Part 5

A fearful clatter ascended from long-legged fowls roosting on the cart, for their repose was roughly broken. They clucked and cried until Mrs. Stanbury, supposing a fox had descended from the lulls, hastened out to frighten it away.

Then she met Margaret and David--shame-faced, joyous.

"We’m tokened, mother!" cried the man; "and please God, I’ll be a dutiful second son to you."

"Thank you for that," she said. "Give you joy, I’m sure. And I’ll be proud to have you for a son; and may you never repent your bargain."

She put up her face to his and kissed him; and since he still held Madge by the waist, all three were thus, for an instant, united in a triple caress.

By chance some moments of happy magic in the sky smiled upon this incident, for the grey west broke at its heart above the horizon and little orange feathers of light flashed suddenly along the upper chambers of the air. The Hesperides--daughters of sunset--danced golden-footed on the threshold of evening, and their glimmering skirts swept earth also, set radiance upon Eylesbarrow and hung like a beacon of fire against the deep storm-purple of the east. Thrice this glory waxed and waned; then all light vanished; the colour song was sung; the day died.

Not observing these gracious phenomena upon Night’s fringes, the mother, the man and his maiden went in together.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*IN PIXIES’ HOUSE*

Various interests are served by the great bulk of Sheep’s Tor. Not only the colt and the coney prosper here and the vixen finds a place for her cubs, but man also avails himself of the hill in a manner little to be guessed. Battleships, swinging far off to adjust their compasses in Plymouth Sound, use the remote, ragged crown of the tor as a fixed point for determining the accuracy of their instruments; while once, if oral tradition may be respected, the stony bosom of the giant offered hiding in time of stress to a scion of the old Elford clan, lords of the demesne in Stuart days. This king’s man, flying for his life from the soldiers of Cromwell, hid himself in a familiar nook; and we may suppose the ’foreigners’ tramped Sheep’s Tor in vain, and perhaps stamped iron-shod over the rocks under which he lay safe hidden. To-day this cleft, called the Pixies’ House, can still be entered. It is of a size sufficient to contain two adults in close juxtaposition; but an inner chamber has fallen, and certain drawings, with which it was alleged the concealed fugitive occupied his leisure, have, if ever they existed, vanished away.

In the very bosom of the great south-facing rocky slope of Sheep’s Tor where the lichen-coated slabs and boulders are flung together in magnificent confusion, there may be found one narrow cleft, above which a mass of granite has been split perpendicularly. Chaos of stone spilled here lies all about, and numberless small crannies and chambers abound; but the rift alone marks any possible place of concealment for creature larger than dog or fox; and beneath it, invisible and unguessed, lies the Pixies’ House, one of the local sanctities and a haunt of the little people.

Here, two days after Margaret had accepted David Bowden, Bartley Crocker was walking with a gun. His goal lay up the valley and he hoped to shoot some snipe; but circumstances quite altered his intentions.

The day was one of elemental unrest and the clouds rolled tumultuous. They unrolled great planes of shifting gloom and splendour, of accidents of vapour that concealed and of light that illumined. But at mid-day a mighty shadow ascended against the wind and thunder rumbled along the edges of the Moor. The storm-centre spun about a mile off, then it drove in chariots of darkness over Sheep’s Tor.

At this moment Bartley remembered the Pixies’ House, and, hastening sure-footed over the wild concourse of stones that extended around it, he approached the crevice where it lay.

A woman suddenly caught his eye, and as the breaking storm now promised to be terrific, he called to her and, turning back, joined her.

It proved to be Rhoda Bowden on her way home, and she accepted Bartley’s offer of shelter.

"Something pretty bad’s coming," she said. "Be the Pixies’ House large enough for the both of us? I’ve got a bit of news you’ll be surprised to hear."

"Full large enough--quick--quick--down through there--let me have your hand."

But she accepted no help and soon crawled through the aperture into shelter. Then Bartley, taking two caps off the nipples of his gun, thrust it in after Rhoda and followed swiftly to avoid the onset of the storm.

They had acted with utmost speed and Rhoda was now aghast to find the exceeding propinquity of Mr. Crocker. He could hardly have been closer. She moved uneasily. It occurred to her that he ought to have surrendered the Pixies’ House to her and himself found shelter elsewhere. The idea, however, had not struck him.

