Chapter IV: Part 4

"Ess fay! 'Tis the chaps as have got to talk I be sorry for--the public warriors and Parliament men an' such like. They sweat o' nights, I reckon; for they be 'feared to talk now an' again, I'll wager, an' be still worse 'feared to hold theer peace."

"You're pretty right, Ash," said Mr. Endicott. "It takes a brave man to keep his mouth shut and not care whether he's misunderstood or no. But 'tis a bleating age--a drum-beating age o' clash and clatter. Why, the very members of Parliament get too jaded to follow their great business with sober minds. If a man don't pepper his speeches with mountebank fun, they call him a dull dog, and won't listen to him. All the world's dropping into play-acting--that's the truth of it."

"I didn't make no jokes howsoever when I turned my speech 'fore supper," declared Mr. Cramphorn; "an' I'm sure I'd never do no such ondacent thing in a set speech. Ban't respectful. Not but what I was surprised to find how pat the right word comed to me at the right moment wi'out any digging for un."

"'Tis a gert gift for a humble man," said Mr. Ash.

"A gift to be used wi' caution," confessed Jonah. "When you say 'tis a gift, last word's spoken," he added, "but a man's wise to keep close guard awver his tongue when it chances to be sharper'n common. Not as I ever go back on the spoken word, for 'tis a sign of weakness."

Myles Stapledon laughed and Mr. Cramphorn grew hot.

"Why for should I?" he asked.

"If you never had call to eat your words after fifty years o' talkin', Jonah, you're either uncommon fortunate or uncommon wise," declared the blind man. "Wise you are not particular, not to my knowledge, so we must say you're lucky."

The others laughed, and Jonah, despite his brag of a tongue more ready than most, found nothing to say at this rebuke. He made an inarticulate growl at the back of his throat and puffed vigorously, while Henry Collins came to the rescue.

"Can 'e tell us when the weddin's like to be, sir?" he inquired of Stapledon, and Myles waited for somebody else to reply; but none did so.

"I cannot tell," he answered at length. "I fancy nothing is settled. But we shall hear soon enough, no doubt."

"I suppose 'tis tu inquirin' to ax if you'll bide to Endicott's when missis do leave it?" said Samuel Pinsent.

"Well--yes, I think it is. Lord knows what I'm going to do. My home's here for the present--until--well, I really cannot tell myself. It depends on various things."

There was a silence. Even the most slow-witted perceived a new revelation of Stapledon in this speech. Presently Churdles Ash spoke.

"Best to bide here till the time-work chaps be through wi' theer job. Them time-work men! The holy text sez, 'Blessed be they as have not seed an' yet have believed'; but fegs! 'tis straining scripture to put that on time-work. I'd never believe no time-work man what I hadn't seed."

"Anybody's a fool to believe where he doesn't trust," said Mark Endicott. "You open a great question, Ash. I believed no more or less than any other chap of five-an'-twenty in my young days; but, come blindness, there was no more taking on trust for me. I had to find a reason for all I believed from that day forward."

"Was faith a flower that grew well in the dark with you, uncle?" inquired Myles, and there was a wave of sudden interest in his voice.

"Why, yes. Darkness is the time for making roots and 'stablishing plants, whether of the soil or of the mind. Faith grew but slowly. And the flower of it comes to no more than this: do your duty, and be gentle with your neighbour. Don't wax weak because you catch yourself all wrong so often. Don't let any man pity you but yourself; and don't let no other set of brains than your own settle the rights and wrongs of life for you. That's my road--a blind man's. But there's one thing more, my sons: to believe in the goodness of God through thick and thin."

"The hardest thing of all," said Stapledon.

Mr. Cramphorn here thought proper to join issue. He also had his own views, reached single-handed, and was by no means ashamed of them.

"As to the A'mighty," he said, "my rule's to treat Un same as He treats me--same as we'm taught to treat any other neighbour. That's fair, if you ax me."

"A blasphemous word to say it, whether or no," declared Ash uneasily. "We ban't teached to treat folks same as they treat us, but same as we wish they'd treat us. That's a very differ'nt thing. Gormed if I ban't mazed a bolt doan't strike 'e, Jonah."

"'Tis my way, an' who's gwaine to shaw me wheer it fails o' right an' justice?"

"A truculent attitude to the Everlasting, surely," ventured Myles, looking at the restless little man with his hang-dog forehead and big chin.

"Who's afeared, so long as he'm on the windy side o' justice? I ban't. If God sends gude things, I'm fust to thank Un 'pon my bended knees, an' hope respectful for long continuance; if He sends bad--then I cool off an' wait for better times. Ban't my way to return thanks for nought. I've thanked Un for the hay for missus's gude sake a score o' times; but thank Un for the turmits I won't, till I sees if we'm gwaine to have rain 'fore 'tis tu late. 'No song, no supper,' as the saying is. Ban't my way to turn left cheek to Jehovah Jireh after He's smote me 'pon the right. 'Tis contrary to human nature; an' Christ's self can't alter that."

"'Tis tu changeable in you, Cramphorn, if I may say it without angering you," murmured Collins.

