Chapter XX: The Hunter's Moon

The thought of their next meeting was in the minds of both Dinah and Lawrence, and the girl also guessed that they had reached a position only to end in one way. Even so, her own unconscious desires were running before the facts. It is certain that she had gone a little farther along the road of love than he had; but only because upon her path there were no obstacles and she could not guess, or imagine, the hindrances lying upon his. She knew that he loved her and conceived of no reason why he should not tell her so. She had, of course, come to lift him into the supreme reality of her existence.

She waited for him and began to wonder at the delay. Sometimes, indeed, as time passed and for two weeks they had not met, a shadow fell upon her; but it was fleeting. She could not long doubt of him even in the small hours, when life was at its lowest.

The days began to close in and winter was at the door again before he spoke. Then only chance precipitated the event, when, to the unhidden joy of both, they met in the street at Ashburton, on a Saturday afternoon of late November.

Any passing fear that Dinah might have felt vanished before his look as he shook her hand, and he was inspired to action by the pure happiness that lighted her face and shone without restraint upon it.

"I was going to write to you to-morrow if you'll believe me," he said. "But this is better. Are you free?"

"Yes. I've come in to do some chores for Mrs. Bamsey."

"And I'm running errands for Falcon Farm. Neddy Tutt's milking this evening. How would it be if we were to have a cup of tea together?"

"I'd love it. Lord! I am thankful to see you, Lawrence! Sometimes I began to think I never was going to no more."

"You had to see me once more, anyway. Where shall we go out of the way, so as I can talk?"

"Anywhere you please."

He considered.

"There's a little teashop in Church Street with a back parlour. I've been there once or twice, but they don't know nothing about me. We'd have the room to ourselves I reckon. I must go to gunsmith for the governor and get a hundred cartridges. Then I'm free."

"I never thought I was in for such a treat when I woke up this morning," said Dinah.

"No treat, my dinky maid. I wish to God it was a treat. I've got a lot on my mind when I look at you."

"A shared trouble soon grows light," she said; yet his heavy voice chilled her. They walked side by side, and to walk by him cheered Dinah again. The cartridges awaited Lawrence and in twenty minutes they were at the little eating-shop in Church Street. It was a languishing establishment, out of the beaten track. A woman behind the counter smiled at Maynard and recognised him.

"A pot of tea and some bread and butter and cake, missis," he said; then he entered a small parlour behind the shop. The woman lighted a gas jet over their heads, in the corner that Lawrence chose farthest from the door. Presently she brought a tray with their tea upon it, and then she left them. The time was past four.

"Will you pour the tea, Dinah?"

"Yes, I will then," she said. "Be you happy to see me, Lawrence?"

"You know it. I'd sooner see you than anything in the world. Shall I tell her to light a blink of fire? She would. 'Tis a thought cold in here."

"No, no; I'm not cold. Talk--talk to me. Let me hear you talk."

He leant across and took her hand.

"Let me hold it a minute. I like to feel it. You know a bit of what I'm going to tell you; but only a terrible little bit. I wish there was no more than that to tell."

She held his hand tightly.

"I love you. I've known it a long time, Dinah. That's the little bit I think you know. If that was all----"

"It is all--all on earth that matters to me," she said quietly. "And I did know. I wouldn't believe myself for a long time; but it was vain fighting against it. If it happens to you, you must know. I wouldn't have doubted, perhaps, if I hadn't loved you back so fierce. That made me doubt, because it seemed too good to be true and a long way past my deserving. Now the rest don't signify. Nothing's so big as knowing you love me, Lawrence."

"The bigger thing is that it can't be."

She shrank and he felt her hand grow limp. He took his from it and considered how to begin speaking. Meantime she spoke.

"That's a hard thing--not a bigger thing," she said quietly; "it can't alter what is."

"You must hear from the beginning. If I'd ever thought this would happen, I'd have gone long ago. But it came like a thief, Dinah."

"Same with me. Go on--tell why not--quick."

"I'm married," he said.

She bent her head and leant back and shut her eyes.

"That's the only thing that could come between you and me. I'm married. It's a mad tale, and I was the madman, so most people said. Maybe you will, too; maybe you won't. I shall know in a minute. Yet, if I thought what I was going to say would make you hate me, I wouldn't say it. But it won't do that."

She was looking at him with wet eyes.

"How could I hate you? Love's love. I'd see a way to love you through it if you killed her."