"Can’t you make a little more room?" she asked, breathing rather hard.

"I wish I could, but it’s impossible. I forgot you were such a jolly big girl," he answered.

She set her teeth and waited for the outer darkness to lighten. The thunder roared and exploded in a rattle overhead; they heard the hiss and hurtle of the ice and water; while at intervals the entrance of their shelter was splashed along its rough edges with glare of lightning.

"Better here than outside," said Bartley; but Rhoda began to doubt it. It seemed to her that he came nearer and nearer. At last she asked him to get out and let her pass.

"Can’t stand this no more," she said, "I’m being choked. I’d sooner suffer the storm than this."

"You don’t want to go out, surely!"

"Yes, I do."

The lightning showed him her face very close to his, and he saw her round cheek, lovely ear and bright, hard eyes with a wild look in them, like something caught in a trap. The storm shouted to the hills and cried savagely against the granite precipices; it leapt over the open heaths and roared into the coombes and valleys. The waste was all a dancing whiteness of hail, jewelled ever and anon by the lightning.

Already the heart of conflict had passed and it grew lighter to rearward.

"You must wait a bit yet. Your people would never forgive me if I let you go into this."

She pushed forward, then strained back horrified, for she had accidentally pressed his face with her cheek. But Bartley was not built to stand that soft, firm appulse of woman’s flesh without immediate ignition.

"I must have one if I swing for it!" he said. Then he put his arms round her and kissed her.

He expected an explosion and found himself not disappointed. The thunder-storm outside was mild to the woman-storm within when Crocker thrust his caress upon this girl. She started back as though he had stamped a red-hot iron upon her face.

"You loathsome, godless wretch!" she shrieked out, and her voice broke the rocky bounds of earth and leapt into the storm. Thence frantically she followed it and trampled heavily on the amorous sportsman as she did so.

"I could tear the skin off my face!" she cried; and her words came deep and fierce and shuddering. "You coward! I’d sooner be struck by the lightning than have suffered it!"

She departed, running like a frightened child, and he crawled out after her and rubbed his bruised shins. Her nailed shoe had stamped on his hand, torn it and made it bleed; but his wound was light to hers. He was back in the shelter presently, laughing and smoking his pipe while the weather cleared; but she sobbed and panted homeward under the sob and pant of the storm. She felt unclean; every instinct of her nature rebelled against this touch of male lips. She magnified the caress into a mountain of offence; she held up her cheek that the rain which followed the hail might wash it and purge it from this man’s hateful blandishment. Passion got hold of her violated soul, and she would gladly have called down fire from the cloud upon Crocker.

He, meantime, waited a while, and wondered what thing it was she had meant to tell him. As yet none at Sheepstor knew of Margaret’s engagement, the great subject in Rhoda’s mind; but though he did not learn it from her, chance and his own act put the information into Bartley’s hand within that hour. This reverse with David’s sister altered his intentions and turned him towards another woman. He suddenly longed for a sight of Margaret, and, abandoning the thought of snipe, decided to go to Coombeshead and see her instantly. A still larger resolve lurked behind. Now bright weather-gleams of blue and silver opened their eyes to windward; the storm had gathered up its skirts of rack and flame into the central moor; a thousand gurgling rivulets leapt over the grass; the hail melted; the ponies turned head to wind again and went on grazing, while their wet sides steamed in a weak tremor of sunlight.

Bartley stepped forth, shouldered his gun and whistled to his dog, which had taken refuge near at hand and gone to sleep in a hole. Then he started over the Moor to his destination and his great deed.

Margaret was at home and came out to see him. His greeting amazed her, for it differed by much from what she expected. The girl doubted not that her friend had heard the news and had come to offer his congratulations; but he had not heard it, and he came to offer himself.

Mr. Crocker had toyed with this achievement for six weeks; and now the storm, and Rhoda, and certain uneasiness begot of Rhoda, and a general vague desire for something feminine as different as possible from Rhoda, together with other emotions and sensations too numerous to define, all affirmed his resolve.

He wasted no time, for he was full of desire for Madge and honestly believed that she cared for him. And in answer to his abrupt but impassioned plea, she assured him that she did care for him and that his welfare was no small thing to her.

