Part 28

"I shall be there afore you are. ’Tis beautiful to be there first of all, to welcome all the rest as they come in one after t’other, like homing pigeons. If they only knowed ... if they only knowed how dearly I’ve loved ’em all--Rhoda, too. I tried so hard to make her a happy woman. But they will come to know at journey’s end. And she’ll know then. ’Twill all be burning light then, with nothing hid and the last heartache lifted."

They took their basket and crept off. In the dark they stopped and listened. She was singing.

"Never knowed her like that afore," said Richard. "I’ve a good mind to take back a biscuit for her and chance what they’ll say. She’s terrible leery[#] and terrible queer."

[#] Hungry.

"Us had better get home and tell about her."

They pushed on for a quarter of a mile, and then Samson had another idea.

"We’m nearer ’Meavy Cot’ than anywheers," he said. "Us had better go and tell David. ’Tis his job to look after Madge, I should think--him being her husband."

"’I’m cruel tired," answered Richard; "and as ’tis we shall catch it pretty hot for being such a deuce of a time."

"’We’ll leave the basket here, and just run down and then come back for it. And as to catching it, we shall catch it worse if we don’t tell David, and he comes to hear about it after Madge has sloped off."

"You go, and I’ll bide here and keep guard over the basket," suggested Dick; but Samson would not have this.

"No," he answered firmly, "I’m not going without you. You know very well us can’t do nought apart."

They left the basket on the top of a wall and turned back and reached ’Meavy Cot.’ Then they told David that Madge was by Crazywell, and much to their disappointment, he seized his hat and rushed from the house before they had time to give any description of their remarkable conversation with her. Rhoda was not in, and finding themselves alone, the boys sought the larder and ventured to eat heartily. Then they went on their way, cheered at consciousness of well-doing and the reward of well-doing.

All that David had heard was how his brothers had met with Madge by Crazywell. More he did not stop to learn; and when some time afterwards he stood by the pool, tramped its shores and shouted Margaret’s name until the hollowed cup of the little tarn echoed, he judged that the children had been mistaken in the darkness and imagined that some other was Madge. Because he saw no sign of her and heard no answer to his cries. For a time he wandered through the night and splashed along the fringes of the pool; then he abandoned the search, groped his way upwards, and returned home.

His wife, however, had been within sound of his voice. Through the locked portals of a sleeping ear his cries had reached and wakened her. When Samson and Richard were gone, she sang a hymn about the joys of heaven; and then nature made a sudden and imperious appeal for sleep. She had not slumbered for forty hours, and now, succumbing swiftly, lay down under the gorse and sank into oblivion.

Anon her husband’s voice reached her brain, and roused her consciousness. His loud summons, filtering through the sleep-drenched avenues of her brain, begot happy dreams therein. She smiled and wakened. Then she heard him calling in the darkness, and sudden terrors bound her hand and foot. His voice, lifted in deep anxiety, to her seemed laden with wrath. Her dismantled mind hid the truth and turned the man’s cry into a sinister threat. Therefore she cowered motionless, breathless, like a bird that sees a hawk at hand, until he was gone, and silence returned.

She slept no more, but it was not until midnight that her wounded intellect again roused itself. Then chance, quickening propensities that had for ever remained asleep in another environment, swept the woman to action.

*CHAPTER XIV*

*DAVID AND RHODA*

Dawn brought forth a wonder in the sky and lighted accumulations of little clouds that ranged in leagues under highest heaven. Like flakes of mother-o’-pearl upon a ground of aquamarine the cirri were evenly and regularly disposed. Seen horizontally, perspective massed them until they hid the firmament, but overhead the pale interstices of space appeared. Like a ridged beach at low tide was the sky--like a beach at break of day when morning twinkles, between bars of wave-woven sand and touches the transparent green water there. A glory irradiated heaven, and each of the myriad cloudlets moving above the sunrise was streaked upon its breast with amber. Then the herald light fell from them into earth-born mists beneath.

