Part 24

"Us might sit here 'pon the fir-needles," suggested Henry.

"'Tis damp, I doubt," answered his companion, thinking of her best gown.

"Then I'll spread my coat for 'e. I want to have a tell along with you, an' I caan't talk travellin'. 'Tis tu distractin', an' what I've got to say'll take me all my power, whether or no."

He spread his black broadcloth without hesitation, and Sally, appreciating this compliment, felt she could not do less than accept it. So she plumped down on Henry's Sunday coat, and he appeared to win much pleasure from contemplation of her in that position. He smiled to himself, sighed rather loudly, and then sat beside her. Whereupon his tongue refused its office and, for the space of two full minutes, he made no remark whatever, though his breathing continued very audible.

"What be thinking 'bout?" asked Sally suddenly.

"Well, to tell plain truth, I was just taking pleasure in the idea as you'd ordained to sit 'pon my jacket. 'Twill be very comfortin' to me to call home as you've sat on un every time I put un on or off."

"If 'twas awnly another party!" thought the girl. "Doan't be such a fule," she said.

"That's what everybody have been advisin' me of late," he answered calmly, without the least annoyance or shame. "'Tis the state of my mind. Things come between me an' my work--a very ill-convenient matter. But, whether or no, I'll be proud of that coat now."

She sat comfortably beside him, and presently, after further silence, Henry lolled over towards her, and, taking a straw, sought with clumsy pleasantry to stick it into her hand under the white cotton glove which she was wearing.

"What be about?" she asked sharply. "Go along with 'e! Doan't 'e knaw me better than to think I be so giddy?"

Thus repulsed, Mr. Collins apologised, explained that in reality he did know Sally better, that his action was one of pure inadvertence, and that he admired her character by special reason of its sobriety. Silence again overtook them, and, while Sally fidgeted impatiently, the man's owl eyes roamed from off her face to the woods, from the woodland back again to her. He stuffed his pipe slowly, then returned it to his pocket; he sighed once or twice, tied up his boot-lace, and cleared his throat. After a painful pause the woman spoke again.

"Be us at a funeral or a junketing? You look for all the world as if you'd catched something hurtful. Wheer's your manners? What's in your mind now?"

Henry gulped, and pointed to an oak immediately opposite them--a great tree bound about in a robe of ivy.

"Was just considerin' 'bout thicky ivydrum, an' what gude sneyds for scythe-handles her'd make."

"Then you'd best to bide here with your scythe-handles, an' I'll go back-along to the company. I didn't come out to sit an' stare at a ivybush if you did."

"Doan't 'e be so biting against me, woman!" said Collins indignantly. "I be comin' to it so fast as I can, ban't I? 'Tedn' so easy, I can assure 'e. Maybe chaps as have axed a score o' females finds speech come quick enough; but I've never spoke the word to wan afore in all my life; an' 'tis a damn oneasy job; an' I ban't gwaine to be hurried by you or any other."

Sally appeared awed at this outburst. She suddenly realised that Mr. Collins was a man, a big one, a strong one, and an earnest one.

"Sorry I took you up tu quick, I'm sure. I didn't knaw as you felt so deep."

"If I could have trusted pen an' ink, I should have written it out for 'e," he answered, "but my penmanship's a vain thing. I'll have the handkercher out of that pocket you'm sittin' on, if 'tis all the same to you. Theer's a dew broke out awver my brow."

She rose and passed to him a large red handkerchief. Then he thanked her, mopped his face, and continued--

"When fust I seed you, I felt weak by reason of your butivul faace, an' the way you could toss hay an' keep so cool as a frog. An' I will say that the laugh of you was very nigh as fine as a cuckoo's song. Then I got to see what a gude gal you was tu, an' how you scorned all men-folk--'cept Libby."

These words he added hastily, as he saw her colour rising.

