Chapter V: Part 5

Honor Endicott walked slowly back to Bear Down. The significance of her own position, as a woman apparently jilted, did not weigh with her in the least. She reflected, with a dull ache and deadness, that her accident, with a delay of ten little minutes resulting from it, had altered the whole scope and sweep of her life and another's. That Christopher Yeoland had taken his great step with very real difficulty the fact of his continued absence before it made sufficiently clear. He had not trusted himself to see her again; and now Honor's conviction grew: that her presence even at the last moment, must surely have broken down his determination and kept him at home had she so willed.

She asked herself what she might have done in the event of that ordeal, and believed that she would have tried hard to keep him.

*CHAPTER XII.*

*THE DEFINITE DEED*

Life, thus robbed of love for Honor Endicott, was reduced to a dreary round of mere duties. Within one fortnight of time these two men, severally responsible for the music and sunshine of her life, had departed out of it in a manner perfectly natural, conventional, and inevitable. Given the problems that had arisen, this was the solution to have been predicted. Mark Endicott, indeed, put it very bluntly to her; but Honor viewed the tragedy with more tender pity for her own feelings. She marvelled in secret at the great eternal mystery of human affections, at the evolution of the love instinct, which now, ennobled and sublimated through the generations of men, had achieved its present purity and perfection in the civilisation of monogamous nations; while her uncle told her, in fewer words and homelier, that between two stools she had fallen to the ground.

She was supremely miserable through dwindling days, and each of them to her seemed longer than those of the summer that was past. The shadows of two men often accompanied her lonely rides, and circumstances or places would remind her of each in turn, would suddenly stab her into acute suffering as they wakened the image of Christopher or of Myles in very life-colours.

There came a laugh once, when she overheard Pinsent and Collins congratulating each other that Bear Down had not been too precipitate in the purchase of the wedding "momentum"; but the salt was gone out of humour for a little while; and with her uncle, at least, she never laughed at all. His boundless sympathy was strained before her wayward unhappiness. She flew to paradoxes, contradictions, and whimsical conceits, all vain, and worse than vain in his judgment. She sometimes talked at random with no particular apparent object save to waken opposition. But the knitting-needles ticked placidly through long evenings beside the glowing peat: and it asked an utterance beyond measure flagrant to set them tapping, as an indication that the blind man's patience was exhausted.

About mid-December they sat together in the little parlour of the kitchen, and Honor, who lolled beside the fire, employed her pretty fingers upon no more useful task than playing with a piece of string from a grocer's parcel.

"What are you doing?" asked Mark suddenly.

"Making cats' cradles," she answered, and won from him the reproof that such a confession invited.

"How is it you've given up reading of late days?"

"I've sunk into a lazy way. The lazier you are the less time there is for anything."

"You ought to read; you've ample leisure to improve your mind; and ample need to."

"That's just it--the ample leisure. When I had Christo to look after, though every precious moment of the day was full, I could find time for all. And that shows a busy man or woman's more likely to see well after affairs than a leisurely one. Some men can actually _make_ time, I believe--Myles could. But now--through these black, hateful, sunless days--I feel I'm always wanting to creep off to bed, and sleep, and forget."

"That's never my brave girl spoke that?"

"I'm not brave; and I'm tired of the awful stores of things worth knowing collected by people who are dead. How the men who wrote books must look back from the other world and shiver at the stuff they've left behind them in this--knowing all they know there! But Myles was right in that. He used to say he'd learned more from leaning over gates than from any books. And I believe he had."

"He was grounded in solid knowledge by lessons from wise books to start with. They taught him to learn."

"Such a way as he had of twisting everything into a precept or example!"

"You'd have held that prosy talk presently."

"Speak of sermons in stones! He found whole gospels in a dead leaf."

"But you would have grown mighty impatient of all that after a while."

"Very likely indeed. And yet I doubt it; for never being in earnest myself, I admire it in others," she said.

"Never in earnest and never of one mind! 'Tis a poor character, and I'd not like to hear anybody give it to you but yourself, Honor."

"With two minds you get light and shade into life--shade at any rate. If I hadn't been--but you'll grow as weary of that as I am. Yet a woman's days are so drab if she never changes her mind--all cut and dried and dead. Why, every morning I open my eyes and hope I shall get a new idea. I love my ideas to jostle about and fight and shift and change and dance, like colours in a cloud. I like to find myself helpless, shaken, bewildered, clutching at straws. You don't understand that, Uncle Mark. Ideas are the beautiful, budding flowers of one's thoughts."

