."

"How much more am I to suffer to-day?"

"You can ask me that, Honor? My little girl, d'you suppose life's a bed

of roses for me since your letter?"

"A bed of roses is the sum of your ambitions."

"Why, that's like old times when you can be merely rude to me! But is

the old time gone? Is the new time different? Listen, Honor, and tell

me the truth."

"I don't know the truth. Please go away and leave me alone; I can tell

you nothing. Don't you see I don't want you? Be a man, if you know

how, and go out of my sight."

The voice was not so harsh as the words, and he thought he saw the ghost

of a hope behind it.

"Curious!" he said. "You're the third person this week who has told me

to be a man. Well, I'll try. Only hear this, and answer it. I've just

left Myles Stapledon on his way to Okehampton--gone for good."

"What is that to me?"

"Your looking-glass will tell you. Now, Honor, before God--yes, before

God, answer me the truth. Do you love him?"

"You've no right to stay here prattling when I bid you go."

"None; and I'm not going to stay and prattle. But answer that you

shall. I've a right at least to ask that question."

The girl almost wrung her hands, and half turned from him without

speaking; but he approached and imprisoned both her arms.

"You must tell me. I can do nothing until I know, Your very own lips

must tell me."

"You don't ask me if I love you?"

"Answer the other question and I shall know."

"Blind--blind--selfish egotists--all of you," she cried. Then her voice

changed. "Is it my fault if I do love him?" she asked.

"I'm no judge. To part right and wrong was a task beyond me

always--excepting on general, crude principles. Answer my question."

"Then, I do."

He bent his head.

"I love him, I love him, I love him."

Neither spoke for some seconds; then the man lifted up his head, shook

it as though he had risen from a plunge, and laughed.

"So be it. Now here's news for you, that I can relate since you've been

so frank. D'you remember what I whispered to you when I was a little

boy, of the cracks on my ceiling and the chance patterns I found on my

window-blind when I used to lie awake in the grey of summer mornings,

waiting for the first gold? You forget. So had I forgotten until a few

days since. Then, being lazy, I lay abed and thought, and thought, and

fell to tracing the old stories told by the lines on blind and ceiling.

Chance patterns of bays and estuaries, continents and rivers, all mapped

out there--all more real to me than those in my atlas. I remember a

land of blackamoors, a sea of sharks, an island of cannibals, a desert

of lions, in which the little flies figured as monsters of the

wilderness. Such dreams of deeds by field and flood I weaved in those

grey, gone mornings to the song of the thrush and the murmur of the old

governor snoring in the next room! And now--now I'm smitten with the

boy's yearning to speed forth over the sea of sharks--not after lions,

but after gold. I'm going to justify my existence--in Australia."

"You couldn't go further off if you tried."

"Not well--without slipping over the edge altogether."

"You mustn't do this, Christopher."

"It's done, dearest. This is only a ghost--an adumbration that's

talking to you. I ask for my freedom, Honor--sweetheart Honor. Thank

God we are humorists both--too sensible to knock our knuckles raw

against iron doors. You'll be happy to-morrow, and I the day after. We

mustn't miss more laughter than we can help in this tearful world. And

friends we must always be. That can't be altered."

"I quite understand. You shall not do this, Christopher. I love you for

suggesting it. You may go--as far as London, or where the steamer

starts from. Then you must come back to me. You've promised to marry

me."

"Forget it. I'm in earnest for once. At least you must credit that.

There's Mrs. Loveys at the window calling you to tea. We'll meet again

in a day or two very likely."

"Don't go; don't go, Christo; I'm so lonely, and wretched, and----"

But the necessary iron in him cropped up at this hour of trial. He

hardened his heart and was gone before she had finished speaking.