"Not so, Henery; ban't me that changes, but Him. I'm a steadfast man, an' always was so, as Mr. Endicott will bear witness. When the Lard's hand's light on me, I go dancin' an' frolickin' afore Him, like to David afore the ark, an' pray long prayers week-days so well as Sundays; but when He'm contrary with me, an' minded to blaw hot an' cold, from no fault o' mine--why, dammy, I get cranky tu. Caan't help it. Built so. 'Pears to me as 'tis awnly a brute dog as'll lick the hands that welts un."

"What do 'e say to this here popish discoorse, sir?" inquired Churdles Ash; and Mark answered him.

"Why, Jonah only confesses the secret of most of us. We've got too much wit or too little pluck to tell--that's all the difference. He's blurted it out."

"The 'state of most of us'?" gasped Mr. Collins.

"Surely, even though we don't own it to our innermost souls. Who should know, if not me? It makes a mighty difference whether 'tis by pleasant paths or bitter that we come to the throne of grace. Fair weather saints most of us, I reckon. I felt the same when my eyes were put out. God knows how I kept my hands off my life. I never shall. Before that change I'd prayed regular as need be, morn and night, just because my dear mother had taught me so to do, and habit's the half of life. And after my eyes went the habit stuck, though my soul was up in arms and my brain poisoned against a hard Providence. And what did I do? Why, regular as the clock, at the hour when I was used to bless God, I went on my knees and lifted my empty eyes to Him and cursed Him. 'Twas as the psalmist prayed in his awful song of rage: my prayer was turned into sin. I did that--for a month. And what was the price He paid me for my wickedness? Why, He sent peace--peace fell upon me and the wish to live; and He that had took my sight away brought tears to my eyes instead. So I reached a blind man's seeing at the last. I've lived to know that man's misty talk and thought upon justice is no more than a wind in the trees. Therefore Jonah is in the wrong to steer his life by his own human notion of justice. There's no justice in this world, and what fashion of stuff will be the justice in the next, we'll know when we come to get it measured out, not sooner. One thing's sure: it's not over likely to be planned on earthly models; so there's no sight under heaven more pitiful to me than all mankind so busy planning pleasure parties in the next world to make up for their little, thorny, wayside job in this."

"The question is, Do we matter to the God of a starry night?" asked Stapledon, forgetting the presence of any beyond the last speaker. "We matter a great deal to ourselves and ought to--I know that, of course," he added. "We must take ourselves seriously."

Mark laughed and made instant answer.

"We take ourselves too seriously, our neighbours not seriously enough. It's the fault of all humans--philosophers included."

"An' I be sure theer's immortal angels hid in our bones, however," summed up Mr. Ash.

"If so, good," answered Stapledon with profound seriousness. "But thought won't alter what is by the will of God; nor yet what's going to be. The Future's His workshop only. No man can meddle there. But the present is ours; and if half the brain-sweat wasted on the next world was spent in tidying the dirty corners in this one--why, we might bring the other nearer--if other there be."

"You'll know there's another long before your time comes to go to it, my son," said the blind man in a calm voice. Then the tall clock between the warming-pans struck ten with the sonorous cadence and ring of old metal. At this signal pipes were knocked out and windows and doors thrown open; whereupon the west wind, like the voice of a superior intellect, stilled their chatter with sweet breath, soon swept away the reek of tobacco, and brought a blast of pure air through the smoke. All those present, save only Myles and Endicott, then departed to their rest; but these two sat on awhile, for the old man had a hard thing to say, and knew that the moment to speak was come.

"How long are you going to stop here?" he asked suddenly.

"I can't guess. I suppose there's no hurry. I've really not much interest anywhere else. Why do you ask?"

"Because it's important, lad. Blind folks hear such a deal. And they often know more than what belongs to the mere spoken word. There's an inner and an outer meaning to most speech of man, and we sightless ones often gather both. It surprises people at times. You see we win nothing from sight of a speaking mouth or the eyes above it. All our brain sits behind our ear; there's no windows for it to look out at."

"You've surprised me by what you have gleaned out of a voice, uncle."

"And I'm like to again. Not pleasantly neither. I've thought how I'd found something on your tongue long ago; but I've kept dumb, hoping I was mistaken. To-night, my son, there's no more room for doubt."

"This is a mystery--quite uncanny."

"I don't know. 'Tis very unfortunate--very, but a fact; and you've got to face it."

"Read the riddle to me," said Stapledon slowly. His voice sounded anxious under an assumption of amusement.

"Do you remember after supper how Pinsent asked you whether you would stop on here when his mistress was married? You answered that the Lord knew what you were going to do. Now it was clean out of your character to answer so."

"I hope it was; I hope so indeed. I was sorry the moment afterwards."

"You couldn't help yourself. You were not thinking of your answer to the question, but the much more important thing suggested by the question. That's what made you so short: the thought of Honor's marriage."

"I own it," confessed the other. A silence fell; then Mark spoke again more gravely.

"Myles, you must clear out of here. I'm blind and even I know it. How much more such as can see--you yourself, for instance--and Honor--and Christopher Yeoland."

Stapledon's brow flushed and his jaw set hard. He looked at the sightless face before him, and spoke hurriedly.

"For God's sake, what do you mean?"

"It's news to you? I do think it is! And it has come the same way to many when it falls the first time. The deeper it strikes, the less they can put a name to it. But now you know. Glance back along the road you've walked beside Honor of late days. Then see how the way ahead looks to you with her figure gone. I knew this a week ago, and I sorrowed for you. There was an unconscious tribute in your voice when you spoke to her--a hush in it, as if you were praying. Man, I'm sorry--but your heart will tell you that I'm right."

