Part 32

*CHAPTER XVI.*

*THRENODY*

"In all my life, and long it has been, I never met a particular good man, nor yet a particular bad one. Maybe each sort's rare as t'other, for black and white mixed is the common dirt-colour of human nature. Yet--him--him we've laid to his rest--I do think he was good. He was better than sight to me--that I know."

The men in Bear Down kitchen were clad in black, for that noon they had buried their master, not without tears. He lay in Little Silver churchyard beside his wife's father; but Honor had not attended the funeral.

"Ess, a very gude, upright man, I think. A man as stood to work in season, and never bid none do a job what he couldn't have done better hisself," said Churdles Ash mournfully.

"A man of far-seeing purposes, as allus carried through whatever he ordained; an' could tell when rain was comin' to a day," added Samuel Pinsent. He knew of no higher praise than that.

"An' so soft-hearted wi' the beasts what perish that he comed by his death for a silly auld sheep. Who but him would have thrawed away life on such a fool's errand?" asked Cramphorn bitterly.

"No other man for sartain, sir," answered the boy Bates.

"Very fine to bring it in death by misadventure," continued Jonah, "an' I'm not saying 'twas anything but seemly so to do; but all the same, if the maister had lived an' come off wi' a mere brawken leg or arm, I'd have been the fust to tell un as he was riskin' his life in a fule's trick, even if he'd been a lighter built an' spryer man."

"A plaace as looks much easier than 'tis," said Tommy Bates. "I climbed it next day an' done it easy gwaine down, but 'twas all I could do, hangin' on by my claws like a cat, to get up 'pon top again."

'"Twas playin' wi' his life, I say, an' though he'm dead, worse luck, theer's blame still falls against un. What do 'e say, maister?"

Mark Endicott's face wore a curious expression as the question reached him. The blind man had preserved an unusual silence before this tragedy, and while the real explanation of Stapledon's death was accepted by all, from Honor to those amongst whom the farmer was no more than a name, yet Endicott had at no time discussed the matter, though he exhibited before it an amount of personal emotion very rare from him. The sudden end of Myles had aged Mark obviously, shaken him, and set deep currents surging under the surface of him. Even his niece in her own stricken heart could find room for wonder at her uncle's bitter expressions of sorrow and self-pity before his personal loss. After the first ebullition of grief, when tears were seen to flow from his eyes for the first time in man's recollection, he relapsed into a condition of taciturnity and accepted the verdict brought at the inquest with a relief not understood by those who observed it. He kept much alone and spoke but seldom with Honor, who rarely left her room through the days that passed between her husband's death and burial. Out of the darkness of his own loss Mark seemed powerless to comfort another, even though she might be supposed to suffer in a degree far keener than his own; and the men of Bear Down, noting his attitude, whispered that old Endicott was beginning to break up. Yet this was but partly the case, for private convictions and an erroneous conclusion before mentioned were in the main responsible for the blind man's great concern; and the impossibility of sharing his burden with any other at this moment weighed heavily upon him. Spartan he still stood under the blow and that worse thing behind the blow; but the night of his affliction was darker than a whole lifetime of blindness, and the signs of it could not be hidden. The man began to grow aged, and his vigour and self-control were alike abating a little under steady pressure of time.

Now each of the toilers assembled there uttered some lament; each found a word of praise for his dead master.

"The auld sayin' stood gude of un," declared Churdles Ash. "'The dust from the farmer's shoes be the best manure for his land.' Ess fay, everywheer he was; an' no such quick judge of a crop ever I seed afore."

"Never begrudged a chap a holiday, I'm sure," declared Pinsent.

"Would to God it had been t'other," growled Mr. Cramphorn. It was a vain desire that he had openly expressed on every possible occasion, and once to Christopher Yeoland's face.

"Don't wish him back, lads," answered Mark Endicott. "His life's work was done nearly perfect--by the light of a poor candle, too; an' that's to say there was a deal of pain hidden away deep in it. For pain is the mother of all perfect work. He's out of it. We that have lost the man are to be pitied. We cannot pity him if we're good Christians."