Two days later Honor, who had heard nothing of Christopher since their

last meeting, sent a message to him. He returned an evasive answer,

which annoyed her for the space of three days more. Then, still finding

that he kept at home, she went to seek him there. Between ten and eleven

o'clock one morning she started, but breaking her bootlace near the

outset, returned home again. The total delay occupied less than fifteen

minutes, and presently she reached Godleigh to find Mrs. Brimblecombe,

wife of Noah Brimblecombe, the sexton of Little Silver, on her knees,

scrubbing in the porch. The charwoman readily desisted from work and

answered Honor's question.

"He kept it that 'mazin' quiet from us all, Miss. An' you never told

nobody neither. Gone--gone to foreign lands, they tell me; an' the

place in a jakes of a mess; an' the new folks comin' in afore

Christmas."

As she spoke a dog-cart wound up the steep hill to Chagford, and a man,

turning in it, stopped and looked long at the grey house in the pines.

Had anybody walked on to the terrace and waved a handkerchief, he must

have seen the signal; but as Honor spoke to Mrs. Brimblecombe the trap

passed from sight.

"When did he go?" she asked unguardedly.

"Lard! Doan't 'e knaw 'bout it--you of all folks?"

"Of course; of course; but not the exact hour."

"Ten minutes agone or less--no more certainly; an' his heavy boxes was

took in a cart last night, I hear."

Honor hurried on to the terrace and looked at the road on the hill. But

it was empty. Mrs. Brimblecombe came also.

"Sails from Plymouth this evenin', somebody telled us, though others

said he'm gwaine to Lunnon fust; an' it seems that Doctor Clack knawed,

though how a gen'leman so fond of the moosic of his awn tongue could

hold such a tremenjous secret wi'out bustin' I can't fathom."

Honor Endicott walked slowly back to Bear Down. The significance of her

own position, as a woman apparently jilted, did not weigh with her in

the least. She reflected, with a dull ache and deadness, that her

accident, with a delay of ten little minutes resulting from it, had

altered the whole scope and sweep of her life and another's. That

Christopher Yeoland had taken his great step with very real difficulty

the fact of his continued absence before it made sufficiently clear. He

had not trusted himself to see her again; and now Honor's conviction

grew: that her presence even at the last moment, must surely have broken

down his determination and kept him at home had she so willed.

She asked herself what she might have done in the event of that ordeal,

and believed that she would have tried hard to keep him.

*CHAPTER XII.*

*THE DEFINITE DEED*

Life, thus robbed of love for Honor Endicott, was reduced to a dreary

round of mere duties. Within one fortnight of time these two men,

severally responsible for the music and sunshine of her life, had

departed out of it in a manner perfectly natural, conventional, and

inevitable. Given the problems that had arisen, this was the solution

to have been predicted. Mark Endicott, indeed, put it very bluntly to

her; but Honor viewed the tragedy with more tender pity for her own

feelings. She marvelled in secret at the great eternal mystery of human

affections, at the evolution of the love instinct, which now, ennobled

and sublimated through the generations of men, had achieved its present

purity and perfection in the civilisation of monogamous nations; while

her uncle told her, in fewer words and homelier, that between two stools

she had fallen to the ground.

She was supremely miserable through dwindling days, and each of them to

her seemed longer than those of the summer that was past. The shadows

of two men often accompanied her lonely rides, and circumstances or

places would remind her of each in turn, would suddenly stab her into

acute suffering as they wakened the image of Christopher or of Myles in

very life-colours.

There came a laugh once, when she overheard Pinsent and Collins

congratulating each other that Bear Down had not been too precipitate in

the purchase of the wedding "momentum"; but the salt was gone out of

humour for a little while; and with her uncle, at least, she never

laughed at all. His boundless sympathy was strained before her wayward

unhappiness. She flew to paradoxes, contradictions, and whimsical

conceits, all vain, and worse than vain in his judgment. She sometimes

talked at random with no particular apparent object save to waken

opposition. But the knitting-needles ticked placidly through long

evenings beside the glowing peat: and it asked an utterance beyond

measure flagrant to set them tapping, as an indication that the blind

man's patience was exhausted.

