Part 9

Then he made a ghastly effort to be entertaining.

"And mind, Honor, I shall be very sharp if my cheque does not come each quarter on the right day. A hard taskmaster I shall be, I promise you."

"Don't, Myles," she answered instantly, growing grave at his simulated merriment.

A few minutes afterwards she left him, sought out the squeaking kittens to calm her emotions, presently deposited them in a sunny corner with their parent, and, taking Christopher's letter, walked out again upon the grass.

A storm played over her face which she made no attempt to hide. Tear-stained Margery, peeping from the kitchen window, noticed it, and Samuel Pinsent, as he passed from the vegetable garden, observed that his salute received no recognition.

Honor Endicott knew very well what she now confronted, and she swept from irritation to anger, from anger to passion before the survey. Ignoring the great salient tragedy that underlaid the position, she took refuge in details, and selecting one--the determination of Myles to depart--chose to connect Christopher Yeoland directly with it, decided to believe that it was at Yeoland's desire her cousin now withdrew. The rectitude of the act added the last straw to her temper. The truth perhaps was not wholly hidden from her; she had been quick to read Myles by light thrown from her own heart. And here, at a point beyond which her thought could not well pass, she turned impatiently to the letter from her lover, tore it open, and scanned the familiar caligraphy.

Half a page sufficed, for her mood just then was ill-tuned to bear any sort of reproof. Anger had dimmed both her sense of proportion and her knowledge of Christopher; round-eyed she read a few lines of stern rebuke and censure, a threat, an offer of liberty, and no more. The real Christopher, who only began upon a later folio, she never reached. There was a quick suspiration of breath, a sound suspiciously like the gritting of small teeth, and her letter--torn, and torn, and torn again--was flung into the hand of the rough wind, caught, hurried aloft, swept every way, scattered afar, sown over an acre of autumn grass.

"This is more than I can bear!" she said aloud; and after the sentiment--so seldom uttered by man or woman save under conditions perfectly capable of endurance--she entered the house, tore off her gloves, and wrote, with heaving bosom, an answer to the letter she had not read.

*CHAPTER XI.*

*PARTINGS*

When Christopher Yeoland received his sweetheart's letter at the hand of Tommy Bates, he read it thrice, then whistled a Dead March to himself for the space of half an hour.

He retired early with his tribulation, and spent a night absolutely devoid of sleep; but Nature yielded about daybreak, when usually he rose, and from that hour the man slumbered heavily until noon. Then, having regarded the ceiling for a considerable time, he found that Honor had receded to the background of his mind, while Myles Stapledon bulked large in the forefront of it. To escape in their acuteness the painful impressions awakened by his letter, he destroyed it without further perusal; he then wandered out of doors, and climbed above his pine woods to reflect and mature some course of action. He retraced the recent past, and arrived at erroneous conclusions, misled by Honor's letter, as she had been deceived from the introductory passages in his. He told himself that she had yielded to his importunities through sheer weariness; that in reality she did not love him and now knew it, in presence of this pagan cousin, sprung up out of the heather. From finding herself in two minds, before all the positive virtues of Stapledon, she was doubtless now in one again, and he--Christopher--had grown very dim, had quite lost his old outline in her eyes, in fact had suffered total eclipse from the shadow of a better man.

To these convictions he came, and while still of opinion--even after the catastrophe of her letter--that no more fitting husband could have been found for Honor than himself, yet was he equally sure, since her indignation, that he would never ask her to marry him more. Thus he argued very calmly, with his body cast down under the edge of the pine woods, his eyes upon the dying gold of oak forests spread over an adjacent hill. Against Honor he felt no particular resentment, but with Stapledon he grew into very steadfast enmity.

