Part 25

"You'd make Job lose his patience--you, that I thought a man of ideas as fresh and wholesome as the west wind! Can't you see this cuts both ways? She's yours till death parts you, so have done whining. You're stirring hell-broth, that's what you're doing, and if you let Honor catch a sight of the brew, there will be some real, live trouble very likely. You, to break out like this! Well, it shows how true the saying runs: that every man, from Solomon down, is mad when the wind sets in one quarter. Now you've found your foul-weather wind, and it's like to blow you into some play-acting if you don't pull yourself up. You're the luckiest man on the whole countryside, if you could only see it so. Be patient, and put your faith in your wife, where it should be, and go your old gait again."

"I'll try your remedy--ignore the thing, banish it, laugh at it."

"Laugh at yourself; if you could only learn to do that, there'd be hope for you. And take another point to your comfort. We're all agreed that Yeoland's no hypocrite, whatever else he may be. Three days since I had speech with him, and your name was on his lips, and he rejoiced that you were his friend and Honor's husband. He does not dream that his return to life has either gladdened her or troubled you. He only sees her now pretty much as she was when he went away. He hasn't seen what you and I have--her sorrows. But, remember that Honor's real happiness rests with you--nobody else--and she knows it, and trusts to you for it. Nobody can ever take your place, and if she glimpses a serious change in you, she'll soon be down in the mouth, and, as like as not, a lie-abed again."

"She has seen a change. She has asked me what was amiss."

"Then stir yourself, and make a giant's effort before she finds out more than you want her to know. I'm glad I spoke to you to-night--wish I had sooner; but it's not too late. You've had tangles to untie in your character before to-day--puzzles to pick--dirty corners to let the light in upon. Who hasn't? And you're not the one to fear such work, I should reckon. So set about it, and the Lord help you."

Myles Stapledon rose and took the old man's hand.

"Thank you," he said. "You've done me good, and I'll try to be worthy of your advice. I don't quite know what this place would be without you, Uncle Endicott."

"Quieter, my son--that's all. I'm only a voice. Words are poor things alongside actions. The great deeds of the world--the things achieved--are not chattered by the tongue, but rise out of sweat, and deep, long silences. Yet I've given you advice worth following, I do think, though, seeing that your blind spot looks like jealousy, what I've bid you do may be harder than you imagine. So much more credit if you do it."

Neither spoke again, and Stapledon, taking the candle, soon went to his bed; but Mark sat on awhile over his knitting in the dark, while the crickets chirruped fearlessly about the dim and dying peat.

*CHAPTER V.*

*A HUNTING MORNING*

On such a morning as hunting folk live for, some ten days after the conversation between Stapledon and Mr. Endicott, Christopher, who did not himself hunt, drove Honor to a meet of the Mid Devon. Taking his dog-cart down a mossy by-path at the spinney-side, he stopped not fifty yards distant from where a patch of scarlet marked the huntsman's standpoint. Above was a race of broken clouds and gleam of sunshine from pale blue sky; below spread opaline air and naked boughs, save where great tods of ivy shone; while underneath nervous tails twitched among brown fern and wintry furzes. Then a whimper came from the heart of the wood, and two old hounds threw up their heads, recognised the sound for a youngster's excitement, and put nose to earth again. A minute later, however, and a full bay echoed deep and clear; whereupon the pair instantly galloped whence the music came.

Honor and her companion sat in Christopher's dog-cart behind a fine grey cob.

"They know that's no young duffer," said Yeoland, as the melody waxed and the hounds vanished; "he's one of their own generation and makes no mistake. If the fox takes them up to the Moor, sport is likely to be bad, for it's a sponge just now, and the field won't live with the hounds five minutes. Ah! he's off! And to the Moor he goes."

Soon a business-like, hard-riding, West Country field swept away towards the highlands, and silence fell again.

Christopher then set out for Little Silver, while conversation drifted to their personal interests and the prosperity in which each now dwelt--a thing foreseen by neither three short years before. They had no servant with them and spoke openly.

"My touchstone was gold; yours a husband of gold," said Christopher. "Money he possessed too, but it is the magic man himself who has made Endicott's what it is now."