"Libby, I do allow, you gived your countenance to, though, if I may say it, ban't no gert sign of love to see a chap in two minds between such a piece as you an' your sister. But I never looked at no other but you--not even when I was up to Exeter. An' if you see your way to keep comp'ny along wi' me, God's my judge you'll never be sorry you done it. I be a man as stands to work an' goes to church Sundays when let alone. An' I'd trust you wi' every penny of the money an' ax for no more'n a shillin' here an' theer. An' I'd stand between you an' your faither, as doan't 'pear to be so fond of you of late as he used to be."

Sally moved uneasily, for he had echoed a recent, dim suspicion of her own.

"Best let that bide," she said. "If my faither likes Margery better'n what he do me, that's his business, not yours."

"'Tis a fault in him, however," answered Henry. "You'm worth ten thousand o' she; an' he'll live to find it out yet. He'm grawin' auld an' tootlish, I reckon, else he'd never set her up afore you."

"She'm a crafty twoad," declared the other gloomily. "I knaw she'm clever'n what I be, but flesh an' blood counts for somethin'. He sees me twice to her wance--Gregory do; an', whether or no, the man's free as ban't achsually married."

Mr. Collins grew warm again, to see the drift of his lady's thoughts, and endeavoured to bring her conversation back to the matter in hand.

"Ban't for me to speak nothin' 'gainst Libby or any other man. An' 'twouldn't be fair fightin' if I said what I'd say wi' pleasure to the faace of un if he was here; but I want 'ess' or 'no' for myself, an' I do pray, my dear woman, as you'll consider of it afore you decide."

"Ban't no need, an' thank you kindly, I'm sure," said Sally. "But you must look some plaace else than me, Henery; an' I'm sure you'll find many so gude, an' plenty better."

He sat silent, staring and sniffing.

"Doan't 'e cry 'bout it," she said.

"I ban't cryin'--merely chap-fallen," he answered, "an' theer's none 'pon the airth so gude as you that ever I see; an' I do wish as you'd take your time an' not be so sudden. I can wait--I can wait if theer's a shade of doubt in your mind. Ess fay, I can wait weeks, an' months, an' years, so easy as a tree, for you to decide. But do 'e take a bit of time. 'Tis cruel short just to say 'no,' after all as I've felt for 'e so long."

She accepted the alternative, half from pity, half from policy. Any hint of an understanding might galvanise the cold-blooded Libby into action.

"Wait then," she said, "an' us'll see what time sends."

"Thank you, I'm sure--cold comfort, but a thought better'n nought. Now, if you'll rise up off my coat I might get 'e a few braave filbert nuts; then us'll join the people."

Sally dusted the coat and helped its master into it. They then returned towards the central festivity, and upon the way, at the bend of a narrow path, came suddenly upon Christopher Yeoland, Honor and her husband, Mark Endicott, with his arm in that of Mr. Scobell, Doctor Clack, and other local celebrities and men of leading in the neighbourhood.

"Lard! how can us pass all this mort o' gentlefolks an' me that down-daunted," moaned Henry; but his companion, secure in her pretty face and trustful of her best gown, felt quite equal to the ordeal.

"So easy as they can pass us," she answered. "They'm awnly men an' women when all's said, an' us be so gude as them, 'pon a public holiday or in church. I mind a time when Squire Yeoland never passed me by wi'out a civil word, an' I shouldn't wonder if he didn't now for all his riches."

She was right. Observing that no parent accompanied her and recollecting her blue eyes very well, Christopher stopped.

"Ah, Sally, glad to see you again. Not married yet--eh? But going to be, I'll warrant. That's your man? Lucky chap. And remember, the day of the wedding I've got twenty pounds for you to make the cottage vitty."

Miss Cramphorn blushed and murmured something, she knew not what, while Henry, now safely past his betters, shook at these bold words. Then the company proceeded, and Myles Stapledon, recollecting when these two had last met, mused upon the nature of the man, while Honor chid him.

"That's the way you'll send your money spinning, by putting a premium on improvident marriages. Ask Mr. Scobell what he thinks of such folly."

"A sentiment. I've always liked Sally. I kissed her once and her father saw me. Myles will tell you about that. Not that she ever liked me much--too good a judge of character, I expect."

