Part 17

He put the food in his pocket and rode on; she stood and watched him; then her lips parted a little and as she pressed them together tears started from her eyes. There was none to see and she made no effort to restrain her sorrow. Her face was still tear-stained when two men overtook her and Bartley Crocker, with Billy Screech, bade her good-day. Billy was in a hurry and had to call at his home on the way elsewhere. He dearly liked Margaret and now, hearing that she was on the way to see Dorcas, took her basket for her. Mr. Screech rapidly passed out of sight and she was left alone with Bartley.

He spoke at once.

"What’s amiss?" he said. "You’ve been crying."

"Nonsense!"

"I daresay it was. Still, you have. And if ’twas nonsense, you can tell me so much the easier."

"Some silly trifle. You oughtn’t to have taken any note of it."

"I’ve just met David--going up to Ditsworthy. He must have passed you. Well, well--no business of mine, Madge. I’ll say nought and ask you to forgive me for being so bold as to see. Only I’m different to other people. We’ve got such a lot of secrets--you and me."

Instantly she confided in him.

"I know ’tis nought but your soft, silly heart, Bartley. We’m too much alike here and there, you and me. But David’s always right, and I do vex him with my foolish ways--too well I know it. I can’t be so firm and just as him. God knows I try; but my mind ban’t built in his manly pattern. I’m all for forgiving everybody and being friendly with everybody. He says I’m no better than a spaniel to fawn, but--"

"Don’t," said Mr. Crocker. "Don’t tell me no more, Madge. I quite understand. ’Tis the man’s nature to be firm and stern, same as it is yours to be soft and gentle. You’ve got to meet one another. He must try and be soft, and you must try and be hard. I don’t suppose either of you can succeed; but if you try--and yet what silly rummage I be talking!"

"I vexed him rather sharp a moment ago."

"Look here!" he exclaimed. "In a bit of a cloud like this, Rhoda ought to be the very one living creature of all others to put everything right. Don’t you see that with her sort of nature--as firm as David and yet a woman--she ought to be able to see both sides and just speak the very word and do the very thing to make all go smooth and happy?"

"I’m sure she would if she could," answered Margaret at once. "Rhoda and me are capital friends nine days out of ten. But of course she’s more like David than me."

"I heard Screech say she was David in petticoats; but that’s only rude, foolish nonsense. She’s a woman, and she must have a woman’s softness and gentleness and understanding for women hidden away in her--a clever, beautiful creature like her."

The lover spoke and Margaret did not contradict him. Bartley, though he could arrive at fairly accurate estimates of character as a rule, proved blind where Rhoda Bowden was concerned. He had judged her better in the past; but now he only loved her and erred accordingly.

"Trust to her; tell her," he advised. "She can do anything with David."

And Margaret, knowing perfectly well that Billy Screech’s opinion of her sister-in-law was the more correct, yet took some heart of hope from Mr. Crocker’s advice and promised him to do as he suggested.

"But what am I to waste your time?" she asked. "Such a happy woman as I be. To see such a foreign thing as a tear on my cheek! No wonder you was surprised. ’Twas all about nothing really and I’m ashamed of myself. Now let’s talk of you. When be you coming up again to tell us more about Canada?"

"I’ve forgot all about it," he answered. "The question is, when am I going to ask Rhoda to go there with me? I feel ’twill be do or die next time. But I can’t wait much longer. Then there’s my mother. She’ll be gone by October, they say. ’Tis curious how she hankers after that man, Charles Moses, now. And I’m sure he’s terrible kind. Comes in when he can and reads the Bible to her by the hour. Mr. Merle’s very good too. But she’d rather have Moses than anybody."

"There’s you."

"Yes--me first, poor dear. I’ve scraped the skin off my throat, as you can hear. I was reading to her till three o’clock this morning. Then, thank God, she got off to sleep."

They had reached the home of Dorcas and there parted. Margaret went in and Mr. Crocker, with a resolution recently made and carefully concealed from her, proceeded towards Sheepstor.

