Part 27

"Look here," he said; "I've had a nasty jar to-night, Mr. Endicott, and I'm in no end of a muddle. You know that I'm a well-meaning brute in my way, even granted that the way is generally wrong. But I wouldn't really hurt a fly, whereas now, in blissful ignorance, I've done worse. I've hurt a man---a man I feel the greatest respect for--the husband of my best friend in the world. It's jolly trying, because he and I are built so differently. There's an inclination on his part to turn this thing into the three-volume form apparently. It's such ghastly rot when you think of what I really am. In plain English, Stapledon doesn't like his wife to see so much of me. She only discovered this deplorable fact to-day, and it bewildered her as much as it staggered me. Heaven's my judge, I never guessed that he was looking at me so. Nor did Honor. Such kindred spirits as we are--and now, in a moment of weakness, the man bid her see me no more! Of course, he's too big to go in for small nonsense of that kind, and he'll withdraw such an absurd remark as soon as he's cool again; but straws show which way the wind blows, and I want to get at my duty. Tell me that, and I'll call you blessed."

"What is Honor to you?"

"The best part of my life, if you must know--on the highest plane of it."

"Don't talk about 'planes'! That's all tom-foolery! You're a wholesome, healthy man and woman--anyway, other people must assume so. I'll give you credit for believing yourself, however. I'll even allow your twaddle about planes does mean something to you, because honestly you seem deficient--degenerate as far as your flesh is concerned. All the same, Stapledon is right in resenting this arrangement with all his heart and soul. His patience has amazed me. Two men can't share a woman under our present system of civilisation."

"Which is to say a wife may not have any other intellectual kindred spirit but her husband. D'you mean that?"

"No, I don't. I mean that when a man openly says that a woman is the best part of his life, her husband can't be blamed for resenting it."

"But what's the good of lying about the thing? Surely circumstances alter cases? It was always so. He knew that Honor and I loved each other in our queer way long before he came on the scene. She can't stop loving me because she has married him."

"It isn't easy to argue with you, Yeoland," answered Mark quietly; "but this I see clearly: your very attitude towards the position proclaims you a man of most unbalanced mind. There's a curious kink in your nature--that is if you're not acting. Suppose Honor was your wife and she found greater pleasure in the society of somebody else, and gradually, ignorantly, quite unconsciously slipped away and away from you; imperceptibly, remember--so subtly that she didn't know it herself--that nobody but you knew it. How much of that would you suffer without a protest?"

"I shouldn't bother--not if she was happy. That's the point, you see: her happiness. I constitute it in some measure--eh? Or let us say that I contribute to it. Then why need he be so savage? Surely her happiness is his great ambition too?"

"Granted. Put the world and common sense and seemliness on one side. They don't carry weight with you. Her happiness then--her lasting happiness--not the trumpery pleasure of to-day and to-morrow."

"Is it wise to look much beyond to-morrow when 'happiness' is the thing to be sought?"

"Perhaps not--as you understand it--so we'll say 'content.' Happiness is a fool's goal at best. You love Honor, and you desire for her peace of mind and a steadfast outlook founded on a basis strong enough to stand against the storms and sorrows of life. I assume that."

"I desire for her the glory of life and the fulness thereof."

"You must be vague, I suppose; but I won't be, since this is a very vital matter. I don't speak without sympathy for you either; but, in common with the two of you--Myles and yourself--this silly woman is uppermost in my mind--her and her good. So, since you ask, I tell you I'm disappointed with you; you've falsified my predictions of late, and your present relations with Honor have drifted into a flat wrong against her husband, though you may be on a plane as high as heaven, in your own flabby imagination. This friendship is not a thing settled, defined, marked off all round by boundaries. No friendship stands still, any more than anything else in the universe. Even if you're built of uncommon mud, lack your share of nature, and can philander to the end of the chapter without going further, or thinking further, that is no reason why you should do so. The husband of her can't be supposed to understand that you're a mere curiosity with peculiar machinery inside you. He gives you the credit of being an ordinary man, or denies you the credit of being an extraordinary one, which you please. So it's summed up in a dozen words: either see a great deal less of Honor, or, if you can't breathe the same air with her apart from her, go away, as an honourable man must, and put the rim of the world between you. Try to live apart, and let that be the gauge of your true feeling. If you can bide at Godleigh happy from month to month without sight of her or sound of her voice, then I'll allow you are all you claim to be and give you a plane all to yourself above the sun; but if you find you can do no such thing, then she's more to you by far than the wife of another man ought to be, and you're not so abnormal as you reckon yourself. This is going right back upon your renunciation in the beginning--as pitiful a thing as ever I heard tell about."

