*THE PASSAGE OF TWO YEARS*
Upon the death of Myles Stapledon great changes marked the
administration of Bear Down. The event stood for a landmark in the
history of the farm, and served as an occasion from which its old,
familiar name of 'Endicott's' fell into disusage; for the place now
passed into alien hands, and from it departed the last of the old stock,
together with not a few of those whose fortunes had been wrapped up with
the farm for generations.
Honor determined to leave her home within a month of her husband's
death. To roam awhile alone seemed good to her, and, for a space of
time that extended into years before her return, she absented herself
from Devon. Her farm had appreciated much in value of late years, and a
tenant for it did not lack long; but the new power brought new servants,
and certain of the older workers took this occasion to retire from
active service. Churdles Ash went to live with an elderly nephew at
Little Silver; Mr. Cramphorn also resigned, but he continued to dwell in
his cottage at Bear Down and was content that Sally and Margery should
still work upon the farm. Collins, promoted to deputy headman, took his
life with increasing seriousness--a circumstance natural when it is
recorded that matrimony with Sally Cramphorn had now become only a
question of time.
Mark Endicott also left Bear Down for a cottage at Chagford, and Mrs.
Loveys accompanied him as housekeeper. This great uprooting of his life
and necessary change of habits bewildered the old man at first; but his
native courage aided him, and he unfolded his days in faith and
fortitude. From Honor he heard erratically, and gathered that she
drifted rudderless amid new impressions now here, now there. Then, as
the months passed by, into the texture of her communications came
flashes or shadows of herself, and the blind man perceived that Time was
working with her; that her original, unalterable gift of mind was
awakening and leavening her life as of yore.
Humour she still possessed, for it is an inherent faculty, that sticks
closer than a spouse to the heart that holds it from puberty to the
grave. It wakens with the dawn of adult intelligence, and neither time
nor chance, neither shattering reverse nor unexpected prosperity can rob
the owner of it. Earthly success indeed it brightens, and earthly
failure it sets in true perspective; it regulates man's self-estimate
and personal point of view; enlarges his sympathies; adjusts the
too-staring splendours of sudden joys; helps to dry the bitterest tears
humanity can shed. For humour is an adjunct divine, and as far beyond
the trivial word for it as "love" is, or "charity." No definition or
happy phrase sums it correctly, or rates it high enough; it is a balm of
life; it makes for greater things than clean laughter from the lungs; it
is the root of tolerance, the prop of patience; it "suffers long and is
kind"; serves to tune each little life-harmony with the world-harmony
about it; keeps the heart of man sweet, his soul modest. And at the end,
when the light thickens and the mesh grows tight, humour can share the
suffering vigils of the sleepless, can soften pain, can brighten the
ashy road to death.
In the softness of the valley air lived Mark Endicott, and still knitted
comforters for the Brixham fishers.
His first interest was Honor and her future. Of these, he prophesied to
those few who loved her and who came to see her uncle from time to time.
To Mrs. Loveys, to Ash, to Jonah Cramphorn the old man foretold a thing
not difficult of credence. Indeed, eighteen months after the death of
her husband, a letter from Honor, despatched at Geneva, came as
confirmation, and informed Mark that she had met Christopher Yeoland
there.
"They will part no more," said he when the letter was read to him; and
he was right.
An interval of six months separated this communication from the next,
and when his niece wrote again, she signed herself "Honor Yeoland." The
missive was tinctured with some unusual emotion, and woke the same in
Mrs. Loveys as she rehearsed it, and in Mark as he listened. "I am just
twenty-seven," said the writer. "Do not tell me that it is too late in
life to seek for a little happiness still. At least I know what Myles
would think."
But the deed demanded no excuse in her uncle's judgment, for he had long
anticipated it, and was well content that matters should thus fall out.
And a few months later, when August had passed again, the master of
Godleigh and his lady returned home. Special directions prevented any
sort of formal welcome, and the actual date of their arrival was only
known to a few. Through a twilight of late summer they came, unseen and
unwelcomed; and one day later, upon a fair afternoon in mid-September,
Honor, escaping from the flood of new cares and responsibilities,
slipped valleywards away to traverse the woods alone and visit her uncle
at Chagford.