Under his careless, laughter-loving, and invertebrate existence Yeoland hid a heart; and though none, perhaps not Honor herself, had guessed all that his engagement meant to him, the fact remained: it began to establish the man in essential particulars, and had already awakened wide distaste with his present uncalculated existence. Thus Honor's promise modified his outlook upon life, nerved him, roused him to responsibility. He was not a fool, and perfectly realised what is due from any man to the woman who suffers him henceforth to become first factor in her destiny. Yet his deeply rooted laziness and love of procrastination had stood between him and action up to the present. All things were surely conspiring to a definite step; but events had not waited his pleasure; another man now entered the theatre, and his own part was thrust into obscurity even at the moment when he meditated how to make it great. But the fact did not change his present purpose. Ideas, destined to produce actions during the coming year, were still with him, and recent events only precipitated his misty projects. He resolved upon immediate and heroic performance. He began by forgiving Honor. He marvelled at her unexpected impatience, and wondered what barbed arrow in his own letter had been sharp enough to draw such serious wrath from her. There was no laughter in her reply--all thunder, and the fine forked lightning of a clever woman in a passion on paper. He felt glad that he had destroyed the letter. Yet the main point was clear enough, though only implicitly indicated; she loved him no more, for had she done so, no transient circumstance of irritation or even active anger had been strong enough to win such concentrated bitterness from her. He did not know what had gone to build Honor's letter; he was ignorant of Stapledon's decision, of the fret and fume in his sweetheart's spirit when she heard it, of the mood from which she suffered when she received his note, and of the crowning fact that she had not read all.

So Christopher made up his mind to go away without more words, to let Godleigh to the enamoured linen-draper for a term of years, and join his sole surviving relative--an ancient squatter in New South Wales--who wrote to his kinsman twice a year and accompanied each missive with the information that Australia was going to the dingoes and must soon cease to be habitable by anything but a "sun-downer" or a kangaroo. Hither, then, Christopher determined to depart; and, viewed from beneath his whispering pines, the idea had an aspect so poetical that he found tears in his eyes, which set all the distant woods swimming. But when he remembered Myles, his sorrow dried, scorched up by an inner fire; and, as he looked into the future that this stranger had snatched away from him, he began to count the cost and measure the length of his life without Honor Endicott. Such calculations offered no standpoint for a delicate emotion. They were the difference between visions of billowing and many-breasted Devon, here unrolled before him, glorious under red autumn light, and that other in his mind's eye--a sad-coloured apparition of Australian spinifex and sand.

His anger whirled up against the supplanter, and he forgot his former charitable and just contentions uttered before this blow had fallen. Then he had honestly affirmed to Honor that in his judgment Stapledon was in love with her and scarcely realised his position. That utterance was as nearly true as possible; but in the recollection of the woman's anger he forgot it. How the thing had come about mattered nothing now. To inquire was vain; but the knowledge that he had done no deed to bring this storm upon himself proved little comfort. His patience and humour and philosophy went down the wind together. He was, at least to that extent, a man.

To Honor's letter he returned no answer; neither did he seek her, but avoided her rather and pursued an active search for Myles Stapledon. Accident prevented a meeting until the morning of the latter's departure, and, wholly ignorant that his rival was at that moment leaving Bear Down for good and all, Christopher met him in a dog-cart on the road to Okehampton, not far from the spot where had fallen out their first introduction.

The pedestrian raised his hand, and Myles bid Bates, who drove him, pull up.

"Well met," he said.

"Would you mind giving me a few minutes of your time, Stapledon?" inquired Christopher coldly; whereupon Myles looked at his watch, and then climbed to earth.

"Trot on," he said to his driver, "and wait for me at the corner where Throwley road runs into ours. And now," he continued, as the vehicle drew out from ear-shot, "perhaps you won't mind turning for half a mile or so. I must keep moving towards Okehampton, or I shall miss my train."

They walked in step together; then Yeoland spoke.

"You'll probably guess what I've got to say."

"Not exactly, though I may suspect the subject. Hear me first. It'll save you trouble. You know me well enough to grant that I'd injure no man willingly. We must be frank. Only last Sunday did I find what had overtaken me. I swear it. I didn't imagine such things could happen."