He had decided to speak to David, and since, knowing himself tolerably well, he guessed that time might very easily destroy this intention, Bartley proceeded then and there to the way by which Bowden would return to his home. In a dingle not very far from Dennycoombe he waited, and after two lonely hours, during which he considered the probable futility of his intention, David came along.

He was in good spirits and asked his old adversary to return home with him for a cup of tea.

"I know you’ll need no second bidding," he said, "for my wife have told me about your fancy for Rhoda, and though I can’t further it, I’ll not stand in the way if ’tis to be. You’d better come and tell her some more about foreign parts: she likes that better than courting. If any man ever wins her, ’twill have to be a wild man of the woods, I reckon."

Crocker, pleased that David was in a mood so easy, nerved himself to a dangerous task. He had decided to do no less than try and light Bowden’s imagination. This on any subject had been a difficult feat; but since the man’s own wife was the matter, Bartley felt that he could hardly have attempted anything less likely to succeed or more likely to end in tribulation. Indeed, as soon as his mouth was open he regretted his unwisdom; but it was then too late to draw back and he proceeded. Chance inspired him to make an excellent case and speak with very genuine discretion; but David was a long time silent and the other feared that he had done more harm than good.

"’Tis well we met," he began, "for I want to speak to you, David. And ’tis a kicklish subject at first glance; but not at second. I mean Margaret. You know very well I wanted to marry her once, and you know she loved you better far and you won her. But though she never would have taken me for a husband, yet I’ve been close as a brother to her all my life, and she’s fond of me too in her way."

"I know it," said Bowden. "And why not? Fond she is, else she wouldn’t take so much trouble to try and get Rhoda to have you."

"Exactly so. And now I’m coming to the tricky place in our talk. I met Margaret a bit agone--mind, I’m talking like her brother might--and she was crying. Just after leaving you it was, David. I asked her what was amiss, and she told me ’twas all her weak nonsense. Then it come out--as a sister to a brother. She’d vexed you and she was cut to the heart about it. She loves the ground you walk on, David; and when she don’t hit it off with you--when you look black at her--’tis like holding back water from a flower. By God, she droops!"

"Crying, you say?"

"Had been, and couldn’t hide it. You’d never have known it; but I said to myself, ’that man don’t guess what he is to her, or that a cold word frets her like a wound.’ Be angry with me if you like, Bowden, and tell me to mind my own business. I’ll take it now--now that I’ve told you."

David stopped and got off his horse.

"I’m not angry," he said. "The question is, what have you told me? I’ll thank you to say it again; and don’t fear to use clear words. I like ’em best."

"The point is that, busy as you are and up to the eyes in affairs and beasts and money-making in general, you’ve missed a lot in Madge that’s worth finding out. And you must find it out if you want her to be a happy woman."

"What don’t I know?"

"You don’t know how to humour her."

"A sane, grown-up woman don’t want humouring, surely?"

"Every woman that ever was born wants humouring. Think now. Don’t you humour Rhoda? Don’t even Rhoda do and say things you can’t fathom now and again? Don’t you give in to her against your own better knowledge now and then--for the sake of pleasing her and so that she may the quicker do as you want her to do next time? Be honest--don’t you?"

Bowden looked at the other with surprise and nodded.

"Lord! How you know the ins and outs of ’em!"

"Not me. No man ever can. We just glimpse a bit here and there. But this I know; patience is the first virtue with women. Patient, as a spider, we’ve got to be when the fly is a female. Now Margaret feeds on one thing, and if you hold it back you starve her. That’s sympathy, Bowden--just a natural, tender sort of feeling such as you don’t hold back even from a cow that’s just dropped a dead calf and had her trouble for nought. I’ll say it in a word and trust your large sense and justice not to be angered. You’re not so kind as you might be to Margaret. ’Tis summed up in that, and I ask you to forgive me for saying it. I’ve nought to gain, and everything to lose by losing your friendship. I wouldn’t have spoken such a strong thing for any less serious reason than her happiness. And now you can tell me to go about my business if you please, and I’ll gladly go."