"Stay here and never see her! How would you like it? I mean--you see and hear with the mind, though your eyes are dark. Of course I couldn't do that. What's Godleigh compared to her?"

"And still you say that sight of her and sound of her voice is all you want to round and complete your life?

"Emphatically."

"You're a fool to say so."

"You don't believe it?"

"Nor would any other body. Least of all her husband."

"A man not soaked in earth would."

"Find him, then. Human nature isn't going to put off its garment at your bidding. If you're only half-baked--that's your misfortune, or privilege. You'll have to be judged by ordinary standards nevertheless."

"Then I must leave the land of my fathers--I must go away from Godleigh because a man misunderstands me?"

"You must go away from Godleigh because, on your own showing, you can't stop in it without the constant companionship of another man's wife."

"What a brute you'd make me! That's absolutely false in the spirit, if true in the letter. The letter killeth. You to heave such a millstone!"

"You're a poorer creature than I thought," answered Mark sternly, "much poorer. Yet even you will allow perhaps that it is to her relations with her husband, not her relations with you, that Honor Endicott must look for lasting peace--if she's to have it."

"Yet I have made her happier by coming back into her life."

"It's doubtful. In one way yes, because you did things by halves--went out of her life and then came back into it at the wrong moment. I won't stop to point out the probable course of events if you had kept away altogether; that might not be fair to you perhaps, though I marvel you missed the lesson and have forgotten the punishment so soon. Coming back to her, ghost-haunted as she was, you did make her happier, for you lifted the horror of fear and superstition from her. But now her lasting content is the theme. How does your presence here contribute to that?"

"It would very considerably if Stapledon was different."

"Or if he was dead--or if--a thousand 'ifs.' But Stapledon is Stapledon. So what are you going to do with the advice I've given you?"

"Not use it, I assure you. Consider what it means to drive me away from Godleigh!"

"For her lasting content."

"I don't know about that. Of course, if it could be proved."

"You do know; and it has been proved."

"Not to my satisfaction. I resent your putting me in a separate compartment, as if I was a new sort of beast or a quaint hybrid. I'm a very ordinary man--not a phenomenon--and there are plenty more people in the world who think and act as I do."

"Go and join them, then," said Mr. Endicott, "for your own peace of mind and hers. Get out of her life; and remember that there's only one way--that leading from here. I'm sorry for you, but you'll live to know I've spoken the truth, unless your conscience was forgotten, too, when the Lord fashioned you."

Yeoland grumbled a little; then he brightened up.

"My first thought was best," he said. "I should not have bothered you with all this nonsense, for it really is nonsense when you think of it seriously. I should have stuck to my resolve--to see Myles himself and thrash this out, man to man. And so I will the moment he's up to it. The truth is, we're all taking ourselves much too seriously, which is absurd. Good-night, my dear sir. And thank you for your wisdom; but I'll see Stapledon--that is the proper way."

*CHAPTER VIII.*

*THE ROUND ROBIN*

Before they slept that night Myles had expressed deep sorrow to Honor for his utterances and declared contrition.

"The suffering is mine," he said; "to look back is worse for me than for you."

His wife, however, confessed on her side to a fault, and blamed herself very heartily for a lapse, not in her love, but in her thoughtfulness and consideration. She declared that much he had spoken had been justified, while he assured her that it was not so.

The days passed, and health returned to Myles; upon which Christopher Yeoland, believing the recent difficulty dead, very speedily banished it from his mind, met Stapledon as formerly in perfect friendship, never let him know that he had heard of the tribulation recorded, and continued to lead a life quite agreeable to himself, in that it was leavened from time to time by the companionship of Honor.

