Chapter XXXVII: Shepherd's Cross

The new cowman came on the day before Maynard left Falcon Farm and Mr. Stockman was satisfied with his ability and intelligence. And then came the moment when Joe shook hands and bade Lawrence farewell. All animosity had died, for the elder was not vindictive. He pictured the experiences that awaited his old servant and found it in his heart to be sorry for him. Only thought of the enormity of the deed he had so deliberately planned steeled Mr. Stockman.

"I shall hear tell of you, no doubt," were the last words that he said at parting.

To Holne went Maynard, put up with an acquaintance for that night, and, at five o'clock on the following morning, set out to meet Dinah at Shepherd's Cross, a mediæval monument that marked a forgotten monkish way of old. There Dinah, whose departure was designed to be secret, would meet him, and together they would descend to Brent, where neither was known, and so reach Plymouth, whence their steamer sailed that night.

The morning dawned fine and touched with frost. The wind blew gently from the east. There was no sting in it, but it created an inevitable haze, and distance quickly faded under its blue-grey mantle, while at hand all shone clear and bright in the sunrise fires. The heavy dew of a cloudless night was not yet dried off the herbage, and the grass, nibbled to a close and springy velvet by sheep and rabbits, spread emerald green between the masses of heather and furze, where the lover climbed Dene Moor. Still the autumn heath shone with passages of colour; but into the rich pink of a month earlier had crept a russet warmth, where innumerable heather bells passed to death with a redness that drowned the purple. As yet this new colour was genial in tone, shone in the sunlight and glowed along the reaches of the fading fern; but a time approached when from ruddy to sere the countless blossoms must sink. Then the light would fade and the flowers wither, till winter winds tinkled in their grey inflorescence and sang the song of another dying year. Now only the splendour of their passing and the pale gold, where brake died in patches amid the standing fern, prophesied changes to come. A few raddled sheep browsed their morning meal and made harmony with the bright colours of the dawn, while Maynard, stooping, picked up the wing feather of a carrion crow and reflected that this was the last black plume he would ever find to clean his pipe on Dartmoor. He was sorry to leave it, but had found no time for regret until this moment. Life had passed so swiftly and demanded so much thought and contrivance of late, that only now he spared a few minutes to consider all that he was leaving, and how much had been good and precious to him. He had formed a hazy and nebulous picture of his future environment, but knew that it could in no way resemble this. He guessed that he must often look back, and doubted whether his future scene of life would entirely take the place of the one he was about to leave. But he remembered Dinah's attitude and her expressed joy that the Vale should be left behind them and all things become new.

Now he centred upon her and again thin shadows crept through his mind. For good or evil they had listened to their own hearts alone; but he still found questions asking themselves and doubts limning deep in his soul when he thought of her; he still felt a smoulder of indignation in himself that this cup should be forced upon them. There was an ingredient of bitterness, a dumb question why fate should have called him and Dinah to do a thing against which he rebelled, and the doing of which was an outrage upon her love of truth and directness. She might make light of the burden, but he resented the fact that she was called to bear it. Such is the force of inherited conviction and tradition that he could not, as she had done, discredit and dismiss his past as an empty dream. She honestly so regarded Maynard's story; otherwise he knew she would never have come to him; but it was only for his sake that she made the sacrifice, and he felt it a cruel fact that any sacrifice should be called for from her. His past was real enough, and the shadow must fall on her and the children to be born of her. That the world would never see the shadow, or know of its existence, did not matter. For him and his wife it could never vanish. Even yet he did not perceive that no shadow whatever existed for Dinah. The thing that still haunted him like a fog, like the robe of the east wind hanging on the skirts of the moor, must, he felt, be appreciated by her also, and might, indeed, grow more solid and real for her in the future. Regret for the inevitable thus found a place in his mind despite his reason, because it sprang from foundations other than his reason.