A lengthy silence followed upon this speech; then the other whispered out a question, and there was awe rather than terror in his tone.

"You mean I'm coming to love her?"

"I do--if only that. Remember what you said the first day you came here about the false step at the threshold."

"But she is another man's. That has been familiar knowledge to me."

"And you think that fact can prevent a man of honour from loving a woman?"

"Surely."

"Not so at all. Love of woman's a thing apart--beyond all rule and scale, or dogma, or the Bible's self. The passions are pagans to the end--no more to be trusted than tame tigers, if a man is a man. But passions are bred out nowadays. I don't believe the next generation will be shook to the heart with the same gusts and storms as the last. We think smaller thoughts and feel smaller sentiments; we're too careful of our skins to trust the giant passions; our hearts don't pump the same great flood of hot blood. But you--you belong to the older sort. And you love her--you who never heard the rustle of a petticoat with quickened breath before, I reckon. You're too honest to deny it after you've thought a little. You know there's something seething down at the bottom of your soul--and now you hear the name of it. Go to bed and sleep upon that."

Stapledon remained mute. His face was passive, but his forehead was wrinkled a little. He folded his arms and stared at the fire.

"God knows I wish this was otherwise," continued Mark Endicott. "'Twould have been a comely and a fitting thing for you to mate her and carry on all here. So at least I thought before I knew you."

"But have changed your opinion of me since?"

"Well, yes; I did not think so highly of you until we met and got to understand each other. But I doubt if you'd be a fit husband for Honor. There's a difference of--I don't know the word--but it's a difference in essentials anyway--in views and in standpoint. Honor's a clever woman to some extent, yet she takes abundant delight in occasional foolishness, as clever women often do. 'Tisn't your fashion of mind to fool--not even on holidays. You couldn't if you tried."

"But she is as sober-minded as I am at heart. Under her humorous survey of things and her laughter there is----"

"I know; I know all about her."

"We had thought we possessed much in common on a comparison of notes now and again."

"If you did, 'tis just what you wouldn't have found out so pat at first sight. There's a great gulf fixed between you, and I'm not sorry it is so, seeing she's another man's. Yeoland looks to be a light thing; I grant that; but I do believe that he understands her better than you or I ever could. I've found out so much from hearing them together. Moreover, he's growing sober; there's a sort of cranky sense in him, I hope, after all."

"A feather-brain, but well-meaning."

"The last leaf on an old tree--even as Honor is."

"At least there must be deep friendship always--deep friendship. So much can't be denied to me. Don't talk of a great gulf between us, uncle. Not at least a mental one."

"Truly I believe so, Myles."

"We could bridge that."

"With bridges of passing passion--like silver spider-threads between flowers. But they wouldn't stand the awful strain of lifelong companionship. You've never thought what that strain means in our class of life, when husband and wife have got to bide within close touch most times till the grave parts them. But that's all wind and nothing. She's tokened to Yeoland. So no more need be spoken on that head. You've got to think of your peace of mind, Stapledon, and--well, I'd best say it--hers too. Now, good-night. Not another word, if you're a wise man."

Mark Endicott was usually abroad betimes, though not such an early riser as Myles, and on the following morning, according to his custom, he walked in the garden before breakfast. His pathway extended before the more ancient front of Bear Down, and in summer, at each step, he might stretch forth his hand over the flower border and know what blossom would meet it. Now there fell a heavy footfall that approached from the farmyard.

"Good morning," said Stapledon, as he shook Mark by the hand.

"Good morning, my lad."

"I'm going on Saturday."

Mr. Endicott nodded, as one acknowledging information already familiar.

"Your loss will fall heavily on me," he said, "for it's not twice in a month of Sundays that I get such a companion spirit to chop words with."

*CHAPTER X.*

*THREE ANGRY MAIDS*

Upon the day that Myles Stapledon determined with himself to leave Little Silver, Christopher's patience broke down, and he wrote to Honor concerning their protracted quarrel. This communication it pleased him to begin in a tone of most unusual severity. He struck the note in jest at first, then proceeded with it in earnest. He bid his lady establish her mind more firmly and affirm her desires. He returned her liberty, hinted that, if he so willed, he might let Godleigh Park to a wealthy Plymouth tradesman, who much desired to secure it, and himself go abroad for an indefinite period of years. Then, weary of these heroics, Christopher became himself on the third page of the note, expressed unbounded contrition for his sins, begged his sweetheart's forgiveness, and prayed her to name a meeting-place that he might make atonement in person. With joke and jest the letter wound to its close; and he despatched it to Bear Down upon the following morning.

Mr. Gregory Libby happened to be the messenger, and of this worthy it may be said that, while now a person well-to-do in the judgment of Little Silver, yet he displayed more sense than had been prophesied for him, kept his money in his purse, and returned to his humble but necessary occupation of hedge-trimming. He was working about Godleigh at present, and being the first available fellow-creature who met Yeoland's eye as he entered the air, letter in hand, his temporary master bid Gregory drop gauntlet and pruning-hook that he might play postman instead for a while.