"And fixed opinions the roots--or should be. What's the value of poor blossoms 'pon the top of a tree when the storm comes an' puny petals are sent flying down wind? You talk foolishness, and you know 'tis foolishness. Done to vex me, I could almost think. 'Tis your ideas that make you miserable now. A feather in a gale is a stable thing beside you, Honor. You must turn to books if only to please me."

She promised to do so presently, but did not keep her promise; and thus, to little purpose, oftentimes they talked. Then a circumstance quite unexpected made Honor think less of her ill fate and start into new and lively touch with her existence. After long intervals it chanced that some intelligence both of Yeoland and Stapledon reached Bear Down on the same morning; and Doctor Clack it was who brought news of his friend; while information concerning Myles came more directly from himself.

Doctor Clack dismounted with some parade, and made his announcement before Honor and her uncle. That he might perchance move the girl to emotion troubled him but little, for the physician was a staunch partisan, and held that Christopher had been very badly treated.

"A communication from the wanderer," said he. "Yeoland was leaving Sydney for his kinsman's up-country place when he wrote six weeks ago. All is well with him--at least so he declares, and--what do you think? He desires me to join him. Such a romantic notion!"

"Well?"

"Well, Mr. Endicott, positively I don't see why I should not. Little Silver without Christopher is, frankly, a howling wilderness from my point of view--a mere solitary tomb. And nobody ever ill--nobody ailing--no opportunities. When folk do succumb it means the end of them and the inevitable dose of churchyard mould--that final prescription none can escape."

"The health of the place is your highest tribute surely."

"Not at all--far from it. I've nothing to do with the matter. Drugs decaying in their vases; steel rusting in its velvet. Besides, the loneliness. A fishing-rod is but a vain thing to save a man--especially when it's close time as now; and the new people at Godleigh haven't asked me to a single shoot. In fact there's to be no shooting this year at all. So my case is desperate."

"Come and see us oftener," said Mark.

"I will; I positively must; but I think I'll go abroad. There's a saying that a man who can live quite happily alone must be one of two things: an angel, or a demon. Now I'm neither to my knowledge, and since Christo has vanished I've lived alone, and it's telling on me. I shall drift into one of those extremes, and I leave you to guess which."

"But you're always welcome everywhere, my dear Clack."

"I know it--at least I think so; but there's such fear of wearing out a welcome in a small place. Hereditary modesty, you'll say. If so, it's on the mother's side, not the father's. But, in all seriousness, why should not I join him?"

"You know your own business best. Is there money to be made there?"

"Plenty for a professional man. They are to have a qualification of their own, I believe; but at present a practitioner with English degrees gets the pull--very right and proper of course. Thus the old country drives her sons away; but not before she's arranged ample accommodation for them elsewhere--God bless her! So I'm wise to go--eh?"

"Nothing like seeing the ends of the earth and enlarging the mind," said Mark.

"Well, don't any of you develop anything in the nature of an interesting indisposition to tempt me to stop."

Margery brought in a letter at this moment as the postman had just penetrated to Bear Down--a feat he rarely accomplished much before midday. Doctor Clack wondered in secret whether her old lover had also communicated with Honor, but seeing that his own missive was charged with a general message of goodwill to all at Endicott's, he suspected the letter came from elsewhere.

Soon he was gone; then, without comment, Mark's niece read aloud a brief note from Myles Stapledon. It did no more than set forth his determination to return in a fortnight's time. Reason for the step was not given, as the writer disdained any excuse. His words were bald. "I will arrive on such a date, if convenient," he concluded; and Mark Endicott, reading ahead and reading backwards also, was saddened, even amazed, as one standing before the sudden discovery of an unsuspected weakness or obvious flaw in a work he had rejoiced to believe near perfection.

The stages by which Myles had arrived at the determination now astonishing Mark Endicott had extended over three months, and the curtain rose upon his battle exactly a week after he left the farm, for at that date he learned how the engagement between Honor and Christopher was definitely at an end, and how the latter would be on the sea before his words were read. The announcement came from Yeoland himself, and was written in London on the eve of his departure. Then began the fight that ended with a determination to return, and caused such genuine disappointment in Mr. Endicott. Mark, however, forgot the force of the passion his niece had awakened in this man; and certain it is that neither he nor any other could have guessed at the storm which swept Stapledon's soul when he learned how Honor had regained her freedom. Soaked as he was in love, to remain away from Endicott's with this knowledge for three months had proved no mean task to Myles. The battle fought and won with his passion while it had no right to exist proved but a prelude to encounters far more tremendous upon Christopher Yeoland's departure.

