SHEPHERD'S CROSS
The new cowman came on the day before Maynard left Falcon Farm and
Mr. Stockman was satisfied with his ability and intelligence. And
then came the moment when Joe shook hands and bade Lawrence farewell.
All animosity had died, for the elder was not vindictive. He
pictured the experiences that awaited his old servant and found it in
his heart to be sorry for him. Only thought of the enormity of the
deed he had so deliberately planned steeled Mr. Stockman.
"I shall hear tell of you, no doubt," were the last words that he
said at parting.
To Holne went Maynard, put up with an acquaintance for that night,
and, at five o'clock on the following morning, set out to meet Dinah
at Shepherd's Cross, a mediæval monument that marked a forgotten
monkish way of old. There Dinah, whose departure was designed to be
secret, would meet him, and together they would descend to Brent,
where neither was known, and so reach Plymouth, whence their steamer
sailed that night.
The morning dawned fine and touched with frost. The wind blew gently
from the east. There was no sting in it, but it created an
inevitable haze, and distance quickly faded under its blue-grey
mantle, while at hand all shone clear and bright in the sunrise
fires. The heavy dew of a cloudless night was not yet dried off the
herbage, and the grass, nibbled to a close and springy velvet by
sheep and rabbits, spread emerald green between the masses of heather
and furze, where the lover climbed Dene Moor. Still the autumn heath
shone with passages of colour; but into the rich pink of a month
earlier had crept a russet warmth, where innumerable heather bells
passed to death with a redness that drowned the purple. As yet this
new colour was genial in tone, shone in the sunlight and glowed along
the reaches of the fading fern; but a time approached when from ruddy
to sere the countless blossoms must sink. Then the light would fade
and the flowers wither, till winter winds tinkled in their grey
inflorescence and sang the song of another dying year. Now only the
splendour of their passing and the pale gold, where brake died in
patches amid the standing fern, prophesied changes to come. A few
raddled sheep browsed their morning meal and made harmony with the
bright colours of the dawn, while Maynard, stooping, picked up the
wing feather of a carrion crow and reflected that this was the last
black plume he would ever find to clean his pipe on Dartmoor. He was
sorry to leave it, but had found no time for regret until this
moment. Life had passed so swiftly and demanded so much thought and
contrivance of late, that only now he spared a few minutes to
consider all that he was leaving, and how much had been good and
precious to him. He had formed a hazy and nebulous picture of his
future environment, but knew that it could in no way resemble this.
He guessed that he must often look back, and doubted whether his
future scene of life would entirely take the place of the one he was
about to leave. But he remembered Dinah's attitude and her expressed
joy that the Vale should be left behind them and all things become
new.
Now he centred upon her and again thin shadows crept through his
mind. For good or evil they had listened to their own hearts alone;
but he still found questions asking themselves and doubts limning
deep in his soul when he thought of her; he still felt a smoulder of
indignation in himself that this cup should be forced upon them.
There was an ingredient of bitterness, a dumb question why fate
should have called him and Dinah to do a thing against which he
rebelled, and the doing of which was an outrage upon her love of
truth and directness. She might make light of the burden, but he
resented the fact that she was called to bear it. Such is the force
of inherited conviction and tradition that he could not, as she had
done, discredit and dismiss his past as an empty dream. She honestly
so regarded Maynard's story; otherwise he knew she would never have
come to him; but it was only for his sake that she made the
sacrifice, and he felt it a cruel fact that any sacrifice should be
called for from her. His past was real enough, and the shadow must
fall on her and the children to be born of her. That the world would
never see the shadow, or know of its existence, did not matter. For
him and his wife it could never vanish. Even yet he did not perceive
that no shadow whatever existed for Dinah. The thing that still
haunted him like a fog, like the robe of the east wind hanging on the
skirts of the moor, must, he felt, be appreciated by her also, and
might, indeed, grow more solid and real for her in the future.
Regret for the inevitable thus found a place in his mind despite his
reason, because it sprang from foundations other than his reason.
Swinging forward with an ash sapling in his right hand and a leathern
portmanteau in his left, Lawrence presently saw his goal ahead.