Meantime Mr. Collins and his companion passed back to the tents and flags, and as they did so Henry could not refrain from commenting upon the squire's handsome promise.

"Did you hear what the man said?" he asked.

"Not being deaf, I did," answered Sally with evasion. "A wonnerful offer. Twenty pound! An' just for to make a place smart."

"Best to find a maid as won't keep 'e hanging round. 'Tis mere gapes-nestin' for you to wait for me--a wild-goose chase for sartain."

"I hope not."

"Twenty pounds ban't much arter all's said."

"Not to your faither, as he be a snug man enough by accounts; but 'tis tidy money to the likes of me--big money to come in a heap an' all unearned. Not as I'd want it. You should have every penny-piece if you'd awnly--"

"I doan't want to hear no more 'pon that head. I've promised to think of it, an' I ax you not to speak another word till I tell you to."

"'Twas the thought of the money that carried me away like, an' I'll be dumb from to-day, I do assure 'e."

Somewhat later they met Mr. Cramphorn, but it was significant of a lessened interest in his elder daughter that Jonah, instead of reproaching her for thus walking apart with one of the other sex, merely called to Collins and bid him bring his strength where it was needed to brace the tackle of a tent.

*CHAPTER IV.*

*DRIFTING*

With return of winter some temporary peace descended upon Myles, and, looking back, he felt ashamed at the storm and stress of spirit that Yeoland's resurrection had awakened in him. For a season, as life returned to its level progress, he truly told himself that he viewed the friendship between his wife and her old lover without concern, because it was natural and inevitable. Honor's very frankness and ingenuous pleasure in the wanderer's company shamed a jealous attitude. Some men, indeed, had gone further and blessed Yeoland's home-coming. Certainly that event was in no small measure responsible for Honor's renewed physical welfare, and the excitement acted kindly upon a temperament that found food in novelty and desired sweep and play of change for her soul's health. Stapledon's wife was well again, and soon she discovered that life could still be full and sweet. Into a sort of lulled contentment he therefore sank, and proclaimed to himself that all was well, that the existence of the three, lived under present relations, was natural and seemly. He checked impatience at the expeditions planned, listened to Christopher's endless designs with respect to Godleigh, advised him and endured from him the old, extravagant conceits and jesting, specious views of life. Yet the glamour was off them now, and they only wearied Myles. He believed at first that Yeoland must be a changed man; but very soon he found no such thing had happened.

Nevertheless, some parity of tastes obtained, as of old, in divers directions. Again they walked for many miles together, each occupied with Nature from his own standpoint; and again they met in the dawn hour that possessed like fascination for both. At such times, under grey winter light, shrewd and searching, what was best in the men stood first, and they almost understood one another; but when they met, smudged by long hours of the toilsome day, and especially when they found each other in common company of Honor, both lacked the former sympathy.

As for Christopher, he heartily appreciated Myles at this period, and found the farmer's common sense a valuable antidote to the somewhat too spacious ideas of Doctor Clack in matters concerning betterment of Godleigh. And not seldom did Yeoland rejoice, with a single eye, that his old love had such a steadfast rock upon which to establish her life.

In his relations with Honor he had been a little astonished to find the fact of her marriage not recognised by his nature, as it was by his conscience. That Nature could dare to be herself surprised him, when her wave throbbed through his being now and again upon some rare, sweet note of voice or tinkle of laughter. At such emotional moments he complimented the character and heroic attributes of Myles, with a vigour so crude that Honor might have suspected had not she echoed the sentiment from her heart. She never wearied of her husband's praises, and had no discernment as to what prompted Christopher's sudden overflowings of admiration. The man's return, as in the first instance of his own juxtaposition with Myles, served to alter Honor's inner attitude towards her husband. It seemed, in a sense, as she had fancied of old, that these two were the complement each of the other.