There grew within him a web of sophistry spun through sleepless nights. This at first, with the oncoming of morning, he swept away; but, spider-like, and with a spider's patience, the love in him renewed each mesh, and asked his conscience a question that his conscience seemed powerless to answer. He fought, yet knew not the name of the foe. To-day he marvelled at his own hesitation, and asked himself what still held him back; to-morrow a shadow of Yeoland shamed his troubled longings, and the word of Mark Endicott, "between you is a great gulf fixed," reverberated drearily upon his thoughts. Then the cloud castles fell to earth, and the sanguine glow upon their pinnacles vanished away. Yet against that saying of the blind man's every pulse in his body often throbbed furiously. He knew better, and Honor knew better also. It was not for nothing that they had walked over the Moor together; not for nothing they had stood silently, each by the other's side, on moonlight nights.

Out of darkness Christopher Yeoland sometimes took shape, but only as an abstraction that grew more misty with passage of days. He had gone for all time; and Honor was left alone. Myles burnt to know something of her mind; how much or how little she had forgotten; how much or how little she wondered at his attitude; in what she blamed him; whether such blame grew daily greater or was already fading away--perhaps along with his own image--in her recollection.

The great apparition of Duty rose. In the recent past he had made others supremely unhappy and tormented himself. That was over; and now--the slave of duty from his youth up--he stood in doubt. For the first time the man discerned no clear sign-post pointing to his road. Wherein lay duty now? He wearied his brain with dialectics. Sometimes duty looked a question of pure love; sometimes it hardened into a problem of pure logic. He would have risked all that he had for one glimpse of Honor's attitude towards the position; and finally he decided that his duty lay in ascertaining that attitude. This much might very easily be done without a word upon the vital theme. He told himself that a few hours under the same roof with her--the sound of her voice, the light in her eyes--would tell him all he needed to know. He dinned this assurance upon his own mind; but his heart remained dead, even before such a determination, and the cloud by no means lifted itself from off him. He presented the somewhat uncommon spectacle of a man trying to deceive himself and failing. His natural instincts of justice and probity thrust Christopher Yeoland again and again into his thoughts. He began three letters to the traveller on three separate occasions, but these efforts ended in fire, and the letter that was written and posted went to Bear Down.

Through turmoil, tribulation, and deepening of frontal furrows he reached this step, and the deed done, his night thickened around him instead of lifting as he had hoped and trusted. Perhaps the blackest hour of all was that wherein he rode through familiar hamlets under the Moor upon his way to Honor. Then came the real sting of the certainty that he had lapsed from his own lofty rule; and love itself forsook him for a space beneath Cosdon's huge shadow at sunset time. He hastened, even galloped forward to the sight of the woman; he told himself that in her presence alone would be found balm to soothe this hurt; and the very feebleness of the thought fretted him the more.

So he came back, and Chance, building as her custom is on foundations of the trivial, wrought from his return the subsequent fabric of all his days. For out of the deliberate action, whether begun in laughter or prayer, whether prompted by desire or inspired by high ambition, springs issue, and no deed yet was ever barren of consequence, hidden or revealed. Never, since conscious intelligence awakened here, has that invention of the dunces justified itself--never once has any god from any chariot of fire descended to cut one sole knot in a tangle of earthly affairs. The seeds of human actions are sown to certain fruition but uncertain crop, and Fate and Chance, juggling with their growth, afford images of the highest tragedy this world has wept at; conjure from the irony of natural operations all that pertains to sweet and bitter laughter; embrace and environ the whole apparition of humanity's progress through time. Life's pictures, indeed, depend upon play of ridiculous and tragic chance for their rainbow light, for their huge spaces of formless and unfathomable shadow, for their ironic architecture, their statuary of mingled mice and mountains--flung together, fantastic and awful. In Titan visions these things are seen by lightning or by glow-worm glimmer; or sunned by laughter; or rained upon with tears; or taking such substance and colour as wings above the reach of either.

Thus, his deed done, through chaos of painful thoughts, came Myles Stapledon; and then, standing amid the naked beds of Bear Down garden, he found Honor Endicott's little hand in his at last. Whereupon he whispered to his soul that he had acted wisely, and was now about to pass from storm into a haven of great peace.

