Chapter 12

The storm had brought back the floods, and they were now worse than anything that anybody remembered having ever seen. The feeding sources of the Rod River had broken all bounds; the lower parts of Hadleigh Wood had become a quagmire; and the volume of water passing under the road bridge was so great that many people thought this ancient structure to be in danger of collapsing. Over at Otterford Mill, the stream swept like a torrent through a chain of wide lakes; Mr. Bates' cottage was cut off from the highroad, and the meadows behind the neighboring Foxhound Kennels were deep under water.

In these days Dale took to riding as the easiest means of getting about; and one afternoon when he had gone splashing across to see Mr. Bates, thence to pay a visit of polite canvass at the Kennels, and was now returning homeward by the lanes, he heard a dismal chorus of cries in the Mill meads.

Forcing his clumsy horse through a gap in the hedge, he galloped along the sodden field tracks to the shifting scene of commotion. Three or four idle louts, a couple of children, and a farm-laborer were running by the swollen margin of the mill-stream, yelling forlornly, pointing at an object that showed itself now and again in the swirling center of the current. Plainly, somebody had chosen this most unpropitious season for an accidental bath, and his companions were sympathetically watching him drown, while not daring, not dreaming of, any foolhardy attempt at a rescue.

"'Tis Veale, sir. A'bram Veale, sir. Theer!" And all the cries came loud and hearty. "Theer he goes ag'in. I see 'un come up and go under. Oo, oo! Ain't 'un trav'lin'!"

"Catch th' 'orse!" shouted Dale; and next moment it was a double entertainment that offered itself to hurrying spectators.

The water, charged with sediment from all the rich earth it had scoured over, was thick as soup; its brown wavelets broke in slimy froth, and its deepest swiftest course had a color of darkly shining lead beneath the pale gleams of March sunshine. In this leaden glitter the two men were swept away, seeming to be locked in each other's arms, their heads very rarely out of the water, their backs visible frequently; until at a boundary fence they vanished from the sight of attentive pursuers who could pursue no further; and seemed in the final glimpse as small and black as two otters fiercely fighting.

"Laard's sake," said one of the louts, "I'd 'a' liked to 'a' seen 'em go over the weir and into the wheel--for 'tis to be, and there's nought can stop it now."

The event, however, proved otherwise. Before the submerged weir was reached a kindly branch among the willows, stretching gnarled hands just above the flood level, gave the ready aid that no louts could offer. Here Dale contrived to hang until people came from the mill and fished him and his now unconscious burden out of their hazardous predicament.

This little incident so stimulated Dale's servants that they began to work for him quite enthusiastically. It occurred to them that he was not only a good plucked 'un, but that, however hard his manner, his heart must possess a big soft spot in it, or he could never have so "put himself about for a rammucky pot-swilling feller like Abe Veale."

Veale was truly a feckless, good-for-little creature. By trade a hurdle-maker, he lived in one of the few remaining mud cottages on the skirts of Hadleigh Upper Wood, and in his hovel he had bred an immense family. His wife had long since died; her mother, a toothless old crone, kept house for him and was supposed to look after the younger children; but generally the Veales and their domestic arrangements were considered as a survival of a barbaric state of society and a disgrace in these highly polished modern times. People said that Veale was half a gipsy, that his boys were growing up as hardy young poachers, and that every time he got drunk at the Barradine Arms he would himself produce wire nooses from his pocket, and offer to go out and snare a pheasant before the morning if anybody would pay for it in advance by another quart of ale.

Drunk or sober now, he widely advertised a sincere sense of obligation to his preserver. He bothered Dale with too profuse acknowledgments; he came to the Vine-Pits kitchen door at all hours; and he would even stop the red-coated young gentlemen as they rode home from hunting, in order to supply them with unimpeachable details of all that had happened. He told the tale with the greatest gusto, and invariably began and ended in the same manner.

"You sin it in th' paper, I make no doubt, but yer can 'aave it from me to its proper purpus. Mr. Dale he plunged without so much as tekking off of his getters and spurs." And then he described how, stupefied by his mortal danger, he treated Dale more like an enemy than a savior. "I gripped 'un, sir, tighter than a lad in his senses 'd clip his sweetheart;" and he would pause and laugh. "Yes, I'd 'a' drowned 'un as well as myself if he'd 'a' let me. I fair tried to scrag 'un. But Mr. Dale he druv at me wi' 's fist, and kep' a bunching me off wi' 's knees, and then when all the wind and the wickedness was gone out o' me, he tuk me behind th' scruff a' the neck and just paddled me along like a dummy."