"We’ve known each other ever since we was dinky boy and girl to infant school together; and I, with my managing ways, would oft blow your li’l nubby nose when it wanted it," she said, looking at him with shining eyes and in a mood emotional. "But with my David--yes, my David he is--well, ’twas love, dear Bartley, and we’m tokened. And I’m glad ’twas left for me to tell you, though ’tis terrible strange it should fall out at such a minute as this."

He stared and stammered and wished her joy. He was disappointed, but not by any means crushed to the earth. It only occurred to him that no other woman’s lips would that day destroy the flavour of Rhoda Bowden’s.

"Then what becomes of me?" he said; but not as though there were no answer to the question.

"You’ll get a better far," she replied.

"But you--you to go into that silent family--all so stern and proper. Think twice afore ’tis too late, Madge."

"I love them all," she answered. "But silent they surely are. I took my dinner along with them yesterday and, if it hadn’t been for Dorcas and me, they’d have gone without a word spoken from grace afore meat to thanksgiving after."

"Dorcas is cheerful enough."

"I like her--best after David," said Madge, a little nervously, as though she talked treason.

Then Mr. Crocker told of the storm and his companion in the Pixies’ House.

"Like a damned fool, just because her cheek happened to touch mine, I kissed her."

"Bartley!"

"Well you may stare. Lord knows what come over me to do it; but I got hell for my fun, and so like as not your David will have a bit more to say later on. Him and Rhoda are the wide world to each other. I suppose you know that?"

Margaret’s face clouded, but she was loyal.

"Rhoda’s a splendid woman, Bartley."

"She is. Now that you won’t take me, I believe I shall have a dash at her. But ’twill be a long year afore she forgives this day’s work."

He left Margaret soon afterwards and his depression of spirit steadily gained upon him as he returned home. At ’The Corner House’ he stopped and drank a while; then he got back to his mother and took a gloomy pleasure in shocking her pride with his news.

Nanny Crocker was sewing at the kitchen table when he returned, and his Aunt Susan brought a belated meal to him hot from the oven.

He looked at the food and then spoke.

"Can’t eat," he said. "I’ve had a full meal to-day a’ready."

"Was you in the storm?" asked Susan. "In the midst of all that awful lightning, with thunder-planets falling and a noise in the elements like the trump of Doom.--If the cat haven’t chatted in the pigs’ house! Her always brings six, so no doubt that’s the number."

"I’ve just come from asking Margaret Stanbury to marry me," said Bartley, showing no interest in the kittens. "That’s what I meant when I said I’ve had a full meal."

"At last!" cried Nanny Crocker. "Well, well, well--and what a day to choose, my dear! God bless you both, I’m sure. She’s a lucky girl and we must set to work now to teach her more than she’s been able to learn at home. Rise up and kiss me, my son."

Bartley obeyed with a sort of sardonic smile under his skin. His mother kissed him fervently and sighed.

"You didn’t ask twice, I lay," said Susan.

"No," he answered, "I didn’t."

"’Tis a terrible pity her mother’s such a chuckle-headed, timid creature," declared Nanny. "Not a word against her after to-day, of course. But I’m sorry she haven’t got larger intellects and don’t believe a little less."

"When is it to be, Bartley?" asked his aunt. "You’re not the sort to wait long, I reckon."

"It isn’t to be," he answered. "You two silly old souls run on so, and can’t imagine any woman turning up her nose at me. But unfortunately other people haven’t such a good opinion."

"Won’t have you!" gasped his parent. "A Stanbury won’t take a Crocker!"

"Madge Stanbury won’t take this Crocker--which is all that matters."

"The chit!" said Nanny.

"The ninnyhammer!" cried Aunt Susan.

"The sensible girl," answered Bartley. "She’s found somebody better--a man as stands to work and will make a finer fashion of husband than ever I should."

"How you can sit there and talk in that mean spirit passes me!" answered his mother. "Have a greater respect for yourself, and let that girl see to her dying day what a fool she’s been."

"Who is it? I suppose you got that much out of her?" asked Bartley’s aunt.

"It’s David Bowden from Ditsworthy, and they’ve been tokened two days, so, you see, I was a bit behind the fair."

"Nobody would blame her for changing her mind yet now you’ve offered yourself," declared Susan.