"Wait a bit and hear me," answered the other. "I can see, fixed up as you are, and hoping what you hope, that it wasn’t all fun for you to say this to me. You’re not the sort of man as ever goes across the road to teach other people or meddle with them. And that’s why I’ve listened so patient to you. Some--most men--I’d have stopped at the first word; because most men be very fond of giving advice and lifting themselves above their neighbours; and that sort I very soon put in their place if they talk to me. But you don’t offer your opinions unasked as a rule, and you’ve knowed my wife since she was a baby, and you’m a thought like her here and there--a softness there is in your nature. ’Twas pointed out after our fight."

"I said that very word to her to-day," answered Bartley. "’Tis because I’m rather the same pattern as she that I can feel so sharp about this as even to risk your friendship by speaking. She’d die for you; but would you die for her, David? Well, yes, without doubt you would; but do what’s harder. Try to do the little, twopenny-halfpenny, every-day sort of things for her that’ll show her she’s never out of your thought."

The other had retired into his own mind and failed to hear this admonition. His intellect moved much more slowly than Crocker’s, and he was now retracing an incident.

"To show you the softness of her," he said, "I may tell you that when you was coming to see us, she begged me to take down the fight-colours--the two handkerchers you might have seen hanging in shiny wood frames one on each side of the parlour looking-glass in my house. She said that it would hurt your feelings cruel to see the signs of the battle there, and I think even Rhoda looked a sort of question with her eyes at me. ’But no,’ I said. ’He’s not a fool. ’Twill be no pain to him to see ’em.’ And I wouldn’t take ’em down. Rhoda saw it my way; but Margaret kept on to the end that ’twas not a proper thing--’specially as you came at my invitation to tea. Yet, of course you didn’t mind seeing your fogle there?"

"Not a bit in the world. A very natural and proper place for it. But don’t it show what stuff she’s made of--Margaret, I mean?"

"It do," admitted David. "I thank you for saying these things to me. I’m not above learning from any man or woman either."

"Learn from her then. You can’t learn from a better. Be out of bias with her no more."

"I’ll have a tell with Rhoda about it. ’Tis the little silly things, as you say, that please women. I do big things when I can, you must know. There was another twenty pound put out at interest for her last month. But she didn’t take much delight seemingly in a valuable matter like that. She thanked me loving enough, but not as though she knowed what it means to earn and to save twenty pounds."

"She’d sooner you took her back a bunch of they wild strawberries out of the hedge than all the money in Tavistock," declared Bartley. "Foolish, if you like, but take my word for it, David. She’s built in that particular way. Try it."

Bowden laughed.

"If any man had told me that I should ever listen to such a lot of sense from you, I’d have judged him mad," he answered. "Yet here it has come about, and I thank you, honest, for trying to do me a good turn. And succeeding too. I’ll see how a little silliness will work. Perhaps a holiday come the next revel. Good-bye--unless you’ll drop in for a bite."

"Next week, perhaps. But there’s a lot of trouble afore me just now. My mother--"

"You’re welcome when you please to come," concluded Bowden, and re-mounted, full of his own thoughts. It was characteristic that when the other mentioned his dying parent, he said nothing. He had heard, but the ready word made no effort to leave his lips. He was for the moment quite occupied with his own business. Crocker left his old antagonist very full of thought and, when the younger was out of sight, Bowden, at a sudden whim, took his advice literally, dismounted again and tethered his horse. Then he ranged about and gathered a great bunch of wood-strawberries that clustered in a dewy hedge and shone ruby-red in the level sunset light along the lane.

They would have been a very real and deep joy to Margaret; she must have been the nearer to his heart that night by the tie of that simple thought; but such an act was foreign to his nature. He fell to thinking how really and practically to please her, and in the light of definite and weighty deeds, this piece of sentiment looked in his eyes so exceedingly foolish, that he flung the berries away impatiently long before he reached home.

What would anybody have said, he asked himself, had they seen the busy and prosperous David Bowden carrying along rubbish from the hedge-row, like a child playing truant from Sunday school?