*CHAPTER XIII.*

*SNOW ON SCOR HILL*

There came a day when Honor and Myles rode out upon a dry and frozen Moor under the north wind. The man, who had brought his own great horse to Endicott's, now galloped beside Honor's pony, and the pace warmed them despite the extreme coldness of the weather. Presently, upon their homeward way from Watern's granite castles, they stopped to breathe their horses, where a ring of horrent stones sprouted abrupt, uneven, irregular, out of the waste, and lay there, the mark of remote human activity. All the valley presented a stern spectacle unsoftened by any haze, untouched by any genial note of colour. The Moor's great, iron-grey bosom panted for coming snow; and Teign, crying among her manifold stairways, streaked the gorges with ghostly foam light, where naked sallows and silver birches tossed lean arms along the river. Only the water offered action and sound in the rocky channels; all else, to the horizon of ashy hills under a snow-laden sky, waited and watched the north.

Two horses stood steaming in Scor Hill Circle--that ancient hypaethral high place of the Damnonians--while their riders surveyed the scene and one another. Both long remembered the incident, and for them, from that day forward, the spot was lighted with a personal significance, was rendered an active and vital arena, was hallowed by interest more profound than its mere intrinsic attributes of age and mystery had formerly imparted to it.

Myles Stapledon did not reach the speedy conclusion he anticipated upon return to Bear Down. A month had now lapsed since his arrival, and, while very thoroughly assured of his own sentiments, while gulfed and absorbed, heart and soul, in a transcendent love of Honor that swept all before it and left him a man of one hope, one daily prayer, he had yet to learn her explicit attitude. His own humility helped to blind him a little at first, but she made no attempt to disguise her pleasure in his society, and by her unconventional companionship and intercourse wakened strong hopes within him. For he attached an obvious meaning to many actions, that had perhaps been conclusive of intention in any other woman, but were not in Honor. She went everywhere with him alone--to Chagford on horseback, to Exeter by train. Moreover, she let her cousin do as he would with the farm, and when he suggested embarking further capital and acquiring a half interest of all--she made no personal objection, but consulted Mr. Endicott. The inevitable sequel now stared Bear Down in the face, yet, when his niece put the question to him in private, Mark refused to give advice.

"That's a point none can well decide but yourself," he said. "The future's your own, as far as a human being can claim such control. As you act now, so the man will assume you mean to do afterwards."

"I mean nothing at all but the welfare of the farm and--you won't advise, then?"

"No. It looks all cut and dried to me."

Honor stamped her foot like a child.

"Everything's always cut and dried in my hateful life--try as I will," she said. Then she swept away, and he knitted on without visible emotion, though not lacking an inner sympathy. For he understood her desire to escape from the monotonous, and foresaw how this imminent incident would not bring about that end. Personally Stapledon had served to brighten his sightless life not a little, had set new currents running in his mind, had sweetened back waters grown stagnant by disuse; for Myles, as Endicott believed, was fine metal--wise, self-contained even in his love, a sober and discreet man--super-excellent save in the matter of his return to Bear Down. Even there, however, on second thoughts, Mark did not judge him. He only felt the lover to be human, and it was viewed in the character of a husband for Honor that the old man regarded his nephew without enthusiasm. Stapledon's very goodness, simplicity, and content with rural interests would suffice to weary the wife he wanted soon or late. And Christopher Yeoland must probably return to his home some day.

Thus he argued, but, meantime, full of hope, and arriving at a right logical conclusion on a wrong hypothesis of logical intention in Honor, Stapledon resolved to speak. And now, before the beauty of her, kissed into a sparkle by her gallop, her bosom rising and falling, a tiny cloud around her lips, caught and carried away by the wind at each expiration--before this winter vision his heart found a tongue; and, as they walked their horses in the grey circle, he spoke.

"It's a strange place this to tell you, yet these things are out of one's keeping. I must say it I must. Honor, do you care for me at all?"

"Of course I care for you."

"Do you love me?"

"Now, dear Myles, please don't say anything to make me cry in this wind. Think of the freezing misery of it! Please--Please."

"To make you cry! I hope not--indeed. I hope not that. Yet it's solemn enough--the most solemn thing a man can say to a woman."

"That's all right, then," she said cheerfully. "Nothing solemn ever makes me cry."

He looked bewildered, wistful, and her heart smote her; but the inopportune fiend would speak. She remembered how that Christopher had proposed marriage in a flippant spirit, while she craved for something so different. Here was no frivolous boy in a sunny wood, but a strong, earnest man under skies full of snow. His great voice and his eyes aflame made her heart beat, but they had no power to alter her mood.