And a result was that his wife became more to Stapledon as the weeks passed. Gradually--but not so gradually that he failed to observe it--there came an increase of consideration in small matters, a new softness in her voice, a deeper warmth in her kisses. He marked her added joy in life, noted how she let her happiness bubble over to make him more joyful; and at first he was filled with satisfaction; and next he was overclouded with doubt. He tried to ascertain why her old lover's return should increase Honor's liking for her husband; he laboured gloomily upon a problem altogether beyond his calibre of mind to solve. He failed to see that the subtle change in his wife extended beyond him to the confines of her little world, that some higher graciousness was bred of it, that the least planet of which she was the sun now reaped new warmth from her accession of happiness. He puzzled his intelligence, and arrived, through long fret and care, at an erroneous solution. Utterly unable to appraise the delicate warp and poise of her humours, or gauge those obscure escapements that control happiness in the machinery of a woman's mind, Stapledon came to pitiful and mistaken conclusions that swept from him all content, all security, all further peace. At the glimmer of some devil's lantern he read into Honor's altered bearing an act of deliberate simulation. He denied that this advent of the other could by any possibility possess force to deepen or widen her affection for him; and he concluded, upon this decision, that the alteration must be apparent, not real. Such was the man's poor speed in the vital science of human nature. Next, he strove to explain the necessity for her pretence, with the reason of it; and so he darkened understanding, fouled his own threshold with fancied danger, and passed gradually into a cloudy region of anxiety and gloom. Excuse for speech or protest there was none; yet, unable to discern in Honor's frank awakening to everyday life and her renewed healthful bearing towards all her environment an obvious purity of mind and thought, he suffered his agitation to conquer him. He lived and waited, and sank into a chronic watchfulness that was loathsome to him. His fits of moody taciturnity saddened his wife and astonished her above measure, for it seemed that the old love of natural things was dead in him. In truth, his religion of the Moor--his dogma of the granite and vast waste places--failed him at this pinch. His gods were powerless and dumb--either that, or the heart of him had grown deaf for a season.

His unrest appeared, but the inner fires were hidden very completely. Then Mark Endicott, who knew that Myles was disordered, and suspected the tissue of his trouble, approached him, burrowed to his secret, and held converse thereon through some hours of a stormy night in January.

Stapledon at first evaded the issue, but he confessed at length, and, when invited to name the exact nature of his disquiet, merely declared the present position to be impossible in his judgment.

"We can't live with the balance so exact," he said. "I feel it and know it. Honor and this man loved one another once, and the natural attraction of their characters may bring them to do so again, now that such a thing would be sin."

"A big word--'sin,'" answered Mr. Endicott. "If that's all your trouble, the sooner you let sunshine into your mind again the better. Honor's an Endicott, when all's said, though maybe one of the strangest ever born under that name. I'm astonished to hear that this is the colour of your mind. And the man--queer though he is, too, and unlike most men I've met with--yet he's not the sort to bring trouble on a woman, last of all this woman."

"You prose on, uncle, not remembering what it felt like to feel your blood run hot at a woman's voice," answered Myles with unusual impatience and a flash of eye. "I give him all the credit you desire and more; I know he is honourable and upright and true. What then? Highest honour has broken down before this temptation. He is made of flesh and blood after all, and a man can't live within a span of a woman he loves and be happy--not if that woman belongs to somebody else. I don't assert that his love still exists, yet it's an immortal thing--not to be killed--and though he thinks he has strangled it--who can say? It may come to life again, like he did."

"You judge others by your own honest character; but I'm not so certain. If there is a man who could live platonically beside a woman he loves, that man might be Yeoland. There's something grotesque in him there--some warp or twist of fibre. Remember how well content he was in the past to remain engaged to her without rushing into her arms and marrying her. He's cold-blooded--so to call it--in some ways. I've known other such men."

"It's contrary to nature."

"Contrary to yours, but temperaments are different Don't judge him. There may be a want in him, or he may possess rare virtues. Some are ascetic and continent by disposition and starve Nature, at some secret prompting of her own. I don't say he is that sort of man, but he may be. Certainly his standpoint is far less commonplace than yours."

"I caught him kissing a pretty milkmaid once, all the same; and that after he was engaged to Honor," answered the other gloomily.