These phenomena were reflected in the eyes of Reuben Shillabeer; and for a moment they roused within him thoughts of the gates of pearl and the streets of gold that belonged to the haven of his hopes. He had risen before day, and now moved across the Moor with his mind steadily affirmed. The journey concerning which Margaret had babbled to her husband’s brothers, this old man now meant to make. But he had hidden his secret close, and those who knew him best supposed that his mind had entered a more peaceful and contented road of late. They were right. After decision came great calm. His affairs were in order; his work was finished. He walked now as one who had already taken his farewells of the earth and all that belonged to it. The sky pleased him with its splendour, for it promised happiness. He thought of his wife and supposed her behind the dawn, moving uneasily, eagerly, full of excitement and joy, counting the minutes that still separated him from her. He was going up to Crazywell to drown himself.

On his way the man stood still before one of his own messages. Black along the top bar of a gate, a text confronted him: the same that had led Bart Stanbury to hasten his proposal of marriage.

"_Now is the accepted time._"

The old prize-fighter was well satisfied at this omen. He tramped through mist and over frost-white heaths among the ruined lodges of the stone men; he breasted the gorse-clad hill above Kingsett, and presently stood and looked down into the cup of the pool, and saw the fire and flame of the morning sky mirrored sharply there. A thin vapour still softened the reflections from above and hung about the water, and a scurf of ice lay round the edges of Crazywell. The place was deserted. Winter had made a home here and darkness of sleeping vegetation encompassed all, save for the silver frost and the splendour of the sky above. Heath, furze, grass, alike slumbered.

Shillabeer was panting with his exertions. Now, very cautiously he trusted his huge body on a path winding down to the water, and presently he stood at the brink of the pool and trod the sandy beach. Crazywell was supposed to be of fabulous depth; tradition declared that all the ropes from the belfry of Walkhampton church had not plumbed it. Reuben reflected upon this story. "No call to sink so deep as that," he thought. "Please God; come presently, they’ll fetch me out and let me lie beside her; not that it matters much where they put this here frame, so long as the thinking soul be joined to she. Still--till Doom--I’d like to bide with her; and I hope parson will be large-minded enough to allow it."

For some little time he walked beside the water, then suddenly addressed himself to action.

"’Tis no good messing about," he said aloud. "I’ve got to go through the pinch, and the sooner ’tis over the better."

He took off his coat and hat, moistened his hands with his tongue, as one about to do some hard work, clenched his fists, snorted like a bull, and plunged in up to his knees. He felt his boots sinking upon the mud, but the water was still shallow. Not far distant at the edge of the pool, on the further side, a great stone rose. "I’ll drop in off that," said the man; "’twill throw me out of my depth and make a quicker job of it."

He emerged, walked round the margin of Crazywell, and clambered on to the stone. Beneath it, where the water was more than four feet deep, light fell full and radiant, and made all crystal-clear.

Shillabeer was about to jump when he found himself not alone. Separated from him only by the smooth surface of the pool, there appeared a fellow-creature. A woman seemed to be looking up quietly at him from beneath.

The recent past, forgotten since he had slept, turned back upon him and he remembered that Margaret Bowden was missing on the previous night. He glared down at her now.

"Well might they fail to find you!" he said. "Poor lamb--her of all women! Whatever should take her in the water? And how long have she been there?"

He forgot his own purposes absolutely. He lowered himself into the pool until his feet were at her side. Then he drew a long breath, dived in his arms and head and groped round till he held her. A touch brought her to the surface: in the water she weighed nothing; it was only afterwards, when he dragged her out, that he found even his strength only equal to carrying her body to the bank.

How long she had been dead he knew not; but her face he found not unhappy. It was impossible to bear her single-handed to her home, and Shillabeer now climbed out of the cup and started to the adjacent farm of Kingsett. But he marked a man by the leat and he shouted to him and attracted his attention.

Twenty minutes later Simon Snell and the innkeeper carried Margaret Bowden between them on a hurdle. Mr. Shillabeer’s coat covered the corpse. They proceeded slowly and at last came in sight of ’Meavy Cot.’

"I’ll go so far as the wicket," said Snell; "but no further. I couldn’t face that chap--not with this load."

