MAYNARD
Mr. Stockman, having decided that sea air and a fortnight of rest
were desirable to fortify him against another winter, had been absent
from his home and was only recently returned. He had visited a
friend, who farmed land in the neighbourhood of Berry Head, above
Brixham, and he declared himself very much better for the change of
scene and companionship. He related his adventures, told how he had
trusted himself to the sea on more than one occasion in a Brixham
trawler, and also expatiated in Soosie-Toosie's ear upon a woman whom
he had met--the daughter of his friend.
"Mr. King has but one stay-at-home child, like me," he said, "and I
could wish you were able to see the way Ann King runs her father's
house. Not a breath against you, Susan--you know how I thank my God
every night on my knees for such a daughter; but there's a
far-sightedness and a sureness about Ann as I don't remember to have
marked in any other female."
"How old might she be?" asked Susan.
"Older than you by ten years I dare say; but it's not so much that as
her way of dealing with life and her sure head. The Elms Farm is
bigger than ours and mostly corn. They grow amazing fine wheat, to
the very edge of the cliffs; and Ann King reigns over the place and
the people in such a way that all goes on oiled wheels. She's always
ahead of time, that woman--bends time to her purpose and never is run
about, or flustered. A great lesson to a simple man like me, who
never seems to have enough time for his work."
Mr. Palk heard these things. There was growing between him and Joe a
shadow of antagonism. So faintly did this contest of wills begin
that neither appreciated it yet.
"And how many females do Miss King have at her word of command,
master?" asked Thomas, his subconscious self up in arms as usual when
Susan was even indirectly assailed.
Joe stared blandly at him.
"Hullo! I didn't know you was there, Thomas. I was talking to my
daughter, Thomas, not you, if you'll excuse me; and if you've got
nothing on your hands for the moment, perhaps you won't mind having a
look over the harness and reporting to me to-morrow. I was put about
when I came home to see a bit of rope where there did ought to be
leather, Thomas. You know what I mean."
"I was going to name it," answered Mr. Palk.
"Good; I'm sure you was; we'll go over the lot at your
convenience--to-morrow perhaps. I admire you a lot for making shift
and saving my pocket. It shows a spirit that I value in a man; but
we must keep our heads up, even under the present price of harness if
we can; and when we've had a tell over it, I'll go down to saddler at
Ashburton and put it to him as an old customer."
Joe returned from his holiday full of energy. He had to-day been at
a sale of sheep at Hey Tor village and was tramping with Maynard by
road behind fifty fine ewes from a famous breeder. He discoursed of
sheep and his man listened without much concentration.
They trudged together behind the raddled flock with a sheep-dog
attending them.
"The rare virtue of our Dartmoors is not enough known," declared Mr.
Stockman. "In my opinion, both for flesh and coat, there's no
long-wooled sheep in the world to beat 'em and few to equal 'em. Yet
you'll find, even to this day, that our Devon long-wools be hardly
known outside the South Hams and Cornwall. Mr. King had a friend
from Derbyshire stopping at Brixham--a very clever man and wonderful
learned in sheep; but he knew naught about our famous breed. They
did ought to be shown at all the big shows all over England, and
then, no doubt, they'd come into their own, and some of us who rears
'em would earn our just reward."
"That class ought to be included in all important shows certainly,"
admitted Lawrence. "At their best they can't be beat."
"And they ought to be shown in their wool," added Mr. Stockman. "The
difficulties ought to be got over, and it should be done for the
credit of the county, not to say Dartmoor."
They debated this question till the younger man wearied of it and was
glad when a farmer on horseback overtook them. He had been a seller,
and he approved of Joe's opinions, now repeated for his benefit.
Maynard walked a little apart and found leisure to think his own
thoughts. They revolved about one subject only, and reverted to it
with painful persistence.
He was in love with Dinah Waycott and knew that she was in love with
him. The something that was left out of her made this all the more
clear, for she relied on no shield of conventions; she had a way to
slip a subject of the clothes it generally wore, in shape of speech.
She had exerted no wiles, but she could not be illusive, and the
obvious qualities of Dinah which had appealed to Johnny's first love
had also, for different reasons, overwhelmed Maynard. Many men by
these very qualities in her would have been repulsed. Experienced
men might have missed those elements in Dinah that, for them, make a
woman most provocative and desirable; but in the case of this man,
his own experience of life and his personal adventure combined to
intensify the charm that her peculiar nature possessed. He had known
nothing like her; she contrasted at almost every possible point with
what he had known; she shone for him as an exemplar of all that was
most desirable in feminine character. He could not believe that
there were many such women, and he doubted not that he would never
see such another. He had tried to adopt a fatherly attitude to Dinah
and, for a considerable time, succeeded. The view he took of her at
their first acquaintance, when she was betrothed to John Bamsey,
persisted after the breaking of the engagement; but the very breaking
of the engagement enlarged this view, and the freedom, that could no
longer be denied to her after that event, had improved their
knowledge of each other until both learned the same fact. Then
Maynard could play a fatherly friendship no more, nor could the
figment of an elder brother serve. He loved her and she loved him.