"I love you!" he said simply. "I loved you long before I knew it, if you can believe so strange a thing. I loved you, and, finding it out, I left you and poured all the bitter blame on myself that I could. Then I heard how you had agreed to part. He was going. He went. And now I stand before you all yours. You are unlinked by any tie. He said so--he----"

"Oh you wretches of one idea!" she burst out, interrupting him. "You self-absorbed, self-seeking, selfish men! How can I explain? How can I lay bare my weaknesses before such superiority? He was the same--poor Christo--just the same. I suppose nearly all of you must be; and women are frightened to speak for fear of shocking you. So we pretend, and win from you a character for huge constancy that we often deserve no more than you do. Why attribute so many virtues to us that you don't possess yourselves? Why demand a single, whole-hearted, utter, ineffable love from us that not one in a thousand of you can give?"

"All this is nothing to the purpose," he said in a puzzled voice. "What can you answer, Honor?

"Well, I'll speak for myself, not for the hosts of single-hearted women. I won't tar them with my black brush. You want me to marry you, Myles?"

"God knows how dearly."

"And because I love you, you think I ought to marry you. Yet if I love somebody else too? I wish I had fine words, though perhaps plain ones are better to describe such an unheroic muddle. When I told Christo I loved you--yes, I told him that--he bowed his head as though he had heard his death knell. Yet I did not tell him I loved him less than before."

"You still love him?"

"Of course I do. Can a quarrel kill a live love? He was made for somebody to love him. And I love you--love you dearly too. And I'm not ashamed of it, however much you may think I should be."

"The end of that?" he said drearily.

"Clear enough. I've spoilt two lives--no, not all, I hope, but a part of two lives."

"It is I that have done so," he answered bitterly and slowly; then he stopped his horse and looked aloft where scattered flakes and patches of snow began to float heavily downward from the upper grey.

"No, no, no," said Honor. "It's just a snappy, snarling, unkind fate that wills it so. Two's company, and three's none, of course."

"Your knowledge is imperfect," he said, "and so your argument is vain. If you were a type, the foundation of civilisation would fail. Surely no woman worth thinking of twice can love in two places at once?"

"Then think of me no more," she answered, "for I do--if I know love at all. Is not the moon constant to earth and sun? A woman can love two men--as easily as a man can love two women. You couldn't--I know that; but you're not everybody. Most men can. Christianity has made a noble, exalted thing of love, and I was born into the Christian view. Yet I'm unfortunately a barbarian by instinct. Just an accidental primitive heathen who has cropped up in a respectable family. You can't alter any particular cranky nature by pruning. Oh, dear Myles, if I could marry you both! You for the working weeks and Christo for Sundays and holidays!"

He merely gasped.

"Yet I love to think you love me. But you know what naughty children say when they're crossed? I can't have you both, so I won't have either."

"This you say for love of him?"

"Don't trouble to find reasons. At any rate I'm speaking the truth. Should I have confessed to such a depraved and disgraceful frame of mind to a man I love if I had not been deadly serious despite laughter? Hate me, if you must, but I don't deserve it. I would marry you and be a good wife too; but there's a sort of sense of justice hid in me. Christo noticed it. So don't drive me into marriage, Myles dear."

"You love him better than me at any rate?"

"Arithmetic can't be brought to bear upon the question. I love you both."

There was a pause; then she added suddenly--

"And if there were a hundred more men like you and Christopher, I should love them all. But there are no more."

"You've got a big heart, Honor."

"Don't be unkind to me. It's a very unhappy heart."

"It should not be."

"That fact makes it so much the more unhappy."

"Do you know your own mind in this matter?"

"Of course I don't. Haven't you found that out?"

"It's going to snow," he said. "We'd better hurry."

"No, walk to the top of the hill; I like it."

"You must be made happy somehow," he continued. "It's everybody's duty who loves you to make you that, if it can be done."

"You great, generous thing! How I wish I could do what you ask me to; but I should be haunted if I did. You don't want a haunted wife, Myles?"

"Leave that. I have spoken and you have answered. I shall not speak again, for I pay you the respect and honour to believe your 'No' means no."

"Yes," she said; "you would." Then she turned away from him, for her tears were near at last. "Every flake lies on the frozen ground. D'you see how black the spotless snowflakes look against the sky? Isn't there some moral or other to be got out of that, Myles?"

"Why did you let me buy half Endicott's?" he asked, not hearing her last speech.

"Because you wanted to. And I wanted some money."

"Money!"

"Yes--I can tell you just at this moment. It will help to show you what I am. I sent a thousand pounds to Christo."