Swinging forward with an ash sapling in his right hand and a leathern portmanteau in his left, Lawrence presently saw his goal ahead. Sunshine played over the blue hazes and touched the grey summit of Shepherd's Cross, where the ancient stone stood erect and solitary on the heath. It reared not far distant from rough, broken ground, where Tudor miners had streamed the hillside for tin in Elizabethan days. The relic glimmered with lichens, black and gold and ash colour. Upon its shaft stuck red hairs, where roaming cattle had rubbed themselves. It stood the height of a tall man above the water worn trough at its foot, and the cross was still perfect, with its short, squat arms unbroken, though weathered in all its chamfering by centuries of storm.

Here he sat down, knit his brows to scan the northern slope of the hill, whereon Dinah must presently appear, and wondered how far she might have already tramped upon her way. He had found his own climb from Holne shorter than he imagined and was at their place of meeting before the time.

Then, suddenly, behind him he heard feet shuffling and turned to see five men spring up from their hiding-places at hand. They were familiar faces that he saw, and for a moment no suspicion that they were here upon his account entered the mind of Maynard. It occurred to him that Shepherd's Cross might be a meeting-place for hounds at this early hour. Yet he did not know that cub-hunting was yet begun. And then he marked behind the four now beside him, the tall, thin figure of Arthur Chaffe--one who would certainly attend no meet of hounds.

He was not left long in doubt. The men brought ropes. They closed round him, as he rose to confront them, caught his arms, dragged him to the cross and, with the celerity of executioners, quickly had him fast bound by ankles and wrists against the granite--crucified thereto with his arms extended upon the arms of the cross and a dozen coils of rope about his shoulders, trunk and legs. John Bamsey handled one wrist and saw that his cords bit.

Here was Mr. Chaffe's inspiration; that the erring man should be lifted on the Christian emblem of salvation, for his heart to be taken by storm, and for Dinah to behold the great event. He apprehended a wondrous purification in Maynard as the result of this punishment and he hoped thai he himself might have time to say the necessary words and utter a trumpet note in the sinner's ear before his victim reached Shepherd's Cross.

The men had come by night and hidden as near the tryst as possible. Now they completed their work and stood off, some grinning, some scowling, at the prisoner. His hat had fallen and his ash sapling and his leather bag lay together where he had sat. The light of day shone upon his bare head and he stared at the faces round him, still dazed and silent before the terrific surprise of their attack. But though he said nothing, others spoke freely enough and some chaffed and some derided.

"You didn't think you was going to get chained up this morning, you dirty, runaway dog!" said John Bamsey, while Robert Withycombe laughed.

"You ban't the first thief as have found yourself on a cross--eh, my bold hero? Not but what a cross be almost too holy a sign to rope such a scamp upon."

"You--you that thought you could fox an honest woman and turn her away from an honest man! You wicked lying trash, as ought to have the skin tanned off your bones!" roared John.

But the thunder did not make Maynard shrink. He turned his head to the veteran and spoke.

"What does this mean, Mr. Chaffe?" he asked.

Jerry Withycombe began to answer him, but John took the words out of his mouth. Jerry was too mild for this occasion.

"It means that I happened to find the wrens' nest, and I told about it, and John's sister found 'twas you plotting against Orphan Dinah and----"

"It means that all the world knows you're a married man, you blasted wretch," stormed Johnny. "It means you kindiddled the woman away from me with lies and cunning and thought to get her out of England and ruin her, and then, no doubt, fling her off, like you flung off your lawful wife. It means you're found out for what you are--the scum of the earth. And she's going to know it, and see you where you stand, and hear where your filthy plots and wickedness was going to land her. And if she don't sclow down your face for you when she knows and tear your damned eyes out, she ought to!"

Maynard looked at the furious man, but did not answer. Then Mr. Chaffe intervened.

"That'll do, John Bamsey," he said. "Us have carried out our work in a high spirit so far and we don't want no crooked language."

"Crooked language be the right sort for crooked deeds I reckon," declared Mr. Callicott, the prize-fighter--a sturdy and snake-headed youth who had assisted the others. "If it's true this bloke's married and was going to run away and do bigamy with an innocent girl, then you can't talk too coarse to him, I reckon."

"You're right to be angered, but righteous wrath must keep its temper, Callicott," explained Arthur. "Now hear me talk to the man and show him how it is with him. He be dazed, as you see, and stares through us and looks beyond, as if we was ghosts."

"He knows very well we ban't ghosts," said Jerry.

