Chapter XII: Afterwards

The shock of Orphan Dinah's sudden action fell with severe impact in some directions, but was discounted among those of wider discernment. The mother of John had seen it coming; his father had not. In a dozen homes the incident was debated to Dinah's disadvantage; a few stood up for her--those who knew her best. In secret certain of John's acquaintance smiled, and while expressing a sympathy with him, yet felt none, but rather satisfaction that a man so completely armed at all points, so successful and superior, should receive his first dose of reality in so potent a shape.

The matter ran up and down on the tongues of those interested. His mother and sister supported Johnny in this great tribulation, the first with dignity, the second with virulence, hardly abated when she found herself more furious than John himself.

For after the first rages and intemperate paroxysms in which Jane eagerly shared, she fancied Johnny was cooling in his rage; and, such are the resources of human comedy, that anon her brother actually reproved Jane for some particularly poignant sentiments on the subject of Dinah. He had set her a very clear-cut example in the agonised days of his grief; but presently, to the bewilderment of Jane, who was young and without experience of disappointment, John began to calm down. He roughly shut up the girl after some poisonous criticism of Dinah, and a sort of alliance into which brother and sister had slipped, and into which Jane entered with full force of love for John and hate for Dinah, threatened to terminate.

Jane lessened nothing of her fervid affection for John, however, and it remained for another man to explain what seemed to her a mystery. He was not a very far-seeing, or competent person, but he had reached to the right understanding of Johnny's present emotion.

With Jerry Withycombe Jane fell in beside a track through the forest, where he was erecting a woodstack, and since their relations were of the friendliest and Jane, indeed, began to incline to Jerry, she had no secrets from him and spoke of her affairs.

"What's come to them I don't know," she said. "Father's plucking up again, and I can see, though Dinah's trying to get a place and clear out, that he'll come between and prevent it very likely. Mother's at him behind the scenes, but God knows what they say to each other when they go to bed. You'd think Dinah wouldn't have had the face to bide in the house a day after that wickedness; but there she is--the devil. And John ordered her to go, too, for he told me he had."

"It's your father," answered Jerry. "My sister was telling about it. Melindy says that Mr. Bamsey's troubled a lot, and though he knows Dinah has got to go, he's taking it upon himself to decide about where she shall go and won't be drove."

"I see through that; mother don't," said Jane. "Father only cares for Dinah really, and he thinks, in his craft, that very like, given time, things may calm down and her be forgiven. That's his cowardly view, so as he shall keep her. But nobody shan't calm down if I can help it. I won't live with the wretch, and so I tell John. Men ban't like us: they don't feel so deep. They're poor things in their tempers beside us. A woman can hate a lot better than a man. Why, even Johnny--you'd never believe it; but you'd almost think he's cooling a bit if it was possible."

"He is," answered Jerry. "And why not? What the hell's the good of keeping at boiling point over what can't be helped? Especially if, on second thoughts, you begin to reckon it can be helped."

"What d'you mean by that?" asked Jane.

"Why, you see John's a very determined sort of customer. He's never took 'no' for an answer from anybody, and he's got an idea, right or wrong, that a man's will is stronger than a woman's. I thought so, too, till I got to know what a rare will you've got. But there it is in a word; not two days agone I met Johnny, and he said where there was life there was hope."

Jane gasped.

"That's what be in his head then! That's what made him stop me pretty sharp when I was telling the truth about her?"

Jerry nodded.

"Very likely it might have been. In fact, he ain't down and out yet--in his own view, anyway. You see, as John said to Lawrence Maynard, and Maynard told me, 'If Dinah ain't got no other man in sight, she's what you may call a free woman still.' And I believe that John be coming round to the opinion that Dinah may yet live to see she was wrong about him."

Jane stared and her thoughts reeled.

"D'you mean to tell me that a man like my brother could sink to think again of a girl that had jilted him?" she flamed.

"Don't you turn on me," protested Jerry. "It ain't my fault men are like that. You know John better than I do. But it wouldn't be contrary to nature if he did want her still. A man in love will stand untold horrors from a woman; and though it may make you, looking on, very shamed for him--still, life's life. And I believe, if John thinks he can get Dinah back, he'll come down off his perch yet and eat as much dirt as she likes to make him."