The youth departed then to Endicott's under a personal and private excitement, for his own romance lay there, as it pleased him to think, and he was conducting it with deliberate and calculating method. Libby found himself divided between the daughters of Mr. Cramphorn, and, as those young women knew this fact, the tension between them increased with his delay. Upon the whole he preferred Sally, as the more splendid animal; but the man was far too cunning to commit himself rashly. His desires by no means blinded him, and he looked far ahead and wondered with some low shrewdness which of the maids enjoyed larger part of her father's regard, and which might hope for a lion's share of Jonah's possessions when the head-man at Bear Down should pass away. In this direction Mr. Libby was prosecuting his inquiries; and the operation proved difficult and delicate, for Cramphorn disliked him. Margery met the messenger, and gave a little purr of pleasure as she opened the kitchen door.

"Come in, come in the kitchen," she said; "I'm all alone for the minute if you ban't feared o' me, Mr. Libby."

"Very glad to see you again," said Gregory, shaking her hand and holding it a moment afterwards.

"So be I you. I heard your butivul singing to church Sunday, but me, bein' in the choir, I couldn't look about to catch your eye."

"Wheer's Sally to?" he asked suddenly, after they had talked a few moments on general subjects.

The girl's face fell and her voice hardened.

"How should I knaw? To work, I suppose."

"I awften wonder as her hands doan't suffer by it," mused Libby.

"They do," she answered with cruel eagerness. "Feel mine."

She pressed her palms into his, considering that the opportunity permitted her so to do without any lack of propriety. And he held them and found them soft and cool, but a thought thin to his taste. She dropped her eyelids, and he looked at her long lashes and the thick rolls of dark hair on her head. Then his eyes ranged on. Her face was pretty, with a prim prettiness, but for the rest Margery wholly lacked her sister's physical splendours. No grand curves of bosom met Mr. Libby's little shifty eyes. The girl, indeed, was slight and thin.

He dropped her hand, and she, knowing by intuition the very matter of his mind, spoke. Her voice was the sweetest thing about her, though people often forgot that fact in the word it uttered. Margery had a bad temper and a shrewish tongue. Now the bells jangled, and she fell sharply upon her absent sister. She declared that she feared for her; that Sally was growing unmaidenly as a result of her outdoor duties. Then came a subtle cut--and Margery looked away from her listener's face as she uttered it.

"Her could put you in her pocket and not knaw you was theer. I've heard her say so."

Mr. Libby grew very red.

"Ban't the way for a woman to talk about any chap," he said.

"Coourse it ban't. That's it with she. So much working beside the men, an' killin' fowls, an' such like makes her rough an' rough-tongued. Though a very gude sister to me, I'm sure, an'----"

She had seen Sally approaching; hence this lame conclusion. The women's eyes met as the elder spoke.

"Wheer's faither to, Margery? Ah! Mr. Libby--didn't see you. You'm up here airly--helpin' her to waste time by the look of it."

"Theer's some doan't want no help," retorted the other. "What be you doin' indoors? Your plaace is 'pon the land with the men."

"Wheer you'd like to be, if they'd let 'e," stung the other; "but you'm no gude to 'em--a poor pin-tailed wench like you."

"Ess fay! Us must have a brazen faace an' awver-blawn shape like yourn to make the men come about us! Ban't sense--awnly fat they look for in a female of coourse!" snapped back Margery; and in the meantime the cause of this explosion--proud of his power, but uneasy before the wrath of women--prepared to depart. Fortune favoured his exit, for Honor appeared suddenly at the other end of the farmyard with some kittens in her hands and a mother cat, tail in air, marching beside her and lifting misty green eyes, full of joy.

Libby turned therefore, delivered his letter, and was gone; while behind him voices clashed in anger, one sweet, one shrill. Then a door slammed as Margery hastened away upon a Parthian shot, and her sister stamped furiously, having no word to answer but a man's. Sally immediately left the house and proceeded after the messenger; but a possibility of this he had foreseen, and was now well upon his way back to Godleigh. Sally therefore found herself disappointed anew, and marked her emotions by ill-treating a pig that had the misfortune to cross her stormy path.

Another woman's soul was also in arms; and while Margery wept invisible and her sister used the ugliest words that she knew, under her breath, their mistress walked up and down the grass plot where it extended between the farm and the fields, separated from the latter by a dip in the land and a strange fence of granite posts and old steel rope.

Honor had now come from seeing Myles Stapledon. Together, after breakfast, they had inspected a new cow-byre on outlying land, and, upon the way back, he told her that he designed to return to Tavistock at the end of that week. Only by a sudden alteration of pace and change of foot did she show her first surprise. Then she lifted a questioning gaze to his impassive face.

"Why?" she asked.

"Well, why not? I've been here three months and there is nothing more for me to do--at any rate nothing that need keep me on the spot."

"There's still less for you to do at Tavistock. You told me a month ago that there was nothing to take you back. You've sold the old house and let the mill."

"It is so; but I must--I have plans--I may invest some money at Plymouth. And I must work, you know."

"Are you not working here?"

"Why, not what I call work. Only strolling about watching other people."

Honor changed the subject after a short silence.

"Did you see Christopher on Sunday? I thought you were to do so?"

"Yes; the linen-draper from Plymouth has been at him again. He's mad about Godleigh; he makes a splendid offer to rent it for three years. And he'll spend good money upon improvements annually in addition to quite a fancy rent."

