Part 15

"It’s throwed her into a great trouble, and ’tis no good to deny it," said Margaret. "Of course the man will marry you, as you’ve told me in secret, and no doubt David will come back presently in a good temper about it; but Rhoda’s different. She’s rather terrible if a girl slips. I’ve heard her say frightful things long before this--this business of yours. ’Tis the point of view, Dorcas. You’m so good as a married woman now, and me and you can talk; but Rhoda’s awful different--as the maidens often be till they’m tokened. Then they begin to soften and understand men-folk a bit better."

"Fool!" said Dorcas.

"She’ll take a bit of time to recover; but she’ll be at your wedding with the best of us, if I know her."

"Not her! Mark me! She’ll never come inside my house or put a finger to my childer. And God knows I don’t want her to."

"She will--she will. You’re too hard. She’ll grow wiser and more understanding. She’s a very kindly, sensible girl in a lot of ways. Only she’s made of sterner stuff than me and you. I wish I was so noble-minded as her and so brave, I’m sure. She’s as plucky as David, Dorcas. Nought on four legs can frighten her."

"Four legs!" said Dorcas. "I want for a man on two legs to frighten her--ay, and master her and make her run about and do his will. But no man will ever look at her. They want something to put their arms around--not the sour, stand-offish likes of she. ’Tis no better than facing the east wind to be along with her."

"Not at all, Dorcas. You’ll soon see different. She have a sort of queer feeling in her that ’tis an awful horrid thing to give yourself over to a man. I do believe she feels almost the same if a woman marries. You’d think the whole race of women had received a blow in the face when one takes a husband. She can’t talk of ’em with patience. But us will get her a husband come presently. Then her eyes will open."

"Never--never!" foretold the other. "She’ll go single to her grave--and a good riddance when it happens."

"Here’s David coming up the path," said Margaret, and both women went out to meet him.

But Madge’s prophecy was only partly fulfilled. He brought, indeed, the news that Mr. Screech was prepared to wed with Dorcas at the earliest opportunity; but he showed no joy at the fact, and was indeed in an exceedingly bad temper.

"What are you doing here?" he said to Dorcas, sternly. But she never had been and never was likely to be brow-beaten by a man.

"Come to see Madge, seemingly, and hearing that you was gone with father to have a tell with my William, I thought I’d wait and see what came of it."

"Your William!" he said. "I wonder you don’t blush for yourself, Dorcas Bowden."

"Ah! you must see a lot of things that make you wonder," she answered insolently. "Not for myself did I ever blush; but for father, as forbid me to marry the only chap that ever loved me, or was ever likely to. What do I care? I suppose you and father, in your righteous wisdom, have decided that we may be married now, anyway; and if you haven’t ’tis no odds, because parson will mighty soon shout out the banns when we ax him to do it."

"You’re a bad woman," said her brother, shortly, "and this is a very brazen, shameless piece of work."

"That for you," she answered, flicking her fingers in his face. "I’m as straight and honest and true as your wife, or Rhoda either. ’Tis her that’s nasty and shameful, with her prudish ways, not me. And if I’ve done anything to think twice about, ’tis father’s fault--and yours."

David was angry and turned to his wife.

"The less you hear of this sort of talk the better," he said. "I’ll have no trollop here, fouling your ears with her lewd speeches."

"Call yourself a man!" sneered Dorcas. "Call yourself a man, to speak of me like that. You know I loved the chap as faithful and true as a bird its mate, and I was his wife just as much as Madge be yours in everything but the jargon and the ring. And you turn round and call me ’lewd,’ because I did the only thing I could do to force father to say ’yes.’ ’Tis you that are lewd--you and yonder creature, who won’t see me nor touch me no more; and so much the better for me." She pointed to Rhoda, who was sitting a little way off calmly waiting for Dorcas to depart.

"Larn from your wife to be larger-minded," she began again; then David silenced her.

"Stop!" he thundered out. "Who are the likes of you--a common, fallen woman--to preach to me? You get going out of this! I don’t want you here no more, and I won’t have you here no more."

"Bah!" she answered. "You’re jealous of my William--that’s what you are! Because you can’t do what he’s done!"