A chill touched her heart as she proceeded, for in these dear glades, at
Doctor Clack's command, the woodmen had been zealous to help Nature
during the preceding spring. Wide, new-made spaces innocent of trees
awaited her; light and air had taken the place of many an old giant, and
raw tablets of sawn wood, rising in the vigour of bramble, and refreshed
undergrowths were frequent beside her path. Then, at a familiar spot,
no pillar of grey supporting clouds of mast and foliage met Honor's
eyes. Instead there opened a little clearing, created by one effort of
the axe, with the frank sky above and a fallen column below--a column
shorn of branch and lopped of bough--a naked, shattered thing lying in a
dingle of autumn grasses and yellow, autumn flowers, like, yet unlike,
the old nest of memories.
And this fallen tree, so unexpected, came as right prelude to the matter
that awaited her beside it. The beech of her joy and sorrow was thrown
down, and its apparition awakened in her heart none of that gentle and
subdued melancholy she anticipated. Rather, such emotions were
smothered in active regret at its downfall. And now a howling, winter
storm descended upon her spirit--a tempest very diverse from the
silver-grey, autumnal rainfall of placid sadness that here she had
foreseen and expected.
The stricken tree struck a chord of deeper passion than it had done
beheld in prosperity; whereupon, looking forward, Honor found herself
not alone. Close at hand, in a spot that he had favoured through the
past summer, sat Mark Endicott with his knitting; and a hundred yards
away, beside the river, a boy, successor to Tommy Bates, stood with his
back turned watching the trout.
Mark sat in the sunshine with his head uplifted.
There was speculation in his face, but his hands were busy, and the old
wooden needles flashed in white wool.
She watched him a moment, then her eyes caught sight of something nearer
at hand.
*CHAPTER II.*
*NO AFTER-GLOW*
The object that had attracted Honor's attention was an inscription
carved upon the fallen beech tree. Ignorant of the interest awakened by
that ancient work of Christopher's hand, when the same came to be
discovered by woodmen, she glanced hurriedly at the initials and
love-knot, now weathered and toned by time and the tree's growth; then
she produced a little pocket-knife, and, not without difficulty, erased
the record of her husband's red-letter day in a vanished summer.
Mark Endicott sat within ten yards of Honor while she worked; but he
continued unconscious of her near presence, for the song of a robin and
the music of Teign muffled the small noise she made. Moreover, the
blind man's own voice contributed to deaden all other sound, for,
following his ancient use, he thought aloud. This Honor discovered,
hesitated a moment, then, her task upon the tree completed, listened to
Mark Endicott.
There are blind, dark forces that spin the fabric of man's day and night
from his own emotions and sudden promptings. In thoughtless action and
unconsidered deed; in impulse born of high motive or of low, they find
their material, weave our garments; and, too often, led by destiny,
steep most innocent white robes in poisoned blood, as Deianira that of
Hercules. Thus they fashion man's black future out of his sunny past,
breed his tears from his laughter, his enduring sorrows from fleeting
whims, and tangle him soul-deep in networks of his own idle creation.
Our secure hour is the signal to their activities; they sleep while we
are watchful; they wake when we enter upon our pleasures and seek for
joy.
Moved by a sentiment that herself might be the object of his thoughts,
and her heart yearning to him as he sat there alone, Honor gave heed to
the slow voice and listened to Mark Endicott's oral musings upon the
time that was past. Fitfully he spoke, with unequal intervals of
silence between the sentences. But his thoughts were of a piece; he
dwelt upon a theme that he could now endure to handle--a theme rendered
familiar to his mind by constant repetition and convictions rooted
beyond power of further argument. Of Honor indeed he had been thinking;
for the sound of her voice and the touch of her hand he had greatly
longed. These were numbered first among the few good things left to
him; but from reflection upon his niece he had now passed to her dead
husband, and he spoke and thought of Myles Stapledon. His voice, though
he communed with himself, was so clear that no word escaped the
listener; and every utterance came as cloud upon cloud to darken her day
and deepen her night henceforward.
"A man good in the grain--frugal--industrious--patient--yet the one
thing needful denied him--held out of his reach. Maybe faith had made
him almost a hero--maybe not. Anyway, there was strong meat in the rule
he set himself; and he didn't swerve even to the bitter end of it....
Strange, strange as human nature, that his way of life could reach to
that. Yet I heard the words upon his lips; I heard him say how
self-slaughter might be a good, high deed. And certain 'tis the Bible
has no word against it. Little he thought then--or I--that he'd take
that road himself....... And the foundations of his life so simple as
they were. His pleasures to find out flowers and seeds in season, and
the secret ways of wild creatures. To think that 'twas only the Moor,
and the life of it, and the moods of it, that he sucked such iron from.