A thing he had never considered as possible now complicated a life
that for seven years he had striven with all his might to simplify;
and the new situation extended far beyond Dinah, for it was
calculated to alter his own agreement and undertaking with himself.
These covenants had been entered into with himself alone.
Circumstances had long ago combined, at a certain period of his
early, adult life, to change the entire texture of existence, deflect
its proposed purpose and throw down the goal he set out to attain.
And with the changes wrought in temporal ambitions had come others.
Life thus dammed ceased to flow. His future collapsed and in its
place appeared a new purpose, if negation could be called a purpose.
That had sufficed, though at a cost of mental corrosion he did not
guess; but now it seemed that a closed book was thrown open again and
he stood once more facing outlets to life that even implied
happiness. His existence for seven years, it appeared, had not been
a progression, but a hiatus. Yet he knew, even while he told himself
this, that it must be a delusion and a juggle with reality; since no
man can for seven years stand still.
There was need for a jolt forward now, and the problem appeared
simple enough as to the thing he must do, but shattering when he saw
it done. He was deeply agitated, yet through the inexorable shot a
thread of unexpected hope and beauty. To cut this thread, which had
crept so magically into the grey fabric of existence and touched the
days of his crepuscular life with the glimmering of an unguessed
sunrise, promised to be a task so tremendous that it was not strange
he hesitated. For did any vital necessity exist to cut it? He could
not immediately convince himself, and every natural instinct and
impulse combined to cry out against such a necessity.
He had reached an attitude of mind, and that long before he met Dinah
Waycott, which now suffered no shock from the personal problem. He
had dealt in generalities and pondered and meditated on human conduct
in many aspects. The actual, present position, too, he had debated,
and even asked himself how he might expect to act under certain
circumstances. But the possibility of those circumstances ever
arising had not occurred to him, and now that they had done so, he
saw that his view and his judgment were only one side of the question
in any case. The visionary figure of a woman had turned into a real
one, and as such, her welfare and her future, not his own, instantly
became the paramount thing. What he might have deemed as sudden
salvation for himself, namely, a good and loving woman in his life,
took another colour when the woman actually appeared. The temptation
now lay in this. He knew Dinah so well, that he believed, from her
standpoint, she might look at the supreme problem as he did; and for
this very reason he delayed. Reason argued that, did Dinah see eye
to eye with him, no farther difficulty could exist, while if she did
not, there was an end of it; but some radical impulse of heredity, or
that personal factor of character, which was the man himself, fought
with reason at the very heart of his being and made the issue a far
deeper matter for Maynard now.
The horseman left Mr. Stockman and galloped forward, while Joe
regarded his retreating figure with mild amusement and turned to
Lawrence.
"Did you hear that?" he asked, and the other replied that he had not.
"I've vexed him--just the last thing ever I meant, or intended. It's
a funny world. If you mind your own business and stick to it, the
people say you're a selfish, hard-hearted creature, with no proper
feeling to humans at large. And if you seek to mind other people's
business, and serve 'em, and help the folk along, and lend a hand
where you may, then they lift their voices and call you a meddling
Paul Pry and a busybody and so on. That man's just told me to look
after my own affairs, because I went out of my way to give him a
valuable tip about his!"
"More fool him," said Maynard. "The fools are the hardest to help."
"Nothing but the people themselves keep me from doing a great deal
more good in the world than I might," declared Joe. "The will is
there, and I think I may say the wit is there; but my fellow
creatures choke me off."
"They're jealous of your sense I reckon."
"No doubt some be, Lawrence. But 'tis cutting off your nose to spite
your face, when you quarrel with a man who might be useful, just
because you hate to think he's got a better brain than you have."
"A very common thing."
"Not a mistake of the wise, however. For my part I've lived long
enough to see that jealousy, look at it all round, is the feeblest
and silliest vice we humans suffer from. There's nothing to it but
wretchedness and wasted energy. Jealous I never could be of any
living creature, I assure you."
But though Joe despised jealousy, such was his humour, that within an
hour, for the sake of personal amusement he sought to awake the
futile flame in another breast.
Melinda Honeysett was waiting at Falcon Farm when the men returned,
but she had come to see Lawrence Maynard, not Mr. Stockman. He,
however, entertained her while his man was looking after the sheep.
Indeed, he insisted on Melinda joining him in a cup of tea. He had
not seen her since his return from Brixham, and now the rogue in Joe
twinkled to the top and he began to enumerate the rare qualities of
Miss King. He knew that Melinda regarded herself as holding a sort
of proprietary right over him, and he much enjoyed this shadowy
bondage and often pretended to groan under it. But now he launched
on the task of making Melinda jealous for his private entertainment.
With Soosie-Toosie the enterprise had failed. She humbly accepted
the accomplishments of Ann King and praised her genius so heartily
that Joe soon dropped the subject; but for Melinda it came as a new
idea, and this enthusiasm on Mr. Stockman's part for a paragon at
once unknown and eligible, caused Mrs. Honeysett just that measure of
exasperation her first male friend desired to awaken.