Spring demanded that Myles should be much upon the farm, and the extent of his present labours appeared to sweep his soul clean again, to purify his mind and purge it of further disquiet. All that looked unusual in his conduct was an increased propensity toward being much alone, or in sole company of his dogs; yet he never declined Honor's offers to join him.

She had not failed to profit vitally by the scene in the sick-room, yet found herself making no return to peace. Now, indeed, Honor told herself that her husband's state was more gracious than her own; for there began dimly to dawn upon her heart the truth of those things that Myles had hurled against her in the flood of his wrath. She divined the impossible persistence of this divided love, and she felt fear. She was sundered in her deepest affections, and knew that her peace must presently suffer, as that of Myles had already suffered. Her peculiar attitude was unlike that of her husband or the other man. She saw them both, received a measure of worship from both, and grew specially impatient against the silent, pregnant demeanour of Mark Endicott. His regard for her was steadily diminishing, as it seemed, and he took some pains that she should appreciate the fact.

It grew slowly within her that the position was ceasing to be tenable for human nature, and not seldom she almost desired some shattering outburst to end it. She was greatly puzzled and oftentimes secretly ashamed of herself; yet could she not lay a finger on the point of her offending. Nevertheless she missed some attributes of a good wife, not from the conventional standpoint, which mattered nothing to her, but from her own standard of right-doing.

Meantime, behind the barriers now imperceptibly rising and thickening between man and wife, behind the calm and masklike face that he presented to the world, Myles Stapledon suffered assault of storm upon storm. He knew his highest ambitions and hopes were slipping out of reach; he marked with punctuations of his very heart's throb the increasing loneliness and emptiness of his inner life; and then he fought with himself, while his love for Honor waxed. In process of time he came gradually to convince himself that the problem was reduced to a point. She loved Christopher Yeoland better than she loved him, or, if not better, then, at least, as well. She did not deny this, and never had. Life with him under these circumstances doubtless failed every way, because his own temperament was such that he could not endure it placidly. He doubted not that his wife went daily in torment, that she saw through him to the raging fire hidden from all other eyes. He gave her credit for that perspicacity, and felt that her existence with him, under these circumstances, must be futile. He then convinced himself that her life, if spent with Christopher, would be less vain. Through dark and hidden abodes of agony his soul passed to this decision; he tried to make himself feel that he loved her less by reason of these things; and finally he occupied thought upon the means by which he might separate himself from her and pass out of her life.

In the misty spring nights, under budding woodland green, or aloft in the bosom of silence upon the high lands, he wandered. A dog was his companion always, and his thoughts were set upon the magic knife, that should cut him clean out of his wife's existence with least possible hurt to her. By constitution, conviction, instinct, the idea of suicide was vile to him. He had spoken of the abstract deed without detestation in Mark Endicott's company, had even admitted the possibility of heroic self-slaughter under some circumstances; but faced with it, he turned therefrom to higher roads, not in fear of such a course, but a frank loathing rather, because, under conditions of modern life, and with his own existence to be justified, he held it impossible to vindicate such a step. And that door closed; he thought of modern instances, and could recall none to serve as a precedent for him. He turned, then, to consider the mind of Christopher Yeoland, and endeavoured to perceive his point of view. Blank failure met him there; but the thought of him clenched Stapledon's hand, as it often did at this season, and he knew that hate was growing--a stout plant of many tendrils--from the prevalent fret and fever of his mind. He worked early and late to starve this passion, but toil was powerless to come between his spirit and the problem of his life for long.

His tribulation he concealed, yet not the outward marks of it. The eyes of the farm were bright, and it was natural that he should be the focus of them all. There came a night when Myles and his wife were gone to Chagford at the wish of others, to lend weight in some parochial entertainment for a good cause. Mr. Endicott was also of the party, and so it chanced that the work-folk had Bear Down house-place to themselves. The opportunity looked too good to miss, and their master was accordingly discussed by all.

"Some dark branch of trouble, no doubt," said Henry Collins. "Time was when he would smoke his pipe and change a thought with the humblest. Now he's such a awnself man, wi' his eyes always turned into his head, so to say."

"Broody-like," declared Churdles Ash; "an' do make his friends o' dumb beasts more'n ever, an' looks to dogs for his pleasure."