"When I went into the world after father died, I was took by a relation of my mother's at Barnstaple, you must know; and there was that in me that made for getting on. I done very well, and when my mother's sister, who had a little dairy, found the sort I was, she reckoned to do me a good turn and suit herself also. By twenty years old I knew the business inside out and all that goes to it; and when I was twenty-one, my aunt, who was a widow, bargained with me to let her go out and drop the shop and be paid a regular income for her lifetime. When she died I was to have all. It worked very well for a year and a half, and I found I'd got a turn for the business, and opened out a bit, and bought a few cows for myself and even had thoughts of going higher up into the middle of the town and starting a bigger place and having a department for teas and refreshments and so on.

"But that wanted a woman, and then, just at the right moment as it seemed, a woman came along--the very woman on all the earth for the business. It looked as if Providence was out on my side and nothing could go wrong."

"You loved her?"

"I did. Yes, I loved her, Dinah. I wouldn't have thought twice about marrying any woman I didn't love."

"I suppose you wouldn't."

"No more than you could. She was called Minnie Reed, and she came to live not far ways off from where my aunt lived. She was twenty and had a widowed mother along with her, and they didn't lack for means. My old lady took to Mrs. Reed and didn't think it amiss when, presently, I began to make chances for seeing Minnie. In a way it was her great cleverness, more than herself, that took me first. I was all for cleverness at that time, Dinah--all for knowledge and learning; and I found, a good bit to my surprise, that Minnie Reed had got a lot more book learning than any young creature I'd ever come across before. Her mother explained she'd been educated above her station and so on; and she certainly had. Her very speech was nice--far ways above what you'd expect. And from admiring her cleverness, I got to admire her. She had a bit of money too--a thousand pounds put away in a very fine investment. Her mother told my aunt that; and she took good care to tell me; because my old lady was as thick as thieves with Mrs. Reed by now, and they both wanted to see Minnie married to me.

"Looking back I can't say much about what I felt. I only knew I was very wishful to win her if possible, and I soon found she was quite agreeable. Always pleasant, cool, collected she was. She liked me and had an easy, friendly manner; yet I'll swear she always held herself a cut above me. She never said so, perhaps she didn't even think so, but unconsciously she let me feel, somehow, that was in her mind. Not that I cared. I was in a stage to her then that I thought so too. My havage was of no account, and I felt she was superior, along of education and natural quick wits. An old head on young shoulders she had. I do believe most honest that she cared for me, and felt happy to think she was going to share my life and push on my business. But from the day we got tokened she didn't turn half so much to love-making as work. And I wasn't the soft, cuddling sort neither; and if anything could have drawed me to her more than I was drawed, it would have been the fashion she set to mastering my business and all its details. She took it up with all her wits, and soon showed that she was a masterpiece at it. She liked business and she had a head for saving. She understood more about money than I did, though I thought myself pretty clever at it. But I felt a gawk beside her, and she soon showed me how to make more. In fact, her thoughts soared higher than mine from the start, and I knew I'd have such a right hand in that matter as few men in my position could ever have expected.

"I think I knew my luck, and it suited me very well, as I say, that she didn't want a lot of love-making, for I was busy as a bee and not given to that sort of thing. And she was on the cold side too--so I reckoned. In fact she made it clear in words. For she'd thought about that, like most subjects. She held the business of love-making and babies and so on was only a small part of life, and that men thought a lot too much about that side of marriage and took women too seriously. She said certain things with an object, and gave me an opening to ax a few questions; but I was too green to take up the hint, and she said afterwards that she thought I agreed with her.

"We were married and started in the train for our honeymoon. We was going to Exeter for a week and then coming home again, for neither of us had much use for honeymooning, but felt full of business.

"We had a carriage to ourselves by the kindness of the guard--a Barnstaple man. And we talked. And when I got out of the train at Exeter, I left her; and I've never seen her again and never shall. She was a stranger woman to me for evermore."

He was silent for a time, but Dinah said nothing.