"’Tis I that have been told off for the purpose. ’Tis I that have found her, though ’pon a very different errand, I assure you. Yet not different neither, Simon, for I went to meet death; and when I looked down in the water, there was death, sure enough, glazing up at me."

"And yet just as if she was no more than sound asleep--poor young woman--save for the blueness," said Mr. Snell.

"And so she looked, poor creature, when first I seed her. But death be the name for sleep under water."

"What was you doing up over, ’Dumpling’?"

"There again! The ways of the Lord be past finding out, Simon. My wife waiting at the golden gate--waiting and watching for the sight of a certain man--namely me--and instead this young Margaret comes along."

"My word!" said Mr. Snell. "Was you going for to make away with yourself, Mr. Shillabeer? Please don’t say so, for I’ve had as much as I can stand this morning. I’m quivering to my innermost inwards."

"I was going to do it; but not now--not now. Abraham found a ram in a thicket, you’ll remember; I find a woman in the water. The Lord works with strange tools, Snell."

"Without a doubt He do; and here’s the gate. I’ll take her no further. David Bowden can come out and lend a hand hisself now."

"And you’d best to let it be known far and wide," said Shillabeer. "And doctor ought to see her, though of course no good. Still ’tis the fashion. And crowner will sit--here’s the man!"

David Bowden appeared and Simon Snell ran away. For a moment Shillabeer set himself between the dead and living.

"’Tis I found her--Madge. She’s gone to glory--she’s drownded herself--dead. Lord’s will, David."

"Found! Thank God--where?" asked the husband. He had only heard the word ’Madge.’

"If you can thank God, ’tis a good thing, Bowden. ’Twas long afore I could, when this happened to me," answered the other. "Come. She’s here--behind the edge of the wall. ’Twas the best I could do."

David had passed him, and when Shillabeer turned, the husband knelt beside the hurdle. A moment later he tore at the clothing of the corpse and pressed his hand over her heart.

"Us must go for doctor as a matter of form, and he’s at Princetown to-day--his day there from eleven o’clock till two--so I’ll traapse up over and tell him to call. And I’ll ax you for a dry shirt afore I start, poor man."

"She’s dead!" said Bowden.

"And cold. There’s nought in all nature so cold as them that die by drowning. But you must think of her as far ways off from here."

"Dead--dead. God help me!"

He rose to his feet and stared down.

"You take it wildly, same as I did," remarked the elder. "When my wife died, ’twas all three strong men could do to tear me off her. And when the two old women comed to do what was right, I nearly knocked their grey heads together, for I said, in my mad way, what business had them to live to grey hairs and my wife die afore a lock was touched by time? Brown her hair--pale brown to the end. Let me help you. She’m water-logged--poor blessed creature."

Margaret Bowden was brought to her little parlour and laid upon the sofa.

David said nothing; Shillabeer maundered on.

"Like a dog on a grave you’ll be, my poor David. And time’s self will find it hard to travel against your heart. You’ll dare him to push on. I know--I know. And to think that I’d have been back with her--my own wife--but for this. Ess fay! Crazywell would have me if it hadn’t had she. But you mustn’t speak about that. One be taken and t’other left."

"She killed herself!" burst out the other man suddenly. "Mark me--this was no accident. She took her own life--and to think that I was there calling to her and she past hearing by then."

"Yes, she went her way. She knowed, I suppose--but what did she know? Weren’t she useful no more? ’Tis only failure of usefulness allows this deed."

"Useful! What have I done? God knows what I’ve done. ’Tisn’t me--’tisn’t me, I tell you--there’s nought between us and never was--nought but faithful love. There’s another have done it--some other--and I shall never know--and her dead. Is she dead? Maybe there’s a flicker in her yet, if we only knowed what to do."

"Don’t distress yourself," said Shillabeer; "only Christ could raise her from the dead. I know death. She was lying like a woman asleep under the water. She’s dead enough, and as a thinking man who knows trouble very close, I’ll tell you for why. ’Tis along of’ being childless--all because she had no child."

"What folly and wickedness to think so! If I didn’t mind--why should she?"

"But they all mind, and the less sense, the more they take on. It was just the same with mine; and only her large belief that God couldn’t make no mistakes kept her quiet."