'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.'
That it should have been help to do such a thing as he did! All a big
mind turned to ruination for lack of faith..... Close touch with
natural things taught him the killing meaning of selfishness; for
everything in nature is selfish but Nature's self. Out of the innocence
of barren heaths, the honesty of the sky, the steadfastness of the
seasons and the obedience of green things to the sun--out of all these
he gathered up the determination to do a terrible deed....... 'Twas all
they taught him, for Nature's a heathen. Yet a wonderful departure; and
the heart of him held him up at the last, for his face was happy, his
eyes at peace, so they said. 'Twas a glimpse of that life to come he
could never believe in here that made his eyes at peace. God spoke to
him I doubt. Yet never a glimmer of promise did he see, or a whisper of
hope did he hear in this life. And he gave up the only life he knew for
her--died brave enough, to the tune of his own words spoken long, long
since.... And the suicide of him not guessed, thank God. Even she
couldn't see--so quick as she is. The dust was flung in her eyes by a
kind angel. Yes, surely she was blinded by some holy, guardian thing,
for his great nature was understood by her. She had sense enough for
that."
He shook his head for a space, then fell into silence again.
He had uttered his conclusion--this old, wise man--in the ear of the
soul on earth most vitally involved. He had been for long years a voice
that conjured some sense out of his own darkness; he had lightened the
difficulties of others; he had spoken not seldom to the purpose and won
a measure of love and respect; yet here, by same flaw of mind, or by the
accident of blindness; by weakness that hinted approaching senility, or
by mere irony of chance, he had taken a wrong turning and missed the
transparent truth concerning Myles Stapledon. The dead man's own past
utterances were in a measure responsible; and upon them Mark had long
since built this edifice of error; he had lived in the belief for two
years; had accepted it as life's most tragic experience, to be taken by
him in silence to the grave.
But now this opinion crashed into the mind of Honor Yeoland, and she
reeled before it and was overwhelmed. Up into the blue sky she looked
blankly, with a face suddenly grown old. For an instant she fought to
reject the word; for an instant she had it in her to cry out aloud that
the old man lied; then the life of Mark Endicott--the sure bulwark of
his unfailing wisdom and right judgment rose before her, and she
believed that what he said was true. Not in her darkest hour had the
possibility of such an event entered Honor's thoughts. Agony she had
suffered at Stapledon's death, and the mark of it was on her face for
ever, but he had left her for the last time at peace to seek a course
that might maintain peace; he had departed full of awakened content to
find the road to new life, not death.
Yet this utterance under the woods made her uncertain of her better
knowledge; this remorseless, unconscious word, thrown by a voice that
had never spoken untruth, was, as it seemed, a blind oracle above appeal
from human suffering, an inspired breath sent at God's command to reveal
this secret in her ear alone. The glare suddenly thrown upon her mind
she held to be truth's own most terrible white light; and she stood
helpless and confounded, with her future in ruins. At least some
subdued Indian summer of promised content with Christopher had seemed to
await her. Now that, too, was torn away and whelmed in frost and snow;
for Myles had killed himself to give it to her; Myles had not believed
her solemn assurance, but, convinced that she still placed him second in
her affection, had set her free. With steady heart and clear eye he had
gone to death, so ordering his end that none should guess the truth of
it. And none had guessed, save only this ancient man, whose judgment
within Honor's knowledge was never at fault.
She believed him; she saw that her present state, as the wife of
Christopher, could only confirm him in his conviction; she pictured Mark
Endicott waiting to hear how, all unconsciously, she had followed the
path Myles Stapledon marked out for her when he died. And then she
looked forward and asked herself what this must mean.
A part of her answer appeared in the old man who sat, ignorant of her
presence, before her. He--the instrument of this message--had spoken
his belief indeed, but with no thought of any listener other than
himself. She knew Mark Endicott; she was aware that he had rather
himself suffered death than that this matter should have reached her
ear. Loyalty to him was not the least part of her determination now.
He must never know what he had done.
Neither could she tell her husband for a kindred reason. Such news
would cloud his mind for ever, and lessen all his future joy in living.