"It was her work, not mine. She'd got a dim sense of what she owed me, I suppose, or else a fear of something. Yet, looking back, I often wondered she troubled to tell me the truth, for she knew well enough I was much too inexperienced and ignorant to have found it out. She might have lied. Perhaps it was a case where a lie would have been best--if a lie's ever best. Anyway it's to her credit, I suppose, that she told me. Not that she would have done so if she'd known how I should take it. She reminded me of her nest-egg and how I'd asked her how she came by it, and how she'd said an uncle left it to her under his will. 'That's not true,' she said to me. 'And I don't want to begin our married life with a secret between us, specially as it happens to be such a trifle. I dare say some fools would pull a long face,' she said, 'but you ain't that sort, else you'd never have fallen in love with me.' Then she told me that for two years she'd been the mistress of a gentleman at Bristol--a rich, educated man in business there. He'd kept her till he was going to be married, and they parted very good friends and he gave her a thousand pounds. He'd used her very well indeed and never talked any nonsense about marrying her, or anything like that. It was just a bargain, and he had what he wanted and so had she. Then she bent across the carriage and put her arms round my neck and kissed me. But she kissed a stone. I kept my head. I didn't go mad. I didn't curse or let on.

"I put her arms off me and bade her sit down and let me think; and all the passion I felt against her kept inside me. I was man enough for that. She looked a pretty thing that day. In pink she was, and if ever a man could swear he looked at a virgin, he might have sworn it afore her grey eyes.

"I told her it was all up; and she kept her nerve too. A funny sort of scene for any onlooker, to watch a newly-married man and woman starting on their honeymoon and lost to all but a future bargain. Guard looked in and had a laugh sometimes when the train stopped, and we ruled our faces and grinned back at him.

"She began by trying hard to change me. She poured out a flood of reasons; she used her quick brains as she'd never used them afore. But she kept as keen and cool as a dealer to market, and when she found I wasn't going on with it, she bided still a bit and then asked me what I was going to do.

"That I couldn't tell her for the minute. 'Us'll begin at the beginning,' I said, 'and have every step clear. You've got my name now, and you're my wife in the law, and you've got your rights. And I shan't come between you and them. But my love for you is dead. I don't hate you, because, I suppose, women are mostly built like you and I won't waste my strength hating you. You've gone. You're less to me now than the trees passing the window. You'll live your life and I'll live mine,' I said to her; 'but you're outside mine in future and I'm outside yours.'

"'That can't be,' she said. 'I've got a claim, and if you turn me down, though I pray to God you won't--but if you do, you've got to think of my future as well as your own.' I granted that and promised her she need not trouble for herself. Being what I am, for good or evil, I saw very quick this blow would fall on me, not her. She wouldn't miss me so long as everything else was all right, and my feelings were such that I wasn't particular mindful of myself, or my ruined hopes at that minute. I got a sudden, fierce longing to cut a loss and be out of it. And that first driving impulse in me--to get away from her and breathe clean air--stuck to me after twenty-four hours had passed. Once knowing what she'd been, my love for her went out like a candle. That may be curious, but so it was. I didn't fight myself over it, or weaken, or hunger for her back. Never once did I. She was gone and couldn't have been more gone if she'd dropped dead at my feet. All my passion was a passion to get out of her sight.

"She tried with every bit of her cleverness to change me. Yes, she tried hard, and I saw the wonder of her brains as I'd never even yet seen them. She made a lot clear. She scorned the thing we call sin. She said to give a man what she'd given was no more than to give another woman's baby a drink from her breast if it was thirsty. She talked like that. She said she never loved the man as she loved me, and she prayed very earnest indeed for me to take a higher line and not be paltry. But it was all wind in the trees for me and didn't shake me by a hair."

He stopped for a moment and Dinah asked him a question. She had followed him word by word, her mouth open, her eyes fixed upon his face.

"If she'd told you before instead of after, would it have made a difference?"

"Yes, it would," he said. "God's my judge, it would have made all the difference between wanting her and loathing her. I'm the sort of man that could no more have brooked it than I'd willingly touch a foul thing. That may be silliness and a narrow understanding of life. Where women are concerned, I may have wanted better bread than is made of wheat--I don't know and I don't care; but that's me. And nothing could change me. She tried hard enough--part for my own sake, I do believe, and part for hers. She was wonderful and I'll grant it. She knew me well enough to waste not a minute of her time in coaxing, or tears, or any foolery. She just kept to the argument as close and keen as a man, and if she was feeling as much as me, which ain't likely, she certainly didn't show it.

"She said a strange thing--bare-faced it seemed to me then, but I dare say in strict fairness to her, I might have been shook by it. She reminded me that it was what that blasted, rich man had taught her had made her what she was. She said he'd lifted her above her class and woke up her brains and educated her with books and lessons; and that what had drawn me was just what she had to thank him for. She said, 'You'd never have looked at me twice for myself. A pretty face means nothing to you. It was my sharpened sense took you; and now you turn round and fling me off for just what made you marry me.' Cunning as a snake she was--the wisdom and the poison both. Or so it seemed to me. But what she said didn't alter the facts. Nothing could alter them, and I wasn't built to take any man's leavings.