"A cruel beast of a world 'tis most times," declared Cramphorn, as he lighted his pipe. "Takin' wan thing with another, 'tis a question if a man wouldn't be happier born a rabbit, or some such unthinking item."

"World's all right," answered Ash. "You'm acid along o' your darters. 'Tis the people in the world makes the ferment. 'Twas a very gude plaace when fust turned out o' hand, if Scripture's to count; for God A'mighty seed it spread out like a map, wi' its flam-new seas an' mountains an' rivers; an' butivul tilth--all ripe for sowin', no doubt; an' He up an' said 'twas vitty."

"Ah! Awnly wan man an' wan woman in it then--wi'out any fam'ly," commented Jonah. "The Lard soon chaanged His tune when they beginned to increase an' multiply. Disappointing creations all round, them Israelites. God's awn image spoiled--as they be to this day for that matter."

"Pegs! an' us little better'n them judged in the lump. Take I--as'll be next to go onderground by the laws of nature. What have I to shaw for all my years?" asked Ash sadly.

"You've done a sight o' small, useful jobs in your time--things as had to be done by somebody; an' you've worked no ill to my knowledge. 'Tis somethin' to have bided on the airth eighty year an' never woke no hate in a human breast," said Jonah. "Very differ'nt to the chap that mourned in his Lunnon clothes at the graave-side, an' cried his crocodile tears into a cambric 'ankersher for all to see," he added.

"They was real, wet tears, for I catched the light of the sun on 'em," said Tommy Bates. "An' he shook grevous at 'dust to dust,' as if the dirt was falling 'pon him 'stead of the coffin."

"He'm gone since--drove off to Okington, they tell me; an' Brimblecombe says he be off to furrin paarts again to roam the world," murmured Samuel Pinsent.

"Like the Dowl in Job, no doubt," declared Jonah; "though 'tis question whether he'll see worse wickedness than he knaws a'ready--even among they Turks.

"The man stopped in the yard till the graave was all suent, an' smooth, an' covered to the last turf, however," answered Collins; "for I bided tu, an' I watched un out the tail o' my eye; an' he was cut deep an' couldn't hide it even from me."

"No gude for you to spit your spite 'gainst him, Jonah," summed up Churdles Ash. "It caan't be no use, an' 'tis last thing as dead maister would have suffered from 'e."

There was a silence; then Collins spoke in musing accents, to himself rather than for any listener.

"Really gone--dust--that gert, strong frame--an' us shan't see the swinging gait of un, or the steady eye of un, nor hear the slow voice of un calling out upon the land no more."

"Gone for ever an' ever, amen, Henery," answered Ash. "Gone afore; an' I like to be the fust to shaake his hand, in my humble way, t'other side the river."

"An' his things a mouldering a'ready," whispered Tommy Bates with awe. "I found the leggings what he died in behind easy-chair in the parlour, wheer he wus took fust; an' they'm vinnied all o'er."

Jonah Cramphorn nodded.

"'Tis a terrible coorious fact," he said, "as dead folks' things do mildew 'mazin' soon arter they'm took off of 'em."

The talk fell and rose, flickering like a fire; then silence crowded upon all, and presently every man, save only Mark Endicott, departed; while he was left with a horror of his own imagining, to mourn the last companion spirit his age would know.

*BOOK IV.*

CHAPTER I.

*THE PASSAGE OF TWO YEARS*

Upon the death of Myles Stapledon great changes marked the administration of Bear Down. The event stood for a landmark in the history of the farm, and served as an occasion from which its old, familiar name of 'Endicott's' fell into disusage; for the place now passed into alien hands, and from it departed the last of the old stock, together with not a few of those whose fortunes had been wrapped up with the farm for generations.