About mid-December they sat together in the little parlour of the

kitchen, and Honor, who lolled beside the fire, employed her pretty

fingers upon no more useful task than playing with a piece of string

from a grocer's parcel.

"What are you doing?" asked Mark suddenly.

"Making cats' cradles," she answered, and won from him the reproof that

such a confession invited.

"How is it you've given up reading of late days?"

"I've sunk into a lazy way. The lazier you are the less time there is

for anything."

"You ought to read; you've ample leisure to improve your mind; and ample

need to."

"That's just it--the ample leisure. When I had Christo to look after,

though every precious moment of the day was full, I could find time for

all. And that shows a busy man or woman's more likely to see well after

affairs than a leisurely one. Some men can actually _make_ time, I

believe--Myles could. But now--through these black, hateful, sunless

days--I feel I'm always wanting to creep off to bed, and sleep, and

forget."

"That's never my brave girl spoke that?"

"I'm not brave; and I'm tired of the awful stores of things worth

knowing collected by people who are dead. How the men who wrote books

must look back from the other world and shiver at the stuff they've left

behind them in this--knowing all they know there! But Myles was right in

that. He used to say he'd learned more from leaning over gates than

from any books. And I believe he had."

"He was grounded in solid knowledge by lessons from wise books to start

with. They taught him to learn."

"Such a way as he had of twisting everything into a precept or example!"

"You'd have held that prosy talk presently."

"Speak of sermons in stones! He found whole gospels in a dead leaf."

"But you would have grown mighty impatient of all that after a while."

"Very likely indeed. And yet I doubt it; for never being in earnest

myself, I admire it in others," she said.

"Never in earnest and never of one mind! 'Tis a poor character, and I'd

not like to hear anybody give it to you but yourself, Honor."

"With two minds you get light and shade into life--shade at any rate.

If I hadn't been--but you'll grow as weary of that as I am. Yet a

woman's days are so drab if she never changes her mind--all cut and

dried and dead. Why, every morning I open my eyes and hope I shall get

a new idea. I love my ideas to jostle about and fight and shift and

change and dance, like colours in a cloud. I like to find myself

helpless, shaken, bewildered, clutching at straws. You don't understand

that, Uncle Mark. Ideas are the beautiful, budding flowers of one's

thoughts."

"And fixed opinions the roots--or should be. What's the value of poor

blossoms 'pon the top of a tree when the storm comes an' puny petals are

sent flying down wind? You talk foolishness, and you know 'tis

foolishness. Done to vex me, I could almost think. 'Tis your ideas that

make you miserable now. A feather in a gale is a stable thing beside

you, Honor. You must turn to books if only to please me."

She promised to do so presently, but did not keep her promise; and thus,

to little purpose, oftentimes they talked. Then a circumstance quite

unexpected made Honor think less of her ill fate and start into new and

lively touch with her existence. After long intervals it chanced that

some intelligence both of Yeoland and Stapledon reached Bear Down on the

same morning; and Doctor Clack it was who brought news of his friend;

while information concerning Myles came more directly from himself.

Doctor Clack dismounted with some parade, and made his announcement

before Honor and her uncle. That he might perchance move the girl to

emotion troubled him but little, for the physician was a staunch

partisan, and held that Christopher had been very badly treated.

"A communication from the wanderer," said he. "Yeoland was leaving

Sydney for his kinsman's up-country place when he wrote six weeks ago.

All is well with him--at least so he declares, and--what do you think?

He desires me to join him. Such a romantic notion!"

"Well?"

"Well, Mr. Endicott, positively I don't see why I should not. Little

Silver without Christopher is, frankly, a howling wilderness from my

point of view--a mere solitary tomb. And nobody ever ill--nobody

ailing--no opportunities. When folk do succumb it means the end of them

and the inevitable dose of churchyard mould--that final prescription

none can escape."

"The health of the place is your highest tribute surely."