"Did you advise Christopher to accept it?"

"Most certainly I did. It would help to lessen his monetary bothers; but he was in one of his wildly humorous moods and made fun of all things in heaven and earth."

Honor tightened her lips. Their first great quarrel, it appeared, was not weighing very heavily on her lover.

"He refused, of course."

"He said that he would let you decide. But he vows he can't live out of sight of Godleigh and can't imagine himself a trespasser on his own land. He was sentimental. But he has such an artist's mind. 'Tis a pity he's not got some gift of expression as an outlet--pictures or verses or something."

"That can have nothing to do with your idea of going away, however, Myles?" asked Honor, swinging back to the matter in her mind.

"Nothing whatever; why should it?"

"I don't want you to go away," she said; and some passion trembled in her voice. "You won't give me any reason why you should do so, because there can be none."

"We need not discuss it, cousin."

"Then you'll stop, since I ask you to?"

"No, I cannot, Honor. I must go. I have very sufficient reasons. Do not press me upon that point, but take my word for it."

"You refuse me a reason? Then, I repeat, I wish you to stay. Everything cries out that you should. My future prosperity cries out. It is your duty to stay. Apart from Bear Down and me, you may do Christopher much good and help him to take life more seriously. Will you stay because I ask you to?"

"Why do you wish it?" he said.

"Because--I like you very much indeed; there--that's straightforward and a good reason, though you're so chary with yours."

She looked frankly at him, but with annoyance rather than regard in her eyes.

"It is folly and senseless folly to go," she continued calmly, while he gasped within and felt a mist crowding down on the world. "You like me too, a little--and you're enlarging my mind beyond the limits of this wilderness of eternal grass and hay. Why, when Providence throws a little sunshine upon me, should I rush indoors out of it and draw down the blinds?"

He was going to mention Christopher again, but felt such an act would be unfair to the man in Honor's present mood. For a moment he opened his mouth to argue the point she raised, then realised the danger and futility. Only by an assumption of carelessness amounting to the brutal could he keep his secret out of his voice. And in the light of what she had confessed so plainly, to be less frank himself was most difficult. Her words had set his heart beating like a hammer. His mind was overwhelmed with his first love, and to such a man it was an awful emotion. It shook him and unsteadied his voice as he looked at her, for she had never seemed more necessary to him than then.

"Don't be so serious," he said. "Your horizon will soon begin to enlarge with the coming interests. I've enjoyed my long visit more than I can tell you--much more than I can tell you; but go I must indeed."

"Stop just one fortnight more, Myles?"

"Don't ask it, Honor. It's hard to say 'No' to you."

"A week--a little week--to please me? Why shouldn't you please me? Is it a crime to do that? I suppose it is, for nobody ever thinks of trying to."

"I cannot alter my plans now. I must go on Saturday."

"Go, then," she said. "I'm rewarded for being so rude as to ask so often. I'm not nearly proud enough. That's a distinction you've not taught me to achieve with all your lessons."

She left him, but he overtook her in two strides, and walked at her right hand.

"Honor, please listen to me."

"My dear cousin, don't put on that haggard, not to say tragic, expression. It really is a matter of no moment. I only worried you because I'm spoiled and hate being crossed even in trifles. It was the disappointment of not getting my way that vexed me, not the actual point at question. If you can leave all your interests here without anxiety and trust me so far--why, I'm flattered."

"Hear me, I say."

"So will the whole world, if you speak so loud. What more is there to hear? You're going on Saturday, and Tommy Bates shall drive you to Okehampton to catch the train."

"You're right--and wise," he said more quietly. "No, I've nothing to say."

Then he made a ghastly effort to be entertaining.

"And mind, Honor, I shall be very sharp if my cheque does not come each quarter on the right day. A hard taskmaster I shall be, I promise you."

"Don't, Myles," she answered instantly, growing grave at his simulated merriment.

A few minutes afterwards she left him, sought out the squeaking kittens to calm her emotions, presently deposited them in a sunny corner with their parent, and, taking Christopher's letter, walked out again upon the grass.

A storm played over her face which she made no attempt to hide. Tear-stained Margery, peeping from the kitchen window, noticed it, and Samuel Pinsent, as he passed from the vegetable garden, observed that his salute received no recognition.

Honor Endicott knew very well what she now confronted, and she swept from irritation to anger, from anger to passion before the survey. Ignoring the great salient tragedy that underlaid the position, she took refuge in details, and selecting one--the determination of Myles to depart--chose to connect Christopher Yeoland directly with it, decided to believe that it was at Yeoland's desire her cousin now withdrew. The rectitude of the act added the last straw to her temper. The truth perhaps was not wholly hidden from her; she had been quick to read Myles by light thrown from her own heart. And here, at a point beyond which her thought could not well pass, she turned impatiently to the letter from her lover, tore it open, and scanned the familiar caligraphy.

Half a page sufficed, for her mood just then was ill-tuned to bear any sort of reproof. Anger had dimmed both her sense of proportion and her knowledge of Christopher; round-eyed she read a few lines of stern rebuke and censure, a threat, an offer of liberty, and no more. The real Christopher, who only began upon a later folio, she never reached. There was a quick suspiration of breath, a sound suspiciously like the gritting of small teeth, and her letter--torn, and torn, and torn again--was flung into the hand of the rough wind, caught, hurried aloft, swept every way, scattered afar, sown over an acre of autumn grass.