"Yes, indeed--dear Myles. And yet I'm half afraid that the old, simple joy in natural things passes him by now. It seems as though he and I could never be perfectly, wholly happy at the same time. While I went dismal mad and must have made his life a curse, he kept up, and never showed the tribulation that he felt, but was always contented and cheerful and patient. Now that I am happier, I feel that he is not. Yes, he is not as happy as I am. He has told me a thousand times that content is the only thing to strive for; and certainly he proved it, for he was well content once; but now our positions are reversed, and I am contented with my life, while daily he grows less so."

"He's a farmer, and a contented farmer no man ever saw, because God never made one."

"It isn't that; the work never troubles him. He looks far ahead and seems to know, like a wizard, long before the event just what is going to be successful and what a failure. I think I know him better than anybody in the world, but I can't fathom him just now. Something is worrying him, and he tries hard not to let it worry him and not to show that it does. Partly he is successful, for I cannot guess the trouble; but that there is a trouble he fails to hide. I must find it out and take my share. Sometimes I think----"

She broke off abruptly.

"What? Nothing that involves me? We're the best, truest friends now, thank heaven."

"No, no. Time will reveal it."

For a moment or two they were silent with their thoughts. It struck neither that such a conversation was peculiar; it occurred to neither the man nor the woman that in the very fact of their friendship--of a friendship so close that the wife could thus discuss her husband's trouble--there existed the seed of that trouble.

Christopher mused upon the problem, and honestly marvelled before it.

"I suppose nobody can be happy really, and he's no exception to the rule. Yet, looking at his life, I should account him quite the luckiest man I ever heard of. Consider the perfection that he has crammed into his existence. He prospers in his farm; he has Nestor under his roof in the shape of your wiseacre of an uncle; and he has you! Providence must have been puzzled to find a way to hurt him. And she hasn't hit him under the belt either, for never a man enjoyed finer health. Now where can he have come across melancholy? I suppose it's his hereafter, or non-hereafter, that's bothering him. Yet I should judge that the man was too sane to waste good time in this world fretting because he doesn't believe in another."

"It's a cloud-shadow that will pass, I hope."

"I hope so heartily--such a balanced mind as he has. Now if I began to whine--one who never did carry any ballast--you could understand it. Look ahead and compare our innings. His will end gloriously with children and grandchildren and all the rest of it. And I--but if I painted the picture you'd probably say I was a morbid, ungrateful idiot."

"Very likely; and I should probably be quite right. There's a great duty staring you in the face now, Christo, and nobody who cares for you will be contented or happy until you've tackled it like a man. Don't look so innocent; you know perfectly well what I mean."

"Indeed I do not. I am doing my duty to Godleigh--that's my life's work henceforth, and all anybody can expect."

"But that is just what you are not doing. You're not everybody, remember; and even if you think you are, you won't live for ever. You'll have to go and sleep in real earnest under the skulls with bats' wings, poor Christo, some day, and Myles and I shall be outside under the grass."

"Who is morbid now?"

"Don't evade the point. I want you to think of the thing you love best in the world--Godleigh."

"Well?"

"Godleigh has got to go on. It won't stop because you do--Godleigh's immortal. When a tree falls there, Nature will plant another. Then what is to become of the dearest, loveliest place in Devon after you are gathered to your fathers?"

"I'm going to leave it to you and Myles and your heirs for ever."

"Don't be ridiculous, Christo; you're going to leave it to a rightful heir, and it's high time you began to devote a little thought to him. Don't wait until you're a stupid, old, middle-aged thing of half a century. Then you'll probably die in the gloomy conviction that you leave your children mere helpless infants."

"So much the better for them, for they'd escape the example of their father. But, as a matter of fact, I'm not going to marry. Godleigh's my mother and sister and brother and wife and family."

"Then you'll leave your family unprovided for, and that's a very wicked thing to do. We're growing old and sensible nowadays, and there'll be plain speaking between us as long as we live; so I tell you now that I've thought of this very seriously indeed, and so has Myles. He quite agees with me; and my opinion is that you ought to marry; the sooner the better."