Sunshine played over the blue hazes and touched the grey summit of
Shepherd's Cross, where the ancient stone stood erect and solitary on
the heath. It reared not far distant from rough, broken ground,
where Tudor miners had streamed the hillside for tin in Elizabethan
days. The relic glimmered with lichens, black and gold and ash
colour. Upon its shaft stuck red hairs, where roaming cattle had
rubbed themselves. It stood the height of a tall man above the water
worn trough at its foot, and the cross was still perfect, with its
short, squat arms unbroken, though weathered in all its chamfering by
centuries of storm.
Here he sat down, knit his brows to scan the northern slope of the
hill, whereon Dinah must presently appear, and wondered how far she
might have already tramped upon her way. He had found his own climb
from Holne shorter than he imagined and was at their place of meeting
before the time.
Then, suddenly, behind him he heard feet shuffling and turned to see
five men spring up from their hiding-places at hand. They were
familiar faces that he saw, and for a moment no suspicion that they
were here upon his account entered the mind of Maynard. It occurred
to him that Shepherd's Cross might be a meeting-place for hounds at
this early hour. Yet he did not know that cub-hunting was yet begun.
And then he marked behind the four now beside him, the tall, thin
figure of Arthur Chaffe--one who would certainly attend no meet of
hounds.
He was not left long in doubt. The men brought ropes. They closed
round him, as he rose to confront them, caught his arms, dragged him
to the cross and, with the celerity of executioners, quickly had him
fast bound by ankles and wrists against the granite--crucified
thereto with his arms extended upon the arms of the cross and a dozen
coils of rope about his shoulders, trunk and legs. John Bamsey
handled one wrist and saw that his cords bit.
Here was Mr. Chaffe's inspiration; that the erring man should be
lifted on the Christian emblem of salvation, for his heart to be
taken by storm, and for Dinah to behold the great event. He
apprehended a wondrous purification in Maynard as the result of this
punishment and he hoped thai he himself might have time to say the
necessary words and utter a trumpet note in the sinner's ear before
his victim reached Shepherd's Cross.
The men had come by night and hidden as near the tryst as possible.
Now they completed their work and stood off, some grinning, some
scowling, at the prisoner. His hat had fallen and his ash sapling
and his leather bag lay together where he had sat. The light of day
shone upon his bare head and he stared at the faces round him, still
dazed and silent before the terrific surprise of their attack. But
though he said nothing, others spoke freely enough and some chaffed
and some derided.
"You didn't think you was going to get chained up this morning, you
dirty, runaway dog!" said John Bamsey, while Robert Withycombe
laughed.
"You ban't the first thief as have found yourself on a cross--eh, my
bold hero? Not but what a cross be almost too holy a sign to rope
such a scamp upon."
"You--you that thought you could fox an honest woman and turn her
away from an honest man! You wicked lying trash, as ought to have
the skin tanned off your bones!" roared John.
But the thunder did not make Maynard shrink. He turned his head to
the veteran and spoke.
"What does this mean, Mr. Chaffe?" he asked.
Jerry Withycombe began to answer him, but John took the words out of
his mouth. Jerry was too mild for this occasion.
"It means that I happened to find the wrens' nest, and I told about
it, and John's sister found 'twas you plotting against Orphan Dinah
and----"
"It means that all the world knows you're a married man, you blasted
wretch," stormed Johnny. "It means you kindiddled the woman away
from me with lies and cunning and thought to get her out of England
and ruin her, and then, no doubt, fling her off, like you flung off
your lawful wife. It means you're found out for what you are--the
scum of the earth. And she's going to know it, and see you where you
stand, and hear where your filthy plots and wickedness was going to
land her. And if she don't sclow down your face for you when she
knows and tear your damned eyes out, she ought to!"
Maynard looked at the furious man, but did not answer. Then Mr.
Chaffe intervened.
"That'll do, John Bamsey," he said. "Us have carried out our work in
a high spirit so far and we don't want no crooked language."
"Crooked language be the right sort for crooked deeds I reckon,"
declared Mr. Callicott, the prize-fighter--a sturdy and snake-headed
youth who had assisted the others. "If it's true this bloke's
married and was going to run away and do bigamy with an innocent
girl, then you can't talk too coarse to him, I reckon."
"You're right to be angered, but righteous wrath must keep its
temper, Callicott," explained Arthur. "Now hear me talk to the man
and show him how it is with him. He be dazed, as you see, and stares
through us and looks beyond, as if we was ghosts."
"He knows very well we ban't ghosts," said Jerry.
