Part 16

Upon the side of the pool there sat a woman--as still as a picture in a gold frame. She was clad with such sobriety that one might have thought her a stone; but she moved and her sunbonnet shone as she flung it off and then wiped her hot forehead with the fall of it. For a moment she thought of the legends of Crazywell and cast back in her memory for the evidence of their truth. Here was a haunt of mystery and a water of power. Voices murmured in this hollow once a year, and if none of late had heard them, doubtless that was because none permitted himself or herself to do so. A spirit neither malignant nor benign, but wondrously informed, dwelt here--a sentient thing, a nether gnome, from whom was not hidden the future of men--a being who once a year could cry aloud with human voice and tell the names of those whose race was run. All dreaded the sortilege of the unknown thing that haunted Crazywell; but since its power was restricted to Christmas Eve, little general sense of horror or mystery hung over the pool. For Margaret Bowden, however, it had always possessed a sort of charm not wholly pleasant. She avoided the place of set purpose and was beside it to-day by appointment only. Another had named Crazywell as a tryst, and she lacked sufficient self-assertion to refuse. Now she blinked in the direct sunlight and longed for shade where no shade was.

She envied the kine below, and being in a mood a little morbid, by reason of private concerns, she cast her thought further than the cattle and pictured the peace and silence beneath the heart of the water. A long sleep there seemed not the hardest fate that could fall on human life. There was a man--and Margaret had known him--who drowned himself in Crazywell. By night he ended a troublous life, and joined the spirit of the pool for a season. Then he floated into light of day again, and was found by his fellows. They drew him out and called him mad, and buried him in the earth with Christian burial, that his wife’s feelings might be saved a pang. Yet nobody knew better than the coroner’s jury that this man was very sane, and had shortened his own life for sound reasons. Margaret remembered that at the time, she had blamed him much, but her mother had not blamed him. And she herself, having been married nearly a year, no longer blamed him. Who was she to judge? If she, a happy wife, could look without horror at Crazywell in this unclouded hour, was it strange that an unhappy man might do more than look, and rest his head there?

"A happy wife--so happy as any woman ever can hope to be, who--who--"

Her thought broke off. She envied the mare at water’s edge. The pot-bellied old matron stood still, and only moved her tail backwards and forwards to keep off the flies. The foal galloped around her--playing as children will.

"So happy as any wife can hope to be, who has no child."

Margaret made herself finish the sentence; for everything that happened to her now revolved upon it. She explained the least little cloud or shadow of cloud thus; she referred the least impatience or short word to the same cause. There was no rift, no failure of understanding, no lessening of love--so the wife assured herself--but she must do her duty. She must not much longer delay to bring to David the thing his soul most desired.

Her thoughts ran unduly upon this theme, and her own anxiety seemed like to stand between her and her object. She exaggerated the truth; out of a natural and innate diffidence she imagined a condition of mind in her husband which did not exist. David indeed desired children and expected them; but he was in no violent hurry, and had not as yet even entertained the possibility of having none. When she mentioned the matter, he consoled her and blamed her for giving it a thought. In reality, the thing in their lives that she marked and deplored and thus explained, belonged to a far different and deeper cause. After love’s fever certain differences of temperament began slowly and steadily to declare themselves. There was no radical change in David; but his self-absorption increased with his prosperity--a circumstance inevitable. For comradeship and for sympathy in business he had Rhoda; and her understanding of dumb animals so much exceeded Margaret’s, that brother and sister unconsciously made common cause and seemed to live an inner life and develop personal interests from which Margaret found herself in some measure excluded. None could be blamed. The thing simply so fell out; and as yet not one of the three involved perceived it. David and Rhoda were full of his enterprises, and she did much man’s work afield for him and advanced his welfare to the best of her strength and sense. Margaret shopped, cooked, mended clothes, and made ready for the others in the intervals of work. She relieved her sister-in-law of much sewing and other toil that Rhoda might have the more leisure to aid David. This woman, indeed, was unlike most women, and for that reason she did not clash with Margaret as much as another might have.