"Go--go!" suddenly cried David. "Who am I to bide here talking to you, and that woman dead behind the door?"

"I will go--this minute--’tis natural and quite proper, poor David, that you feel like this. Break away from man you must; but don’t break away from God. Kneel beside her body and pray your heart out. ’Tis the only thing will keep your brain steady. Work and pray--work like a team of bosses and pray like a team of saints. Out of kindness I say it. I’m gone-- She saved my life, mind. You must let me share the praying, for by God’s grace her death kept me alive. A pity you might say, poor man, in your black misery and ignorance. But God knew which was wanted most. I must live--He only knows why; and this young lovely thing, in full joy of health and happiness, must cut her thread. ’Tis too much to expect we can understand; but we ban’t expected to understand all that happens. I tell you the longest life ban’t long enough to explain the way of God to man, David. Now fetch me a wool shirt while I draw off this one. Then I be going to catch doctor. And I must look at her once more."

He went into the other room and David, having brought him a dry garment, followed him.

"A picture of a happy creature," said Reuben, as he stripped to the waist and dried his huge body. "Remember that. This be only a perishing bit of clay now, David--blue-vinnied, you see--ready to sink into earth--but Madge--a very different tale. A lovely, shining angel is she singing over our heads, along with my wife and all the good dead women. You keep that in mind and say no more cruel words against Heaven than you can help. They will out, but fight ’em down, same as I did."

A few minutes afterward Shillabeer went away; but he was still talking aloud to himself, rolling his head and waving his arms.

Then David, left alone, strove wildly for some faint sign or promise that his wife was not dead. He stripped her, fetched blankets, lighted a fire, thrust hot bricks to her feet, and strove to warm her body. Thus he laboured only that he might be doing something, and through physical exertion cheat mental torture. He knew that all efforts were vain, and presently he abandoned them, left his wife in peace, and went into the kitchen and sat down there.

Nobody came to him for some hours. Then the doctor arrived, expressed deep sympathy, and promised to see those in authority. He departed in less than half-an-hour and the man was left alone again.

Two women came presently, did their office for the dead, and went away again.

Bowden’s thoughts rose and fell like an ebbing and flowing sea. They wearied him and sank away, leaving his mind a drowsy blank; then, with a little rest, intellect gripped the catastrophe once more and the tide of suffering flowed and overwhelmed his spirit. He connected Rhoda with this event. The more he considered the more he suspected that something terrible must have happened between the women. He went several times to the door to look for Rhoda. But she did not come.

She had taken her nightly way with the search parties and at dawn she was in Sheepstor. There, too weary to return home, she had gone to the wife of Charles Moses and slept in her house. For several hours they had not wakened her, but suffered her to sleep on. She rose a little before midday; and then she heard that Bartley Crocker had left England very early on the previous morning, about the same time that her sister-in-law disappeared.

All search for Margaret had proved fruitless and news of her death did not reach Sheepstor until Rhoda left it. Several met her and asked for news, but none knew the truth. She believed now that the facts were clear and she strung herself to tell her brother what had doubtless happened.

At dusk she returned to ’Meavy Cot’ and found David, with his head on the kitchen table, fast asleep. Outside it was growing dark and some chained, ravenous dogs were barking loudly; inside all was silent.

David slumbered uneasily owing to his position, but his sister hesitated to wake him. First she mended the fire and made tea. She drank to fortify herself. Then she went out, fed the dogs, and loitered until darkness gathered upon the earth. Then she came in and lighted a lamp. Still her brother slept. She reviewed the words that she must speak, and then she wakened him.

Reluctantly, irritably, he returned to consciousness and stared at her.

"What the devil--?" he said; then he rubbed his eyes and yawned.

"Take a dish of tea," she said. "I’m back. There’s no news of her yet, but I believe--"

Slowly he began to connect his thoughts and link himself up with life again.

"I believe--I’m afraid I know--I’m almost certain I know."

"What do you know?" he asked. Then the truth returned to him in a wave that submerged him.

"My God, my God!" he cried out.

"’Tis bitter enough, but maybe the best that could have happened--for you, David."