"Not at all--far from it. I've nothing to do with the matter. Drugs

decaying in their vases; steel rusting in its velvet. Besides, the

loneliness. A fishing-rod is but a vain thing to save a man--especially

when it's close time as now; and the new people at Godleigh haven't

asked me to a single shoot. In fact there's to be no shooting this year

at all. So my case is desperate."

"Come and see us oftener," said Mark.

"I will; I positively must; but I think I'll go abroad. There's a saying

that a man who can live quite happily alone must be one of two things:

an angel, or a demon. Now I'm neither to my knowledge, and since Christo

has vanished I've lived alone, and it's telling on me. I shall drift

into one of those extremes, and I leave you to guess which."

"But you're always welcome everywhere, my dear Clack."

"I know it--at least I think so; but there's such fear of wearing out a

welcome in a small place. Hereditary modesty, you'll say. If so, it's

on the mother's side, not the father's. But, in all seriousness, why

should not I join him?"

"You know your own business best. Is there money to be made there?"

"Plenty for a professional man. They are to have a qualification of

their own, I believe; but at present a practitioner with English degrees

gets the pull--very right and proper of course. Thus the old country

drives her sons away; but not before she's arranged ample accommodation

for them elsewhere--God bless her! So I'm wise to go--eh?"

"Nothing like seeing the ends of the earth and enlarging the mind," said

Mark.

"Well, don't any of you develop anything in the nature of an interesting

indisposition to tempt me to stop."

Margery brought in a letter at this moment as the postman had just

penetrated to Bear Down--a feat he rarely accomplished much before

midday. Doctor Clack wondered in secret whether her old lover had also

communicated with Honor, but seeing that his own missive was charged

with a general message of goodwill to all at Endicott's, he suspected

the letter came from elsewhere.

Soon he was gone; then, without comment, Mark's niece read aloud a brief

note from Myles Stapledon. It did no more than set forth his

determination to return in a fortnight's time. Reason for the step was

not given, as the writer disdained any excuse. His words were bald. "I

will arrive on such a date, if convenient," he concluded; and Mark

Endicott, reading ahead and reading backwards also, was saddened, even

amazed, as one standing before the sudden discovery of an unsuspected

weakness or obvious flaw in a work he had rejoiced to believe near

perfection.

The stages by which Myles had arrived at the determination now

astonishing Mark Endicott had extended over three months, and the

curtain rose upon his battle exactly a week after he left the farm, for

at that date he learned how the engagement between Honor and Christopher

was definitely at an end, and how the latter would be on the sea before

his words were read. The announcement came from Yeoland himself, and

was written in London on the eve of his departure. Then began the fight

that ended with a determination to return, and caused such genuine

disappointment in Mr. Endicott. Mark, however, forgot the force of the

passion his niece had awakened in this man; and certain it is that

neither he nor any other could have guessed at the storm which swept

Stapledon's soul when he learned how Honor had regained her freedom.

Soaked as he was in love, to remain away from Endicott's with this

knowledge for three months had proved no mean task to Myles. The battle

fought and won with his passion while it had no right to exist proved

but a prelude to encounters far more tremendous upon Christopher

Yeoland's departure.

There grew within him a web of sophistry spun through sleepless nights.

This at first, with the oncoming of morning, he swept away; but,

spider-like, and with a spider's patience, the love in him renewed each

mesh, and asked his conscience a question that his conscience seemed

powerless to answer. He fought, yet knew not the name of the foe.

To-day he marvelled at his own hesitation, and asked himself what still

held him back; to-morrow a shadow of Yeoland shamed his troubled

longings, and the word of Mark Endicott, "between you is a great gulf

fixed," reverberated drearily upon his thoughts. Then the cloud castles

fell to earth, and the sanguine glow upon their pinnacles vanished away.

Yet against that saying of the blind man's every pulse in his body often

throbbed furiously. He knew better, and Honor knew better also. It was

not for nothing that they had walked over the Moor together; not for

nothing they had stood silently, each by the other's side, on moonlight

nights.

