Part 24

There is a lonely wood where Meavy hides upon her way and whence her waters cry like siren voices from copse and thicket and the darkness under great trees. Hither she passes, amid mossy stones and through secret places curtained by green things. At the feet of Lether Tor there rise forests of oak and beech; and here, by day and night, through all times and seasons, two songs are mingling. The melodies change as the singers do; but they never cease. In summer the shrunken river tinkles to the murmur of the leafy canopy above it, and her voices ascend fitfully to meet the whisper of the leaf and the sigh of the larch; in winter the legions of the branch have vanished and naked woodland and swollen stream make wilder music. Then the trees lend their lyres to the north wind, and the rocks beneath utter strange cries that combine their choral measures with fierce throbbing of the forest harps above. The foliage fallen, Lether Tor’s grey castles and jagged slopes are visible, lifted against the west and seen through a lattice of innumerable boughs. Behind this mountain sinks the sun, now in an orange-tawny aureole above the purple, and now wrapped with sullen, lifeless cloud; now upon the clearness of summer twilights, and now through the flaming arms of a red mist.

To-day, in August, this haunt of Meavy was a nest of light and cool shadows dappled together, a tent of leaves--dark overhead, where the sky filled the fretwork of the tree-tops, and alive at the forest edge with a glory of gold, where sunshine poured through loops and ragged, feathered fringes of translucent foliage. The leaves formed a commonwealth of song and gladness and harmonious concessions. Each integral of the arboreal courts advanced the same beauty, lifted to the same zephyr, glittered to the same sun and moon, drank life from the same dew, trembled to the same threat of autumn and of death. Beneath, through rifts in the bosom of the wood, the blue-green brake-fern shone and panted out her fragrance on the hillside. A colour contrast very vivid was thus offered through the frames of the forest; and beyond this region of rock-strewn fern there spread a haze of light and darkness--of indigo and silver blended about the shaggy knees of Lether Tor where it lifted to the sky.

Through the midst of the dingle under shadows, yet with her breast bared to those amber shafts of sunshine that fell upon it, came Meavy, with many a curl and turn and leisurely dawdling in deep pool. Fern fronds, fingered with light, bent over the face of the water; fresh-coloured flowers of agrimony rose above; flash of golden-rod and the seeding spires of foxgloves mingled there; while a ripple of filched fire from the sun-shaft broke the glass of each smooth pool, and heaven’s blue was also reflected from many a rift in the veil of the leaves. Bramble and woodrush spanned the stream and nodded, linked together with a spider’s trembling web; by broken, subterranean channels the river held her way; light, sobered into half light where moss sponges soaked crystal water and golden sunshine together, penetrated through the heaviest shade; darkness only dwelt in the deepest rifts and crannies and upon the black, submerged vegetation of the rocks. Out of these mysteries arose new songs and whispers, where the stream slid stealthily forth from her secret places and the hidden homes of unseen things that she also blessed and forgot not. Here the sun stars, catching upon her convex ripples, were reflected and thrown upward, to dance and flash unexpected brightness into gloom, or set wonderful radiance upon the under-face of leaves.

Life, in shape of bird and beast and fish, prospered here; and glittering insects--ichneumons, that hung motionless like golden beads in some beam of light; butterflies, that came and went; and long-legged spiders and great ants--likewise justified themselves. The trees were garlanded with ivy, polypody, and many mosses, that hung in festoons and fell even to the dim, moist river-ways, where shy flowers blossomed in shade, and the filmy fern spread its small loveliness upon the stone.

Here, at the hour near summer twilight, when life ranges at full stress and passion before rest, one may see, in the low red light that pierces to each inviolate place, some vision of the shepherd god aglowing; and through the wail of insects, under the melody of ripple and frond, there steals sweet warbling of the syrinx at Pan’s own puckered lips. Music full of the unfulfilled he plays--music fraught with world sorrow and world joy. Now it is mellow as the dying day, now tender and triumphant as the dawn; but it is never satisfied; it is never satisfying; because it whispers of precious things felt but not known; it hungers after the ultimate mystery; it thirsts for the secrets behind the sunset.