"You see him," continued Mr. Chaffe, as though he were lecturing on a specimen--"you see him in the first flush of his surprise--gazing out at the risen sun and too much knocked over even to make a case."

"What sort of case should he make--a man that meant to seduce another chap's sweetheart?" asked John Bamsey.

"If he haven't already," suggested Mr. Callicott.

"Hear me, and let him hear me," answered Arthur; and then he turned to Maynard.

"You ask why we have laid in wait for you and done this," he said. "But you know why we have done it only too well, you bad man, and the true wonder in your mind is to guess how we found out. For well you knew that when honest God-fearers were led by Providence to discover what you was up to, they'd stop it in the name of the Lord. Don't stare into the sky, nor yet over the hill for that poor woman, as you meant to destroy body and soul. Just you turn your wits to me, Lawrence Maynard, and listen; and then tell me before God, if you've got any just quarrel with any man among us. And this is what you done--you knowing you was married and had a wife you'd thrown over. You come here and make a woman care for you; but since your watchful Maker has already opened your mouth, so that your master heard you was married, you know you couldn't pretend to wed her honest before men, but must hatch lies for her and make a plot. And her love was quick, no doubt, to think nothing you could do or say was wrong, so she consented to follow you to foreign parts, where her shame might be hid and where she'd be in your power--to cherish or to desert according as your fancy took you. For well you understood that she could never be no more than your leman and at your mercy. That's what you planned, poor man; but God in His might chose different, and willed to give you up to your fellow creatures and led this young Jerry Withycombe to find your secret, so we learned what you was going to do. And it is my work and ordinance that you stand here now tied to the Cross of your Redeemer, Lawrence Maynard. And may the cross enter into your heart and save your soul alive yet. And then you'll see we five Christians be the willing instruments of Heaven, and have put ourselves to this hard task for love of humanity and in the spirit of our Master. We be here, not only to save Dinah, but to save you; and you can say 'Amen' to that, and I hope your Father in Heaven will touch your hard heart to bend and see what we've saved you from."

"In fact you're getting out of it a damned sight softer than you deserve, and a damned sight softer than you would if I had my way," growled Bamsey; but the sailor stopped him.

"Shut up, John, and let Mr. Chaffe talk," he said. "What he tells be very fine, and us must follow his lead and take a high hand with the man."

"We're all sinners," continued Arthur, "and nobody more so than you, John Bamsey, so I'll beg you hold in and let me do my part."

Then he droned on to the roped cowman.

"Evils must come, but woe be to them that bring them, and you've shown me in the past that you're a thinking creature with all your intellects, and now you see where your doubtful thoughts and lawless opinions have brought you. And I hope it will be a case of 'Go and sin no more,' in the words of the Saviour of us all, Maynard. All things go round and round, you must know. The worm gnaws the nettle that the butterfly may rise up into the sunshine; and the butterfly rises up into the sunshine that the worm may gnaw the nettle; but we, as have immortal souls, be called to deny and defy nature, and lead captivity captive, and trample on the adder and the basilisk. All which things you knew very well, yet set your face to add to the evil of the world to please your own base passions. And you didn't care that a young and harmless woman, who was God's business quite as much as you yourself--you didn't care where you dragged her down, so long as you got what you wanted, and defied principalities and powers, and lied to your own better nature just the same as you lied to her."

"The woman be coming," said Robert Withycombe. His sailor's eyes had seen Dinah still far distant. She was clad in a brick-red gown--her best--and carried a basket of yellow, woven cane that made a bright spot on the heath.

"Yes," said Arthur Chaffe. "Like a lamb to the slaughter the virgin cometh, Lawrence Maynard; and I hope 'tis your voice she will hear, telling how God hath watched over her, and how right and religion have won another victory on this glad morning."

But the prisoner preserved an obstinate silence. He seemed to be rapt away out of sight or sound of Mr. Chaffe and the rest. His eyes rested on Dinah; his ears appeared to be sealed for any attention he paid to his captors. Arthur drew his wind and the others spoke.

"He's waiting for her to come," said Mr. Callicott. "He be going to say his say afore the woman and don't care a damn for you, master."