"He'll never take it!"

"Of course not. Yet, somehow, it comforted me for quite two days to send it."

"How we fool ourselves--we who think we stand firm! I fancied I was getting to understand you, Honor, and I knew nothing."

"You'd know everything, and find that everything was nothing if you weren't in love. There's nothing to know beyond the fact that I'm a very foolish woman. Uncle Mark understands me best. He must do so, for he can always make me angry, sometimes even ashamed."

Snow began to fall in earnest, and fluttered, tumbled, sidled, scurried over the Moor. The wind caught it and swept it horizontally in tattered curtains; the desolation grew from grey into white, from a spotted aspect, still lined and seamed with darkness, into prevailing pallor. The tors vanished; the distance was huddled from sight; Honor's astrakhan hat caught the snow, and her habit also. She shook her head, and shining drops fell from her veil. Then Myles went round to ride between her and the weather, and they hastily trotted down the hill homeward.

Already a mask of snow had played magic pranks with the world, reduced known distances, distorted familiar outlines, brought remote objects close, dwarfed the scene, and much diminished its true spaciousness. The old familiar face of things was swallowed by a new white wilderness, like in unlikeness to the earth it hid.

Early darkness closed down upon the land before tremendous snow. Within the farm candles guttered, carpets billowed, cold draughts thrust chill fingers down stone passages, and intermittent gusts of wind struck upon the casement, like reverberations of a distant gun.

*CHAPTER XIV.*

*THE WISDOM OF DR. CLACK*

That night, despite the heavy snow, and not averse from a struggle with the weather, Myles set out, after supper, for Little Silver, three-quarters of a mile distant, in the valley beneath Bear Down. Progress was difficult, but though snow already stood above Stapledon's knees in the drifts, he found strength more than sufficient for the battle, and presently brought a blast of cold air and a snow wreath into the small dwelling of Doctor Clack, as he entered without formal announcement. Courteney Clack--deeply immersed in packing for his departure--marvelled at the advent of any visitor on such a night and abandoned his labours.

"Get out of that coat and come to the fire," he said. "I'm afraid this means something serious, or you wouldn't have turned out in such a tempest. Who's ill, and what's amiss?"

"Nobody--nothing. I wanted this wild weather against my face to give me a buffet. I also want a talk with you--if I can trespass on your time."

The physician was much relieved to learn that it would not be necessary for him to go out of doors.

"I sail on Thursday," he said, "but, until that date, I am, as usual, at the beck and call of all the world. Sit down and I'll get the necessary ingredients. Need I say that I refer to a glass of punch?"

"In six weeks," began Myles abruptly, "you'll be seeing Christopher Yeoland."

"God willing, that pleasure is in store for me."

Stapledon took out his pipe, and began to fill it mechanically.

"I want you to do a very delicate thing," he said. "The task will need even all your tact and skill, doctor. Yet it happens that if I had to pick a man out of England, I should have chosen you."

"Now that must be flattery--a mere country apothecary."

"No, it's true--for particular reasons. You are Yeoland's best friend."

"A proud privilege. I have his word for it."

"And, therefore, the man of all others to tackle him. Yet it's not to your personal interest either. I'll be frank. That is only fair to you. In the first place, what was the position between Miss Endicott and your friend when he finally left here?"

"Well, Stapledon, I suppose you've the right to ask, if anybody has; and not being blind, I can't speak the truth, perhaps, without hurting you. The rupture was pretty complete, I fancy--final in fact. I didn't know whether to be glad or sorry. Miss Honor is a girl who wants a tight hand over her. I say it quite respectfully, for her good--and yours."

"Don't drag me in, Clack. The point is that she still loves Yeoland. That's what I came here to explain to you. It is right that he should know it, and you are the man to tell him. The information must come from yourself, remember--from nobody else. The point is, how are you to be furnished with proofs?"

"Are you sure there exist proofs? Is it true?"

"She told me so herself."

Doctor Clack had little difficulty in guessing at the nature of the conversation wherein such a confession had made a part. He was impulsive, and now did a thing that a moment's reflection had left undone. He stretched out his hand and gripped Stapledon's.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You have my sincere sympathy. Forgive me if I offend."

Myles flushed, and as the other had been surprised into sudden speech, so now was he. Indeed he answered most unexpectedly, on the spur of the moment, stung thereto by this assault on self-esteem.

"You mistake!" he answered. "She loves me also."

Doctor Clack whistled.