At one spot in this wood a young beech leapt from a rock, and the earth cushion which supported it hung over the river. A little precipice fell beneath to water’s edge, and the whole force of Meavy struck here and leapt on again, crested with light. It was a human haunt and suited well a soul who went between sadness and fitful happiness, who declared herself reconciled and contented, yet knew that it was not so. Hither Margaret often came and found a temple of peace. She brought sorrow and doubt here; and sometimes the glen lifted it; and sometimes she departed again not happier than she came.

To-day she sat with her back to the beech; and two others shared these precincts with her. One reclined at her feet; the other watched unseen.

Prospects of important employment kept David Bowden much from home at this season. The matter was now as good as accomplished and it appeared certain that, with the new year, he would leave Dartmoor and enter the service of a cattle-breeder at Tavistock. Such a position opened possibilities far better than the man could have expected at his present work. With mingled feelings Margaret contemplated the change; and she met with Crocker on two or three occasions at this period during her husband’s prolonged absence. She made no secret of these appointments, yet it came about that one most vitally interested did not always hear of them; because Rhoda had of late lapsed into a very saturnine vein and eschewed converse with her sister-in-law. Madge, therefore, judging that her affairs were of no consequence or interest to Rhoda, kept them to herself. They were at ’Meavy Cot’ alone together and, in all kindness, the wife had proposed that Rhoda should take this opportunity of David’s absence and herself visit Ditsworthy for a day or two. Mrs. Bowden had expressed a desire to this effect and the opportunity seemed good. But Rhoda curtly refused. Her dogs might be trusty guardians for the hearth and home of ’Meavy Cot’; but they could not guard the mistress of it or protect her from herself.

The elder woman stopped therefore, and, the more suspicious for this invitation to depart, watched in secret.

She was watching now, while Margaret and Bartley, under the beech, sat close together and talked like kind-hearted children about the welfare of another person. He had great information for her and promised to lift a sustained cloud of darkness from her mind.

"What’ll you give me for the best piece of news you’ve heard this year?" he asked; and she replied that she had nothing in the world to give anybody but good-will.

"If I could give you Rhoda, I would," she said; "but nobody can give her to you save herself."

"I’ve made a great discovery--or so good as made it," he answered. "’Twas out of Tim Mattacott of all people that I got a clue. Him and Maunder are well-meaning, harmless men, and in the bar--at Shillabeer’s--three days ago--I heard them talking together. They were at my elbow and I couldn’t help listening to a few words. After that I didn’t blame myself for listening to a few more. It’s all about your brother Bart and Jane West, and your mother."

"Whatever do you mean?"

"Why, there’s been a plot, and I’m after the ringleader. I may or may not find him, but one thing is clear, and that’s all that matters. Somebody--not Mattacott himself but a friend of his--has tried to help him to get Jane West away from Bart."

"It looks as if they had succeeded too," said Margaret; "for Bart tells me the girl won’t say ’yes’ and won’t say ’no.’"

"There it is! ’Twas a deep idea to stop her once and for all. How, d’you think? By letting her hear the Voice of Crazywell call out Bart’s name! ’Twas planned very clever that she and Bart should actually hear it on Christmas Eve; and they would have done so, but for the fog that kept ’em to the road. Instead, as luck would have it, your mother of all people, hears the Voice. And now, as far as I can gather, those in the secret--or some of them--hearing how she’s taking on, begin to be a bit uneasy--as well they may."

"Oh, Bartley!"

"’Tis true; but we must go to work witty and catch the sinner himself. ’Sinner’ I call him, yet that’s too strong a word belike. All that really matters is for you to tell your mother ’twas nonsense, and that a man lay hid by the pool, and that ’twas never meant to fret her to fiddle-strings about it."

Margaret jumped to her feet.

"Sit down," he said. "Can’t let you off like this before I’ve been here two minutes. We’ll go up over to Coombeshead together presently. Must talk a bit first. An hour more or less won’t make no difference to your mother."

She sat by him and put her hand on his arm. Then she bent and kissed his hand impulsively.

"You’ve paid me after all!" he laughed.