"My!" said Melinda, after listening to the glowing story of the
farmer's daughter, her virtues, her resource, her financial ability
and her practical knowledge of affairs; "I didn't know there were any
angels to Brixham. Do she fly about, or only walk, like us common
women?"
"No, she walks," said Joe, delighted at his instant success; "but
even in walking she never wastes a footstep, like most of us. Never
wastes anything, and yet not close. Just a grasp of all that matters
and a large scorn for all that don't. And as to being an angel,
Melinda, you may say she is that--just in the same sense that you and
Soosie-Toosie and all nice women are angels. Only that. She's a
thorough human woman and, simply judged as a woman, a very fine piece
indeed."
Mrs. Honeysett laughed somewhat harshly.
"Don't you drag me and Susan in. I'm sure he needn't do that, need
he, Soosie? Such poor creatures as us--not worthy to hold a candle
to this here Jane King."
"Ann King," corrected Joe.
"You and me will go and take lessons, and ax her to teach us how to
look after our poor fathers," said Melinda to Miss Stockman. "We're
such a pair of feckless, know-naught fools that it's time we set
about larning how a parent did ought to be treated. And, by the same
token, I must get back to mine. He's bad and getting worse. I only
came to see Maynard, because father wants to have a tell with
him--to-night if possible. Poor father's going down hill fast
now--all, no doubt, because I've not understood how to nurse him and
tend him and live my life for him alone. If he'd only had Ann King
to look after him, I dare say he'd be well again by now."
Joe, greatly daring, pushed the joke a little deeper.
"You mustn't say that. There's nobody like you to look after a sick
man, Melinda, and I'm sure Miss King couldn't have done it very much
better and steadier than you have. But perhaps it might be a clever
thought to invite her up along. I dare say she'd make time to pay us
a visit, if I told her as you and Soosie-Toosie were very wishful to
make her acquaintance and gather in a bit of her far-reaching sense.
She's always as willing as I am myself to throw a bit of light."
"Ax her to come then," said Mrs. Honeysett. "'Twill be a great
blessing for me and Susan to go to school to her. And something to
see a really wise creature in Buckland, because we'm such a lot of
God-forsaken zanies here--men and women alike."
She rose breathing rather deeply.
"No tea, thank you," she said. "I've changed my mind. I'll go home
and pray for the light of Ann King to fall on my dark road. And when
she comes along, you ask her if she'll give a poor, weak-minded widow
a little of her sense. Tell her I'm one of they women that thinks
the moon be made of green cheese, will 'e? And say I believe in
pixies, and charms for warts, and black witches and white witches and
all that. And you can add that I was one of them idiots that always
gave men credit for nice feeling and good sense and liked to believe
the best about some men and stuck up for 'em, even when I heard 'em
run down and laughed at. Tell her all that; and say as I'm going to
give certain parties a rest in future, because, though a poor worm
and not worthy to be seen alongside her, yet I've got my pride, like
the cleverest of us. And give Lawrence Maynard father's message,
Soosie, if you please."
"Come back, you silly gosling!" shouted Joe; but Melinda did not come
back. He laughed very heartily, yet not loud enough for the
departing woman to hear him.
"Lord! To think now!" he said. "I've took a proper rise out of her,
eh?"
"You have," admitted Susan ruthfully. "And if you done it on
purpose, it weren't a very clever thing to do. Melinda's fiery, but
a good friend and a great admirer of yours, father. Now you've vexed
her cruel."
"You never larn all there is to know about a female," he said. "I
meant to get her wool off--just for a bit of honest fun; but I can't
say as I ever understood she felt so deep how clever she was. She's
a vain, dear creature."
"It weren't that," explained Susan. "She ain't vain, though she
knows her worth, and so do everybody else know it; but what she is
proud of, naturally, be your great fondness for her. She knows you
put her first, and she knows you're a clever man and wouldn't put her
first if there wasn't a reason. And her father be going to die
presently and--and God knows what's in her thoughts, of course. And
then to hear that Miss King be worth all the women you've ever seen
in your life put together, and be the top flower of the bunch, and
such a wonder as was never seen by mortal man--why, of course,
Melinda took it to heart a bit. Who wouldn't?"
"You didn't," said Joe.
"No, I didn't, because I know my place, father. I'm not so clever as
Melinda. I'm a poor thing, though well intending. But Melinda's a
fine thing and you know in your heart that a virgin woman, like Miss
King, however clever she be, couldn't teach Melinda nothing about how
to look after a man."
"Fun be thrown away on you creatures," said Joe. "You're terrible
thick-headed where a joke's the matter, Soosie; but I did think as
Melinda was brighter."
He turned to Palk, who had just entered for his tea. Thomas had
heard the word thick-headed applied to Susan.
"Did you ever know a woman as could see a clever bit of fun, Tom?"
The horseman reflected.
"Women's fun ban't the same as ours," he answered. "No doubt they've
got their own pattern of fun. But there ain't much time for Miss
Stockman to practise laughing in this house."
"Ah! You can be so comical as any of us when you'm in a mind for it,
Thomas," said his master.