That night, after Margaret had gone to bed, he talked with Rhoda concerning her, and Rhoda was deeply interested and anxious to fall in with his purposes. David mentioned the source of his inspiration, and finding that he showed no anger against Bartley Crocker, his sister took the same attitude. They strove very steadily henceforth to please Madge, and to understand the things that were good to her. They tried hard, and in a measure succeeded; for Margaret was quick to mark their efforts and gather happiness from them. Yet the attempt could not largely avail; because sympathy, without imagination to light its way, can only grope in the dark and, groping, perish.

*CHAPTER XII*

*THE COURAGE OF MR. SNELL*

The instinct which drew Simon Snell towards Rhoda Bowden--the instinct which, exemplified in her, suffered the advance without active discomfiture--while slight and subtle, was none the less real. There was that in this simple soul which suited the woman; or if such an expression is too strong, she found him more easily endured than any other man. Most girls fled instinctively from Simon. The dullest found him dull; the least humourous found his beard a jest; the worst educated discovered that they possessed wider knowledge than he. Yet Rhoda, who was not stupid, who was handsome and who enjoyed a measure of sense, could accede something to this egregious man that she denied all others. She did not spurn him and she did not find his companionship a joke or a bore. On the other hand, she did not seek him and made no attempt to better their acquaintance.

Simon, for his part, developed similar and even stronger sentiments; and he had wit sufficient to perceive that any increase of friendship must come from him.

He debated the matter in his mind with oriental deliberation; and he consumed several months on the great problem of whether he should or should not ask Rhoda to take a walk with him during some Sunday afternoon. His inclinations varied, and occasionally he believed that to walk with her was desirable; but more often he feared that such an action would be too definite and must commit him. Moreover, he felt extremely doubtful as to Rhoda’s reply and, thanks to a spark of imagination in his character not to have been suspected, he believed that if she said ’no,’ he would feel very uncomfortable.

She met him on a day when the first opinion was uppermost, and almost before he knew it, Mr. Snell had succeeded in asking Rhoda if she would take a stroll with him upon the following Sunday afternoon. She replied without emotion that she was engaged to dinner with her parents at Ditsworthy.

"The next then," faltered Mr. Snell. As he spoke, he determined with himself that in thus pressing himself upon her, he had gone too far, and he prepared to leave her. To his surprise, however, Rhoda agreed.

"If ’tis a fine afternoon Sunday week, I’ll come. But not if ’tis pouring torrents," she said.

"I’ll be to your house at three of the clock," he answered.

Then he left her and found himself in great agitation. This was the most audacious thing that he had ever done. He felt proud and alarmed by turns. As the day approached he heartily hoped that it might be wet; but it arrived clear, cold, and fine. Therefore he went forth in his Sunday clothes, reached his destination too soon and waited out of sight behind a stone, until his watch told one minute to the appointed hour.

Rhoda was ready for him and they set off together up the valley. From his cottage door David watched them and smiled grimly. His sister had not mentioned her appointment, and both Margaret and her husband were exceedingly surprised.

"It can’t surely be that poor Mr. Snell--?" said Madge.

"Anything can be," he answered; "but ’tis hard to believe. On the whole--no. It amounts to nought. Look at the way Simon carries his legs--that loose from the thigh--that loose and wandering, as though they belonged to a Guy Fawkes!"

"’Tis a most amazing thing, David, what different sort of people sometimes have something in ’em that draws them together willy-nilly. But Hartley!"

"’Tis no good looking that way," he answered with decision. "I sounded her as to the man a bit ago, as I promised. She’s got no fancy that way, Madge, and the sooner he knows it the sooner he’ll stop wasting his time."

Meanwhile Mr. Snell walked beside Rhoda and talked of the amazing number of water rats in the leat. Presently he lifted the theme to poultry, and then, returning to the water, detailed the exact manner of his professional labours. She said little but listened to his statement of facts. His mind was only constituted to assert crude happenings. He had no ideas, no theories, and few opinions.

"You can see the tower of Princetown church very clear from here," he said; "but if a mist comed over, it would be hidden."

She admitted that this was so.