"Don't," he said; "don't go in for having opinions. When anybody begins to cultivate and profess opinions their sense of humour must be on the wane. Keep your mind free of rooted ideas. You were wont to love the rainbow play of change, to welcome sudden extremes as a sign of health and mental activity. Before you married you hated opinions."

"That was before I grew happy, I think. Happiness runs one into a groove very quickly; it steadies our ideas. Now, you won't be perfectly happy until you marry."

"To find her."

"Why, that's not so difficult."

"Never, Honor. There was only one possible mother for my children. You are going over ground that I travelled centuries ago; at least it seems centuries. I told my fib and looked ahead, quite like a son of wisdom for once, and counted the cost, or tried to. Let all that sleep. I shall never know to my dying day how I brought it off, but I did. Perhaps a generous sympathy for unborn boys and girls had as much to do with it as anything else. Candidly and without sentiment, it is time we Yeolands came to an end. For my part I shall die easier knowing that I'm the last of them. I never was very keen about living for the mere sake of living, even in old days, and now I care less than ever. Not that I want to die either; but I go wandering through this great, roaring, rollicking, goose-fair of a world, stopping at a booth here, shooting for nuts or something equally valuable there; and when Dustman Death surprises me, pottering about and wasting my money,--when he puts out his grey claws and asks for his own again, I shall welcome him with perfect cheerfulness."

"Nonsense--and wicked nonsense! You--what?--thirty-two, or some absurd age--trying to talk like Uncle Mark! And Godleigh free! I won't have it, Christo. If ever you loved me, you must obey me in this and find a wife."

"Can't; won't; too small-hearted. I've got nothing to give a girl; and all your fault. Some of me really died, you know, when I pretended that all of me did."

"Then I suppose that it's my turn to go away and perish now? Would you feel equal to marrying anybody if I was dead?"

"Not a parallel instance at all. For you there was a grand chap waiting--a man worth having; else I should not have died, I assure you. In my case there's no grand woman waiting; so if you expire, you will merely be bringing a great deal of trouble upon many excellent people and doing nobody the least good--not even my nebulous prospective lady. No, Myles and I would merely share a mile of crape and live in black gloves for ever. You die! What a thought!"

"Sometimes I wish I had long ago."

"No; you must live to brighten these dull Devonshire winters and strew flowers upon your husband and me when our turns come. Dear old Stapledon! I'm really bothered to know that something is troubling him. I'd tackle him myself, only if you cannot win the truth, I certainly should not. I wish he'd be confidential; I do like confidential men. For my part I haven't got a secret from him in the world."

"He works too hard."

"He does. The man has a horrible genius for making work. It knocks the vitality out of him. I hate this modern gospel that sets all of us poor little world-children to our lessons as a panacea for every evil under the sun. Just look what dull dogs all the hard workers are."

"Well, you've played truant from your youth up."

"Deliberately, as an example to others. But I'm doing any amount of work now. Brain-work too; which is easily the most hateful sort of work. And all for my Godleigh. Yet she doesn't thank me. I see poor Mother Nature stealing about miserably and suspiciously when I go into the woods. She liked me better a pauper. She doesn't know that I'm helping her to make this little corner of earth more and more perfect. She doesn't look ahead and judge how much toil and trouble I am saving her with the ruins of things that must be cleared away--either by her method or my quicker one. She hates axes and ploughs and pruning-hooks, old stick-in-the-mud that she is."

"Treason!"

"No treason at all. Common sense I call it. I'm weary of this nonsense about going straight to Nature. Australia taught me to suspect. She's a bat, a mole; she doesn't know her best friends. She'll sink a saint in mid-ocean--a real saint with an eighteen-carat halo--and let a pirate come safely and happily to some innocent merchantman stuffed with the treasures of honest men, or her own priceless grains and seeds. She'll put back the hand of progress at the smallest opportunity; she'll revert to the primitive if you turn your back on her for an instant; she'll conjure our peaches into wild plums, our apples into crabs, man into--God knows what--something a good deal lower than the angels, or even the cave-dwellers. If we let her, she would hunt for and polish up the missing link again, and huddle the world backwards faster than we spin round the sun. Nature is a grand fraud, Honor. Take the personal attitude, for instance. What has she ever done for me? Did she show me any of her hoarded gold during the month I nearly killed myself exploring in New South Wales? Did she lead me to the water-holes when I was thirsty, or lend me a cloud to hide the sun when I was hot? Has she opened a flower-bud, or taught a bird to sing, or painted a dawn, or ever led the wind out of the east, that I might be the happier? We fool ourselves that we are her favourites. Not so. She is only our stepmother, and behaves accordingly. She knew that the advent of conscious intelligence must be a death-blow to her, and she has never forgiven man for exhibiting it."

