Chapter XXII: At Watersmeet

Dinah was first at the tryst and doubted not that Maynard would come. The lonely, naked woods swept round her and she sat on a fallen trunk not far from where the Webburn sisters shot the grey forest with light and foamed together beneath the feet of trees. The day was dull and windy with rain promised from the south. Withered beech leaves whirled about Dinah's feet in little eddies, then rushed and huddled away together in hurtling companies--with a sound like a kettle boiling over, thought Dinah. Her mind was not wholly upon Maynard, for Joe Stockman's gloomy prophecy had come true in one case and Mr. Bamsey was indisposed from a chill caught at the funeral. As yet they were not concerned for him; but he had grown somewhat worse since the preceding day and Faith had sent Jane to fetch the doctor. Jane never declined a commission that would take her into Ashburton.

A smudge of black appeared in the woods and Maynard stood on the east bank of the river. Dinah rose and waved to him; then he ascended the stream until a place for crossing appeared. Here he leapt from stone to stone and was soon beside her. They wandered away and he found a spot presently, where the ground was dry with fallen needles from a pine above it.

"Sit here," he said, "a little while."

She had not spoken till now, save to tell him her foster-father was ill. But when they sat side by side, with the bole of the great pine behind them and its lower boughs sweeping about them to the ground, she answered all the questions he wanted to put in one swift action. For a moment she looked at him and her face glowed; and then she put her arms round his neck and kissed him.

"Dinah--d'you mean it?" he said. "Oh, d'you mean all that?"

"I want you; I can't live my life without you, Lawrence."

"After what I've told you?"

His arms were round her now and he had paid her fiercely for her kiss.

"What is marriage? I've been puzzling about it. I've been puzzling about it for years, for it seems years since you told me you was married. And if you knew what I'd been feeling, or how I fought not to kiss you at the funeral, you'd be sorry for me. But you've only been sorry for yourself I expect, you selfish man."

He did not answer. He had released her, but was still holding one of her hands.

"I'd make you a good wife, Lawrence," she said.

"By God you would!"

"And what is marriage then? Why d'you tell me you're married to her--any more than I'm married to John Bamsey--or anybody?"

"Marriage is a matter of law, and a man can only marry one wife."

"And what's a wife then?"

"The woman you are married to--she that's got your name."

"Would you say your wife was married?"

"Certainly she is."

"A widow then?"

"Not a widow if her husband is alive."

"Then why d'you say that Gilbert Courtier died when Lawrence Maynard came to life? If Gilbert Courtier's dead, then his wife is a widow."

Her literal interpretation was not a jest. He perceived that Dinah presented no playful mood. She was arguing as though concerned with facts, and not recognising any figurative significance in what he had told her about himself. For a moment, however, he could hardly believe she was in earnest.

"If it was as easy as that," he said.

"How d'you feel to it then?"

"I feel to it as you do, with all my heart. God knows what I want--one thing afore all things and above all things: and that's to have you for my own--my own. And whether I can, or can't, my own you will be from this hour, since you want to be my own, Dinah."

"And I will have it so. You're my life now--everything."

"But you can't make me less than I am. It's no good saying that Gilbert Courtier's dead; and though I change my name for my own comfort, that's not to change it against the facts."

"D'you want to go back to it then?"

"Not I. I'll never go back, and 'tis no odds to me what I'm called; but a wife's a wife, and my wife must stand safe within the law--for her own safety--and her husband's honour."

She stared at this.

"D'you feel that?"

"I do, Dinah."

"That things like safety, or the law, matter?"

"To you--not to me."

"What do I know about the law--or care? D'you think I'm a coward? You've only got one name for me, and ban't the name I love best in the world good enough? Who else matters to you, if you're Lawrence Maynard to me? And what else matters to you if I love you? Words! What are words alongside the things they stand for? I want you, same as you want me. And whose honour's hurt?"

"You feel all that?"

"Not if you don't. But you do."

His own standards failed for the time and he said somewhat more than he meant. Such love as Dinah's, such certainty as Dinah's, made doubt, built on old inherited instincts, look almost contemptible. Trouble of old had shaken these deep foundations; now happiness and pride at his splendid achievement similarly shook them.

"Yes I do," he said. "There's naught else on God's earth; I'd let all go down the wind afore I'd lose what I've won. I can keep off words as easy as you; and the word that would come between me and such love as I've got for you was never spoke and never will be. Words are dust and can go to the dust. But----"

He had recollected a fact beyond any power of words to annul.