"A gentleman stopped in our best bedroom and parlour a year back," continued Simon; "and his custom was to paint pickshers. And once I comed this way and he was painting pretty near where we be standing now. And I made so bold as to look, and then I made so bold as to talk, because the gentleman axed me what I thought of it. ’You’ve left out the church tower,’ I says to him. ’Yes,’ he says, ’’twasn’t like I was going to stick such a beastly, ugly thing as that in the middle of they hills.’ So he left it out, though to my eye ’twas the most interesting sight to be seen."

"Did he make his pickshers for pleasure, or did he get anything by them?" asked Rhoda.

"He lived by ’em. He said to me once that there were one or two sane men in the world who bought everything he liked to paint. ’Twas a very curious speech to my ear. And to be honest with you, I didn’t like his pickshers--messy and half done to my eye--very different to the pickshers you see on grocers’ almanacs, where everything, to the hairs on a horse’s tail, be worked out to a miracle."

"Have ’e seen they pickshers that David got to Tavistock?" she asked.

Mr. Snell had seen them; but with a great and sudden access of cunning he replied in the negative. He expected her to invite him home to do so; but she did not.

A silence fell until they came to a clapper bridge of rather narrow dimensions.

"Shall I hand you over, miss, or would you rather go alone?" he inquired.

But Rhoda had crossed before he finished the question.

The church-tower seemed to draw his eyes like a magnet, and after further silence Mr. Snell began to talk about it again.

"’Tis a very wonderful and curious thing that the old prisoners made thicky pile," he said. "You might not know it, but so it was in ancient days."

"Very sad for them, because they was foreigners," ventured Rhoda.

"Exactly so. ’Twould be a very sad thing to have a wife and family and be shut away from them."

"Yes."

"Very sad without a doubt."

"Yes."

Mr. Snell next ventured on a great generality.

"I don’t think ’tis a very good plan for fighting men to marry," he said.

"Perhaps not."

"Because, if they get the worst of it, and get shot dead or taken prisoners, or any such like misfortune, their children and females have to suffer."

Rhoda did not answer.

"’Tis a deep question, if you come to think of it, miss, who ought to be married and who ought not to be married."

"There’s a lot married as had better not be," she declared.

"I quite agree, I quite agree," answered Simon; "and you might even go so far as to say there’s a lot might be married who ain’t."

"There’s a lot don’t want to be, I believe."

"Women, I grant you. I do think here and there you’ll find a woman who won’t change the single state, along of experience with married sisters, or babies, or cross-grained men, or what not; but us was telling to ’The Corner House’ a bit back along, and it seemed the general idea that there comes a time in every manly mind when the chap cries out for a wife. Should you think that might be so?"

"How should I know?"

"Beg pardon, I’m sure. Perhaps ’twas a silly question to put to a young woman. No offence, I hope?"

"Yes, it was a silly question."

"Sorry, I’m sure, and I hope you’ll overlook it. But, when I ax myself if ever it was so with me--but perhaps it don’t interest you?"

She considered before answering, then replied:

"I don’t much care what men think, but if you want to tell me, tell me."

"Not at all--far from it, I’m sure. For that matter I couldn’t tell you very easy. I haven’t been throwed much with the female kind."

"So much the better for you very like."

"I quite agree--as a general thing; but, however--" he broke off and looked at his watch.

"My word, only four o’clock! Who’d have thought it?" he exclaimed.

"In my case I’ve been throwed a lot with men," said Rhoda.

"So you have, and no doubt you’ll understand ’em pretty well. In fact, you’re as brave as most men. I’m sure now you are braver than me."

"Ban’t you brave then?"

"I’m brave by fits and starts," said Mr. Snell. "With cattle, yes; with horses, no. When I was a little nipper, not above twelve or thirteen year old, a wicked horse got me down and bit my shoulder to the bone. He’d have killed me in another moment, but the Lord sent a man with a pitchfork and I was saved. But I feared a horse from that day, and if I could show you my shoulder, which, of course, I wouldn’t offer for to do, you’d see how I was mangled by the teeth of him."

"Some horses be as uncertain as dogs, and they’ve got terrible long memories--better than ours sometimes."

"No doubt you know, so full of learning about four-footed things as you be."

"We’ll turn now, please."

"Certainly. Us have come a longer way than I thought to. But you step out something wonderful."

"I like walking."