"Don't maunder on like that! What do I care what's overtaken you? You say you suspect the thing I want to speak about. Then come to it, or else let me do so. When first we met you heard that I was the man your cousin had promised to marry. You won't deny that?"

"You told me."

"Then why, in the name of the living God, did a man with all your oppressive good qualities come between us? That's a plain question anyway."

A flush spread over Stapledon's cold face and as quickly died out. He did not answer immediately, and the younger spoke again.

"Well? You're the strong man, the powerful, self-contained, admirable lesson to his weak brethren. Can't you answer, or won't you?"

"Don't pour these bitter words upon me. I have done no deliberate wrong at all; I have merely moved unconsciously into a private difficulty from which I am now about to extricate myself."

"That's too hard a saying for me."

"It is true. I have wakened from an error. I have committed a terrible action in ignorance. A blind man, but not so blind as I was, showed me my stupidity."

"Say it in so many words. You love Honor."

"I do. I have grown to love her--the thing farthest from my thoughts or dreams. I cannot help it. I do not excuse it or defend myself. I am doing all in my power."

"Which is----?"

"Going--going not to come back."

"It is too late."

"Do not say so, Yeoland. What could I be to her--such a man----?"

"Spare me and yourself all that. And answer this one question--on your oath. Did she tell you of the letter she wrote to me?"

"She did not."

"Or of my letter?"

"Not a word."

"One question more. What did she say when you told her you were going?"

"She deemed it unnecessary at the time."

"She asked you to stop?"

Stapledon did not answer immediately; then his manner changed and his voice grew hard. He stood still, and turned on his companion and towered above him. Their positions were suddenly reversed.

"I will suffer no more of this. I have done you no conscious wrong, and am not called upon to stand and deliver at your order. Leave a man, who is sufficiently tormented, to go his way alone. I am moving out of your life as fast as my legs will carry me. I mourn that I came into it. I acknowledge full measure of blame--all that it pleases you to heap upon me; so leave me in peace, for more I cannot do."

"'Peace!' She did ask you not to go?"

"I have gone. That is enough. She is waiting for you to make her your wife. Don't let her wait for ever."

"You do well to advise--you who have wrecked two lives with your--'private difficulty'!"

Yeoland stood still, but the other moved hastily on. Thus they parted without further words, and Christopher, at length weary of standing to watch Stapledon's retreating shape, turned and resumed his way.

He had determined, despite his sneer, to take Stapledon's advice and go back to Honor. The bonds woven of long years were not broken after all. How should events of a few short weeks shatter his lifelong understanding with this woman? Recent determinations vanished as soon as his rival had done so, and Yeoland turned and bent his steps to Bear Down, resolved that the present hour should end all and place him again in the old position or dethrone him for ever. His mind beat like a bird against the bars of a cage, and he asked himself of what, in the name of all malevolent magic, was this man made, who had such power to unsettle Honor in her love and worship, to thrust him headlong from his high estate. He could not answer the question, or refused to answer it. He swept on over the sere fern, with the soft song of the dead heather bells in his ear; but the message of stone and heath was one: She had asked the other man not to go.

Before that consummation his new-kindled hope faded, his renewed determinations died. The roads of surrender and of flight were all that stretched before him. To Honor he could be nothing any more; and worse than nothing if he stopped. Complete self-sacrifice and self-effacement seemed demanded of him if his love was indeed the great, grand passion that he had imagined it to be. Impressed with this conviction he passed from the Moor and sought his nearest way to Godleigh; and then the mood of him suffered another change, and hope spoke in the splendours of sunset. Myles Stapledon had certainly gone; and he had departed never to return. That was his own assurance. Honor at least might be asked, and reasonably asked, to tell her mind at this crisis in affairs.

And so he changed the road again and set his face for Bear Down. A dark speck met his gaze while yet he was far distant; and he knew it for the mistress and hastened to her, where she walked alone on the little lawn.

Coming quietly over the grass Yeoland surprised her; she lifted a startled face to his, and he found her moist of eye while in her voice was a tremor that told of tears past.