Honor determined to leave her home within a month of her husband's death. To roam awhile alone seemed good to her, and, for a space of time that extended into years before her return, she absented herself from Devon. Her farm had appreciated much in value of late years, and a tenant for it did not lack long; but the new power brought new servants, and certain of the older workers took this occasion to retire from active service. Churdles Ash went to live with an elderly nephew at Little Silver; Mr. Cramphorn also resigned, but he continued to dwell in his cottage at Bear Down and was content that Sally and Margery should still work upon the farm. Collins, promoted to deputy headman, took his life with increasing seriousness--a circumstance natural when it is recorded that matrimony with Sally Cramphorn had now become only a question of time.

Mark Endicott also left Bear Down for a cottage at Chagford, and Mrs. Loveys accompanied him as housekeeper. This great uprooting of his life and necessary change of habits bewildered the old man at first; but his native courage aided him, and he unfolded his days in faith and fortitude. From Honor he heard erratically, and gathered that she drifted rudderless amid new impressions now here, now there. Then, as the months passed by, into the texture of her communications came flashes or shadows of herself, and the blind man perceived that Time was working with her; that her original, unalterable gift of mind was awakening and leavening her life as of yore.

Humour she still possessed, for it is an inherent faculty, that sticks closer than a spouse to the heart that holds it from puberty to the grave. It wakens with the dawn of adult intelligence, and neither time nor chance, neither shattering reverse nor unexpected prosperity can rob the owner of it. Earthly success indeed it brightens, and earthly failure it sets in true perspective; it regulates man's self-estimate and personal point of view; enlarges his sympathies; adjusts the too-staring splendours of sudden joys; helps to dry the bitterest tears humanity can shed. For humour is an adjunct divine, and as far beyond the trivial word for it as "love" is, or "charity." No definition or happy phrase sums it correctly, or rates it high enough; it is a balm of life; it makes for greater things than clean laughter from the lungs; it is the root of tolerance, the prop of patience; it "suffers long and is kind"; serves to tune each little life-harmony with the world-harmony about it; keeps the heart of man sweet, his soul modest. And at the end, when the light thickens and the mesh grows tight, humour can share the suffering vigils of the sleepless, can soften pain, can brighten the ashy road to death.

In the softness of the valley air lived Mark Endicott, and still knitted comforters for the Brixham fishers.

His first interest was Honor and her future. Of these, he prophesied to those few who loved her and who came to see her uncle from time to time. To Mrs. Loveys, to Ash, to Jonah Cramphorn the old man foretold a thing not difficult of credence. Indeed, eighteen months after the death of her husband, a letter from Honor, despatched at Geneva, came as confirmation, and informed Mark that she had met Christopher Yeoland there.

"They will part no more," said he when the letter was read to him; and he was right.

An interval of six months separated this communication from the next, and when his niece wrote again, she signed herself "Honor Yeoland." The missive was tinctured with some unusual emotion, and woke the same in Mrs. Loveys as she rehearsed it, and in Mark as he listened. "I am just twenty-seven," said the writer. "Do not tell me that it is too late in life to seek for a little happiness still. At least I know what Myles would think."

But the deed demanded no excuse in her uncle's judgment, for he had long anticipated it, and was well content that matters should thus fall out.

And a few months later, when August had passed again, the master of Godleigh and his lady returned home. Special directions prevented any sort of formal welcome, and the actual date of their arrival was only known to a few. Through a twilight of late summer they came, unseen and unwelcomed; and one day later, upon a fair afternoon in mid-September, Honor, escaping from the flood of new cares and responsibilities, slipped valleywards away to traverse the woods alone and visit her uncle at Chagford.

A chill touched her heart as she proceeded, for in these dear glades, at Doctor Clack's command, the woodmen had been zealous to help Nature during the preceding spring. Wide, new-made spaces innocent of trees awaited her; light and air had taken the place of many an old giant, and raw tablets of sawn wood, rising in the vigour of bramble, and refreshed undergrowths were frequent beside her path. Then, at a familiar spot, no pillar of grey supporting clouds of mast and foliage met Honor's eyes. Instead there opened a little clearing, created by one effort of the axe, with the frank sky above and a fallen column below--a column shorn of branch and lopped of bough--a naked, shattered thing lying in a dingle of autumn grasses and yellow, autumn flowers, like, yet unlike, the old nest of memories.