"Begone before I come back," he answered, "or I’ll wring your neck, you foul-thinking slut! And look to it you treat her as I do, Margaret, or there may come trouble between us."

He glanced at his wife darkly, then, in most unusual anger, left the threshold and walked across to Rhoda.

"A pair of ’em," commented Dorcas. "And, please Heaven, they’ll both be childless to their dying day. I hate the ground they walk on!"

"Don’t! don’t, for God’s sake, curse like that," cried the other, and Dorcas, divining what she had done, was instantly contrite. Indeed, she began to cry.

"I’m--I’m that savage; but not with you, Madge--never with you. Forgive me for saying that. Of course you’ll have plenty of children--plenty--more’n you want, for that matter. Never think you won’t--such a lover of the little creatures as you be. You’ll make up for lost time when you do start. And I hope you’ll love mine as well as your own, for, barring me and Billy and Billy’s mother, there won’t be many to love ’em."

Her words had turned Margaret’s thoughts upon herself and made her sad.

"Sometimes there comes an awful fear over me, Dorcas, that I shall have none," she confessed. "’Tis all folly and weakness, yet you’d be astonished how oft I dream I’m to have none. And if it fell out so, I doubt David would break his heart."

"Don’t think such nonsense. Dreams never come true, and ’twill be all right," declared Dorcas. "But now I’ll clear out, else he’ll bully you for talking to me so long after what he threatened. And, David or no David, you’ve got to be our friend, Madge; because there never was such a dear, sweet creature afore, and never will be. And if ’tis a girl, Billy have promised me I may call it ’Madge’; and I shall do."

Dorcas dried her eyes and prepared to depart, but the other bade her wait a moment.

"A drop of milk you must have; and--and--I know ’twill be a dinky darling, and I shall love it only less than you and your husband will," Margaret said.

Then Dorcas drank and set off homeward, fearing further trouble; but with her father she had no painful scene, for by the time that Elias returned to the warren, the humorous side of that day’s encounter had struck him. He kept this to himself most firmly however; but, as a result, he indulged in no anger. Instead he merely informed Dorcas that Mr. Screech would marry her at the earliest possible moment on one condition: the bridegroom insisted upon a wedding of ceremony and importance.

*CHAPTER IX*

*COMMON SENSE AND BEER*

Certain persons of local note had gathered together for evening drinking in the bar of ’The Corner House.’

Charles Moses, Bartley Crocker, Mattacott, and Ernest Maunder were there; but interest chiefly centred in one just entered upon the state of matrimony. The truth concerning his marriage was known to none present but Mr. Crocker, and he kept the secret.

Mr. Moses chaffed Billy Screech, and Billy, whose wit was nimbler than the shoemaker’s, answered jest for jest.

"As for cleverness, we well know you’re clever," declared Mr. Moses. "You’ve got a clever face, Screech--a clever nose, if I may say so--’tis sharp as one of my awls."

"My nose has a point, I allow," said Mr. Screech, "and your awl’s got a point; but I’m damned if there’s much point to the things you say, Moses. All the cleverness in your family was used up afore you come into it, I reckon."

"I knowed the cleverest man that ever was seen in Sheepstor," said Timothy Mattacott, slowly. "So does Maunder here. So clever he was that he tried to walk faster than his own shadow, and he sowed a barrow-load o’ bricks once, thinking as they’d grow up into a house."

"And what became of him?" asked Crocker.

"They put him away," said Mattacott. "He was afore the times. He’s up along with the Exeter pauper lunatics to this hour, I believe."

"Samuel Edge was cleverer than that," declared Bartley. "And I’ll tell you why: he weren’t content with anything as it stood, but must be altering and changing and pulling down and building up."

"A foreigner from Bristol way," said Mr. Moses.

"Yes, and the great cleverness of the man undid him. There was an egg-bottomed well to his house, you remember, ’Dumpling’?"

"I do remember," admitted Mr. Shillabeer. "One of they egg-bottomed wells the man had."

"And though it ran out more than enough water for all his needs, nothing would do but he must cut his egg-bottomed well into a bell-bottomed well. A pushing, clever chap."

Reuben took up the narrative.

"He went down hisself to do the work; and the sides fell in when he’d under-cut a bit; and they didn’t get the carpse out for three days," he said, gloomily.