"She’s no wish to change. She likes me very well as a friend--always have since she used to blow my nose for me in infant school--but she likes him a long sight better--well enough to wed."

"She’ll change yet--mark me," foretold his aunt.

"My son have got his self-respect, I believe, Susan, and, change or not change, he’ll never give her another chance, I should hope. ’Tis done, and to her dying day she’ll rue it--as she well deserves. To put that rough rabbit-catcher afore--however, I thank God she did--I thank God she did; and I shall thank Him in person on my knees this night. Never, never was such an empty giglet wench heard of. A merciful escape without a doubt; for a fool only breeds fools."

"I may be her brother-in-law if I can’t be her husband," said Bartley; and then he departed and left the indignant and wounded old women to wonder what he might mean.

*CHAPTER IX*

*THE DOGS OF WAR*

The renowned Mr. Fogo, with the modesty of a man really great, arrived at Sheepstor in a butcher’s trap from Plymouth. He brought a box of humble dimensions, studded with brass nails; while for the rest, a very large umbrella, two walking-sticks and a cape of London pattern completed his outfit.

Reuben Shillabeer walked as far as Sheep’s Tor Bridge, and the two notable men met there and shook hands before numerous admiring spectators. Then the sporting butcher, who had driven Mr. Fogo from Plymouth, proceeded to Reuben’s familiar inn, while ’Frosty-face’ and the ’Dumpling’ made triumphal entry into the village together. The contrast between them could scarcely have been more abrupt. Shillabeer ambled with immense strides and heaving shoulders, like a bear on its hind legs, and his great, gentle face, set in its tawny fringe of hair, smiled out upon the world with unusual animation as he shortened his gait, crooked his knees somewhat and gave his arm to his friend. The notable Fogo was a good foot shorter than Reuben--a thin, brisk, clean-shaved man with eyes like a hawk, under very heavy brows, now quite white. His nose was sharp and thin; his mouth, a slit; his hair was still thick and white as snow. Fogo numbered seventy years, yet bore himself as straight and brisk as a youth. He was agile, thin and wiry; but a certain asperity of countenance, which had won him his nickname in the past, was now smoothed away by the modelling of time, and Mr. Fogo’s face, though keen, might be called amiable; though exceedingly wide-awake, revealed no acerbity of expression. His glance took in the situation swiftly.

"Crikey!" he said. "And you live here among all these trees and mountains and rocks! But I daresay, now, there’s pretty fishing in this river."

"Trout--nought else. And ’tisn’t the season for ’em. But a fisherman still, I see--eh? What a man! Not a day older, I warrant. And how did they serve you at Plymouth?"

"I’ve no fault to find with Plymouth," said Mr. Fogo. "They done me a treat there, and we had a pretty sporting house and a nice set-to in the new way with the mufflers. I got my boy through, but he’d have lost if I hadn’t been there. And now let me cast my eye over you, ’Dumpling.’ The same man; but gone in the hams, I see. You big ’uns--’tis always that way. Your frames can’t carry the load of fat. And so your lady has passed away to a better land. But that’s old history."

"No, it isn’t, Fogo," declared Mr. Shillabeer, his animation perishing. "’Twill never be old history so long as I bide in the vale; and I hope you’ll have a good tell about her many a time afore you leave me. But not to-day. We’ll talk about her in private--you and me--over a drop of something special."

"’Twas the weather killed her, I doubt," hazarded Mr. Fogo. "You couldn’t expect a London woman to stand so much fresh air as you’ve got down here. Why--Good Lord!--you breathe nought with a smell to it from year to year! There’s not a homely whiff of liquor or fried fish strikes the nose--not so much as the pleasant odour of brewing, or them smells that touch the beak Covent Garden way. Nought for miles and miles--unless it’s pigs; and that I don’t like, and never shall."

"Our air will make you terrible hungry, however," promised Mr. Shillabeer; "and by the same token we’d better get on our way, for there’s a goose with apple sauce and some pretty stuffing to welcome you."

That evening a very large gathering assembled in the public bar of ’The Corner House,’ and the men of Standing were introduced each in turn to Mr. Fogo. He had changed his attire and produced from the box of many nails a rusty brown coat, a shirt with a frill and black knee-breeches. Thus attired, he suggested some pettifogging attorney from the beginning of the century. He sat by the fire, smoked a clay and conducted himself with the utmost affability. He was, in fact, no greater than common men while ordinary subjects were under discussion. Only when the Prize Ring began to be talked about, did the aquiline and historic Fogo soar to his true altitudes and silence all listeners before the torrent of his discourse.