And this fallen tree, so unexpected, came as right prelude to the matter that awaited her beside it. The beech of her joy and sorrow was thrown down, and its apparition awakened in her heart none of that gentle and subdued melancholy she anticipated. Rather, such emotions were smothered in active regret at its downfall. And now a howling, winter storm descended upon her spirit--a tempest very diverse from the silver-grey, autumnal rainfall of placid sadness that here she had foreseen and expected.

The stricken tree struck a chord of deeper passion than it had done beheld in prosperity; whereupon, looking forward, Honor found herself not alone. Close at hand, in a spot that he had favoured through the past summer, sat Mark Endicott with his knitting; and a hundred yards away, beside the river, a boy, successor to Tommy Bates, stood with his back turned watching the trout.

Mark sat in the sunshine with his head uplifted.

There was speculation in his face, but his hands were busy, and the old wooden needles flashed in white wool.

She watched him a moment, then her eyes caught sight of something nearer at hand.

*CHAPTER II.*

*NO AFTER-GLOW*

The object that had attracted Honor's attention was an inscription carved upon the fallen beech tree. Ignorant of the interest awakened by that ancient work of Christopher's hand, when the same came to be discovered by woodmen, she glanced hurriedly at the initials and love-knot, now weathered and toned by time and the tree's growth; then she produced a little pocket-knife, and, not without difficulty, erased the record of her husband's red-letter day in a vanished summer.

Mark Endicott sat within ten yards of Honor while she worked; but he continued unconscious of her near presence, for the song of a robin and the music of Teign muffled the small noise she made. Moreover, the blind man's own voice contributed to deaden all other sound, for, following his ancient use, he thought aloud. This Honor discovered, hesitated a moment, then, her task upon the tree completed, listened to Mark Endicott.

There are blind, dark forces that spin the fabric of man's day and night from his own emotions and sudden promptings. In thoughtless action and unconsidered deed; in impulse born of high motive or of low, they find their material, weave our garments; and, too often, led by destiny, steep most innocent white robes in poisoned blood, as Deianira that of Hercules. Thus they fashion man's black future out of his sunny past, breed his tears from his laughter, his enduring sorrows from fleeting whims, and tangle him soul-deep in networks of his own idle creation. Our secure hour is the signal to their activities; they sleep while we are watchful; they wake when we enter upon our pleasures and seek for joy.

Moved by a sentiment that herself might be the object of his thoughts, and her heart yearning to him as he sat there alone, Honor gave heed to the slow voice and listened to Mark Endicott's oral musings upon the time that was past. Fitfully he spoke, with unequal intervals of silence between the sentences. But his thoughts were of a piece; he dwelt upon a theme that he could now endure to handle--a theme rendered familiar to his mind by constant repetition and convictions rooted beyond power of further argument. Of Honor indeed he had been thinking; for the sound of her voice and the touch of her hand he had greatly longed. These were numbered first among the few good things left to him; but from reflection upon his niece he had now passed to her dead husband, and he spoke and thought of Myles Stapledon. His voice, though he communed with himself, was so clear that no word escaped the listener; and every utterance came as cloud upon cloud to darken her day and deepen her night henceforward.