"Yet an amazing clever man was Edge," concluded Bartley.

"Better he’d left well alone, however," ventured Mr. Screech. His jest was greeted with a stare and an uncertain sort of laugh. The folk treat a pun like a conjuring trick: they are dimly conscious that something unusual has happened in conversation, but they cannot say what, and they have no idea how it was done.

"If Edge was the cleverest man, which, for my part, I won’t allow," proceeded Moses, "then who was the cleverest woman, I wonder?"

"My wife," declared Mr. Shillabeer, instantly. "You must be just to the dead, Charles, for they can’t defend their characters. But I say that my wife was both the largest and best and cleverest woman that ever comed here; and if anybody doubts it, let ’em give chapter and verse."

"Nobody does doubt it, ’Dumpling,’" said Bartley, in a soothing voice. "There may be a smart female here and there yet, and there may be a clever maiden or two coming on also; but never did any such grand creature as Mrs. Shillabeer appear among us. Mr. Fogo used to tell about her, and how you won her from a regular army of other men."

"True as gospel. There was a good few fighters after her besides me--heavy weights too. She’d never have looked twice at anything less than a fourteen stone man. In fact, to see any male short of thirteen to fourteen stone beside her was a thing to laugh at. ’Twas when I was in training for my fight with the old Tipton--years younger than me he was all the same, that I won her. I was at a little crib out Uxbridge way, and her father had me in hand, and she come out from Saturday to Monday, and us went walking over fields. Then a bull runned at us, and my girl weren’t built for running, but I got her over a stile somehow by the skin of the teeth, and the bull helped me after her from the rear. Horched me in the buttock, and I bled like a pig after. In fact, I saved her life. And she knowed it; and when I offered myself ’twas ’Dumpling’ first and the rest nowhere, like the race-horse."

Mr. Maunder spoke.

"A faithful man to her memory. No doubt if the widow-men could all look back on such partners, there’d be less marrying a second than we see around us."

"In my case," declared the host, "I can’t forget her enough to think of a second. Her great largeness of character was the peculiar trick of her; and she took such delight in everyday things, owing to being town-bred, that when I look at a sow with young, or a pony and foal, or the reds in the sky at evening, or a fall of snow, they all put me in mind of her. For whether ’twas a budding tree, or a fish in a pool, or one of they bumbling bees in a bit of clover, everything made that woman happier. Never wanted to go back to London, took to the country like a duck to water. So I can’t forget her so long as the lambs bleat and the clouds gather for rain and the bud breaks on the bough. I say, ’Ah! how my wife would have liked to see that fox slip off that stone;’ or ’how my dear woman would have clapped her hands to look at this grey-bird’s nest with the eggs in it.’"

The old man heaved a sigh; the rest nodded.

"Mr. Fogo was different," declared Simon Snell, who had recently arrived. "He’d got terrible tired of Sheepstor afore he left it; for he told me so."

Reuben admitted this, and his gloom increased.

"He’ll never come no more, I’m afraid. ’Twas only the mill that kept him so long. He must have London booming round him. He’s been in hospital since he was here, for the doctors to cut a lump of flesh out of his neck. But he’s very well again now; and busy about a coming turn up between Tom King and an unknown."

"How do it feel to be among the race of married men, Billy?" asked Simon Snell.

"’Tis a very proper feeling, Simon," answered the other. "In fact, I’ll go so far as to say a man don’t know he’s born until he’s married. You chaps--Bartley here and suchlike--talk of freedom. But ’tis all stuff and nonsense. You ban’t free till you’m married; you be a poor, unfinished thing without your own woman, and I should advise dashing blades like you, Simon, and you, Timothy, to look around before the grey hairs begin to thrust in. Thirty to thirty-five is the accepted time. I’m thirty-three myself."

"There’s outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual grace I see, too," said Mr. Moses. "I was by your house a bit ago, and I was terrible pleased to mark all the windows mended and a bit of paint on the woodwork of ’em, and a new swing gate where you used to have nought but a pole across and a piece of old sacking to keep the chickens in. The place is a changed place and so smart as any bride could wish for."