Rhoda Bowden had struck an observer from without as an exotic creature, who homed here by accident, but who by right belonged to no dwelling made with hands. A sister of the deep green glade was she--a denizen of the upland wilderness and the secret antre. She followed the train of Selene. The silver light and the domain of nocturnal dew were hers. Silence was her familiar; from her own brother she hid a part of her days and her nights. And of the varied aspects of her mistress, the moon, Rhoda shared not a few. The young of beasts seemed her special care and joy.

"The tender whelps, new-dropped, of creatures rude,"

found a ready friend in her; but while thus gracious to all the lesser things that shared her place in time, this girl revealed for humanity, beyond her brother, but little love. She was zealous for him, but to other men she stood as heretofore: in an attitude enigmatic, tending to aloofness. Margaret, however, had yet to be convinced that she was not to be won.

To women Rhoda’s aspect of late was made more widely manifest. Out of her own virginal fount of feeling no drop of sympathy with the unvirginal could flow; and the thing that Dorcas had accomplished was above all measure infamous, treacherous to womankind, beyond hope of pardon in her eyes. Had the power to do so rested with Rhoda, she had swept her sister out of life; and in her mind this yielding wanton, and her husband, and her new-born baby were already as objects dead and banished from existence.

Margaret’s thoughts now centred on Rhoda and she lost sight of her own misty tribulations. Two great problems awaited solution, and with the optimism of a large heart this woman hoped yet to solve them. She wanted to see Rhoda a wife; and she wanted to see her reconciled to Dorcas. The one achievement might depend upon the other. Let Rhoda once wed, and there must come understanding into her life.

Margaret had spoken often, with tact and warmth, of Bartley Crocker; and she had been helped in a very valuable quarter, as it seemed, for David also considered the man as among his closest friends at this season. There had recently been some talk between them of a sort specially interesting to David, for Bartley was attracted, or declared himself attracted, by the prospect of leaving England to farm in Canada, and the information he had gathered together respecting that wider world of the Colonies could not fail to be of interest to Bowden. At David’s invitation Bartley had spent a Sunday afternoon recently at ’Meavy Cot’; and Madge was now at Crazywell to tell the lover what had followed his visit.

She waited yet half an hour; then Bartley appeared on the hither bank of the pool, looked about him a while, caught sight of Madge’s sunbonnet, and approached her. So busy with her own thoughts was she that she did not see him until he was beside her: then she rose and bade him find some shade.

"The sun’s that fierce I must get out of it," she said.

Thereupon he took her to a little glen close at hand--a lip through which the pool sometimes overflowed in winter--and under a white-thorn they sat down together, while Margaret, looking at the golden furzes in front of her, spoke to him.

"I do believe the gorse be going brown already. Just a little gladness we get from it, then ’tis gone again, like a candle blown out."

"What a thought! You’re down, I see. No use saying you’re not. And of late you’ve been like this more than once. ’Tis for me to talk to you to-day, I think. ’Tis for me to tell you what I saw last Sunday at ’Meavy Cot,’ not for you to tell me what fell out after I was gone."

"I’m cheerful enough--only wisht to spend such a long day away from David. He’s to Tavistock again. He’s terrible hopeful of some work there; but I hardly think he’ll get it--hasn’t been well enough eggicated, I fancy. Though clever enough, I’m sure."

"He don’t know everything, however."

"Who does?"

"He don’t know a thing or two that even I could teach him."

"Such as upholstering?"

"Just so. I upholster chairs--at least I know how to. And you upholster David’s life--make it easy and comfortable and soft at the edges. But what about your life, Madge?"

"Well, what about it, Bartley?"

"I suppose ’tis infernal impudence of me," he said. "All the same I’m an old friend and one good turn deserves another. You’re trying to help me to get what I want; I wonder if I could help you a bit here and there?"

"Whatever do you mean? And what did you see at our home that makes you say such a curious thing?"

"’Tisn’t what I saw, but what I didn’t see. But there, what on God’s earth am I saying? ’Tisn’t to you I should speak."

"Go on and tell me."