"A man good in the grain--frugal--industrious--patient--yet the one thing needful denied him--held out of his reach. Maybe faith had made him almost a hero--maybe not. Anyway, there was strong meat in the rule he set himself; and he didn't swerve even to the bitter end of it.... Strange, strange as human nature, that his way of life could reach to that. Yet I heard the words upon his lips; I heard him say how self-slaughter might be a good, high deed. And certain 'tis the Bible has no word against it. Little he thought then--or I--that he'd take that road himself....... And the foundations of his life so simple as they were. His pleasures to find out flowers and seeds in season, and the secret ways of wild creatures. To think that 'twas only the Moor, and the life of it, and the moods of it, that he sucked such iron from. 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.' That it should have been help to do such a thing as he did! All a big mind turned to ruination for lack of faith..... Close touch with natural things taught him the killing meaning of selfishness; for everything in nature is selfish but Nature's self. Out of the innocence of barren heaths, the honesty of the sky, the steadfastness of the seasons and the obedience of green things to the sun--out of all these he gathered up the determination to do a terrible deed....... 'Twas all they taught him, for Nature's a heathen. Yet a wonderful departure; and the heart of him held him up at the last, for his face was happy, his eyes at peace, so they said. 'Twas a glimpse of that life to come he could never believe in here that made his eyes at peace. God spoke to him I doubt. Yet never a glimmer of promise did he see, or a whisper of hope did he hear in this life. And he gave up the only life he knew for her--died brave enough, to the tune of his own words spoken long, long since.... And the suicide of him not guessed, thank God. Even she couldn't see--so quick as she is. The dust was flung in her eyes by a kind angel. Yes, surely she was blinded by some holy, guardian thing, for his great nature was understood by her. She had sense enough for that."

He shook his head for a space, then fell into silence again.

He had uttered his conclusion--this old, wise man--in the ear of the soul on earth most vitally involved. He had been for long years a voice that conjured some sense out of his own darkness; he had lightened the difficulties of others; he had spoken not seldom to the purpose and won a measure of love and respect; yet here, by same flaw of mind, or by the accident of blindness; by weakness that hinted approaching senility, or by mere irony of chance, he had taken a wrong turning and missed the transparent truth concerning Myles Stapledon. The dead man's own past utterances were in a measure responsible; and upon them Mark had long since built this edifice of error; he had lived in the belief for two years; had accepted it as life's most tragic experience, to be taken by him in silence to the grave.

But now this opinion crashed into the mind of Honor Yeoland, and she reeled before it and was overwhelmed. Up into the blue sky she looked blankly, with a face suddenly grown old. For an instant she fought to reject the word; for an instant she had it in her to cry out aloud that the old man lied; then the life of Mark Endicott--the sure bulwark of his unfailing wisdom and right judgment rose before her, and she believed that what he said was true. Not in her darkest hour had the possibility of such an event entered Honor's thoughts. Agony she had suffered at Stapledon's death, and the mark of it was on her face for ever, but he had left her for the last time at peace to seek a course that might maintain peace; he had departed full of awakened content to find the road to new life, not death.

Yet this utterance under the woods made her uncertain of her better knowledge; this remorseless, unconscious word, thrown by a voice that had never spoken untruth, was, as it seemed, a blind oracle above appeal from human suffering, an inspired breath sent at God's command to reveal this secret in her ear alone. The glare suddenly thrown upon her mind she held to be truth's own most terrible white light; and she stood helpless and confounded, with her future in ruins. At least some subdued Indian summer of promised content with Christopher had seemed to await her. Now that, too, was torn away and whelmed in frost and snow; for Myles had killed himself to give it to her; Myles had not believed her solemn assurance, but, convinced that she still placed him second in her affection, had set her free. With steady heart and clear eye he had gone to death, so ordering his end that none should guess the truth of it. And none had guessed, save only this ancient man, whose judgment within Honor's knowledge was never at fault.

She believed him; she saw that her present state, as the wife of Christopher, could only confirm him in his conviction; she pictured Mark Endicott waiting to hear how, all unconsciously, she had followed the path Myles Stapledon marked out for her when he died. And then she looked forward and asked herself what this must mean.

A part of her answer appeared in the old man who sat, ignorant of her presence, before her. He--the instrument of this message--had spoken his belief indeed, but with no thought of any listener other than himself. She knew Mark Endicott; she was aware that he had rather himself suffered death than that this matter should have reached her ear. Loyalty to him was not the least part of her determination now. He must never know what he had done.

Neither could she tell her husband for a kindred reason. Such news would cloud his mind for ever, and lessen all his future joy in living.