"’Tis all that and more," declared Mr. Screech. "And if you’d gone in--and you’ll always be welcome, Moses--you’d have found my wife fresh as paint herself in her new print, and, what’s still more wonderful, my mother with her hair all twisted tidy and her clothes neat as ninepence. I would have it, you must know. ’Us must pull ourselves together,’ I said to mother. ’Dorcas comes from a terrible tidy family,--too tidy, you might say, and I’m not pretending I mind the fowls in the kitchen myself, or the dogs on the beds; but there ’tis--with a bride we must meet her halfway; and she’s as clean and trim herself as a hen hedge-sparrow.’ My mother made no objection--took to her second-best dress without a murmur, and bought a new one for the Lord’s Day."

"You’re a reformed character, in fact," declared Maunder. "And I for one rejoice at it, for I’ve often feared you and me might some day meet in an unfriendly way when I stood for the law."

"Don’t fear it," answered the other. "I’m all right and full of contrivances for making a bit of money in a straight and proper manner."

"David tells me your rabbit trap is the wonderfullest thing in that line he’ve met with, and good for ten pounds to sell," put in Bartley.

"More like twenty," answered Screech. "’Tis a masterpiece of a trap, and I’ve had a good offer or two already, but not enough."

"We get more greedy after money when we’m married, I suppose," ventured Snell. "Of course we want more then."

"We ought to have more. We’re worth more," answered Billy. "The moment a man takes a serious hand in the next generation, he becomes a more dignified object and ought to fetch better money, for the sake of the wife and family. A married man ought to have better wages and be rewarded according to his breeding powers."

"And the women too. ’Tis a great fault in the State that our women don’t make a penny by getting children," declared Moses.

"Unless they bring forth three at a birth," said Mr. Shillabeer. "Then ’tis well known that the Queen’s Majesty sends three pounds out of her own money, to show that ’tis a glorious feat, in her gracious opinion."

"Well, we single men had better waste no more time, if Billy is right," said Mattacott. "For my part I’ve been looking round cautious for two years now; but I haven’t found the right party. ’Tis the married girls I always feel I could have falled in love with, not the maidens."

"Just t’other way with me," declared Bartley. "I like the unexpected things the girls say and do. The ways of a woman are like the ways of the mist: past all finding out."

"True," declared Mr. Screech. "I know a bit about ’em; and shall know more come presently. But like the mist you’ll find ’em."

"Now here, now away again," continued Bartley. "Now lying as still and as white as washing on the hill, now scampering off, hell for leather, without rhyme or reason. And so with them: they never do the expected thing."

"True," said Mr. Moses, "you’ve hit ’em there. As soon as a girl answers me the direct opposite of what I expect, then I know that girl’s a child no more. She’s grown up, and ’tis time for her to put up her hair and let down her dress."

"Never the expected thing," repeated Crocker, meditatively. "They cry when they ought to laugh; they cuss when they ought to cherish; they fondle when they ought to whip. They forgive the wrong sins; they punish the wrong men; they break the wrong hearts."

"And when they’ve done their bitter worst," added Charles Moses; "when they’ve set a man against Heaven, and life in general, and made him pretty well hungry to creep into his grave and get out of it; when they’ve driven him to the edge of madness and forced him to damn and blast ’em to the pit--then what do the long-haired humans do?"

"Why, they jump into his lap," declared Mr. Crocker, "and kiss his eyes, and press their soft carcases against him, all purring and cooing--half cats and half pigeons that they be!"

"And the men give way," summed up Mr. Moses. "Leastways the manly, large-minded sort, like ’Dumpling’ and me and Crocker. We can’t stand against ’em--not for a moment."

"We take, when our turn comes, in fear and trembling," continued Bartley, "and we hope we’ll be one of the lucky ones."

"The fear and trembling comes afterwards, as you’ll find some day, Bartley, and as Screech here may find any day," foretold Moses. "Every man backs his own judgment and will lay you any odds he’s drawn a prize."

"’Tis always the other people be fools in this world," declared Screech. "It holds of life in general. ’Tis said the world be full of fools, yet no man will ever allow he is one."

Mr. Snell spoke.

"I’m sure you hear of happy marriages here and there," he said doubtfully.