"How spacious! These times are really too cramped for such a girl. This is the sort of knot that could be cut so easily in mediaeval days; but now the problem is most difficult. You want to drop out of the running in favour of Christo? Carlyle says that the heroic slumbers in every heart. It woke in Yeoland's when he turned his back on Little Silver and everything that made life worth living for him. Now it wakes in you."

"I do not want her life to be made a lonely, wretched thing by any act of mine."

"Of course not."

"We must save her from herself."

"Ah, that means that she has announced a determination not to marry at all."

"Yes. We are both so much to her that she cannot marry either."

The doctor smothered a smile--not at Stapledon's speech, but before the monumental sternness with which he uttered it.

"How characteristic!"

"Against that, however, I have the assurance that she does not know her own mind. Women, I think, if I may say so without disrespect and upon slight experience, are very contradictory. Miss Endicott has not been in the habit of analysing her emotions. Not that she is not lucidity itself. But--well, if he were here and I--if I were out of the way--I only want her happiness. It seems to lie there. He must come back to her. I can't say all I feel about this, but you understand."

"You're set on her happiness. Very altruistic and all the rest; but I'm afraid she's not built for it. To get happiness into her life will be difficult. Too humorous to be happy, don't you think? Omar al Khattab remarks, very wisely, that four things come not back to man or woman. They are the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity. She sent Yeoland about his business. Now there is a sort of love that won't brook cruelty of that pattern."

"Cruelty's too big a word for it. She called it a lover's quarrel herself. Eliminate me, and judge whether the spoken word might not be retrieved and forgotten if he came back to her again."

"Of course improbability's the only certainty with a woman. Don't fancy I'm letting my own interest stand in the way. I, too, in common with all human clay, contain the germ of the heroical. I'll tell Christo everything; that he still has half--is it half or a lesser or greater fraction?--of Miss Honor Endicott's heart. Here we are--three able-bodied men: you, Christo, and myself. Well, surely with a little expenditure of brain tissue we can--eh? Of course. One of you chaps is the obstacle to the other. You pull her heart different ways. She is suspended between your negative and positive attractions like a celestial body, or a donkey between two bundles of hay. So you both go free. Now, if one of you heroes could only find comfort in another woman such a circumstance might determine--you follow me?"

"Her happiness?"

"Not so much her happiness as her destination. Well, I'll urge upon Yeoland the advisability of coming home; I'll tell him how things stand, and of course keep you out of it."

"She would be happier with him than with me: that's the point."

"Say rather: that's the question. He may not think so. I don't want to flatter you, but I don't think so myself. There is that in Christo not usually associated with the domestic virtues. He and I are bachelors by instinct--natural, unsophisticated beasts, in no sense educated up to the desirable and blessed, but extremely artificial, state of matrimony. You, on the contrary, are a highly trained creature with all your emotions under your own control, and capable of a consistent unselfishness in the affairs of life which is extremely rare in the male animal. No; merely considered as a husband, Christo would not have a look in with you--could hardly expect to get a vote--certainly not mine."

"He might make a better husband for Honor."

"Not for any woman."

"Don't tell him so, if you think it."

"Leave me to do what I deem wise. Like you, I'm solely actuated with a desire to brighten Miss Endicott's life. But you must not dictate my line of action. My judgment is not wont to be at fault."

"I know that very well. This great cause is safe in your hands. Put it first. Put it first, before everything. You can't feel as I do, and as Yeoland must; but you're a man of very wide sympathy--that's to say a man of genius more or less. And you're his first friend--Yeoland's, I mean; so for his sake--and hers----"

"And yours--yes. I shall glory in bringing this matter to an issue--happy for choice, but definite at any rate--if only to prove all your compliments are not vain. Light your pipe and drink, and fill your glass again."

"No more--perfect punch--perfect and very warming to the blood."

"Your punch-maker, like your poet, is born. The hereditary theory of crime, you know."

"Now I must get up the hill. And thank you, Clack. You've lightened my anxiety, I think. We shall meet again before you go?"

"Certainly--unless you are all snowed up at Bear Down. Good-night! Gad! I hope nobody will want me! Not my weather at all."

The storm screamed out of the darkness. Beyond a narrow halo of light from Courteney Clack's open door all was whirling snow and gloom; and through it, his head down, Stapledon struggled slowly back to the farm.

The significance of his own position, the bitterness of his defeat, the nature of his loss, and the gnawing sting of suffering had yet to come. This effort to ameliorate the lonely life of Honor by bringing Yeoland back into it was indeed laudable; but mere consciousness of right has no power to diminish the force of great blows or obliterate the awful meaning of a reverse in love. His future stretched desolate as the weather before Myles Stapledon, and these physical exercises under the storm, together with his attempts on behalf of others, might serve to postpone, but could not diminish by one pang, the personal misery in store for him.