"Ess; an' wanders about on moony nights, an' hangs awver gates, like a momet to frighten pixies, if wan may say so without disrespect," continued Collins.

"A gert thinker he've grawed of late," said Cramphorn; "an' if I doan't knaw the marks of thought, who should?"

"Sure a common man might 'most open a shop with the wisdom in his head," admitted Sam Pinsent; and Jonah answered--

"He ban't wise enough to be happy, however. A red setter's a very gude dog, but no lasting company for a married man--leastways, he shouldn't be. Theer's somethin' heavy as a millstone round his neck, an' dumb beasts can't lift it, fond of 'em as he is. The world's a puzzle to all onderstandin' people; yet theer's none amongst us havin' trouble but can find a wiser man than hisself to lighten the load if he'll awnly look round him. Theer's Endicott, as have forgot more of the puzzle of life than ever Stapledon knawed; an' theer's Ash, a humble man, yet not without his intellects if years count for anything; an' me, as have some credit in company, I b'lieve. Ess, theer's auld heads at his sarvice, yet he goes in trouble, which is written on his front and in his eyes. Best man as ever comed to Endicott's tu, present comp'ny excepted."

"Theer's nought as we could do for his betterment, I s'pose?" asked Gaffer Ash. "I've knawed chaps quick to take fire at any advice, or such bowldaciousness from theer servants; but if you go about such a deed in the name of the Lard, nobody of right honesty can say nothin' against you. Now theer's a way to do such a thing, an' that is by an approach all together, yet none forwarder than t'others. Then, if the man gets angry, he can't choose no scapegoat. 'Tis all or none. A 'round robin' they call the manifestation. You puts a bit of common sense, or a few gude Bible thoughts in the middle, an' writes your names about, like the spokes of a cart-wheel, or the rays of the sun sticking out all around. So theer's nothin' to catch hold of against them as send it."

"Seein' we doan't knaw wheer the shoe pinches, the thing be bound to fail," said Pinsent. "If us knawed wheer he was hit, I be sure auld blids like you an' Jonah would have a remedy, an' belike might find the very words for it in the Scriptures; but you caan't offer medicine if you doan't know wheer a body's took to."

"'Tis the heart of un," said Cramphorn. "I'm allowed an eye, I think, an' I've seed very clear, if you younger men have not, that this cloud have drifted awver him since Squire Yeoland comed to his awn--an' more'n his awn. Stapledon be out o' bias wi' the world here an' theer no doubt."

"I'm sure they'm gert friends, sir, an' awften to be seed abroad of a airly mornin' together 'pon the lands," piped in Tommy Bates.

"Shut your mouth, bwoy, till us axes your opinion," retorted Jonah. "An' come to think on't, seein' the nature of the argeyment, you'd best clear out of this an' go to bed."

"Let un listen to his betters," said Mr. Ash. "'Tis right he should, for the less he listens to men as a bwoy, the bigger fule he'll be come he graws. 'Tis a falling out contrary to all use," he continued. "Missis was set 'pon squire fust plaace; then, second place, he died; an', third place, she married t'other; fourth place, he comed to life; an' fifthly an' lastly, 'pon this thumb of mine, he graws rich as Solomon, an' bides in pomp an' glory to Godleigh again."

"An' they'm awften about together, drivin' an' walkin' for that matter; though God, He knaws I'd be the last to smell a fault in missis," said Jonah.

"Damn bowldacious of the man, however," declared Pinsent.

"'Tis so; an' all of a piece wi' his empty life, fust to last; an' that's what's makin' Myles Stapledon go heavy an' forget to give me an' others 'Gude-marnin'' or 'Gude-evenin',' 'cordin' to the time of day. He thinks--same as I do--that theer's a sight tu much o' Yeoland in the air; an' yet he's that worshipful of his wife that, though maybe she frets him, he'd rather grizzle hisself to fiddle-strings than say a word to hurt her. 'Mazin' what such a wonnerful woman sees in that vain buzz-fly of a man."

"You'm right, no doubt, Jonah," assented Ash. "An' if 'tis as you say, an' we'm faaced wi' the nature of the ill, us might do our little in all gude sarvice an' humbleness towards the cure."