"So you do, Simon. You hear of ’em--same as you hear of pixies. But you don’t see ’em. Leastways I don’t," answered Bartley.

"Present company excepted, I hope," said Screech.

"You forget Mrs. Shillabeer also," murmured Mattacott. "I’m sure nobody here knows more about marriage than what the ’Dumpling’ do. He’s seen a happy marriage."

"In a way, yes," admitted the host; "and also in a way, no. You can’t be right down happy with a woman--not if you love her as well as I loved the wife."

"’Perfect love casteth out fear,’ however," quoted Mr. Moses, vaguely.

"Just what it don’t do, Charles; and the man that said it, saint or sinner, didn’t know what it was to love," answered the old prize-fighter. "If you love a female right down from the crown of her head to the tip of her toes, and through and through likewise, you fear for her something cruel. I was built so soft where that woman was concerned, that I hated for her to go for a drive in a trap, and couldn’t be easy--for thinking of the springs--till I seed her safe again. And when illness overtook her--why, ’fear’ wasn’t the name for it. I crawled about like a beaten dog and cringed to God A’mighty for her in season and out. But she had to go, and I had to be left. And she took twenty year of my life underground with her."

They sympathised with him; then Mr. Snell returned to the main theme.

"They’m quicker than us, however," he asserted. "I’m sure their brains work faster than what ours do. There’s many a thing a woman can’t make clear to a male mind, try as she will."

Mr. Crocker laughed.

"Yes," he admitted. "Such things as two and two make five--when they want ’em to make five. And they try and they try to make us see it; but we can’t. And yet they are always ready to believe that our two and two be five, God bless ’em!"

"I wonder," said Mr. Snell.

"’Tis so; but you must be masterful, Simon. You must make ’em feel you’re in earnest and have no shadow of doubt," said Billy Screech. "They love to see you strong, and they’d sooner see you wrong and sticking to it than be blowed from your purpose by another man. Nought on God’s earth be more hateful to a brave woman than to see her husband bested. And if a man bests you--whether ’tis at business or in any other way--don’t you tell her if you can help it. Love you as she will, you’ll drop in her mind and be so much the less if she hears about it."

The clock struck; mugs were drained.

"Closing time, souls," said Mr. Shillabeer; and five minutes later the company had separated and the bar was empty. The ’Dumpling’ mused on the things that his guests had uttered.

"’Tis summed up in that word ’unexpected’ without a doubt," he thought. "Never the expected thing. And if we grant so much, then us never ought to expect the expected thing. They be all of a piece; and because my wife looked like living for ever, I ought to have knowed she’d die. I ought to have known it, and prepared for it, and laid in wait for it. Yet nobody was more surprised than me, and nobody less so than her when it leaked out of the doctor. She knowed it herself well enough; but hadn’t the heart to tell me."

*CHAPTER X*

*CRAZYWELL*

Nature, passing nigh Cramber Tor, where old-time miners delved for tin, has found a great pit, filled the same with sweet water, and transformed all into a thing of beauty. Like a cup in the waste lies Crazywell; and, at this summer season, a rare pattern of mingled gold and amethyst glorified the goblet. Autumn furze and the splendour of the heath surrounded it; the margins of the tarn were like chased silver, where little sheep-tracks, white under dust of granite, threaded the acclivities round about and disappeared in the gravel beaches beneath. Upon the face of the lake there fell a picture of the bank, and it was brightened, where heather and honey-scented furze shone reversed with their colour-tones subtly changed by the medium that reflected them. But at midmost water these images ceased and fretted away into wind-ripples that frosted and tarnished the depths. And there, when the breeze fell dead for a moment, shone out the blue of the zenith and the sunny warmth of clouds. At water’s brink stood three black ponies--a mare and two foals of successive births. The mare’s daughter already attained to adult shapeliness; her son was a woolly baby, with a little silly face like a rocking-horse. He still ran to her black udder when thirsty and flew to her side for protection if alarmed.

Peace, here brooding after noon, was suddenly wakened by the stampede of half a dozen bullocks, goaded by gadflies. Down they came from above with thundering hoofs and tails erect. They rushed to cool their smarting flanks, sent ripples glittering out into the lake, and presently stood motionless, knee-deep, with their chestnut coats mirrored in the water.