"This is more than I can bear!" she said aloud; and after the sentiment--so seldom uttered by man or woman save under conditions perfectly capable of endurance--she entered the house, tore off her gloves, and wrote, with heaving bosom, an answer to the letter she had not read.

*CHAPTER XI.*

*PARTINGS*

When Christopher Yeoland received his sweetheart's letter at the hand of Tommy Bates, he read it thrice, then whistled a Dead March to himself for the space of half an hour.

He retired early with his tribulation, and spent a night absolutely devoid of sleep; but Nature yielded about daybreak, when usually he rose, and from that hour the man slumbered heavily until noon. Then, having regarded the ceiling for a considerable time, he found that Honor had receded to the background of his mind, while Myles Stapledon bulked large in the forefront of it. To escape in their acuteness the painful impressions awakened by his letter, he destroyed it without further perusal; he then wandered out of doors, and climbed above his pine woods to reflect and mature some course of action. He retraced the recent past, and arrived at erroneous conclusions, misled by Honor's letter, as she had been deceived from the introductory passages in his. He told himself that she had yielded to his importunities through sheer weariness; that in reality she did not love him and now knew it, in presence of this pagan cousin, sprung up out of the heather. From finding herself in two minds, before all the positive virtues of Stapledon, she was doubtless now in one again, and he--Christopher--had grown very dim, had quite lost his old outline in her eyes, in fact had suffered total eclipse from the shadow of a better man.

To these convictions he came, and while still of opinion--even after the catastrophe of her letter--that no more fitting husband could have been found for Honor than himself, yet was he equally sure, since her indignation, that he would never ask her to marry him more. Thus he argued very calmly, with his body cast down under the edge of the pine woods, his eyes upon the dying gold of oak forests spread over an adjacent hill. Against Honor he felt no particular resentment, but with Stapledon he grew into very steadfast enmity.

Under his careless, laughter-loving, and invertebrate existence Yeoland hid a heart; and though none, perhaps not Honor herself, had guessed all that his engagement meant to him, the fact remained: it began to establish the man in essential particulars, and had already awakened wide distaste with his present uncalculated existence. Thus Honor's promise modified his outlook upon life, nerved him, roused him to responsibility. He was not a fool, and perfectly realised what is due from any man to the woman who suffers him henceforth to become first factor in her destiny. Yet his deeply rooted laziness and love of procrastination had stood between him and action up to the present. All things were surely conspiring to a definite step; but events had not waited his pleasure; another man now entered the theatre, and his own part was thrust into obscurity even at the moment when he meditated how to make it great. But the fact did not change his present purpose. Ideas, destined to produce actions during the coming year, were still with him, and recent events only precipitated his misty projects. He resolved upon immediate and heroic performance. He began by forgiving Honor. He marvelled at her unexpected impatience, and wondered what barbed arrow in his own letter had been sharp enough to draw such serious wrath from her. There was no laughter in her reply--all thunder, and the fine forked lightning of a clever woman in a passion on paper. He felt glad that he had destroyed the letter. Yet the main point was clear enough, though only implicitly indicated; she loved him no more, for had she done so, no transient circumstance of irritation or even active anger had been strong enough to win such concentrated bitterness from her. He did not know what had gone to build Honor's letter; he was ignorant of Stapledon's decision, of the fret and fume in his sweetheart's spirit when she heard it, of the mood from which she suffered when she received his note, and of the crowning fact that she had not read all.

So Christopher made up his mind to go away without more words, to let Godleigh to the enamoured linen-draper for a term of years, and join his sole surviving relative--an ancient squatter in New South Wales--who wrote to his kinsman twice a year and accompanied each missive with the information that Australia was going to the dingoes and must soon cease to be habitable by anything but a "sun-downer" or a kangaroo. Hither, then, Christopher determined to depart; and, viewed from beneath his whispering pines, the idea had an aspect so poetical that he found tears in his eyes, which set all the distant woods swimming. But when he remembered Myles, his sorrow dried, scorched up by an inner fire; and, as he looked into the future that this stranger had snatched away from him, he began to count the cost and measure the length of his life without Honor Endicott. Such calculations offered no standpoint for a delicate emotion. They were the difference between visions of billowing and many-breasted Devon, here unrolled before him, glorious under red autumn light, and that other in his mind's eye--a sad-coloured apparition of Australian spinifex and sand.

His anger whirled up against the supplanter, and he forgot his former charitable and just contentions uttered before this blow had fallen. Then he had honestly affirmed to Honor that in his judgment Stapledon was in love with her and scarcely realised his position. That utterance was as nearly true as possible; but in the recollection of the woman's anger he forgot it. How the thing had come about mattered nothing now. To inquire was vain; but the knowledge that he had done no deed to bring this storm upon himself proved little comfort. His patience and humour and philosophy went down the wind together. He was, at least to that extent, a man.

To Honor's letter he returned no answer; neither did he seek her, but avoided her rather and pursued an active search for Myles Stapledon. Accident prevented a meeting until the morning of the latter's departure, and, wholly ignorant that his rival was at that moment leaving Bear Down for good and all, Christopher met him in a dog-cart on the road to Okehampton, not far from the spot where had fallen out their first introduction.