"Why d'you steal on me like this?" she asked suddenly, and her face flushed, and her hands went up to her breast. "You frighten me. I do not want you. Please, Christopher, go away."

"I know you do not want me, and I am going away," he answered gloomily, his expectations stricken before her words. "I'm going, and I've come to tell you so."

"How much more am I to suffer to-day?"

"You can ask me that, Honor? My little girl, d'you suppose life's a bed of roses for me since your letter?"

"A bed of roses is the sum of your ambitions."

"Why, that's like old times when you can be merely rude to me! But is the old time gone? Is the new time different? Listen, Honor, and tell me the truth."

"I don't know the truth. Please go away and leave me alone; I can tell you nothing. Don't you see I don't want you? Be a man, if you know how, and go out of my sight."

The voice was not so harsh as the words, and he thought he saw the ghost of a hope behind it.

"Curious!" he said. "You're the third person this week who has told me to be a man. Well, I'll try. Only hear this, and answer it. I've just left Myles Stapledon on his way to Okehampton--gone for good."

"What is that to me?"

"Your looking-glass will tell you. Now, Honor, before God--yes, before God, answer me the truth. Do you love him?"

"You've no right to stay here prattling when I bid you go."

"None; and I'm not going to stay and prattle. But answer that you shall. I've a right at least to ask that question."

The girl almost wrung her hands, and half turned from him without speaking; but he approached and imprisoned both her arms.

"You must tell me. I can do nothing until I know, Your very own lips must tell me."

"You don't ask me if I love you?"

"Answer the other question and I shall know."

"Blind--blind--selfish egotists--all of you," she cried. Then her voice changed. "Is it my fault if I do love him?" she asked.

"I'm no judge. To part right and wrong was a task beyond me always--excepting on general, crude principles. Answer my question."

"Then, I do."

He bent his head.

"I love him, I love him, I love him."

Neither spoke for some seconds; then the man lifted up his head, shook it as though he had risen from a plunge, and laughed.

"So be it. Now here's news for you, that I can relate since you've been so frank. D'you remember what I whispered to you when I was a little boy, of the cracks on my ceiling and the chance patterns I found on my window-blind when I used to lie awake in the grey of summer mornings, waiting for the first gold? You forget. So had I forgotten until a few days since. Then, being lazy, I lay abed and thought, and thought, and fell to tracing the old stories told by the lines on blind and ceiling. Chance patterns of bays and estuaries, continents and rivers, all mapped out there--all more real to me than those in my atlas. I remember a land of blackamoors, a sea of sharks, an island of cannibals, a desert of lions, in which the little flies figured as monsters of the wilderness. Such dreams of deeds by field and flood I weaved in those grey, gone mornings to the song of the thrush and the murmur of the old governor snoring in the next room! And now--now I'm smitten with the boy's yearning to speed forth over the sea of sharks--not after lions, but after gold. I'm going to justify my existence--in Australia."

"You couldn't go further off if you tried."

"Not well--without slipping over the edge altogether."

"You mustn't do this, Christopher."

"It's done, dearest. This is only a ghost--an adumbration that's talking to you. I ask for my freedom, Honor--sweetheart Honor. Thank God we are humorists both--too sensible to knock our knuckles raw against iron doors. You'll be happy to-morrow, and I the day after. We mustn't miss more laughter than we can help in this tearful world. And friends we must always be. That can't be altered."

"I quite understand. You shall not do this, Christopher. I love you for suggesting it. You may go--as far as London, or where the steamer starts from. Then you must come back to me. You've promised to marry me."

"Forget it. I'm in earnest for once. At least you must credit that. There's Mrs. Loveys at the window calling you to tea. We'll meet again in a day or two very likely."

"Don't go; don't go, Christo; I'm so lonely, and wretched, and----"

But the necessary iron in him cropped up at this hour of trial. He hardened his heart and was gone before she had finished speaking.