The visitor drank gin and not much of that. He was somewhat silent at first until Reuben explained his many-sided greatness; then, when the company a little realised the man they had among them, he began to talk.

"The Fancy always felt you was unlike the rest," said Shillabeer. "Even the papers took you serious. There was pugs and there was mugs; there was good sportsmen and bad ones, and there were plenty of all sorts else, but never more than one ’Frosty-face.’"

Mr. Fogo nodded.

"I can’t deny it," he said. "’Twas my all-roundness, I believe. Fight I couldn’t--not being built on the pattern of a fighting man, though the heart was in me; but I had a slice over my share of wits, and I’d forgot more about the P.R. than most people ever knew before I was half a century old."

"You must understand," said Shillabeer to his guests, "that Fogo always had letters stuck after his name, for all the world like other learned men. They was complimentary and given to him by the sporting Press of the kingdom."

"Quite true," said Fogo. "I was D.C.G., which stood for Deputy Commissary-General--the great Tom Oliver of course being C.-G. We had the handling of the stakes and ropes of the P.R. from the time that Oliver fought his last serious fight in 1821. He’s a fruiterer and greengrocer now in Chelsea, and a year or two older than me."

"Then you was--what was it--P.L.P.R.--eh?" asked the ’Dumpling.’

"I was and still am," returned ’Frosty-face,’ proudly. "P.L.P.R.--that’s ’Poet Laureet of the Prize Ring.’ And it may interest these gentlemen here assembled to know that many and many a time my poems about the great fights was printed in the sporting papers afore most of those present was born or thought of."

"I hope you’ve brought some along with you," said Reuben.

"Certainly I have--a sheaf of ’em. I never travel without them," returned the Londoner. "And when by good chance I find myself in a bar full of sportsmen of the real old sort, like to-night, I always say to myself, ’not a man here but shall have a chance of buying one of the poems on the great fights, written by old ’Frosty-faced Fogo.’"

"And you never fought yourself, Mr. Fogo?" asked David Bowden, who was of the company.

"Never in a serious way," answered the veteran. "There wasn’t enough of me."

"I can mind when you come very near a mill though," declared Shillabeer. "’Twas after the fight between Tim Crawley and Burke, and the rain was coming down cats and dogs."

Mr. Fogo lifted his hand.

"Let me tell the story, ’Dumpling.’ Yes, ’twas in 1830 at East Barnet, and ’the Deaf ’Un,’ as Burke was called, had Master Tim’s shutters up in thirty-three rounds. Then, afore I’d pulled up the stakes, if that saucy chap, Tommy Roundhead, the trainer, didn’t come on me with a lot of his bunkum. I was on the losing side that day and not in the best temper; but I let him go a bit and then gave him some straight talk; and ’Dumpling’ here will tell you that as a man of forty my tongue was as ready as my pen. Anyhow, I touched Roundhead on the raw and lashed him into such a proper passion that nothing would do but to settle it there and then in the old style. Tommy put down his five shillings and I covered it, though nobody knew ’twas the last two half-crowns I had in my fob at the time. But I was itching to have a slap at the beggar, and into the Ring I went and shouted for Roundhead. Raining, mind you, all the time--raining rivers, you might say. Well, up hops Roundhead, stripped to the buff and as thin as a dead frog; and when the people saw him in his skin and counted his ribs, they laughed fit to wake the churchyard. But thin though Tommy was, I knew right well that I was thinner. However, I cared nothing for that, and was just getting out of my togs, when some reporters and other chaps, having a respect for me as a poet and a man in a thousand, came between and wouldn’t hear of it.

"’What about my five bob?’ I said. ’D---- your five bob, "Frosty,"’ they said. ’Here’s ten.’ And so, without ’by your leave,’ they thrust me back into my clothes and dragged the arm out of my ’upper Benjamin’ in doing it. ’Twas just the world’s respect for me as a maker of verses, you might say, that kept me out of the Ring that day. So I soon had the true blue stakes up and went off with ’em; and the ropes and staples and beetle, and all the rest of it."