"It's a beastly thought--a beastly thought!" cried Jane. "But he shan't--he never shall have her now if I can prevent it. I'd be a miserable woman if I had to suffer her for a sister-in-law now."

Jerry saw danger in this attitude.

"I always feel just like you feel," he said, "but for God's love, Jenny, don't you go poking into it. It's a terrible good example of a job where everybody had best to mind their own business. You let John do what he's minded to do. Men in love be parlous items, and if he's still that way, though wounded, then 'tis like a wild tiger a man have fired at and only hurt. He's awful dangerous now, I shouldn't wonder; and if he wants her still and counts to get her, God help anybody who came between. He'd break your neck if you tried to: that I will swear."

But Jerry was more perturbed at the vision he had conjured than Jane. For his information she was able to give facts concerning the other side.

"If that's what John's after, he's only asking for more misery then," she said. "I hope you're wrong, Jerry, for I should never feel the same to John if I thought he could sink to it; but anyway he needn't fox himself that she'll ever go back on it again. That much I'm positive certain. Cunning as she is, I can be more cunning than her, and I know all her sorrow about it and pretended straightness and honesty was put on. She weren't sorry, and she never was straight, and I've sworn before to you and will again, that she's got somebody else up her sleeve."

"Who then?" asked Jerry Withycombe.

"I can't tell you. Lord knows I've tried hard enough to find out; but I haven't--not yet. Only time will show. It's a man not worthy to breathe the same air with John you may be sure. She was too common and low ever to understand John, and his high way of thinking; and she'd be frightened to marry such a man, because she knows she'd always have to sing small and take a second place. She's a mass of vanity under her pretences."

"We all know you don't like her; and more don't I, because you don't," answered Jerry. "But if you are positive sure she'll never come round to Johnny again, it might be truest kindness to tell him so. Only for the Lord's sake do it clever. You may be wrong, and if there's a chance of that, you'd do far better to leave it alone."

"I'm not wrong; but all the same I shall leave it alone," said Jane. "What mother and me want is for her to get out of the house, so as we can breathe again. It's up to father, and father's going to have a bad time if he stands against mother."

"Dinah won't stop, whether your father wants for her to or not," prophesied Jerry.

But a few evenings after this meeting, the situation was defined for the benefit of Jane and her mother and, with Dinah out of the way at Ponsworthy, her foster-father endeavoured to ameliorate the existing strain. He had confided his difficulties to Arthur Chaffe and been counselled to speak plainly. Indeed, at his wish, the carpenter joined his circle and supported him.

Mr. Bamsey tried to conceal the fact that Arthur had come to help him, for his friend not seldom dropped in to supper; but on this occasion Faith felt aware of an approaching challenge and was not surprised when, after the evening meal, her husband led the conversation to Dinah Waycott.

"Arthur's my second self," he said, "and I know he'll lift no objection to listening, even if he don't see with our eyes."

"You needn't say 'our eyes,' father," replied Jane, quick to respond. "Me and mother----"

But her mother stopped her. Mrs. Bamsey was all for law and order.

"Listen, and don't talk till you're axed to," she said.

"Give heed to me," began Ben. "There's been growing up a lot of fog here, and Arthur, the friend that he be, was the first to mark it. He pointed it out to me, all well inside Christian charity, and what I want to do is to clear it off this instant moment, now while Orphan Dinah's out of the way. We stand like this. When she threw over Johnny, because her eyes were opened and she found she couldn't love him in a way to wed him, John ordered her out of Lower Town. Well, who shall blame him? 'Tweren't vitty they should clash, or he should find her here in his parents' home. She was instant for going, and though you think I withheld her from doing so, that ain't fair to me."

"You do withhold her, father," said Faith Bamsey quietly.