"The cure would be to knock that cockatrice 'pon the head an' scat his empty brains abroad wance for all. Then the fule would have to be buried fair an' square, wi' no more conjuring tricks," declared Jonah Cramphorn.

"You'm an Auld Testament man, for sartain!" admitted Collins in some admiration.

"Fegs! So he be; but these here ain't Auld Testament days," said Churdles Ash; "an' us caan't taake the law in our awn hands, no matter how much mind we've got to it. 'Tis a New Testament job in my judgment, an' us'll do a 'round robin' to rights, an' set out chapter an' verse, an' give the poor sawl somethin' very high an' comfortin' to chew 'pon. Truth to tell, he's a thought jealous of his lady's likin' for t'other. I mean no rudeness, an' if I doan't know my place at fourscore, when shall I? But so it seems; an' the fact thraws un back 'pon dogs an' his awn devices, which is very bad for his brain."

"What's the gude o' texts to a jealous man, whether or no?" asked Jonah scornfully.

"Every gude; an' even a bachelor same as me can see it. Fust theer'll be the calm process o' handlin' the Word an' lookin' up chapter an' verse, each in turn; then the readin', larnin', markin', an' inwardly digestin'; then, if we pick the proper talk, he'll come to a mood for Christ to get the thin end of the wedge in wi' un. An' so us'll conquer in the name of the Lard."

"'Pears to me as a bloody text or two wouldn't be amiss. I'd like to fire the man up to go down-long to Christopher Yeoland an' take a horse-whip to un, an' tan the hide off un. Theer's nought cools a lecherous heart like a sore carcase," growled Jonah, reverting to his Old Testament manner.

Then Mr. Collins created a diversion.

"I won't have no hand in it anyways," he said. "'Tis a darned sight tu perilous a deed to come between a man and wife, even with a text of Scripture, 'specially when you call home how hard 'tis to find lasting work. Us might all get the sack for it; an' who'd pity us?"

"All depends 'pon how 'tis done. Wi' a bit of round writin' the blame doan't fall nowheers in partickler."

"'Tis the wise ch'ice of words such a contrivance do depend on; an' what more wise than Paul?" inquired Jonah Cramphorn. "I read the seventh of Romans to my wife 'pon our wedding night, and never regretted it. He hits the nail on the head like a workman; an' if theer's trouble arter, the chap will be fallin' out wi' an anointed apostle, not us. Ess, I be come round to your opinion, Ash. Us had better send it than not. You wouldn't have had the thing rise up in your head if Providence didn't mean us to do it."

"Might be safer to send it wi'out names, come to think of it," suggested Collins; but Gaffer Ash scorned the cowardly notion.

"Wheer's the weight of that? No more'n a leaf in the wind wi'out names. No sensible pusson would heed advice, gude or ill, as comed so. 'Tis awnly evil-doers as be feared to sign an' seal their actions."

"Us might send it to she, instead of he," suddenly suggested Cramphorn. "Her's more to us, God bless her; an' a woman's better able to brook such a thing. She doan't see how this here do 'pear to other people, else she'd never give the chap as much as 'Gude-marnin'' again. An' her'll be fust to mark the righteous motives to the act. Gimme the big Bible from the dresser-drawer, Tom Bates; an' then go to your bed. Us doan't want a green youth like you in the document.

"A dangerous thing to give advice wheer it ban't axed," mused Pinsent; "an' specially to your betters."

"So dangerous that I'll have no part nor lot in it," declared Henry. "The dear lady's temper ban't what it was, so your darter tells me, Cramphorn; an' you've got a mother an' sister to keep, Samuel, so you'd best to bide out of it along wi' me."

Mr. Cramphorn was turning over the leaves of an old Bible thoughtfully.

"Paul's amazin' deep versed in it, seemin'ly," he said. "'Pears as he was faaced wi' just such a evil when he wrote an' warmed up they Corinthians. Listen to this here. 'An' unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lard, Let not the wife depart from her husband: But an' if she depart, let her remain unmarried.'"

"Awften had a mind 'pon that scripture myself," declared Mr. Ash.