Out of darkness Christopher Yeoland sometimes took shape, but only as an

abstraction that grew more misty with passage of days. He had gone for

all time; and Honor was left alone. Myles burnt to know something of

her mind; how much or how little she had forgotten; how much or how

little she wondered at his attitude; in what she blamed him; whether

such blame grew daily greater or was already fading away--perhaps along

with his own image--in her recollection.

The great apparition of Duty rose. In the recent past he had made

others supremely unhappy and tormented himself. That was over; and

now--the slave of duty from his youth up--he stood in doubt. For the

first time the man discerned no clear sign-post pointing to his road.

Wherein lay duty now? He wearied his brain with dialectics. Sometimes

duty looked a question of pure love; sometimes it hardened into a

problem of pure logic. He would have risked all that he had for one

glimpse of Honor's attitude towards the position; and finally he decided

that his duty lay in ascertaining that attitude. This much might very

easily be done without a word upon the vital theme. He told himself

that a few hours under the same roof with her--the sound of her voice,

the light in her eyes--would tell him all he needed to know. He dinned

this assurance upon his own mind; but his heart remained dead, even

before such a determination, and the cloud by no means lifted itself

from off him. He presented the somewhat uncommon spectacle of a man

trying to deceive himself and failing. His natural instincts of justice

and probity thrust Christopher Yeoland again and again into his

thoughts. He began three letters to the traveller on three separate

occasions, but these efforts ended in fire, and the letter that was

written and posted went to Bear Down.

Through turmoil, tribulation, and deepening of frontal furrows he

reached this step, and the deed done, his night thickened around him

instead of lifting as he had hoped and trusted. Perhaps the blackest

hour of all was that wherein he rode through familiar hamlets under the

Moor upon his way to Honor. Then came the real sting of the certainty

that he had lapsed from his own lofty rule; and love itself forsook him

for a space beneath Cosdon's huge shadow at sunset time. He hastened,

even galloped forward to the sight of the woman; he told himself that in

her presence alone would be found balm to soothe this hurt; and the very

feebleness of the thought fretted him the more.

So he came back, and Chance, building as her custom is on foundations of

the trivial, wrought from his return the subsequent fabric of all his

days. For out of the deliberate action, whether begun in laughter or

prayer, whether prompted by desire or inspired by high ambition, springs

issue, and no deed yet was ever barren of consequence, hidden or

revealed. Never, since conscious intelligence awakened here, has that

invention of the dunces justified itself--never once has any god from

any chariot of fire descended to cut one sole knot in a tangle of

earthly affairs. The seeds of human actions are sown to certain

fruition but uncertain crop, and Fate and Chance, juggling with their

growth, afford images of the highest tragedy this world has wept at;

conjure from the irony of natural operations all that pertains to sweet

and bitter laughter; embrace and environ the whole apparition of

humanity's progress through time. Life's pictures, indeed, depend upon

play of ridiculous and tragic chance for their rainbow light, for their

huge spaces of formless and unfathomable shadow, for their ironic

architecture, their statuary of mingled mice and mountains--flung

together, fantastic and awful. In Titan visions these things are seen

by lightning or by glow-worm glimmer; or sunned by laughter; or rained

upon with tears; or taking such substance and colour as wings above the

reach of either.

Thus, his deed done, through chaos of painful thoughts, came Myles

Stapledon; and then, standing amid the naked beds of Bear Down garden,

he found Honor Endicott's little hand in his at last. Whereupon he

whispered to his soul that he had acted wisely, and was now about to

pass from storm into a haven of great peace.