"She worked at me till we were very nearly to Exeter. Then she stopped and said it was up to me to say what I intended. And I told her as to that she needn't fear, because I'd do all that was right, and more. Her talk, you see, had done this much. It made me understand that from her point of view--hateful though it was--she had her rights. And so I bade her take her luggage to one inn and I'd go to another; and next day I wrote to her that she'd get a letter from me when I'd looked all round and decided what was proper to do. She left me still hoping; I could see that. But she didn't hope no more when she got my letter."

"You never went back on it?"

"Only once, for five minutes, that first night in bed, turning over my future life and hers. For five minutes a thought did creep in my mind, and for five minutes it stuck. It was such a thought as might have been expected I dare say--a sort of thought any man might think; but it stank in five minutes, and I shook it out. And the thought was how would it be if I said to her she must give up her nest-egg and get rid of it for evermore, and then I---- But what real difference did that make? None."

"Perhaps she wouldn't have let it go," said Dinah.

He nodded. It was another woman's view.

"Perhaps she wouldn't. She earned it--eh? Anyway the idea was too dirty for me. Next morning I wrote and said what I was going to do. It was pretty definite and that was where people said I was mad; but, looking back, I can swear I'd do pretty much the same again. The thought was to be quick--quick and away and out of it. Everything I'd done up to then tumbled down that day. It was all gone together--not only her, but everything. I dare say that was curious, but that's how I felt. I only asked for the clothes on my back, and to get away in 'em and never see a bit of the past no more and begin again."

"You'd feel like that."

"I did. I took a line she couldn't quarrel with. She made a fight; but business was her god, and though I was a fool in her eyes, that didn't make her inclined to play the fool. She hadn't to drive a bargain, or any such thing. I cut the ground from under her feet, threw up the lot, handed her over the business, lock, stock and barrel, and was gone, like a dead man out of mind, so soon as I'd signed the proper papers."

"She let you?"

"She couldn't do no otherwise, and as what I planned was well within her sense of what was right and proper, she made no question. She pointed out that she'd lost a good bit in any case with a mystery like this hanging over her; and she also wrote, when all was fixed up, that she hoped I'd live to change my mind and come back to her and very thankful she would be if I was to. I dare say she truly thought I would.

"We were in Exeter for a week and came and went from a lawyer's--but never there together. I ordained to give her what I'd got and leave her to do as she pleased. She was sorry I saw it like that; but the sense of the woman never allowed nothing to come between her and reason. The lawyer tried to change me too. He was a very kindly man. But it went through. She took over the dairy and carried on my engagements to my aunt, and no doubt developed the shop same as I meant to. She gave out I'd gone away for a bit and might be back in a month. I don't suppose anybody ever heard more, and when I didn't come back, she had a search made for me all very right and regular; but I'd gone beyond finding, and she carried on; and no doubt the nine days' wonder died in course of time. Only my aunt knew I'd gone of my own accord; but why I'd gone, only one creature beside my wife ever knew; and that was her mother; and I doubt not she sided with her daughter. I dare say there's a lot more the other side could tell; but I made a clean cut. I dropped every creature and began again out of their reach. That's the story of me, Dinah. I've most forgotten many of the details myself now. It's seven and a half years agone. I saw in a North Devon paper my old aunt was dead, and so Minnie's free of them payments and standing alone. Half my savings she had also."

There was silence between them for more than a minute. Then Dinah spoke, went back to his first word and asked a question.

"D'you call that being married?"

"Yes--that's my marriage. There ain't much more to tell. I was for going to Canada, and started unknown with fifty pounds of money, which was all I kept. I was going to get a state-aided passage from London and begin again out there. It sounds a big thing to fling over the whole of your life, like as if you was taking off a suit of old clothes; but it didn't seem big to me then--only natural and proper. I comed even to like it. But chance willed different, and the accident of meeting a stranger in the train kept me in England after all. Chance done me a very good turn then. A farmer got in the train at Taunton and between Taunton and Bath, fate, or what you like to call it, willed I went to that man. We got talking, and I told him I was going abroad, being skilful at cows and the butter and milk business. He got interested at that and reckoned I might be such a man as he needed; but I said plainly that I was cutting losses, and my past must bide out of sight, and I'd best to go foreign in my opinion. By that time, however, he'd got a fancy he'd trust me. He was a very good man and a judge of character, which most good men are not in my experience. I found after that he was a rare sort of chap--the best and truest friend to me--such a man as inclined me slowly to think the better of the world again. He only asked me one question and that was if, on my honour, I could tell him I'd done no dishonest or wicked thing from which I was trying to escape. And I swore by God I had not. He believed me, and when, a day or two later, I told him the whole story, he didn't say whether in his judgment I'd done right or wrong, but he granted that I'd done right from my point of view and thought no worse of me for it. I hesitated a bit at his offer; but I liked him, somehow, from the first, and I was cruel tired, and the thought of getting to work right away was good to me. Because I knew by then that there was nothing like working your fingers to the bone to dull pain of mind and make you sleep.