"No, I do not. I come to the subject of Dinah from a point you can't grasp. For why? She was left to me by my dead first as a sacred and solemn trust. Mind, I'm not letting my affection for Dinah darken my reason. I grant I'm very fond of her, and I grant what she's done haven't shook my feelings, because, unlike you, mother, I believe she's done right. My heart's bled for my own--for your great trouble and for John's. Nothing sadder could have come to shake John's faith, and for a time I was fearful for John. The devil always knows the appointed hour when a soul's weakest, and, coward that he is, 'tis in our worst moments, when life goes wrong and hope's slipping away, that he times his attacks. We all know that; and you remember it, Jane. For he forgets neither the young nor the old. But John has justified his up-bringing; and the mother in him is bringing him back to his true self."

"You may think so; but----" began Jane.

She was, however, silenced.

"Hear me, and if you can throw light after, Jane, we'll hear you," continued Mr. Bamsey. "I say what I think and believe. My trouble be still alive for John; but my fear be dead. So that leaves Dinah. Her wish and will is to be gone. She's seeking a proper and fitting place--neither too low nor too high. She'd go into service to-morrow--anywhere; but I won't have that."

"And why for not, father?" asked Mrs. Bamsey; "your first was in service once."

"That's different," he answered. "You must see it, mother. The situation is very tender, and you must remember my duty to the dead. Would Jane go into service?"

"No, I would not," answered Jane; "not for anybody. I'd go on the street first."

Mr. Chaffe was shocked.

"Do I hear you, Jane?" he asked.

"God forgive you, Jane," said her father; then he proceeded.

"My foster-daughter is a much more delicate and nice question than my own daughter; and mother, with her sharp understanding, knows it. From no love for Dinah I say so. She's a sacred trust, and if she was a bad girl, instead of a good one, still she'd be a sacred trust. I'm not standing here for my own sake, or for any selfishness. I've long been schooled to know she was going, as we all hoped, to Johnny. And go she must--for her own sake--and her own self-respect. And if anybody's fretting about her biding here, it's Dinah's self. But the work she must go to is the difficulty, and that work has not yet been found in my opinion. Her future hangs upon it and I must be head and obeyed in that matter."

"She's turned down such a lot of things," said Jane.

"She has not," replied Mr. Bamsey. "She'd do anything and take anything to-morrow. She was at me to let her go for barmaid to the Blue Lion at Totnes. And I said, 'No, Dinah; you shan't go nowhere as barmaid while I live.' And I say it again, meaning no disrespect to the Blue Lion, which is a very good licensed house."

"She's of age, and if she was in earnest, she could have gone, whether you liked it or not," said Jane.

Mr. Bamsey grew a little flushed and regarded his daughter without affection.

"You would--not Dinah," he answered. "Dinah looks to me as her father, and she won't do nothing I don't hold with, or take any step contrary to my view. That's because she's got a righter idea of what a girl owes her father than you have, Jane."

"And what is your view, father?" asked Mrs. Bamsey.

"You know, mother. I want for Dinah to go into a nice family, where the people will receive her as one of themselves, and where she'll take her place and do her proper work and go on with her life in a Christian manner, and not feel she's sunk in the world, or an outcast, but just doing her right share of work, and being treated as the child of a man in my position have a right to expect to be treated."

"You won't find no such place, father," said Jane.

"I hope we shall. She's out to Ponsworthy with Mrs. Bassett to-day; and the Bassetts are God-fearing people in our own station of life."

"If she was to go there, she'd only be nursemaid to four young children," declared Faith.

"Then, if that's all there is to it, she won't go there," answered Ben.

"And what if nothing to suit your opinions can be found, father?" asked his wife.

"Then--then she'll be forced to stop here, I'm afraid, my dear."

"And what if I said I wouldn't if she did?" flashed out Jane.

"There's some questions beneath answering, Jane, and that's one of them," replied Mr. Bamsey.

In the pause that followed, Mr. Chaffe, who had been smoking in the chimney corner of the house-place where they sat, addressed the family.

Jane, however, did not stop to listen. She began to remove the supper things and came and went.