"So I'm not the only one in Little Silver who is developing opinions, I see," laughed Honor. "You're growing egotistical, Christo; you're expecting almost too much, I fear. Nature has something better to do than plan your private fortune and convenience, or arrange the winds of heaven to suit a cold in that silly head of yours! Never in my most dead-alive moment did I grow so dull as that. To be cross with poor Nature--as if she had not to do what she is told, like everybody else. To blame her!"

"I don't blame her. I know where to throw the blame of things perfectly well."

"Then you're the only man in the world who does, and you ought to tell everybody and so make yourself famous."

Thus they prattled in the old manner, and, unconscious of difficulty or danger, passed upon their way. Much each saw of the other; much frank delight each took in the other's company; and through the passage of winter to the advent of spring they progressed, coming nearer and nearer to discovery of the secret tribulation in Stapledon's heart that each now innocently, honestly mourned and misunderstood.

*CHAPTER VI.*

*LOVE OF MAN*

Mr. Gregory Libby, to whom circumstance denied any opportunity of close investigation, at length came upon a conclusion respecting the daughters of Jonah Cramphorn, and allowed his judgment to be unconsciously influenced by his desire. That is to say he arrived at a mistaken decision because the balance of his feeble, physical emotions weighed toward Sally. She was the eldest and the fairest; he concluded, therefore, that she enjoyed the greater proportion of her parent's regard, and must the more materially benefit under his will in time to come. He braced himself for the crucial question, and it happened that he did so but two days after a very significant symposium at Endicott's, during which Mr. Cramphorn occupied the position of chief speaker, and his daughters were the principal theme of conversation. From discussion upon these primitive maids, and their father's opinion concerning them, discourse had truly ranged to higher subjects; but not before Jonah made definite statements of a sort that deeply moved one among his listeners.

Behind the obscurity blown from a clay tobacco-pipe, Henry Collins sat, round-eyed and wretched. He gasped with most unselfish sorrow for the girl he loved, and committed to memory certain surly assertions of Mr. Cramphorn concerning her, with a purpose to forewarn Sally of the fate her future held. For Jonah spoke definitely and doggedly. He weighed the merits of his own daughters with Spartan frankness, and, arriving at judgment, declared Margery's filial conduct a lesson to Little Silver, regretted Sally's indifference and independence of manners, and concluded with complacent hints that his knowledge of human nature was not wont to be at fault, and that she best able to administer wisely his worldly wealth should have it as a just reward, when he passed beyond need of cottage or savings bank.

These utterances Libby heard too late, but Cramphorn's elder daughter became acquainted with them immediately after they were spoken, thanks to the enterprise of Henry Collins. He felt it his duty to the woman that she should be put in possession of such gloomy predictions, while yet power might lie with her to falsify them.

"Afore the whole comp'ny he said it," declared Henry; "an' he'm a man as knaws no shadder of turning most times. An' he haven't got the wisdom of a mouse neither--not in this matter; so it'll surely happen, onless you fall in wi' his ways more an' knock onder oftener than what you do."

"I've seed it comin', an' he'm a cruel wretch," answered Sally with many pouts. "An' her's worse--my sister, I mean. Sly minx, she've plotted an' worked for it wi' low onderhand ways--cooing to un; an' glazin' at un when he talked, as if he was King Solomon; an' spendin' her pence in pipes for un; an' findin' his book-plaaces to church--'Struth! I could wring her neck, an' 'tis more'n likely I shall do it wan day."

"But he doan't knaw--Libby, I mean--though he's sartain to hear soon; an' your faither won't tell Margery for fear she should give awver fussin' 'bout arter un, when she knaws his will's writ an' signed an' can't be called back. So I comed to say that I doan't care a feather for all his money, an' I loves you better'n ever--better'n better now he'm set against 'e."