"My life with him is another tale. I look back upon it with nothing but content. I did well by him, and he was as good as a father to me. It's near eighteen months ago he died, and his two sons carried on. Very nice men, and they wanted me to stop; but I couldn't bide when the old chap dropped out. He left me two hundred pounds under his will, Dinah; and his sons didn't object that I should take it, for they were well-to-do and liked me. Then I saw Joe's advertisement in the paper and had a fancy to come back alongside where I was born."

"And Mrs. Maynard never found you?"

"No; but she isn't Mrs. Maynard. Maynard's not my name and Lawrence ain't my name."

She sighed.

"Man!" she said, "you be sinking and sinking--oh, my God, you be sinking out of my sight! I thought you was one creature, and now you be turning into a far-away thing under my eyes."

"I don't feel like that. I'm Lawrence Maynard to myself, Dinah. T'other be dead and in his grave. My name was Courtier. There's some of the family about on Dartmoor yet. My great-grandfather was a Frenchman--a soldier took in the wars more than a hundred year ago. And the moor folk traded at the war prisons to Princetown, so he got to know a good few at prison market. Then he was tokened to a farmer's daughter, and after the peace he married her and stopped in England and started a family."

"What's your other real name then?"

"Gilbert, same as my father."

"Us must be going," she said.

"Shall I tell her to hot some more tea for you?"

"No--I don't want no tea."

He drank his cold cup at a draught and pressed her to eat a little; but she shook her head.

"I'll see you home by New Bridge and then get up back through the woods, Dinah."

"I can travel alone."

"No, you mustn't do that."

She said very little during the long tramp through a night-hidden land. The darkness, the loneliness, the rustle of the last dead leaves and the murmur of the wind chimed with her thoughts. She seemed hardly conscious of the man at her side. He strove once or twice to talk, but found it vain and soon fell into silence. At New Bridge Dinah spoke.

"You'll always be 'Lawrence' to me," she said. "Tell me this. When are you going to see me again, after I've thought a bit?"

"Like you to want to. We can meet somewhere."

"You love me?"

"Yes; as I never thought I could love anything. But how should you love me any more?"

She did not answer immediately. For some distance they walked by the river. Then they reached a fork of the road where their paths divided; for here Dinah climbed to the left by a steep lane that would bring her to Lower Town and home, while Maynard must ascend into the woods.

They stopped.

"Will you do this?" she said. "Will you put the story of your life before Enoch Withycombe?"

"Why, Dinah?"

"To get his opinion on it--all--every bit."

"Yes, if you like."

"I do like. I'm very wishful to know what a man such as him would say."

"If he's well enough, I'll see him to-morrow. It's been in my mind to tell him about myself before to-day."

"I wish you had."

"He shall hear it. I set great store by his sense. He might---- Can you get home from here? I'll come with you if you like."

"No."

"You've forgiven me?"

"I'll think and think. Be there anything to forgive?"

"I don't know. And yet I do. Yes--you think--then you'll find you've got to forgive me for ever loving you, Dinah."

"You're life--you're life to me," she said. "Don't say small things like that. I'm only being sorry for all you've had to suffer all these years and years. I'll go on being sorry for you a long time yet. Then I'll see if I'm angry with you after. I can only think of one thing at a time."

She tramped up the hill and he stood, until her footfall had ceased. Then he went his own way and had climbed to within half a mile of Buckland, when a strange thing happened. He heard the winding of a hunter's horn. Through the darkness, for all listening ears at Holne or Leusden, Buckland or the neighbour farms and hillsides to hear, came the melodious note. It rang out twice, clear and full; and kennelled hounds a mile distant caught it and bayed across the night--a farewell, good to the heart of Enoch Withycombe if he had heard them.