"There's a hard and fast reality, Dinah, and we've got to take it into account, for it can't be argued down, or thought away."

"Then let it go--same as everything else have got to go. There's only one thing matters, I tell you, and we feel the same about it. Love's far too strong for all other realities, Lawrence. There's only one reality: that you and me are going to live together all our lives. What fact can stand against that? If facts were as big as the Beacon, they're naught against that fact. You be my own and I'm your own, and what else signifies?"

"You make me feel small," he said, "and love so big as that would make any man feel small, I reckon. And for the minute I'll put away the ways and means and machinery, that always have to be set running when a man wants to wed a woman."

"What's machinery to us? We didn't love each other by machinery and us shan't wed by machinery."

"Us can't wed without machinery."

"You say that! Ban't us wed a'ready? Be the rest of it half so fine as what brought us together, and made us know that our lives couldn't be lived apart? Ban't you wed to me, Lawrence?"

"I am," he said, "and only death will end it. But there's more than that for you; and so there's got to be more for me. And if I'm going to be small now and talk small, it's for you I do, not for myself. You're a sacred thing to me and holy evermore mind."

"And you be sacred to me," she said. "You've made all men sacred and holy to me; and you've made me feel different to the least of 'em, because they be built on the same pattern as you. I swear I feel kinder and better to everybody on earth since I know you loved me so true."

"It's this, then--a bit of the past. When I first came here I felt, somehow, that in Stockman I'd had the good luck to hit on just such another as my old master up country. He seemed to share the same large outlook and understanding, and I found him a man so friendly and charitable with his neighbours that I told him about myself, just like I told the other; and he was just the same about it--generous and understanding. In fact, he went further than my old master, and agreed with me right through, and said it was a very manly thing to have done, and that if more people had the pluck to cut a loss, the world would go smoother. He praised me for what I'd done, and I remember what he said. He said, 'To let sleeping dogs lie be a very wise rule; and to let sleeping bitches lie be still wiser.' But I know a lot more about Joe Stockman now than I did then; and though I've got no quarrel with him, yet, if the time was to come again, I wouldn't tell him. He'd never tell again, or anything like that; but he knows it, and if I was to say to him that I held I wasn't married and wanted another, he'd laugh at me."

Dinah admitted that Mr. Stockman was a serious difficulty.

"What would trouble him wouldn't be that; but the thought of losing you," she said. "That would make him nasty, no doubt, and quick to take a line against you."

"Joe knows about Barnstaple. He said to me once, 'Good men come from Barnstaple; my father did.' He has relatives up that way. But I only told him I knew the place; I never said I'd come from there."

She was silent for a moment staring straight before her with her elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands.

"All this means," he continued, "that we can't do anything small, or cast dust in people's eyes about it, even if we were tempted to, which we're not. For the minute we must mark time. Then we'll see as to the law of the subject and a good few things. All that matters to me is that you can love me so well as ever, knowing where I stand, and don't feel no grudge against me."

But she was not sentimental and his general ideas did not interest her. She had gone far beyond generalities. Her only thought was their future and how best and quickest it might be developed and shared.

"As to doing anything small, nothing's small if the result of it is big," she said. "There's no straight wedding for us here anyway, since Cousin Joe knows, but Buckland ain't the world, and what we've got to satisfy be ourselves, not other people. I hate to hear you say we'll see about the law. People like us did ought to be our own law."

"We've got enough to go on with, and we've got ourselves to go on with--everything else is naught when I look at you."

"If you feel that, I'm not afeared," she said. "That means firm ground for me, and all the things that balked and fretted me be gone now."

They talked love and explored each other's hearts, very willing to drop reality for dreams. They were a man and woman deeply, potently in love, and both now made believe, to the extent of ignoring the situation in which they really stood. Time fled for them and the early dusk came down, so that darkness crept upon them from every side simultaneously. Rain fell, but they did not perceive it under the sheltering pine. They set off anon and went down the river bank.

"Now we must go back into the world for a bit," said Dinah, "and we'll think and see what our thoughts may look like to each other in a week. Then we'll meet here once more, unbeknown'st. For I reckon we'd better not moon about together in the sight of people overmuch now. If Joe knows about you--and yet perhaps that's to the good in a way, because he knows you be straight and honest, so he'd feel I was safe enough, and only laugh at the people if they told him you and me were friends beyond reason."