"Ess, I knaw all that; and doan't 'e tell this tale to nobody else; an' bid them others, as heard my auld beast of a faither, to keep it in an' tell nobody. Wance Libby knaws, 'tis----"

"All up. Ess, so 'tis, Sally; an' doan't that shaw 'e what fashion o' dirt the man's made of? Do 'e want a chap to marry you for what you take to un in your hand? Do 'e----"

"Doan't ax no more questions now, theer's a dear sawl. I ban't in no fettle to answer 'em, an' I be sore hurt along o' this. A gude darter as I've been tu. An' her--no better'n a stinging long-cripple--a snake as'll bite the hand that warms it. I wish I was dead, I do. Go away, caan't 'e? I doan't want your 'ankersher. Let my tears alone, will 'e? I wish they was poison. I'd mingle 'em wi' her food--then us would see. Go--go away! Be you deaf? I'll scream my heart out in a minute if you bide theer!"

Collins, desiring no such catastrophe, made haste to disappear; and such is the rough-and-tumble of things that chance willed this dramatic moment for the entrance of Gregory Libby. Big with fate he came from hedge-trimming, and shone upon Sally's grief like the sun of June upon a shower. She was sobbing and biting her red lips; and he, with the dignity of toil yet manifested about him, dropped his sickle, flung off his gloves, led Sally behind a haystack, and bid her sit down and relate her sorrow.

"Just gwaine to take my bit of dinner," he said; "so you can tell while I eat. What's the matter? You'm wisht, an' your butivul cheeks be all speckly-like wi' cryin'."

She swallowed her tears, sucked her lips, and smiled through the storm.

"Nought--a flea kicked me. Sit here an' I'll pull down a bit o' dry out o' the stack for 'e."

"Ban't awften them wonnerful butcher-blue eyes o' yourn shed tears, I'm sure," he mumbled with his mouth full; "but we've all got our troubles no doubt. An' none more'n me. I'm that lonesome wi'out mother to do for me. I never thought as I'd miss her cookin' an' messin' 'bout the house so much. An' what's money wi'out a woman to spend it--to spend it on me, I mean?" he added hastily. "I want a wife. A gude woman stands between a man an' all the li'l twopenny-ha'p'ny worrits as his mind be tu busy tu trouble 'bout. I want a useful gal around me, an' wan as'll take the same view of me what mother done."

"You'm a marryin' man for sartain."

"I be. An' I've thought an' thought on it till I got the 'eadache; an' my thoughts doan't go no further'n you, Sally."

"Lard, Gregory dear!"

"True's I'm eatin' onions. I've been figuring you up for years. An' now I knaw we'm likely to be a very fitting man an' wife. You knawed mother; and you knaw me, as ban't a common man ezacally, so say the word."

"Oh, Gregory! An' I thought you was after my sister!"

"She'm a very gude gal, an' a very nice gal tu," said Mr. Libby with his usual caution. "No word against her would I say for money. An' if you wasn't here, I'd sooner have her than any other. A brave, bowerly maiden wi' butivul hands to her, an' a wonnerful onderstandin' way, an'----"

"Ess, but 'tis me you love--me--not her?"

"Ban't I tellin' you so? I say it in cold blood, after thinkin' 'pon it, to an' from, for years. An' I'll tell you how mother treated me, for you couldn't do no better'n what she did. She onderstood my habits perfect."

"God knaws I'll make 'e a gude wife, Greg. An' no call to tell me nothin' of that 'bout your mother, 'cause I'll be more to 'e than she; an' I'll think for 'e sleepin' an' wakin', an' I'll work for 'e to my bones, an' love the shadow of 'e."

"I'm glad to hear you say so, Sally, though mother's ways was very well considered. The thing be to make up your mind as I'm in the right all times, as a thinking man mostly is."

"I knaw you will be; an' a gude husband, as'll stand up for me against all the world, an' see I ban't put upon or treated cruel."

"I will do so. An' 'tis odds if I'll let 'e do any work at all arter you'm wedded to me--work 'cept about my house, I mean."