"Exactly. Now you would not do such a thing for the world, and he would make light of it. Beauty merely intoxicates some men; but intoxicated men do little harm as a rule. He's irresponsible in many ways; yet still I say the husband that fears such a man must be a fool."

"I can't suppose him built differently to other people."

"Then assume him to be the same, and ask yourself this question: Seeing what he did for love of her, and granting he loves her still, has he come back to undo what he did? Would he change and steal her now, even if he had the power to do so? What has he done in the past that makes you dream him capable of such a deed in the future?"

"I don't say that he dreams that such a thing is possible. Probably the man would not have returned into the atmosphere of Honor if he had dimly contemplated such an event. But I see nothing in his character to lift him above the temptation, or to make me rest sure he will be proof against it. There's a danger of his opening his eyes too late to find the thing which he doubtless believes impossible at present an accomplished fact."

"What thing?"

"Why, the wakening again of his love for her, the returned knowledge that his life is empty and barren and frost-bitten without her. He felt that once. What more natural than that, here again, he should feel it redoubled in the presence of his own good fortune in every other direction?"

"If such a suspicion crossed his mind, he would depart from Godleigh. That I do steadfastly believe. Understand, your welfare would not weigh with him; but Honor's happiness--I feel more assured of it--is still more to him than his own."

"I know--I know; yet how easily a man in love persuades himself that a woman's vital welfare and real happiness depends upon him."

"Now we argue in a circle, and are at the starting-point again. Yeoland believed so thoroughly that she would be happier with you than with him that he actually blotted himself out of her life, and, when he heard she would not marry you while he lived, let it be known that he was dead. Solely for her sake he played that cumbrous prank."

"That is so; yet remember what you told me years ago. Then you honestly believed that this man, from the depths of his own peculiar nature, understood Honor better than anybody else in the world did. You thought that, and you are seldom wrong about people. So perhaps he has come to that conclusion too. If I was the wrong husband for her----"

"I never said such a thing."

"No, because I never asked you; but if it was so, what more likely than that he has discovered it since his return? At any rate he may think that this is the case--though I dispute it with all my heart--and he may feel his sacrifice was vain. Then, what more likely than that he should ask himself if it is too late to amend the position?"

Mr. Endicott's face expressed absolute surprise and some scorn for the speaker.

"Do I hear Myles Stapledon? Where have you sucked poison since last we spoke together? You, who live in the fresh air and enjoy the companionship of natural beasts and wholesome lives, to spin this trash! And wicked trash, too, for what right have you to map out evil roads for other people to follow? What right have you to foretell a man's plan and prophesy ill? Have done with this dance of Jack-o'-lanterns, and get upon the solid road again. Look in your wife's character. No need to go further than that for ointment to such a wound as you suffer from. You have let jealousy into the house, Myles, and the reek of it and the blight of it will make your life rotten to the marrow if you don't set to work and cleanse the chamber again. I know they are happy together; but you've got to face that. I know she's better for his coming, and you've got to face that too. These are subtle things, and if you can't understand them, put them behind you. All this is false fire, and you're in a ferment of windy misery brewed inside you--just wind, because the home-coming of this native has upset your digestion. You ought to feel some shame to harbour such a pack of imps. Time was when a breath of air from Cosdon Beacon would have blown them back to their master. How they got in I can't say; for it's not part of your real character to make trouble. You're like the ploughboy who builds a ghostie with a sheet and turnip and only frightens himself. Get this weed out of your heart at any cost. Burn it out with the caustic of common sense; and trust me, blind as I am, to be quick enough to smell the smoke that tells of fire. I mean in this matter. Honor's only less to me than she is to you. And I know the truth about her as sure as I know the sound of her voice and the things it says, and the secrets it lets out, apart from the words her tongue speaks."

"She's said many a queer thing on the subject of a man and his wife and their relations each to the other. I cannot easily forget them."

"It's her wide, healthy frankness in every affair of life that might set you at rest, if you were not, as I hint to you, a fool."

"If I were a fool, it might. I know she holds the tie lightly. Any conventional sort of bondage angers her. I won her by a trick--not of my hatching, God knows--yet none the less a trick."