The pedestrian raised his hand, and Myles bid Bates, who drove him, pull up.

"Well met," he said.

"Would you mind giving me a few minutes of your time, Stapledon?" inquired Christopher coldly; whereupon Myles looked at his watch, and then climbed to earth.

"Trot on," he said to his driver, "and wait for me at the corner where Throwley road runs into ours. And now," he continued, as the vehicle drew out from ear-shot, "perhaps you won't mind turning for half a mile or so. I must keep moving towards Okehampton, or I shall miss my train."

They walked in step together; then Yeoland spoke.

"You'll probably guess what I've got to say."

"Not exactly, though I may suspect the subject. Hear me first. It'll save you trouble. You know me well enough to grant that I'd injure no man willingly. We must be frank. Only last Sunday did I find what had overtaken me. I swear it. I didn't imagine such things could happen."

"Don't maunder on like that! What do I care what's overtaken you? You say you suspect the thing I want to speak about. Then come to it, or else let me do so. When first we met you heard that I was the man your cousin had promised to marry. You won't deny that?"

"You told me."

"Then why, in the name of the living God, did a man with all your oppressive good qualities come between us? That's a plain question anyway."

A flush spread over Stapledon's cold face and as quickly died out. He did not answer immediately, and the younger spoke again.

"Well? You're the strong man, the powerful, self-contained, admirable lesson to his weak brethren. Can't you answer, or won't you?"

"Don't pour these bitter words upon me. I have done no deliberate wrong at all; I have merely moved unconsciously into a private difficulty from which I am now about to extricate myself."

"That's too hard a saying for me."

"It is true. I have wakened from an error. I have committed a terrible action in ignorance. A blind man, but not so blind as I was, showed me my stupidity."

"Say it in so many words. You love Honor."

"I do. I have grown to love her--the thing farthest from my thoughts or dreams. I cannot help it. I do not excuse it or defend myself. I am doing all in my power."

"Which is----?"

"Going--going not to come back."

"It is too late."

"Do not say so, Yeoland. What could I be to her--such a man----?"

"Spare me and yourself all that. And answer this one question--on your oath. Did she tell you of the letter she wrote to me?"

"She did not."

"Or of my letter?"

"Not a word."

"One question more. What did she say when you told her you were going?"

"She deemed it unnecessary at the time."

"She asked you to stop?"

Stapledon did not answer immediately; then his manner changed and his voice grew hard. He stood still, and turned on his companion and towered above him. Their positions were suddenly reversed.

"I will suffer no more of this. I have done you no conscious wrong, and am not called upon to stand and deliver at your order. Leave a man, who is sufficiently tormented, to go his way alone. I am moving out of your life as fast as my legs will carry me. I mourn that I came into it. I acknowledge full measure of blame--all that it pleases you to heap upon me; so leave me in peace, for more I cannot do."

"'Peace!' She did ask you not to go?"

"I have gone. That is enough. She is waiting for you to make her your wife. Don't let her wait for ever."

"You do well to advise--you who have wrecked two lives with your--'private difficulty'!"

Yeoland stood still, but the other moved hastily on. Thus they parted without further words, and Christopher, at length weary of standing to watch Stapledon's retreating shape, turned and resumed his way.

He had determined, despite his sneer, to take Stapledon's advice and go back to Honor. The bonds woven of long years were not broken after all. How should events of a few short weeks shatter his lifelong understanding with this woman? Recent determinations vanished as soon as his rival had done so, and Yeoland turned and bent his steps to Bear Down, resolved that the present hour should end all and place him again in the old position or dethrone him for ever. His mind beat like a bird against the bars of a cage, and he asked himself of what, in the name of all malevolent magic, was this man made, who had such power to unsettle Honor in her love and worship, to thrust him headlong from his high estate. He could not answer the question, or refused to answer it. He swept on over the sere fern, with the soft song of the dead heather bells in his ear; but the message of stone and heath was one: She had asked the other man not to go.

Before that consummation his new-kindled hope faded, his renewed determinations died. The roads of surrender and of flight were all that stretched before him. To Honor he could be nothing any more; and worse than nothing if he stopped. Complete self-sacrifice and self-effacement seemed demanded of him if his love was indeed the great, grand passion that he had imagined it to be. Impressed with this conviction he passed from the Moor and sought his nearest way to Godleigh; and then the mood of him suffered another change, and hope spoke in the splendours of sunset. Myles Stapledon had certainly gone; and he had departed never to return. That was his own assurance. Honor at least might be asked, and reasonably asked, to tell her mind at this crisis in affairs.

And so he changed the road again and set his face for Bear Down. A dark speck met his gaze while yet he was far distant; and he knew it for the mistress and hastened to her, where she walked alone on the little lawn.

Coming quietly over the grass Yeoland surprised her; she lifted a startled face to his, and he found her moist of eye while in her voice was a tremor that told of tears past.

"Why d'you steal on me like this?" she asked suddenly, and her face flushed, and her hands went up to her breast. "You frighten me. I do not want you. Please, Christopher, go away."

"I know you do not want me, and I am going away," he answered gloomily, his expectations stricken before her words. "I'm going, and I've come to tell you so."