Maynard wondered to see how quickly Dinah's mind moved, and how she could see into and through a problem as it arose. But he approved her opinion, that they had better not be seen too often together.

Yet they did not separate before they ran into one who knew them both. Thomas Palk met them on a woodland road below Watersmeet.

He stood at the edge of an ascent to Buckland.

"Hullo, Tom! What's brought you out this wet evening?" asked Maynard, and the elder explained that he had been to Green Hayes for news of Mr. Bamsey.

"Master was wishful to hear tidings," he said. "And I had naught on hand and did his pleasure. The doctor was along with Benjamin Bamsey when I got there; so I be taking home the latest."

"And what is it, Mr. Palk?" asked Dinah.

"Bad," he answered. "He's got a lung in a fever and did ought to have seen doctor sooner."

"Good night, then. I must be gone," she said, and without more words left the men and started running.

Palk turned to Lawrence.

"I shouldn't wonder if Bamsey was a goner," he prophesied. "If the breathing parts be smote, then the heart often goes down into a man's belly, so I believe, and can't come up again. And that's death."

The other was silent. For a moment it flitted through his mind that, if such a thing happened, it might go far to simplify Dinah's hold upon the world and make the future easier for them both; but he forgot this aspect in sympathy for Dinah herself. He knew that danger to her foster-father must mean a very terrible grief for her.

"He's a hard, tough old chap. He'll come through with such care as he'll get. But Stockman said as that biting day might breed trouble among the grey heads. He was right."

He talked with a purpose to divert Tom's mind from the fact that he had met him walking alone with Dinah; but he need not have felt apprehension: Mr. Palk was immersed in his own thoughts, and no outside incident ever influenced his brain when it happened to be engaged with personal reflections.

"Stockman always looks ahead--granted," he answered as they climbed the hill together, "and for large views and putting two and two together, there's not his equal. But self-interest is his god, though he foxes everybody it ain't. For all his fine sayings, there is only one number in his mind and that's number One. He hides it from most, but he don't hide it from me, because the minute you've got the key to his lock, you see how every word and thought and deed be bent in one direction. And under his large talk of the greatest good to the most, there's always 'self' working unseen."

"You ain't far out, yet in honesty there's not much for you and me to quarrel with," said Maynard.

"When you say that, you'm as ownself as him. And if you and me was everybody, I wouldn't feel what I do. He don't quarrel with us, though he often says a thing so pleasant and easy that you don't know you're cut, till you find the blood running. But we ain't everybody. He may see far, but he don't see near. He's fairly civil to us, because he don't mean to lose us if he can help it; but what about her as can't escape? How does he treat his own flesh and blood?"

Maynard was astonished. He had not given Thomas credit for much wit or power of observation. Nor had he ever concerned himself with the inner life of the farm as it affected Susan.

"Would you say Miss was put upon?" he asked.

"God's light!" swore Mr. Palk. "And be you a thinking man and can ask that? Have you got eyes? If Orphan Dinah had to work like her, would you ax me if she was put upon?"

The challenge disturbed Lawrence, for it seemed that Thomas had observation that extended into the lives of his neighbours--a gift the younger man had not guessed.

"What's Miss Waycott to do with it?" he asked.

"Naught. Nobody's got nothing to do with it but master. And he's got everything to do with it; and he's a tyrant and a damned slave-driver, and treats her no better than a plough, or a turnip cutter."

They were silent and Thomas asked a question.

"Have you ever heard tell they port-wine marks be handed down from generation to generation, worse and worse?"

"No, I never did."

"I heard Stockman tell Melindy Bamsey they was."

"I dare say it might be so."

"And yet again, when the subject come up at Ashburton, a publican there said that if a man or woman suffered from such a thing they was doomed never to have no children at all. He said he'd known a good few cases."

"A woman might," answered Lawrence, "because, if they're afflicted that way, they'd be pretty sure to bide single. But it would be a nice question if a marked man couldn't get childer. I wouldn't believe anybody but a doctor on that subject."

Thomas turned this over for ten minutes without answering. Then the subject faded from his mind and he flushed another.

"What about our rise?" he said.

"We'll hear after Easter."

They discussed the probable figure. Maynard seemed not deeply interested; but Palk declared that his own future movements largely depended upon Mr. Stockman's decision.