Before the loneliness of such an unshared grief the woman's soul rose up
in arms, and, for one brief moment, she rebelled against her lot, told
herself that the evangel of evil had spoken falsely, determined with
herself to reject and cast aside this thought as a suspicion unworthy, a
lie and a libel on the dead. But the unhappy soul of her was full of
the fancied truth. Had she possessed power to turn deaf ears and reject
this theory as vain and out of all harmony with her own knowledge of
Myles Stapledon, Honor's state had been more gracious; but it was beyond
her mental strength to do so. Understanding the dead man no less and no
more than her uncle, she read new subtleties into the past before this
bitterness, credited Myles with views that never existed in his mind at
all, and concluded with herself that he had indeed taken his own life
that she might be what she now was--the wife of Christopher Yeoland.
Therefore her own days stretched before her evermore overshadowed until
the end of them, and her thoughts leapt whole abysses of despair, as the
revelation gradually permeated her being. Seed was sown in that moment,
as she stood with the blue sky mirrored in her brown eyes, and a growth
was established, whose roots would keep the woman's heart aching till
age blunted sensibility, whose fruits would drop gall upon her thirst
while life lasted. Unshared darkness must be her portion--darkness and
cruel knowledge to be revealed to none, to be hidden out of all
searching, to be concealed even beyond the reach of Christopher's love
and deepest sympathy. He indeed had her heart now, and knew the secret
places of it; therefore, in a sort of frenzy, she prayed to God at that
moment, and called upon Him to show her where she might hide this thing
and let it endure unseen.
The boy by the river had not observed Honor, and her uncle remained
ignorant of her presence. She turned, therefore, and departed, lacking
strength at that moment to speak or hearten his desolate life with the
music of her voice. She stole away; and in the woods, returning, her
husband met her and rejoiced in the accidental encounter.
"Good luck!" he cried. "I'd lost half myself the moment you
disappeared, and had made up my mind to mourn unobtrusively till you
came back to me. Why hasn't outraged Nature sent a thunderbolt to
suppress Courteney Clack? I might have known that desperate surgeon
would have prescribed amputation upon most shadowy excuse."
"He has been very busy."
"And done absolutely the right thing, viewed from standpoint of
forestry; which makes it impossible to say what one feels. But forget
all that. Home we won't go yet. Come and see the sunset."
A promise of great aerial splendours filled the sky as the day waned,
and Yeoland, to whom such spectacles were precious as formerly, hastened
upwards to the high lands with his wife by his side.
Together they passed through the wood of pines above Godleigh, then,
pursuing their way onwards, the man caught a shadow of sobriety from
Honor, being quick at all times to note the colour of her thoughts. The
fact that she was sad called for no wonder where they then stood, for
now in her eyes were mirrored Bear Down's wind-worn sycamores, ripe
thatches, whitewashed farm-buildings, and grey walls. The relinquished
home of her forefathers lay there, and she had now come from visiting
the last of her line. This Christopher supposed, and so understood her
demeanour.
Overhead a splendid turmoil of gloom and fire waxed heavenwide, where
wind and cloud and sinking sun laboured magnificently together.
"I know every strand in your dear thoughts, love; I could write the very
sequence of them, and take them down in shorthand from your eyes."
She smiled at him. That favourite jest of his had been nearly true
until now. Henceforth it could be true no more. It was not the picture
of home and the thirsty, shorn grass lands spread around it that made
her soul sink so low. Even Christopher henceforth was outside the last
sanctuary of her heart, and must so remain. There had come a new sorrow
of sorrows, to be hidden even from her second self--a grief not to be
shared by him, a legacy of tears whose secret fountains he must never
find.
She held his hand like a child, and something of her woe passed into
him; then he knew that she was very sad, and suspected that her
unhappiness had source in deeper things than the renewed spectacle of
her home. He instantly fell into sympathy; but it was only a little
deeper than that of an artist. What she felt now--walking where Myles
Stapledon had so often walked--he could readily conceive; and it made
him sad also, with a gentle, aesthetic melancholy that just fell short
of pain. For him and for Honor he believed that a future of delicate
happiness was spread. These clouds were natural, inevitable; but they
scarcely obscured the blue. So he argued, ignorant of that anguish in
the mind of his wife. For her the anticipated summer of peace appeared
not possible. Now her future stretched before her--ghost-haunted in
sober truth. Here was such a mournful twilight as broods over all
personifications of highest grief; for her, as for those Titan
figures--each an incarnate agony--who pace the aisles of olden drama,
there could be no removal into the day-spring of hope, no departure into
any night of indifference. Only an endless dusk of sorrow awaited her.
Western light was upon her face; but not the glory of evening, nor yet
the whole pageant of the sun's passing, could pierce the darkness of her
heart.