"I can’t, for I can’t give it a name. Only somehow--look here, I’m a fool to touch this. I’m talking too soon. I must wait and see a bit more. You can’t have your mind in two places at once, Madge. I’m not myself of late and very likely I fancy things. You’d reckon I had enough to think about without mixing up myself in other people’s business. But you are different to everybody else. I feel we’ve been hunting in couples of late, and so your good’s mine."

"How you run on! And that wild. I don’t know now what you’re talking about, you silly chap."

"More do I. I only know two things for certain. And one is that my mother is worse, and the other is that your sister-in-law was jolly interested in what I said about Canada. Did you mark that?"

"She was. The wildness and bigness of the land would draw her to it. I meant to tell you. After you’d gone--but I am so sorry about your dear mother. I thought last week that she seemed a little better."

"No--not really. It’s got to be. God knows that if talking would mend her, I’d talk for a year. But it won’t. So go on about Rhoda, please."

"Well, she didn’t say much herself, but she listened to my husband after you’d left us, and when he asked her joking whether she’d like Canada, she said quite seriously that she would. ’Twas the great size and wildness of the place took her mind. ’To think of them woods and the wonderful creatures in ’em!’ she said. And when David thought how fine ’twould be to have a bit of ground pretty near as big as all Dartymoor for your own, she nodded and her eyes shone."

"But she couldn’t go out walking all alone of a night there," said Bartley. "There are bears, I believe, and Indians, too, for all I know. But very like she’d take to them--bears and Indians both. I daresay now one of them grimy, naked-faced men with their features looking as though they were cut out of stone, and a hat of hawks’ feathers, would please her better than ever I shall."

Margaret laughed.

"You must persevere," she said. "You must be patient too. After she refused you she was more than common silent for a month. She thought a lot about it and went afield more than usual with nought but dogs for company. Keep at her, but don’t ax again just yet. Time ban’t ripe."

"D’you think if I was to offer to go to Canada and make her mistress of a mile or two of it, that she’d be more like to say ’yes?’"

"’Tis a great question that, and I won’t answer ’yes’ or ’no.’ ’Tis very difficult to guess what’s passing in her mind, for her face don’t alter like most faces. ’Tis more the light in her eye tells you."

Mr. Crocker nodded.

"I’ve marked that. Her lips and brow don’t play and lift like yours. She keeps her mouth shut and her eyebrows steady. But her eyes talk more than her lips. She likes me--I do honestly think that, Madge."

"I’m glad of it. I’ve gone as near as I dare to asking her what she thinks of you, and I’ve sung your praises--not from myself, mind, but as an echo to David. But she gives no sign. She listens and her face don’t alter. I’ll do all I dare, but with such a maiden we must be very nice. If she thought I was on your side, trying to help you to get her, she’d never forgive me."

"I know how clever you are. And David’s not against it neither; though I can’t expect him to wish such a thing, for she’s as good as a couple of men to him. In fact, no two would do what she does for him. Hirelings can’t work like them that labour for love. She’d make a model wife for an open air man. And if I win her, Madge, ’twill be farming without a doubt, for a shop would be no use to her--nor to me neither, for that matter."

Margaret laughed out loud at the idea of her sister-in-law in a shop.

"Nought will ever tame her down to that," she said. "’Twas a pity you learnt the upholstering business, Bartley. It didn’t lift you in her eyes, I’m afraid."

"Let her say ’yes,’ and I’ll learn what she pleases that’ll help to make a living. I’d very well like to go to Canada and grow apples and corn."

"So would she, I do think--if she could get to care enough about you."

"Why shouldn’t she? A maiden can always find one chap that’s good enough to marry, and I’m sure she’ll not meet with a better in these parts."

"I’m very sure she won’t."

"Well, then, I’ve a right to expect her to give in. There’s nobody else? You can honestly say there’s nobody else, Madge?"

"There’s always somebody else where a pretty girl be wife-old," she answered. "In the case of Rhoda--well, it seems absurd--it is absurd--too absurd to be true, and yet I won’t deny there’s something in it."

"You mean that bearded antic of a Snell?"

"He’s very much gone on Rhoda in his cautious, lizard sort of a way. He looks at her in church."