"You see him," continued Mr. Chaffe, as though he were lecturing on a
specimen--"you see him in the first flush of his surprise--gazing out
at the risen sun and too much knocked over even to make a case."
"What sort of case should he make--a man that meant to seduce another
chap's sweetheart?" asked John Bamsey.
"If he haven't already," suggested Mr. Callicott.
"Hear me, and let him hear me," answered Arthur; and then he turned
to Maynard.
"You ask why we have laid in wait for you and done this," he said.
"But you know why we have done it only too well, you bad man, and the
true wonder in your mind is to guess how we found out. For well you
knew that when honest God-fearers were led by Providence to discover
what you was up to, they'd stop it in the name of the Lord. Don't
stare into the sky, nor yet over the hill for that poor woman, as you
meant to destroy body and soul. Just you turn your wits to me,
Lawrence Maynard, and listen; and then tell me before God, if you've
got any just quarrel with any man among us. And this is what you
done--you knowing you was married and had a wife you'd thrown over.
You come here and make a woman care for you; but since your watchful
Maker has already opened your mouth, so that your master heard you
was married, you know you couldn't pretend to wed her honest before
men, but must hatch lies for her and make a plot. And her love was
quick, no doubt, to think nothing you could do or say was wrong, so
she consented to follow you to foreign parts, where her shame might
be hid and where she'd be in your power--to cherish or to desert
according as your fancy took you. For well you understood that she
could never be no more than your leman and at your mercy. That's
what you planned, poor man; but God in His might chose different, and
willed to give you up to your fellow creatures and led this young
Jerry Withycombe to find your secret, so we learned what you was
going to do. And it is my work and ordinance that you stand here now
tied to the Cross of your Redeemer, Lawrence Maynard. And may the
cross enter into your heart and save your soul alive yet. And then
you'll see we five Christians be the willing instruments of Heaven,
and have put ourselves to this hard task for love of humanity and in
the spirit of our Master. We be here, not only to save Dinah, but to
save you; and you can say 'Amen' to that, and I hope your Father in
Heaven will touch your hard heart to bend and see what we've saved
you from."
"In fact you're getting out of it a damned sight softer than you
deserve, and a damned sight softer than you would if I had my way,"
growled Bamsey; but the sailor stopped him.
"Shut up, John, and let Mr. Chaffe talk," he said. "What he tells be
very fine, and us must follow his lead and take a high hand with the
man."
"We're all sinners," continued Arthur, "and nobody more so than you,
John Bamsey, so I'll beg you hold in and let me do my part."
Then he droned on to the roped cowman.
"Evils must come, but woe be to them that bring them, and you've
shown me in the past that you're a thinking creature with all your
intellects, and now you see where your doubtful thoughts and lawless
opinions have brought you. And I hope it will be a case of 'Go and
sin no more,' in the words of the Saviour of us all, Maynard. All
things go round and round, you must know. The worm gnaws the nettle
that the butterfly may rise up into the sunshine; and the butterfly
rises up into the sunshine that the worm may gnaw the nettle; but we,
as have immortal souls, be called to deny and defy nature, and lead
captivity captive, and trample on the adder and the basilisk. All
which things you knew very well, yet set your face to add to the evil
of the world to please your own base passions. And you didn't care
that a young and harmless woman, who was God's business quite as much
as you yourself--you didn't care where you dragged her down, so long
as you got what you wanted, and defied principalities and powers, and
lied to your own better nature just the same as you lied to her."
"The woman be coming," said Robert Withycombe. His sailor's eyes had
seen Dinah still far distant. She was clad in a brick-red gown--her
best--and carried a basket of yellow, woven cane that made a bright
spot on the heath.
"Yes," said Arthur Chaffe. "Like a lamb to the slaughter the virgin
cometh, Lawrence Maynard; and I hope 'tis your voice she will hear,
telling how God hath watched over her, and how right and religion
have won another victory on this glad morning."
But the prisoner preserved an obstinate silence. He seemed to be
rapt away out of sight or sound of Mr. Chaffe and the rest. His eyes
rested on Dinah; his ears appeared to be sealed for any attention he
paid to his captors. Arthur drew his wind and the others spoke.
"He's waiting for her to come," said Mr. Callicott. "He be going to
say his say afore the woman and don't care a damn for you, master."