"I’d give you your heart’s desire and the keys of heaven, if I could," she answered. "This is the best fortune that’s come to me for many, many a long day; and I bless you for bringing it."

"Thought you’d be pleased. But tell ’em to say nought yet. I’m putting my mind into it, for I’ve got nothing to do now but twiddle my thumbs and wait till I can decently go to her--Rhoda--for the third and last time of asking. I doubt ’tis a vain thing, though. She likes me less and less, I believe."

"I hope not; but this I know: she likes me less and less."

"You!"

"Yes--for reasons I can’t fathom. Either that, or she’ve got some deep matter on her mind that keeps her more than common silent. With David away the nights be cruel. Sometimes ’tis all I can do to help crying out and begging her, for pity, to open her mouth. I get off to bed so soon as I can; and so like as not, when I’m gone up, she’ll go abroad again and keep out, Lord knows where, till long after midnight."

"I don’t call it respectable," said Bartley, shaking his head with pretence of disapproval. "I really don’t, Madge. I wish I could meet her on one of these moony walks. Perhaps she’d listen to reason then--if she didn’t set her pack of dogs on me!"

"’Tis hard to live so close to a fellow-creature and understand her so little."

"I understand her well enough--if she’d only believe it," he said.

For a moment they lapsed into silence. Then he plucked a long grass-blade and began to tickle her ear. She shook her head and laughed. A bright thought came to her mind.

"I heard by letter from David this morning. The matter’s settled. He’ll be bailiff of the great breeding farm--everything under him--the actual head man under the master. I feel very proud about it, for it shows how high the people rate him."

"And well they may. You could trust him with the Bank of England. Never was such a dead straight, lofty-minded man in the world before."

"I like you to praise him. He thinks such a lot of you. He’s even been at Rhoda about you too."

"What will she do if you go to Tavistock? I reckon ’tis the thought of that more than me, or anything else, is making her down on her luck."

"I was hopeful ’twould perhaps turn her more to you. She could never live in Tavistock."

"No," he said, "that’s a certainty. She wants more room than a town can give her. You’re right, Madge: this must make her think a bit more of me. Canada, or here, or the North Pole--’tis all one to me if she’ll come. And if she says ’no’ again, then I’m off alone--to the Dominion. Why I’m drawn that way I hardly know. But I am."

"Third time’s lucky. How I hope it will be!"

"If she cared for me, even half as much as you do, I’d win her."

"If she knew what a rare good chap you are, you’d win her, or any woman."

"You’re always too easy with me," he said. "Lucky you didn’t marry me: you would have spoilt me utterly--not that there was much to spoil. Yet I daresay we should have jogged along very comfortable."

"Who knows? Perhaps none too well, Bartley."

"Perhaps not. We’re too much alike," he declared.

"In many things we are."

"But the weak help the weak. You’ll see a pair of bryony stems twirl round each other, and so do far better and go farther than ever they could single-handed."

"’Twould be the blind leading the blind--you and me together. The oak’s more good to the ivy than anything soft like itself."

"Pity I haven’t a bit of David’s iron in me," he confessed.

"It is," she admitted. "A pity I haven’t too."

"And a pity he haven’t got a bit of my--"

She nodded strong assent.

"That’s pity too," she said. "That’s what I’ve wished many and many a time--just like a silly creature to wish what can’t be. ’Tis worse than a child crying for the moon to want a man’s nature changed."

"Yet half the people spend their time wanting the other half to change," he told her.

Again there was a pause and then he spoke.

"So long as it’s well with you, I don’t care."

"Well enough--if I could see it," she said.

"If you could see it!"

"I mean if I could feel it."

"If you don’t feel it, then ’tisn’t well."

"It can’t be well because we’ve got no family. ’Tis a grievance--and a just grievance. But yet ’tis well with me none the less, Bartley. The real way to be happy is never to look at home too much. Perhaps, better still, never to look at home at all. By ’home’ I mean a person’s own heart. Keep out of that and always be busy for other people. Then you haven’t time to be miserable."

He shook his head.