"Yes, like a cow looks at a passing coach. Surely that slow-witted, knock-kneed shadow of a man can’t interest Rhoda?"

"Such things ban’t easily explained, but it’s true that he’s about the only male that ever keeps her talking. I wouldn’t say that he ever dreams of such a thing as marriage, but--"

"Good Lord--marriage! I’d so soon expect to see him a bishop as a husband. What now can it be that she likes in poor Simon? I wish I knew, for I’d try to copy it."

"I’ve oft wondered. ’Tis something in the air of him that makes her feel easy and friendly."

"I wish he’d got the wit to tell me how he does it."

"He doesn’t know--no more does she. But there ’tis. She can suffer him; she can even talk about him."

"Try and see what the trick is, Madge. Ask Simon to tea and watch ’em together. What do they speak about?"

"I’ll do what I can. She was a bit ruffed with Simon last week, however."

"Angered with him! That’s a bad sign, if she could be interested enough in such a shadow as Simon as to be cross with him. She’ve never been cross with me--not since we made it up."

"She was angry because Mr. Snell has got rather friendly of late with Billy and Dorcas Screech. Their house is near his work and he drops in sometimes, I believe. He told Rhoda that the baby was very like its grandmother to Ditsworthy Warren, and Rhoda flared up and answered that she’d thank him never to name it to her again."

"Another mystery in her. If I ever have any luck with her, the first thing will be to make her a bit kinder to women, Madge."

"She’s kind enough; but to say it without feeling, she’s narrow and she hates the mother business. She never will be fond of childer, I’m afraid, Bartley."

"Then we shall be of one mind there anyway. I don’t like ’em either--never did and never shall."

"Wait and see. You’ll change from all that nonsense."

Suddenly Bartley started.

"Talk of--there goeth Rhoda by the footpath yonder."

"So she is! Fancy that. I’ll call her. She’s on her way to Ditsworthy till evening. But I thought she’d gone long ago."

Bartley whistled and a solitary fox-terrier, who was the woman’s companion, rushed over to see what was doing. He recognised Margaret and stopped; then he turned, held up a paw and waited to see whether Rhoda was coming after him.

Madge called and Rhoda came to them. Mr. Crocker greeted her with friendship and Margaret asked where she had been.

"I fell in with your brother," she said. "Bart was up over rounding up some ponies. Him and your father have got ten ponies for Princetown fair and they hope great things from them. But they’ll not do so well as David’s--they ain’t so forward as our three."

"A lucky chance this," declared Bartley. "I’m just going up to Ditsworthy myself to see Mrs. Bowden. My dear mother’s weaker and she wants to have a talk with her old friends before ’tis too late."

"I’ll tell mother for you," said Rhoda. "Only last Sunday she was wondering if Mrs. Crocker would care for to see her."

"I must tell her myself and carry back her message to my mother," answered the crafty lover. His parent had expressed no desire whatever to see Sarah Bowden; but the excuse came as an inspiration to the man.

Rhoda said nothing and he spoke again.

"Perhaps if you are going that way, you won’t be offended if I walk along with you?"

She shook her head, implying that he was welcome.

"I’ve gathered a bit more about the backwoods and the life out in the Dominion of Canada, you must know. And I was wondering if, among all your brothers, there might not be one, or perhaps two, as would like to make their fortunes there. ’Tis a pity for all to bide on the Moor."

"So I think," said she. "For men to be cooped up, like chickens on a run, is a vain thing. I’d much wish for to see them go out in the world a bit--same as other young men."

"If your brother Drake had been spared, I’m sure he’d have gone," said Crocker, with a twinkle of the eye.

Madge saw the jest, but Rhoda quite failed to do so.

"That’s so silly as mother," she said. "But I should like to see Nap and Wellington under articles to some trustworthy farmer in them parts. ’Twould make men of ’em. The whole family can’t be rabbit-catchers."

This common sense impressed Bartley not a little. It was another side of Rhoda, familiar enough to Margaret, but not to him.

They departed now together and Margaret heard Rhoda laugh as they went. Such an exceedingly rare sound cheered her not a little. It rang like a hopeful augury, and she rejoiced for Bartley’s sake and went home happy.