*CHAPTER XIII.*

*SNOW ON SCOR HILL*

There came a day when Honor and Myles rode out upon a dry and frozen

Moor under the north wind. The man, who had brought his own great horse

to Endicott's, now galloped beside Honor's pony, and the pace warmed

them despite the extreme coldness of the weather. Presently, upon their

homeward way from Watern's granite castles, they stopped to breathe

their horses, where a ring of horrent stones sprouted abrupt, uneven,

irregular, out of the waste, and lay there, the mark of remote human

activity. All the valley presented a stern spectacle unsoftened by any

haze, untouched by any genial note of colour. The Moor's great,

iron-grey bosom panted for coming snow; and Teign, crying among her

manifold stairways, streaked the gorges with ghostly foam light, where

naked sallows and silver birches tossed lean arms along the river. Only

the water offered action and sound in the rocky channels; all else, to

the horizon of ashy hills under a snow-laden sky, waited and watched the

north.

Two horses stood steaming in Scor Hill Circle--that ancient hypaethral

high place of the Damnonians--while their riders surveyed the scene and

one another. Both long remembered the incident, and for them, from that

day forward, the spot was lighted with a personal significance, was

rendered an active and vital arena, was hallowed by interest more

profound than its mere intrinsic attributes of age and mystery had

formerly imparted to it.

Myles Stapledon did not reach the speedy conclusion he anticipated upon

return to Bear Down. A month had now lapsed since his arrival, and,

while very thoroughly assured of his own sentiments, while gulfed and

absorbed, heart and soul, in a transcendent love of Honor that swept all

before it and left him a man of one hope, one daily prayer, he had yet

to learn her explicit attitude. His own humility helped to blind him a

little at first, but she made no attempt to disguise her pleasure in his

society, and by her unconventional companionship and intercourse wakened

strong hopes within him. For he attached an obvious meaning to many

actions, that had perhaps been conclusive of intention in any other

woman, but were not in Honor. She went everywhere with him alone--to

Chagford on horseback, to Exeter by train. Moreover, she let her cousin

do as he would with the farm, and when he suggested embarking further

capital and acquiring a half interest of all--she made no personal

objection, but consulted Mr. Endicott. The inevitable sequel now stared

Bear Down in the face, yet, when his niece put the question to him in

private, Mark refused to give advice.

"That's a point none can well decide but yourself," he said. "The

future's your own, as far as a human being can claim such control. As

you act now, so the man will assume you mean to do afterwards."

"I mean nothing at all but the welfare of the farm and--you won't

advise, then?"

"No. It looks all cut and dried to me."

Honor stamped her foot like a child.

"Everything's always cut and dried in my hateful life--try as I will,"

she said. Then she swept away, and he knitted on without visible

emotion, though not lacking an inner sympathy. For he understood her

desire to escape from the monotonous, and foresaw how this imminent

incident would not bring about that end. Personally Stapledon had served

to brighten his sightless life not a little, had set new currents

running in his mind, had sweetened back waters grown stagnant by disuse;

for Myles, as Endicott believed, was fine metal--wise, self-contained

even in his love, a sober and discreet man--super-excellent save in the

matter of his return to Bear Down. Even there, however, on second

thoughts, Mark did not judge him. He only felt the lover to be human,

and it was viewed in the character of a husband for Honor that the old

man regarded his nephew without enthusiasm. Stapledon's very goodness,

simplicity, and content with rural interests would suffice to weary the

wife he wanted soon or late. And Christopher Yeoland must probably

return to his home some day.

Thus he argued, but, meantime, full of hope, and arriving at a right

logical conclusion on a wrong hypothesis of logical intention in Honor,

Stapledon resolved to speak. And now, before the beauty of her, kissed

into a sparkle by her gallop, her bosom rising and falling, a tiny cloud

around her lips, caught and carried away by the wind at each

expiration--before this winter vision his heart found a tongue; and, as

they walked their horses in the grey circle, he spoke.

"It's a strange place this to tell you, yet these things are out of

one's keeping. I must say it I must. Honor, do you care for me at all?"

"Of course I care for you."

"Do you love me?"

"Now, dear Myles, please don't say anything to make me cry in this wind.

Think of the freezing misery of it! Please--Please."