"We’ve all got time for that; there’s always the night," he answered. "Nature gives us the night time for sleep, and life takes a big slice out of it for trouble."

"I ought to understand him by now. But ’tis the ups and downs I never can get used to," she explained. "My dear man will be a husband in a thousand now and again, and I’ll thank God in my prayers and say to myself as he understands my poor feeble nature at last, and that we never shan’t see a cloud again; then he’s off and hidden away behind himself for months at a time, and I can’t win a smile from him or hardly a good word."

"He’s so ambitious."

"No doubt ’tis that. ’Twas Rhoda herself got him into his good way last time; and a right glad week we had of it. Then there came all this over his mind. Somehow he can’t bring himself to ask my advice over anything bigger than his own clothes. He lets me choose them, bless him. That’s something."

"And jolly smart he always looks. But mind this, Madge, you talk of ups and downs. That’s no hardship--’tis the natural, healthy state, like the ebb of the river in summer drought and the seasons coming round one after the other. You can’t have ups without downs, and if you want one you must brave the other."

"I don’t want neither," she said. "I’d sooner far we kept at a steady jog-trot and got closer to each other every year we lived, and saw with the same eyes, and felt with one heart."

"Things balance out pretty fair. That sort be comfortable, but ’tis terrible tame work. If you don’t fall out, you never make it up, and my experience of females is that almost the best part of the fun with ’em is making it up. They like it as much as we do too."

"Marriage is different."

"Nought keeps the air of marriage sweeter than a good healthy breeze now and again."

"You talk as one outside. You know nothing at all about it!"

"I’ll kiss _you_ in a minute--and not on the hand neither!" he laughed. "And ’twill be for punishment, not payment, if you can say such hard things to me. No, I’m not married, worse luck; but you oughtn’t to throw it in my face like that, for ’tis no fault of mine, I’m sure."

"I’d be happier than any woman ever was on Dartmoor, I do think, if she’d take you."

"You’ve done all you could--so’s David. But there’s no more in your power. If I can’t rise to the skill to win her, then so much the worse for me."

"Come and do a kind thing," she said suddenly. "Come and explain to my dear mother this wonder you’ve found out. Nobody but you ever would have been so clever as to do it."

"And may I come home and have supper with you and Rhoda afterwards as a reward?"

"And welcome," she answered.

"There’s a moon and everything. I wish to God she’d let me go out walking in the dark with her afterwards."

"Perhaps she might. She took walks with Mr. Snell."

"Not by moonlight? No--no, ’tis all waste of time and hope and sense. But, good Lord! if she’s so frosty under the summer sun, what must she be in moonlight? Freezing cold enough to make a man’s heart stand still!"

"Perhaps ’tis all the other way and the dark hours soften her," suggested Margaret.

They rose and she brushed his back, which was covered with scraps of leaf and moss.

Presently they moved away together towards Coombeshead; and then from her lair in a brake fifty yards distant, Rhoda departed to return home. Their speech had been entirely hidden from her, but their actions were all observed; and their actions, unlit by the spirit that informed them, left her soul dark.

Mr. Crocker, on second thoughts, decided that he would not sup at ’Meavy Cot’ until David came back, and Madge went her way alone after bringing large comfort and peace to Mrs. Stanbury. She was full of the incident when she came back to Rhoda, and gave her silent and sceptical listener the true account of the meeting by Meavy.

*CHAPTER IX*

*DARKNESS AT ’THE CORNER HOUSE’*

As time advanced even the least observant took note of an increasing gloom that hung over Reuben Shillabeer. It fluctuated but set steadily in upon him. He grew more silent and more fanatical where matters of religion formed the topic. He talked of giving up ’The Corner House.’ He declared that had it been in his power, he would long since have emulated the bold Bendigo and preached to his fellow men.

"I can’t do that, along of having no flow of words," said Mr. Shillabeer moodily. "Speech in the pulpit manner have been denied to me. All the same, I may have done more for the Lord than any of you men know about."

He addressed a Saturday night bar and reduced most of those who listened to an embarrassed silence.