"He'm in a dream," murmured Jerry. "I don't believe he's hearing
what Mr. Chaffe be pouring at him."
Then Dinah, who had long seen the group, made haste and dropped her
basket and hastened to Maynard, ignoring the rest.
Her face was scarlet and she could hardly speak for the throbbing of
her heart.
"Lawrence--Lawrence--what's this?" she asked. "What have they done?"
She had left her home before dawn, unknowing that another was awaking
also at Green Hayes and had heard her go. Her last act was to slip
into Benjamin Bamsey's room, where he slept alone, and kiss the
unconscious old man upon his temple. Then she had gone; and Jane had
heard her do so and seen the vague shadow of her descend the garden
path and vanish into the farm yard. Mrs. Bamsey was kept in
ignorance of Dinah's plans, but when morning came and they sat at
breakfast, her daughter informed her of all that had happened and
told her that she might expect to see her father's foster-daughter
return with Mr. Chaffe in an hour or two. Faith Bamsey took the
revelation calmly enough and showed no great emotion; while Jane
roamed restlessly through the morning and desired to see Jerry and
hear of what had happened on the moor.
Now, in answer to Dinah, Maynard, who was suffering physical pain
from his position and his bonds, answered very quietly, while the men
round the pair listened to him.
"They have done what they thought was right, Dinah. They found out
that we were going to leave England together, and they heard from Mr.
Stockman that I was married. And they took a natural view and
thought I was deceiving you as to that. So they laid in wait and
tied me here, until you heard the truth."
"I know the truth," she said. "I know a deeper truth than any they
can know. I know that in God's sight----"
"Stop!" cried Arthur Chaffe. "Listen to me, Orphan Dinah, and thank
Heaven on your knees that your fellow creatures have saved you from
the evil to come."
She looked at all of them with a flaming indignation.
"Did you set 'em to this dirty task--old as you are? Did you think
so badly of this man that you supposed he would try to do me harm?
Did you think there was no other side? Did you plot behind his back,
when you'd found out our simple secrets? Did you plan this cruel
insult and disgrace for one that never harmed you or anybody?"
"He harmed us all, Dinah, and I beg you'll keep your temper,"
answered Arthur. "You're talking far ways short of sense and you
don't know what we saved you from."
"Be you shadows, or real people, you grinning men?" she asked,
turning upon the others. "Do you know what you've done in your
clumsy, brutal strength? Do you know you've wronged and tortured a
man whose boots you ain't worthy to black?"
"Hear the truth and don't be an idiot!" answered John Bamsey.
"'Truth'! What do you know of the truth? You--shallow, know-naught
creatures, that go by spoken words and make words stand for truth?
It's a lie to say he's wedded. Is every man wedded that's married?
Have none of you ever seen married people that never felt or knew the
meaning of marriage? 'Tis for pity to the likes of you, beyond the
power of understanding, that we took these pains; and now we shan't
run away behind your backs, but go before your faces--a parcel of
zanies, that think because a thing be said it must be true."
"Let the man speak," said Mr. Chaffe. "I command that you speak,
Lawrence Maynard. The woman's beside herself and dead to reason.
'Tis your bounden duty to speak for yourself."
"Loose him then and he'll speak fast enough," cried Dinah. "Who be
you--a cowardly, hulking pack of ignorant clods to lay fingers on
him! If you had sense and decency and any proper Christianity in
you, you'd have gone to work very different and spared me this wicked
outrage, and him too. You'd have come to us and bid us speak. What
do you make us? Loose him, I tell you--ban't one among you man
enough to understand that I know all there is to know about
this--that it's my work we're going, my work--me that loves him and
worships him, and knows the big-hearted, patient, honourable chap he
is. God! If you could see yourselves as I see you--meddling,
nasty-minded bullies, you'd sink in the earth. Loose him and then
listen to him. You're not worth the second thought of a man like
him."
Lawrence spoke quietly to Robert Withycombe.
"You see how it is. Don't keep me trussed here no longer. I'm in
pain and no good can come of it. If you care to listen, then I'll
speak. I'm very glad to let you know how things are, for you've got
a credit for sense; so has Mr. Chaffe."
"It's a free country," said Mr. Callicott, "You chaps seem as if
you'd made trouble where there isn't none. Pity you didn't look into
this first and play your games after."