At this point Veale would pause to laugh, before continuing. "Nor that wasn't all, nether. So soon as Mr. Dale catched his own breath he give me th' artificial respreation--saved my life second time when they'd lugged us on the bank. I was gone for a ghost; but I do hear--as they'll tell 'ee at th' mill--Mr. Dale he knelt acrost me a pump-handling my arms, pulling of my tongue, and bellows-blowing my ribs for a clock hour;" and Veale would laugh again, spit on the ground, and conclude his story. "Quaarts an' quaarts of waater they squeedged out of me afore the wind got back in--an' I don't seem's if I'd ever get free o' the taste o' that waater. Nothing won't settle it, no matter how 'ard I do try."

The gentry who smilingly listened, knowing Veale for a queer rustic character of poor repute, gave him sixpences to assist in his efforts to quench an abnormal thirst. Talking together, they decided that the hero of the tale had done rather a fine thing in a very unostentatious way, and it occurred to several of them that pluck ought to be rewarded. If the chance came they would encourage Dale. The M.F.H. in fact made up his mind to reconsider matters, and see if he could not before long let Dale have an inning at the Kennels.

Throughout this period and well into the hot weather of June Mavis was stanchly toiling, both as clerical assistant in the office and general servant in the house. It was she who did most of the cooking, no light task since meals had to be supplied for the carter and two of the other men. Mary always worked with a will; but old Mrs. Goudie, who came for charring twice a week, used to say that, in spite of being handicapped by the state of her health, the mistress worked harder than the maid.

A swept hearth, a trimmed lamp, and the savory odor of well-cooked food, were what Dale might be sure of finding at the evening hour; and Mavis tried to give him something more. He must have peace at the end of the day, and thus be able to forget the day's disappointments, no matter how cruel they had been. She would not let him talk about the business at night. She said he must just eat, rest, and then sleep; but she allowed him to read, provided that he read real books and magazines, not his ledgers or those horrid trade journals.

So after their supper they used to sit in the pleasant lamplight very quietly, near together and yet scarcely speaking to each other, feeling the restful joy of a companionship that had passed into that deeper zone where silence can be more eloquent than words. He was reading political economy for the purpose of opening his mind, "extending the scope of one's int'lect," as he said himself, and she watched him as he frowned at the page or puckered up his lips with a characteristic doggedly questioning doubtfulness. Certainly no words were needed then to enable her to interpret his thought. "Look here, my lad"--that was how he was mentally addressing a famous author--"I'm ready to go with you a fair distance; but I don't allow you to take me an inch further than my reasoning faculty tells me you are on the right road." When he frowned like this, she smiled and felt much tenderness. He would always be the same obstinate old dear: ready to set himself against the whole weight of immemorial authority, whether in literature or everyday life.

She did not read, but with a large work-basket on a chair by her knees continued busily sewing until bedtime. And the tenderness that she felt as she stitched and stitched was overwhelmingly more than she could feel even for Will. When her work itself made her smile, all the intellectual expression seemed to go out of her face, and it really expressed nothing but a blankly unthinking ecstasy, whereas her smile at her husband just now had shown shrewd understanding, as well as immense kindness. In fact, at such moments, only the outer case of Mavis Dale remained in the snug little room, while the inward best part of her had gone on a very long journey. She could not now see the man with his book, or the walls of the room; the lamp had begun to shine with ineffable radiance; and she was temporarily a sewing-woman in paradise, stitching the ornamental flounces for dreams of glory.

Her baby, a girl, was born at the end of June, exactly three-quarters of a year from the beginning of their new existence. The mother had what is called a bad time, and was slow to recover strength. Nevertheless, she was able to suckle the infant, who did well from its birth and throve rapidly.

It was during the convalescent stage, one evening when he had come up to sit by her bedside, that Dale told her they had at last turned the corner.

"Yes," he said, "orders are dropping in nicely. We're getting back all the good customers that slipped away from me, and some bettermost ones--such as the Hunt stables--that Mr. Bates himself had lost. You may take it as something to rely on that we're fairly round the corner of our long lane."

Then, holding her hand and softly patting it, he praised her for the way in which she had helped him. "You've been better than your word, Mav; you've supported me something grand."

And he added that henceforth he should insist on her doing less work, at any rate less household work. "There's more valuable things than burning your face over the kitchen fire, and roughing your arms with hot water. I'm going to be done with that messing of the men; I'm arranging their meals on another basis; I mean to keep house and yard as two distinct regions. And as to you, old lady, I intend to turn your dairy knowledge to account. Don't see why we shouldn't keep a cow or two--and poultry--and cultivate the bees a bit. Kitchen garden too. And, look here, I've engaged Mrs. Goudie to come every day instead of twice a week--and we shall want a nurse."

But Mavis flatly refused to have any hired person coming between her and the transcendent joy of her life. She had waited long enough for a baby, and she proposed to keep the baby to herself.

"However successful you come to be," she said to her husband, earnestly, "I shouldn't like you to make a fine lady of me. I want to go on feeling I'm useful to you. That's my pleasure--and if good luck took it from me, I'd almost wish the bad luck back again."