"To make you cry! I hope not--indeed. I hope not that. Yet it's

solemn enough--the most solemn thing a man can say to a woman."

"That's all right, then," she said cheerfully. "Nothing solemn ever

makes me cry."

He looked bewildered, wistful, and her heart smote her; but the

inopportune fiend would speak. She remembered how that Christopher had

proposed marriage in a flippant spirit, while she craved for something

so different. Here was no frivolous boy in a sunny wood, but a strong,

earnest man under skies full of snow. His great voice and his eyes

aflame made her heart beat, but they had no power to alter her mood.

"I love you!" he said simply. "I loved you long before I knew it, if

you can believe so strange a thing. I loved you, and, finding it out, I

left you and poured all the bitter blame on myself that I could. Then I

heard how you had agreed to part. He was going. He went. And now I

stand before you all yours. You are unlinked by any tie. He said

so--he----"

"Oh you wretches of one idea!" she burst out, interrupting him. "You

self-absorbed, self-seeking, selfish men! How can I explain? How can I

lay bare my weaknesses before such superiority? He was the same--poor

Christo--just the same. I suppose nearly all of you must be; and women

are frightened to speak for fear of shocking you. So we pretend, and

win from you a character for huge constancy that we often deserve no

more than you do. Why attribute so many virtues to us that you don't

possess yourselves? Why demand a single, whole-hearted, utter,

ineffable love from us that not one in a thousand of you can give?"

"All this is nothing to the purpose," he said in a puzzled voice. "What

can you answer, Honor?

"Well, I'll speak for myself, not for the hosts of single-hearted women.

I won't tar them with my black brush. You want me to marry you, Myles?"

"God knows how dearly."

"And because I love you, you think I ought to marry you. Yet if I love

somebody else too? I wish I had fine words, though perhaps plain ones

are better to describe such an unheroic muddle. When I told Christo I

loved you--yes, I told him that--he bowed his head as though he had

heard his death knell. Yet I did not tell him I loved him less than

before."

"You still love him?"

"Of course I do. Can a quarrel kill a live love? He was made for

somebody to love him. And I love you--love you dearly too. And I'm not

ashamed of it, however much you may think I should be."

"The end of that?" he said drearily.

"Clear enough. I've spoilt two lives--no, not all, I hope, but a part

of two lives."

"It is I that have done so," he answered bitterly and slowly; then he

stopped his horse and looked aloft where scattered flakes and patches of

snow began to float heavily downward from the upper grey.

"No, no, no," said Honor. "It's just a snappy, snarling, unkind fate

that wills it so. Two's company, and three's none, of course."

"Your knowledge is imperfect," he said, "and so your argument is vain.

If you were a type, the foundation of civilisation would fail. Surely

no woman worth thinking of twice can love in two places at once?"

"Then think of me no more," she answered, "for I do--if I know love at

all. Is not the moon constant to earth and sun? A woman can love two

men--as easily as a man can love two women. You couldn't--I know that;

but you're not everybody. Most men can. Christianity has made a noble,

exalted thing of love, and I was born into the Christian view. Yet I'm

unfortunately a barbarian by instinct. Just an accidental primitive

heathen who has cropped up in a respectable family. You can't alter any

particular cranky nature by pruning. Oh, dear Myles, if I could marry

you both! You for the working weeks and Christo for Sundays and

holidays!"

He merely gasped.

"Yet I love to think you love me. But you know what naughty children

say when they're crossed? I can't have you both, so I won't have

either."

"This you say for love of him?"

"Don't trouble to find reasons. At any rate I'm speaking the truth.

Should I have confessed to such a depraved and disgraceful frame of mind

to a man I love if I had not been deadly serious despite laughter? Hate

me, if you must, but I don't deserve it. I would marry you and be a

good wife too; but there's a sort of sense of justice hid in me.

Christo noticed it. So don't drive me into marriage, Myles dear."

"You love him better than me at any rate?"

"Arithmetic can't be brought to bear upon the question. I love you

both."