"He'm in a dream," murmured Jerry. "I don't believe he's hearing what Mr. Chaffe be pouring at him."

Then Dinah, who had long seen the group, made haste and dropped her basket and hastened to Maynard, ignoring the rest.

Her face was scarlet and she could hardly speak for the throbbing of her heart.

"Lawrence--Lawrence--what's this?" she asked. "What have they done?"

She had left her home before dawn, unknowing that another was awaking also at Green Hayes and had heard her go. Her last act was to slip into Benjamin Bamsey's room, where he slept alone, and kiss the unconscious old man upon his temple. Then she had gone; and Jane had heard her do so and seen the vague shadow of her descend the garden path and vanish into the farm yard. Mrs. Bamsey was kept in ignorance of Dinah's plans, but when morning came and they sat at breakfast, her daughter informed her of all that had happened and told her that she might expect to see her father's foster-daughter return with Mr. Chaffe in an hour or two. Faith Bamsey took the revelation calmly enough and showed no great emotion; while Jane roamed restlessly through the morning and desired to see Jerry and hear of what had happened on the moor.

Now, in answer to Dinah, Maynard, who was suffering physical pain from his position and his bonds, answered very quietly, while the men round the pair listened to him.

"They have done what they thought was right, Dinah. They found out that we were going to leave England together, and they heard from Mr. Stockman that I was married. And they took a natural view and thought I was deceiving you as to that. So they laid in wait and tied me here, until you heard the truth."

"I know the truth," she said. "I know a deeper truth than any they can know. I know that in God's sight----"

"Stop!" cried Arthur Chaffe. "Listen to me, Orphan Dinah, and thank Heaven on your knees that your fellow creatures have saved you from the evil to come."

She looked at all of them with a flaming indignation.

"Did you set 'em to this dirty task--old as you are? Did you think so badly of this man that you supposed he would try to do me harm? Did you think there was no other side? Did you plot behind his back, when you'd found out our simple secrets? Did you plan this cruel insult and disgrace for one that never harmed you or anybody?"

"He harmed us all, Dinah, and I beg you'll keep your temper," answered Arthur. "You're talking far ways short of sense and you don't know what we saved you from."

"Be you shadows, or real people, you grinning men?" she asked, turning upon the others. "Do you know what you've done in your clumsy, brutal strength? Do you know you've wronged and tortured a man whose boots you ain't worthy to black?"

"Hear the truth and don't be an idiot!" answered John Bamsey.

"'Truth'! What do you know of the truth? You--shallow, know-naught creatures, that go by spoken words and make words stand for truth? It's a lie to say he's wedded. Is every man wedded that's married? Have none of you ever seen married people that never felt or knew the meaning of marriage? 'Tis for pity to the likes of you, beyond the power of understanding, that we took these pains; and now we shan't run away behind your backs, but go before your faces--a parcel of zanies, that think because a thing be said it must be true."

"Let the man speak," said Mr. Chaffe. "I command that you speak, Lawrence Maynard. The woman's beside herself and dead to reason. 'Tis your bounden duty to speak for yourself."

"Loose him then and he'll speak fast enough," cried Dinah. "Who be you--a cowardly, hulking pack of ignorant clods to lay fingers on him! If you had sense and decency and any proper Christianity in you, you'd have gone to work very different and spared me this wicked outrage, and him too. You'd have come to us and bid us speak. What do you make us? Loose him, I tell you--ban't one among you man enough to understand that I know all there is to know about this--that it's my work we're going, my work--me that loves him and worships him, and knows the big-hearted, patient, honourable chap he is. God! If you could see yourselves as I see you--meddling, nasty-minded bullies, you'd sink in the earth. Loose him and then listen to him. You're not worth the second thought of a man like him."

Lawrence spoke quietly to Robert Withycombe.

"You see how it is. Don't keep me trussed here no longer. I'm in pain and no good can come of it. If you care to listen, then I'll speak. I'm very glad to let you know how things are, for you've got a credit for sense; so has Mr. Chaffe."

"It's a free country," said Mr. Callicott, "You chaps seem as if you'd made trouble where there isn't none. Pity you didn't look into this first and play your games after."