"Hush," he said, gravely. "Don't speak of such a wish, even in joke."

"I only meant I'd wish for the time since we came here. I wasn't thinking of anything before then."

"All right;" and he stooped over her, and kissed her. "You've bin talking more'n enough, I dare say. Take care of yourself, and get well as fast as may be. For I can't do without you."

"That's what I wanted to hear."

"You don't take it for granted yet?"

"No. I want you to say it every time I see you."

"Good night--an' happy dreams."

"Will!" Mavis' voice was full of reproach. "Are you going without kissing the baby?"

Then Dale came back from the doorway, stooped again, and making his lips as light as a butterfly's wings, kissed his first-born.

Before September was over Mavis had not only recovered her ordinary health, but had entered into such stores of new energy that nothing could hinder her from getting back into harness. She herself was astonished by her physical sensations. Languors that had seemed an essential part of her temperament ever since girlhood were now only memories; she felt more alive when passive now than during extreme excitement in the past; her whole body, from the surface to the bones, appeared to be larger and yet more compact. Even the muscles of her back and legs, which ought to have been relaxed and feeble after weeks of bed, had the tone and hardness that only exercise is supposed to induce; so that when standing or walking she experienced a curiously stimulating sense of solidity and power, as if her hold upon the ground was heavier and firmer than it had ever been, although she could move about from place to place with incredibly more lightness and ease.

These new sensations were strong in her one morning when, Dale having risen at dawn, she determined to take a ramble or tour of inspection before the day's work began; and with the mere bodily well-being there was a mental vigorousness that made the notion of all future effort, whether casual or persistent, seem equally pleasurable.

She came out through the front garden, and pausing a moment thought of all the things that ought to be done at the very first opportunity. This neglected garden was a mere tangle of untrimmed shrub and luxuriant weed, with just a few dahlias and hollyhocks fighting through the ruin of what had been pretty flower borders; and she thought how nice it would all look again when sufficient work had been put into it. Some of the broken flagstones of the path wanted replacing by sound ones; the orchard trees were full of dead wood; and the door and casements of the house sadly needed painting. Her thoughts flew about more strenuously than the belated bees that were searching high and low for non-existent pollen. This front of their house would look lovely with its casements and deep eaves painted white instead of gray; and if bright green shutters could at some time or other be added to the windows, one might expect artists to stop and make sketches of the most attractive homestead in Hampshire.

She kissed the tips of her fingers to that rearward portion of the building where Mary guarded the cradle, and then went through the gate and along the highroad.

It was a misty morning--almost a fog--the sun making at first but feeble attempts to pierce through the white veil. There would come a faint glow, a widening circle of yellow light; then almost immediately the circle contracted, changed from gold to silver, and for a moment one saw the sun itself looking like a bright new sixpence, and then it was altogether gone again. Out of the mist on her right hand floated the song of birds in a field. No rain having fallen during this month of September, the ground was dry and hard as iron, but the roadway lay deep in dust, and a continuous rolling cloud followed her firm footsteps. The air was sweet and fresh, although not light to breathe as it is in spring. One felt something of ripeness, maturity, completion--those harvest perfumes that one gets so strong in Switzerland and Northern Italy, together with the heavier touch of sun-dried earth, decaying fruit, turning fern. When the birds fell silent Mavis took up their song, walked faster; and all things on the earth and in the heaven over the earth seemed to be adding themselves together to increase the sum of her happiness.

She loved, and was loved; she lived, and had given life--bud, blossom, and fruit, all nature and she were now in harmony.

Presently the wood that stretched so dark and so grand on her left tempted her from the highroad. This was her first real walk, and she decided to make it a good one. She would aim for the Hadleigh rides, and, going on beyond Kibworth Rocks to the higher ground, get a view of the new buildings. Will had gone across to the far side of Rodchurch and could not be back to breakfast. It would not therefore matter if she were a little late.

She passed rapidly through open glades, to which the great oaks and beeches still made solid walls. The foliage of the beech trees was merely touched with yellow here and there, while the oaks showed no sign of fading color, and beneath all the lower branches there were splendid deep shadows wherever the undergrowth of holly did not fill up the green wall. This was the true wild woodland, remnant of the ancient forest, the place of virgin timber, dense thickets, and natural openings, that tourists always praised beyond anything else. The stream ran babbling through it, with pretty little pools, cascades, and fords, all owning names that spoke of bygone times--such as White Doe's Leap, Knight's Well, and Monk's Crossing. Locally it was not, of course, so highly esteemed. Cottagers said it was "a lonesome, fearsome bit o'country," and, whether because of the ugly memories that hung about it, or in view of extremely modern stories of disagreements between Chase guardians and poachers, considered it an undesirable short cut after dark from anywhere to anywhere.