He opened a knife to sever the ropes that held Maynard. None
attempted to stop him save John, and then the sailor came between.
"Cut him loose, Callicott."
Mr. Chaffe was deeply dismayed and made an effort to save the
position.
"Orphan Dinah," he said, "for the love of your Saviour, and your
foster-father, and right and religion, come home with me this minute.
I can't believe what you say, for you know not what you say. Does
the man deny he's married? That's all I want to know; and if he is,
then do you mean to tell me you're going to live with him? There it
is in brutal words and----"
"The brutal words are yours, because you're bound up in words and
know naught about the truth of what this means, Arthur Chaffe,"
answered Maynard, who now stood free. "Do you think two people who
have set out to share their lives for evermore, didn't count the cost
every way? Believe me, we did, so understand that what seems wicked
to you, ban't wicked to us. I don't count, but Dinah does. She
knows every single word of the truth, and may I die on this stone if
she doesn't."
"Come," said Dinah. "We're not called to lay our hearts bare for
these men. Let 'em know there's as good and honourable and Christian
people in the world as themselves; and if I, knowing far, far deeper
than they know, am content and proud to be your wife in God's sight
for ever and ever, who else matters, and who else shall judge? You
be no more than the buzzing of gnats to us, and there's no power in
one of you to sting this man, or me."
"Think, think what you're doing, Dinah," pleaded Mr. Chaffe.
"And haven't I thought, and don't I know a million times more than
you can, or ever will? Understand before we go. This man was never
false to any woman--never--never. He don't know the meaning of
falseness. He never looked at me, John Bamsey, till I'd left you,
and I never thought of him till long, long after I was free. And
when I loved him, he told me he could not marry me--and why--and I
saw that it was moonshine and only a pair of weak, worthless
creatures would be frightened and part for that--only cowards feared
of their neighbour and the laws--laws that selfish Christians bleat
about and want kept, because to torture other people won't hurt their
comfort, or cloud their homes. What do you know of marriage--one of
you? What do you know of the dark, deadly things that may come
between people and separate 'em far as heaven from hell, while
parsons and lawyers and old bachelors and old women want 'em chained
together to rot--for Christ's sake! Look deeper--look deeper!"
While the men stood silent, Maynard picked up his stick and bag and
Dinah's basket.
Mr. Chaffe had sunk upon a stone and was wiping his eyes with a red
pocket handkerchief.
"You!" he said. "You brought up in a Christian home by God-fearing
people, Dinah!"
"And fear God I always shall; but not man," she answered scornfully.
"Did these chaps do this because they feared God? Ask them!"
She took her package from Maynard and he spoke.
"Have no fear that any harm be done to righteousness," he said. "No
woman knows her duty to her Maker better than this woman, or her duty
to her neighbour. If ever I was in doubt, and I have been, my doubts
be cleared afore what you men have done to-day, and I thank you for
that. You've shown how paltry it was to doubt, I reckon, and I doubt
no more. I be the better and stronger for seeing your minds, you
well-meaning chaps! My life and thought and worship belong to Dinah;
and where no secrets are hid, there's no blame counted against us,
and never will be, I hope."
They turned their backs upon the listeners and went away side by
side; they moved among the stones and bushes until they sank out of
sight and vanished for ever from that company.
"To hell with them!" said John, "and curse all women for the sake of
that blasted woman!"
But the rest did not share his passion. Only Mr. Chaffe mourned; the
others were impressed at what they had heard and the prize-fighter
was amused.
"A pretty parcel we look," said Callicott, "bested by that calm man
and quick-tongued woman. And be damned if I ban't their side. We
don't know naught about it, and if we did very like we'd praise 'em
for a bit of pluck. Anyway she knows what she's doing all right."
"If the Lord can read their hearts, it evidently don't much matter to
them that we can't," declared Robert Withycombe; "and be it as it
will, if he was a Turk, or Indian, the man could have two wives and
no harm done. And if there's only one Almighty, Mr. Chaffe, why for
should He hold it a parlous crime for us to do what a chap across the
water can do every day of the week?"
But Arthur Chaffe was too stricken to argue. He stared in great
grief after the vanished man and woman.
"My God, why hast Thou forsaken them?" he moaned.
They parted presently and went their different ways, leaving
Shepherd's Cross with the sunlight on its face and the severed ropes
about its foot.