Rhoda arrested him. She was looking straight into his face.

"Make yourself clear," he said. "What do you know--or what do you think you know? What’s done be done, anyway."

"’Tis done---and better done, since it had to be."

"What do you know?" he repeated harshly. "Don’t beat about. How much do you know? D’you know why? What’s the reason? I can’t go on with my life till I know who have done it. She never did, I’ll swear to that. ’Twas forced upon her from outside."

"Maybe I can’t tell you more than you’ve found out for yourself, if you speak so," she answered. "Yet ’twas she and only she could have done it. None else had the power to."

"Stop!" he cried out. "Don’t play no more with words, if you don’t want to see me go mad afore your eyes. Speak clear and tell me exactly what’s in your head. I can’t stand no more cloudy speeches. My mind’s a frozen fog. If you’ve got the power to throw one ray of light, then do it. Light, I say--but there’s no more light for me in this world now."

"Don’t speak like that, David. Who can tell? Say nothing till time works its way. If I hurt to heal, forgive me; and if I’m wrong, I’ll beg for you to forgive me. But I’m not wrong. It all joins together very straight and smooth. She’s gone beyond finding, else they’d have found her by now."

"Gone beyond finding."

"Surely. There’s not a brake or pit this side of Princetown, and not a house and not a ruin that some man haven’t hunted through and through for her. But they’ll have to hunt the ships of the sea afore they’ll find your wife that was. She’s gone---she went the same time that Bartley Crocker went--to an hour. Oh, David, she’s with him! Find him and you’ll find her. That’s the awful truth of it--clear--clear as truth can be, and ’tis the worst that have ever fallen to me that I had to tell you. But only I knew, and too well I knew through the bitter past."

He stared at her and laughed.

"What a clever woman you are--and so wonderful understanding!"

"She’s happy enough, if that’s anything. She’s got what she played for--she’s--"

His voice rose in a sudden yell.

"Leave her name alone! Don’t you take her name in your mouth again or I’ll silence you for evermore!"

"I’m not afraid," she answered. "I’m doing what God Almighty drives me to do. If I fail, I fail. I knew ’twas life or death. You can silence me when you please and how you please. And the sooner the better; for if you’re going to hate me, I’d want to die as quick as you can put me out of the way."

"Go on," he said quietly. "I’m sorry I roared. You needn’t fear me. Say what you want to say. Explain just what you think you know."

"I’ve said it. O’ Sunday night, when I came back from Ditsworthy, I spoke out to her. I couldn’t hold it in no more. ’Twas poisoning me heart and soul. I was going to tell you, but there came the boys and father’s sickness held my tongue. Then I met her--your wife with that man--Crocker--and he kissed her--God’s my judge if I don’t tell you truth. And that night I spoke to her and told her all I knew and all I’d seen. I’d watched them many a time--spied if you like--but only for you--only for your honour’s sake. And I taxed her with it--with being untrue to you."

He put up his hand and she was silent. He struggled to master himself and succeeded for one moment more.

"And what did she answer?"

"She denied it, but--"

"And Christ will deny you, you wretch!" he thundered out. "All’s clear--all’s clear now! You thought to damn her; but you’ve damned yourself--damned your own soul through the blazing eternity of hell!"

He leapt up and she faced him without flinching.

"I know what I know," she said.

"Then know a little more than you know!"

He seized her by the wrist and dragged her into the adjoining room. It was dark. Only blankets that covered the dead made a streak of pallid light in the gloom.

"With Crocker--eh? Happy--eh? Go there! Get on your knees, murderess--look under that blanket and then ax yourself whether your carcase be fit to feed dogs!"

She realised in a moment the thing that had happened. She moved the blanket; she touched; she recoiled; but she made no sound.

"Your work--your filthy, lewd work, to drive that angel of goodness to make an end of herself. She couldn’t breathe the same air with you no more. Murder, I say, if ever murder was. You--you--to think that you--behind my back--in my home-- You thrust her in the water--you held her down under it! Get out of my sight to hell--hide yourself--call the hills to cover you afore the decent world finds what you are and tears the flesh off your bones!"