"Ben's so right as he can be in my opinion, and if you think, you'll see he's right, Faith," said Arthur. "He founds what he says upon the fact that Dinah has done the proper thing to give John up; and if you could only see that, instead of blaming her and thinking hardly of her for so doing, you'd admit she was not to be punished for what she done. We all make mistakes, and though I don't know nothing about love from personal experience, I've seen it working in the world, for good or ill, these fifty years very near. And a tricky thing it is, and Dinah ain't the first that thought she was in love when she wasn't, and won't be the last. There's some would have gone on with it and married Johnny just the same, for one reason and another; but in my humble judgment a girl who can marry a man she doesn't love, for any reason, be little better than a scarlet woman. And when Dinah found there weren't love on both sides, very properly she owned up and said so."

Faith Bamsey listened quietly.

"I've pretty well come to that myself, Arthur," she said. "I may say I go that far now. It was a burning shame, of course, as Dinah couldn't make up her mind months and months ago; but when I tell her that, she says she didn't know her mind. And so not a word against her. She's a saint and worthy of all praise, and I dare say we ought to kiss her feet and bless her. But what next? That's all I humbly want to know? Ben, you see, is very jealous indeed for Dinah; but, on the other side, I like John to be free to come and go from his mother's home; and you won't say that's unnatural. But while she's here, angel though she may be, come John can't; and that's not unnatural either."

She smouldered bitterly under her level speech and self-control.

"All good--all good," declared Mr. Chaffe. "And if I may speak for Ben, I should say he grasps the point as firm as you do, Faith. Dinah's wishful to go; she'd go to-morrow if it was only to be a goose-girl; but that wouldn't be seemly, and you can leave Ben to do his duty in that matter and not let any personal feelings interfere. In fact the more he cared for Dinah, the more he would see she must go out into the world now, for the sake of all parties. The rightful place will be found for her, and I always say that when people do their part up to the point where they may fairly look to Providence to go on with it, then Providence be very quick to take up the running. And if Providence don't, it's because our part have not been done right."

"This very night," said Ben, "Dinah may come back in sight of work at Ponsworthy."

"There remains John," continued Mr. Chaffe, "and John's gone through the fire very brave indeed by all accounts, without a crack, thank God. You've every right to be proud of him; and his turn will come. The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, and no doubt his future mate will be along in due course for his comfort and uplifting."

Dinah returned a few minutes later and she expressed a desire to go to Ponsworthy; but Mrs. Bamsey's prediction was correct: her work with the Bassetts must be that of a nurse and no more.

"Providence haven't spoke yet then," said Mr. Bamsey; "but as Arthur very truly says, we've reached a point when we may fairly count to hear a seasonable word afore long; and doubtless we shall do."

Mr. Chaffe presently went home. But for all his smooth speeches, none knew better than he where the fret and difficulty began; and he was aware that it would never end while Dinah remained at Green Hayes.

"If nought's done, in less than no time, she'll make a bolt," he reflected. "She's that sort of woman; and for all us can say, it may be the will of Providence to cut the knot in that manner. I hope not, however, for 'twould be a bitter blow to Ben and fill his old age with sorrow."

He was so impressed with this dark possibility that he decided to see Dinah at the first opportunity and warn her against it.

"A very curious, puzzling thing," thought Mr. Chaffe, "that the price for well-doing be often stiffer than the price for bad. But the good man should keep in mind that the credit side be growing for all he suffers. If we can't trust the recording angel's book-keeping, who should we trust? The wicked may flourish like the green bay; but the end of the green bay be fire, come soon, or come late."

He passed a neighbour in the darkness going home and published his reflection.

"Be that you, Nicholas Gaunter? So it is then. And here, on my way, I was filled with a great thought, Nicholas."

Mr. Gaunter--a hedge tacker of low repute--had drunk too much beer; but not too much not to know it. He concealed his error and Arthur failed to observe the truth.

"A oner for thoughts you be, Mr. Chaffe," he said.

"Yes--they come; and it just flashed over my mind, Nicholas, that goodness breeds life and a good deed can't perish out of the land; but the payment of evil is death--sure and certain."

"Only if you done a murder," said Mr. Gaunter.

"Pass on, Nicholas, pass on. The thought be too deep for your order of mind I'm afraid," replied the older man.