Two days later Honor, who had heard nothing of Christopher since their last meeting, sent a message to him. He returned an evasive answer, which annoyed her for the space of three days more. Then, still finding that he kept at home, she went to seek him there. Between ten and eleven o'clock one morning she started, but breaking her bootlace near the outset, returned home again. The total delay occupied less than fifteen minutes, and presently she reached Godleigh to find Mrs. Brimblecombe, wife of Noah Brimblecombe, the sexton of Little Silver, on her knees, scrubbing in the porch. The charwoman readily desisted from work and answered Honor's question.

"He kept it that 'mazin' quiet from us all, Miss. An' you never told nobody neither. Gone--gone to foreign lands, they tell me; an' the place in a jakes of a mess; an' the new folks comin' in afore Christmas."

As she spoke a dog-cart wound up the steep hill to Chagford, and a man, turning in it, stopped and looked long at the grey house in the pines. Had anybody walked on to the terrace and waved a handkerchief, he must have seen the signal; but as Honor spoke to Mrs. Brimblecombe the trap passed from sight.

"When did he go?" she asked unguardedly.

"Lard! Doan't 'e knaw 'bout it--you of all folks?"

"Of course; of course; but not the exact hour."

"Ten minutes agone or less--no more certainly; an' his heavy boxes was took in a cart last night, I hear."

Honor hurried on to the terrace and looked at the road on the hill. But it was empty. Mrs. Brimblecombe came also.

"Sails from Plymouth this evenin', somebody telled us, though others said he'm gwaine to Lunnon fust; an' it seems that Doctor Clack knawed, though how a gen'leman so fond of the moosic of his awn tongue could hold such a tremenjous secret wi'out bustin' I can't fathom."

Honor Endicott walked slowly back to Bear Down. The significance of her own position, as a woman apparently jilted, did not weigh with her in the least. She reflected, with a dull ache and deadness, that her accident, with a delay of ten little minutes resulting from it, had altered the whole scope and sweep of her life and another's. That Christopher Yeoland had taken his great step with very real difficulty the fact of his continued absence before it made sufficiently clear. He had not trusted himself to see her again; and now Honor's conviction grew: that her presence even at the last moment, must surely have broken down his determination and kept him at home had she so willed.

She asked herself what she might have done in the event of that ordeal, and believed that she would have tried hard to keep him.

*CHAPTER XII.*

*THE DEFINITE DEED*

Life, thus robbed of love for Honor Endicott, was reduced to a dreary round of mere duties. Within one fortnight of time these two men, severally responsible for the music and sunshine of her life, had departed out of it in a manner perfectly natural, conventional, and inevitable. Given the problems that had arisen, this was the solution to have been predicted. Mark Endicott, indeed, put it very bluntly to her; but Honor viewed the tragedy with more tender pity for her own feelings. She marvelled in secret at the great eternal mystery of human affections, at the evolution of the love instinct, which now, ennobled and sublimated through the generations of men, had achieved its present purity and perfection in the civilisation of monogamous nations; while her uncle told her, in fewer words and homelier, that between two stools she had fallen to the ground.

She was supremely miserable through dwindling days, and each of them to her seemed longer than those of the summer that was past. The shadows of two men often accompanied her lonely rides, and circumstances or places would remind her of each in turn, would suddenly stab her into acute suffering as they wakened the image of Christopher or of Myles in very life-colours.

There came a laugh once, when she overheard Pinsent and Collins congratulating each other that Bear Down had not been too precipitate in the purchase of the wedding "momentum"; but the salt was gone out of humour for a little while; and with her uncle, at least, she never laughed at all. His boundless sympathy was strained before her wayward unhappiness. She flew to paradoxes, contradictions, and whimsical conceits, all vain, and worse than vain in his judgment. She sometimes talked at random with no particular apparent object save to waken opposition. But the knitting-needles ticked placidly through long evenings beside the glowing peat: and it asked an utterance beyond measure flagrant to set them tapping, as an indication that the blind man's patience was exhausted.