"How much more am I to suffer to-day?"

"You can ask me that, Honor? My little girl, d'you suppose life's a bed of roses for me since your letter?"

"A bed of roses is the sum of your ambitions."

"Why, that's like old times when you can be merely rude to me! But is the old time gone? Is the new time different? Listen, Honor, and tell me the truth."

"I don't know the truth. Please go away and leave me alone; I can tell you nothing. Don't you see I don't want you? Be a man, if you know how, and go out of my sight."

The voice was not so harsh as the words, and he thought he saw the ghost of a hope behind it.

"Curious!" he said. "You're the third person this week who has told me to be a man. Well, I'll try. Only hear this, and answer it. I've just left Myles Stapledon on his way to Okehampton--gone for good."

"What is that to me?"

"Your looking-glass will tell you. Now, Honor, before God--yes, before God, answer me the truth. Do you love him?"

"You've no right to stay here prattling when I bid you go."

"None; and I'm not going to stay and prattle. But answer that you shall. I've a right at least to ask that question."

The girl almost wrung her hands, and half turned from him without speaking; but he approached and imprisoned both her arms.

"You must tell me. I can do nothing until I know, Your very own lips must tell me."

"You don't ask me if I love you?"

"Answer the other question and I shall know."

"Blind--blind--selfish egotists--all of you," she cried. Then her voice changed. "Is it my fault if I do love him?" she asked.

"I'm no judge. To part right and wrong was a task beyond me always--excepting on general, crude principles. Answer my question."

"Then, I do."

He bent his head.

"I love him, I love him, I love him."

Neither spoke for some seconds; then the man lifted up his head, shook it as though he had risen from a plunge, and laughed.

"So be it. Now here's news for you, that I can relate since you've been so frank. D'you remember what I whispered to you when I was a little boy, of the cracks on my ceiling and the chance patterns I found on my window-blind when I used to lie awake in the grey of summer mornings, waiting for the first gold? You forget. So had I forgotten until a few days since. Then, being lazy, I lay abed and thought, and thought, and fell to tracing the old stories told by the lines on blind and ceiling. Chance patterns of bays and estuaries, continents and rivers, all mapped out there--all more real to me than those in my atlas. I remember a land of blackamoors, a sea of sharks, an island of cannibals, a desert of lions, in which the little flies figured as monsters of the wilderness. Such dreams of deeds by field and flood I weaved in those grey, gone mornings to the song of the thrush and the murmur of the old governor snoring in the next room! And now--now I'm smitten with the boy's yearning to speed forth over the sea of sharks--not after lions, but after gold. I'm going to justify my existence--in Australia."

"You couldn't go further off if you tried."

"Not well--without slipping over the edge altogether."

"You mustn't do this, Christopher."

"It's done, dearest. This is only a ghost--an adumbration that's talking to you. I ask for my freedom, Honor--sweetheart Honor. Thank God we are humorists both--too sensible to knock our knuckles raw against iron doors. You'll be happy to-morrow, and I the day after. We mustn't miss more laughter than we can help in this tearful world. And friends we must always be. That can't be altered."

"I quite understand. You shall not do this, Christopher. I love you for suggesting it. You may go--as far as London, or where the steamer starts from. Then you must come back to me. You've promised to marry me."

"Forget it. I'm in earnest for once. At least you must credit that. There's Mrs. Loveys at the window calling you to tea. We'll meet again in a day or two very likely."

"Don't go; don't go, Christo; I'm so lonely, and wretched, and----"

But the necessary iron in him cropped up at this hour of trial. He hardened his heart and was gone before she had finished speaking.

Two days later Honor, who had heard nothing of Christopher since their last meeting, sent a message to him. He returned an evasive answer, which annoyed her for the space of three days more. Then, still finding that he kept at home, she went to seek him there. Between ten and eleven o'clock one morning she started, but breaking her bootlace near the outset, returned home again. The total delay occupied less than fifteen minutes, and presently she reached Godleigh to find Mrs. Brimblecombe, wife of Noah Brimblecombe, the sexton of Little Silver, on her knees, scrubbing in the porch. The charwoman readily desisted from work and answered Honor's question.

"He kept it that 'mazin' quiet from us all, Miss. An' you never told nobody neither. Gone--gone to foreign lands, they tell me; an' the place in a jakes of a mess; an' the new folks comin' in afore Christmas."

As she spoke a dog-cart wound up the steep hill to Chagford, and a man, turning in it, stopped and looked long at the grey house in the pines. Had anybody walked on to the terrace and waved a handkerchief, he must have seen the signal; but as Honor spoke to Mrs. Brimblecombe the trap passed from sight.

"When did he go?" she asked unguardedly.

"Lard! Doan't 'e knaw 'bout it--you of all folks?"

"Of course; of course; but not the exact hour."

"Ten minutes agone or less--no more certainly; an' his heavy boxes was took in a cart last night, I hear."

Honor hurried on to the terrace and looked at the road on the hill. But it was empty. Mrs. Brimblecombe came also.

"Sails from Plymouth this evenin', somebody telled us, though others said he'm gwaine to Lunnon fust; an' it seems that Doctor Clack knawed, though how a gen'leman so fond of the moosic of his awn tongue could hold such a tremenjous secret wi'out bustin' I can't fathom."