To-day it seemed to Mavis friendly and pleasant as well as beautiful. The mist slowly rising was now high overhead, so that one could see to a considerable distance. Some fern-cutters in shirt-sleeves and slouch hats were already at work, cutting with rhythmic precision, calling to one another, and whistling tunefully.

One or two of them greeted her as she passed.

By the time she reached the straight rides and the fir trees the sun came bursting forth bravely, the shadows just danced before vanishing, the mist broke into rainbow streamers, and then there was nothing more between one's head and the milky blue sky. She walked within a stone's-throw of Kibworth Rocks, and did not feel a tremor, scarcely even a recollection. People nowadays came here from Rodchurch and Manninglea on Sunday afternoons, making it the goal for wagonette drives, wandering up and down, and gaping at a scene rendered interesting to them merely because it had once been the background of tragedy; and Mavis was thinking more of these Sunday visitors than of the dead man, as she hurried through the sunlight so near the spot where he had lain staring with glassy eyes throughout the darkness of a July night.

She thought of him a little later, when she stood on the higher ground looking at what live men were constructing in fulfilment of his wish, and her mind did not hold the least tinge of bitterness. At present the Barradine Orphanage was simply an eye-sore to miles and miles of the country-side, but no doubt, as she thought, it would be all very fine when finished. The bad weather of the winter had caused progress to be rather slow; the red brickwork was only about ten feet out of the ground, but a shell of scaffolding enabled one to trace the general plan. It would be a central block with two long, low dependencies, apparently, and, as it seemed, there were to be terraces and leveled lawns all about it; a great deal of clearing work as well as building work would, however, be necessary before the whole thing could take shape and explain itself properly. She stood outside one of its new ugly fences, and wondered if Mr. Barradine's trustees had, after all, chosen the site wisely. Poor old gentleman, it would be unkind if his last fancies received scant attention. It was rather nice of him to have this idea of doing good after his death, to plot it all, and put it down on paper with such painstaking care.

Truly she was thinking of him now as though he had been a total stranger, some important person that she had known well by name but never chanced to meet. She listened to the faint clinking of bricklayers' trowels, watched men with hods going slowly up and down ladders, men carrying poles, men unloading half a dozen carts; thought what a quantity of money was being expended, and how grateful in the future the little desolate children would be when their costly home was ready for them; and only as it were by accident did she remember that she too had cost the estate money, and perhaps also ought to be grateful. But she had long since ceased to think about the legacy. What the yokels would call her "small basket fortune" had served a purpose handsomely, and there was an end of it. The man from whom it came had gone as completely as the morning mist went when the sun began to shine.

The harm he had done her was nothing. If she purposely dragged out its memory, it seemed much less strong and actual than half one's dreams. Incredible that little more than a year ago she had been in such dire and dreadful trouble.

She struck the highroad again a little way short of the Abbey Cross Roads, and came swinging homeward with long strides, feeling healthy, hungry, happy. And the nearer she drew to home, the deeper grew the happiness. "Oh, what a lucky woman I am," she said to herself.

And with a quite unconscious selfishness that is an essential attribute of joy, and that makes all very successful and contented people think themselves singled out, watched over, and especially guided by fate, she blessed and applauded the beneficently omniscient Providence which had given just enough worry in her youth to enable her to appreciate comfort in mature years, which had delayed motherhood until she could best bear a hearty child, which had wiped out Mr. Barradine and restored her husband's love, which, last of all, had removed Aunt Petherick from North Ride and sent her to live at the seaside.

A small thing, this, perhaps; and yet a Providential boon, a filling of one's lap with bounties. There would have been great awkwardness in having Aunt so near, but forbidden to darken one's door. Will was very firm there: Auntie was not to be admitted at Vine-Pits on any pretext whatever. But it had all worked out so neatly, without the least friction. The new owner of the Abbey wanted North Ride. He had, however, been very kind about the lease or the absence of a lease, and had paid the tenant for life, as she described herself, to surrender possession. Auntie, one might therefore say, was not at all badly treated.

As the master was away and no kind of state necessary, she breakfasted in the kitchen with Mary and Mrs. Goudie. Her baby was asleep in its cradle, which she gently swung with her foot while eating; and the three women all spoke whisperingly. The pots and pans were shining, the hearthstone was white as snow, and through the open doorway one had a pretty little picture of the back pathway, the end of the barn, and a drooping branch of the walnut trees. From the yard beyond came sounds of industrious activity--the rumble of a wagon being pulled from the pent-house, the thump of sacks being let down on the pulleys, and the intermittent buzz of a chaff-cutting machine.

Presently somebody appeared on the pathway, and came slowly and shyly toward the door.

"Oh, bother," said Mary. "If it isn't Mr. Druitt again."

"Good mornin', mum," said the visitor, diffidently. "Would you be doing with an egg or so?"