"’Tis things like that we don’t expect and have a right to object to in a public house," declared Mr. Screech afterwards. "We come here for peace and quietness and a pint. At this rate ’the Dumpling’ will very soon want to end the evening with a prayer meeting; and I for one shall be very glad when he goes and us get a cheerfuller pattern of publican there."

Many were of Billy’s mind. Two potmen in succession left ’The Corner House’ owing to the depressed atmosphere of that establishment; the regular guests held serious meetings to discuss the situation. Some were for strong measures; others held the evil must soon cure itself.

"Either the poor soul will go melancholy mad and have to be taken from among us--and ’twill ask for half a dozen strong men to do it--or else the cloud will pass off," explained Mr. Moses. "Be it as ’twill, we can’t go on like this. I advise that we wait till the turn of the year; and then, if nothing happens, we’ll make a regular orderly deputation, with me and Mr. Bowden as ringleaders, and wait upon Sir Guy Flamank and explain to him that ’The Corner House’ under Shillabeer isn’t what it should be."

"’Twould be better far," Ernest Maunder had said, "if the man would be as good as his word and retire. If we can urge him without unkindness to do so, he might get calmer and easier in his mind in private life."

"Not him," prophesied Screech. "Take the life and company and stir of the bar from him, and he’d become a drivelling old mump-head in six months. As ’tis he may be seen half a dozen times in a week sitting on his wife’s grave, when he ought to be to work in his house."

"Mr. Merle have said the same," admitted Charles Moses. "To me the man said it. ’I don’t like to have poor Shillabeer in the churchyard so often,’ was his word. ’Tisn’t seemly for the people to observe him with his hand over his face and his hat off beside him sitting there. To display his grief in this manner, after nearly fifteen years, is not true to nature, and I feel very alarmed about it.’ That was what his reverence said to me; and I answered that he echoed my very thought."

"The man wants to be lifted to more wholesome ideas," declared Mr. Maunder. "Nobody can say of me that I’m against the Bible; but there’s times and seasons--a time for everything and everything in its time--as the Book says itself, I believe; but he thrusts Scripture into conversation and peppers talk with texts till free speech be smothered. He ought to go--to say it without feeling."

And meantime the anti-social instinct in Shillabeer, filtering by secret ways through the old man’s brain, took another turn and led him upon a road none had foreseen. Vaguely at first he glimpsed it, and on his declining years a dark short cut to peace suddenly yawned.

The first glimpse of this haunting evil that now crept upon the old prize-fighter was revealed to a woman; and on the occasion Mr. Shillabeer not only shocked her with a thought, but astonished her by a confession.

First, however, there came dark words between them, as happens at the meeting of unhappy and restless spirits. Then Margaret Bowden, for it was she, learnt the man’s simple secret. It argued some unexpected cunning in him that he could have pursued his purpose and also hidden it; and the circumstance taken in conjunction with the present theme, made her fear for his sanity. Not the subject so much startled her as its existence in this particular man’s brain. She listened, was surprised to find how reasonable his arguments seemed, yet strove with all her wits to refute them.

One day on his way back from Princetown Mr. Shillabeer noted the smoke rising from ’Meavy Cot’ under Black Tor. He had never seen David Bowden’s home and the opportunity was a good one. He left the main road, therefore, and soon reached the house. David happened to be away, and Rhoda was also out. But Margaret made the visitor welcome, hastened the hour of tea-drinking, and insisted that he should stop for it.

"As nice a house as one might wish for," he said. "And I’d like to say that I’m among them that wish all joy and good fortune and good luck to your husband. He’s one of the fortunate ones, and well he deserves to be. I suppose it won’t be long now afore he takes up the new work?"

"We go after the winter," she answered.

"A position of great trust. ’Tis wonderful to me to think that when I first come to Sheepstor he was a little fellow in a lamb’s-wool coat, as wanted his mother’s hand to help him over the rough ground. And I’ve lived to see him rise into manhood, and show his valour in the ring, and take a wife, and now stand up among leading people and rise to be the right hand of one of the richest personages in the county."

"Very wonderful, as you say. Yet not wonderful neither. ’Tis David that is wonderful--not the things as happen to him. Given such a man, he was bound to get up top."