He opened a knife to sever the ropes that held Maynard. None attempted to stop him save John, and then the sailor came between.

"Cut him loose, Callicott."

Mr. Chaffe was deeply dismayed and made an effort to save the position.

"Orphan Dinah," he said, "for the love of your Saviour, and your foster-father, and right and religion, come home with me this minute. I can't believe what you say, for you know not what you say. Does the man deny he's married? That's all I want to know; and if he is, then do you mean to tell me you're going to live with him? There it is in brutal words and----"

"The brutal words are yours, because you're bound up in words and know naught about the truth of what this means, Arthur Chaffe," answered Maynard, who now stood free. "Do you think two people who have set out to share their lives for evermore, didn't count the cost every way? Believe me, we did, so understand that what seems wicked to you, ban't wicked to us. I don't count, but Dinah does. She knows every single word of the truth, and may I die on this stone if she doesn't."

"Come," said Dinah. "We're not called to lay our hearts bare for these men. Let 'em know there's as good and honourable and Christian people in the world as themselves; and if I, knowing far, far deeper than they know, am content and proud to be your wife in God's sight for ever and ever, who else matters, and who else shall judge? You be no more than the buzzing of gnats to us, and there's no power in one of you to sting this man, or me."

"Think, think what you're doing, Dinah," pleaded Mr. Chaffe.

"And haven't I thought, and don't I know a million times more than you can, or ever will? Understand before we go. This man was never false to any woman--never--never. He don't know the meaning of falseness. He never looked at me, John Bamsey, till I'd left you, and I never thought of him till long, long after I was free. And when I loved him, he told me he could not marry me--and why--and I saw that it was moonshine and only a pair of weak, worthless creatures would be frightened and part for that--only cowards feared of their neighbour and the laws--laws that selfish Christians bleat about and want kept, because to torture other people won't hurt their comfort, or cloud their homes. What do you know of marriage--one of you? What do you know of the dark, deadly things that may come between people and separate 'em far as heaven from hell, while parsons and lawyers and old bachelors and old women want 'em chained together to rot--for Christ's sake! Look deeper--look deeper!"

While the men stood silent, Maynard picked up his stick and bag and Dinah's basket.

Mr. Chaffe had sunk upon a stone and was wiping his eyes with a red pocket handkerchief.

"You!" he said. "You brought up in a Christian home by God-fearing people, Dinah!"

"And fear God I always shall; but not man," she answered scornfully. "Did these chaps do this because they feared God? Ask them!"

She took her package from Maynard and he spoke.

"Have no fear that any harm be done to righteousness," he said. "No woman knows her duty to her Maker better than this woman, or her duty to her neighbour. If ever I was in doubt, and I have been, my doubts be cleared afore what you men have done to-day, and I thank you for that. You've shown how paltry it was to doubt, I reckon, and I doubt no more. I be the better and stronger for seeing your minds, you well-meaning chaps! My life and thought and worship belong to Dinah; and where no secrets are hid, there's no blame counted against us, and never will be, I hope."

They turned their backs upon the listeners and went away side by side; they moved among the stones and bushes until they sank out of sight and vanished for ever from that company.

"To hell with them!" said John, "and curse all women for the sake of that blasted woman!"

But the rest did not share his passion. Only Mr. Chaffe mourned; the others were impressed at what they had heard and the prize-fighter was amused.

"A pretty parcel we look," said Callicott, "bested by that calm man and quick-tongued woman. And be damned if I ban't their side. We don't know naught about it, and if we did very like we'd praise 'em for a bit of pluck. Anyway she knows what she's doing all right."

"If the Lord can read their hearts, it evidently don't much matter to them that we can't," declared Robert Withycombe; "and be it as it will, if he was a Turk, or Indian, the man could have two wives and no harm done. And if there's only one Almighty, Mr. Chaffe, why for should He hold it a parlous crime for us to do what a chap across the water can do every day of the week?"

But Arthur Chaffe was too stricken to argue. He stared in great grief after the vanished man and woman.

"My God, why hast Thou forsaken them?" he moaned.

They parted presently and went their different ways, leaving Shepherd's Cross with the sunlight on its face and the severed ropes about its foot.