*CHAPTER XI*

*REPROOF*

Life is an unconscious effort on the part of the individual to get the world to see him at his own valuation; and some by force of will partially achieve it; and some by preciousness of attributes are justly appraised above their own self-estimate. David Bowden was respected and counted a man of weight--a rising man, a man whose honesty, industry, and sense achieved increasing prosperity, and whose justice and goodness of heart robbed his success of bitterness to all save base minds. But Margaret’s character, so largely different, won open love. The folk nodded appreciation when her name was mentioned and old eyes brightened at it. Sympathy from her own brimming cup poured over; and the people, perceiving this couple from the outer standpoint, declared that no such happy diversity of qualities ever before mingled to make a perfect union.

But it was not quite the union of the moss and the stone; where the hard is made lovely by the soft and, in return, establishes a sure, enduring foothold for it. There were permanent disparities in the texture of their characters that neither could alter and neither could suffer without pain. David frequently failed to see Madge’s point of view: she was constitutionally unable to harden her nature that she might accept his attitude. Out of this disability grew hunger and dearth in the woman’s spirit, discomfort on the part of the man. He tried, as far as his nature would let him, to bridge the gulf; and she came to the other side and held out her hands to him. Sometimes they touched for a glad moment, but only thus briefly; and despite his deep affection and her passionate worship, these vital constituents of character stood between them, deep-rooted in attributes beyond the power of love to overthrow. Unconsciously he bruised her; unconsciously she aggravated him. His native spirit held the wider outlook of her charity and lenity as weakness. Sin and the sinner were closely allied in his judgment; therefore her tolerance, her magic ingenuity of excuse for error, her clemency and her patience with folly puzzled him. She had a genius for identifying herself with those the world forgot or shunned. She was a champion of failures; and her attitude to the sick, the wretched, and the outcast sometimes troubled David.

On one occasion she caught an evil from a house full of sickness and brought it home, so that David, too, fell ill and was from his work for three days. When the doctor came and bade him keep within doors, he turned on his wife, and for the first time she saw him angry with her. The incident passed; the sting lasted a long while. Her attitude to Dorcas won a milder reprimand; but here she was obstinate and asserted her own liberty of action. She visited Dorcas; rejoiced in her happiness and content, and congratulated her on the reformation she had achieved in her husband. But David held off and waited to see Billy Screech return to his irregular ways; while Rhoda kept her word and saw her sister no more.

It happened that David found his wife on an afternoon in autumn going to the house of Mr. Screech with a basket on her arm. She never openly irritated him by visiting his sister under his eyes, though her friendship with Dorcas was not hidden; but now it chanced that husband and wife unexpectedly met. She was on foot and he rode. She smiled and stopped. He nodded and asked where she was going with a full basket.

"Not to they Fosters, Madge? There’s some bad catching sickness there, and I won’t have it. I can’t afford no more of that nonsense."

"I’m going to see Dorcas."

"What for?"

"Because her li’l chap’s queer. Nothing at all, David--only a bit of a tissick on the chest. And I’ve made up some cautcheries[#] after a recipe of mother’s for him. And this here’s a bit of that big, blue-vinnied cheese as you said we never should be able to eat. ’Tis a pity to waste it."

[#] Physic.

"Anything else?"

"No--except a pint of whortleberries what I gathered yesterday; and a couple of they pigs’ trotters for your sister."

"Can’t they pick their own whortleberries?"

"Dorcas be a thought poorly herself. There’s another little one coming a’ready."

He frowned and sat still on his horse, looking straight between its ears.

"Always swarm where they ban’t wanted--like bees," he said. Then he turned to Margaret.

"Give me that food. Let Screech buy his own cheese. I’m going up over to see my mother. I’ll carry it to her."

He held out his hand and she took the cheese from her basket and gave it to him.

"And no more of this, my dear. I’m not going to keep other people’s children--because I haven’t got none of my own. And don’t you never think so, Madge; because if you do, you’ll think wrong. Good-bye for the present. Don’t think ’tis hard: ’tis only sense."