*CHAPTER XV.*

*SUN DANCE*

On the morning of Easter Sunday, some three months after the departure of Doctor Clack from Little Silver, certain labouring men in their best broadcloth ascended Scor Hill at dawn. Jonah Cramphorn, Churdles Ash, Henry Collins, and the lad Tommy Bates comprised this company, and their purpose was to behold a spectacle familiar and famous in ancient days but unheeded and little remembered at the period of these events. Ash had attracted the younger men to see the sun dance on Easter morn, and of those who accompanied him, Mr. Cramphorn was always willing to honour a superstition, no matter of what colour; Collins came to gain private ends; while the boy followed because he was promised a new experience.

"T'others may go to the Lard's Table for their bite an' sup, an' a holy act to theer betterment no doubt," declared Churdles; "but, for my paart, 'tis a finer deed to see the gert sun a-dancin' for sheer joy 'pon Resurrection Marnin', come it happen to be fine. A butivul day, sure enough, an' the elements all red an' blue, like the Saviour's clothes in the window-glasses to church."

Mr. Ash's dim eyes scanned the sweetness of an April sky, and the party moved onward to the crown of the hill. Through pearly dews they went, and passed forward where the soft, green mantle of on-coming spring hung like a veil on hedgerows and over wild waste places. A world stretched before them lighted by the cold purity of spotless dawn, and the day-spring, begemmed with primrose stars, was heralded by thrushes in many a dingle, by the lark on high. As yet earth lay in the light that is neither sunshine nor shadow, but out of the waxing blue above, from whence, like a shower, fell his tinkling rhapsody, one singing bird could see the sun, and himself shone like a little star.

To the upland heath and granite plodded these repositories of obsolescent folk-lore; and they talked as they went, the better to instil Collins and the boy with a proper understanding in the matter of those superstitions a scoffing generation agreed to disregard. Henry, on his part, felt more than uneasy, for he much doubted the sanctity of this present step. But love was responsible; Collins pined for Sally in secret, and his great desire to conciliate Mr. Cramphorn was such that, when Jonah invited him to the present observation, he undertook at once to be of the party. Now he recollected that he had also promised the vicar to go to the Sacrament that morning.

"You must knaw," said Churdles Ash to Tommy, "that this holy season be a gert time for signs an' wonders up-along an' down-along. I tell 'e these things, 'cause you'm a young youth, an' may profit an' hand 'em on to your childern in fulness of time. Theer be Gude Friday--a day of much vartue, I assure 'e. Not awnly the event o' the Lard's undoing by they bowldacious Jews, but the properest for plantin' vegetables in the whole of the year."

"An' the best for weanin' of childern," said Mr. Cramphorn. "Sally was weaned 'pon that day, an' went straight to cow's milk so natural an' easy as a born calf; an' look at her now!"

Mr. Collins sighed deeply.

"Butivulest gal in Debbensheer, I reckon," he said.

Jonah grunted assent, and Henry, feeling the moment for a certain vital question had arrived, mopped his wet brow and tremulously approached the matter.

"Fall back a pace or two, will 'e, maister? Your darter--I daresay you might have seed as I was a bit hit in that quarter?"

"I've seed it, I grant you. I'm all eyes wheer my gals be consarned."

"These things caan't be helped. I mean no disrespect, I'm sure. 'Tis the voice of nature in a man."

"I'm sorry for 'e, Henery."

"For that matter I couldn't wish myself out o' the evil, though 'tis perplexin' an' very onrestful to my head. I be mazed when I consider how a man of my modest way could think twice 'bout a rare piece like Sally. Never seed such a wonnerful strong arm 'pon any woman in all my born days."

Jonah frowned and shook his head.

"Never mind her paarts. Don't become you or any man to name a limb of her separate from the rest. Baan't respectful!"

"Then I'm sorry I said it. An' as for respectfulness, I'd go on my bended knees to her to-morrow."

"Have you?" inquired the parent. "That's the question. Have 'e axed her an' got a answer?"

"Not for the world," stammered Henry. "Not for the world afore gettin' your leave. I knaw my plaace better."

Mr. Cramphorn's nose wrinkled as though it had caught an evil odour.

"Bah! You say that! You'm so chicken-hearted that you come to me 'fore you go to she! Then I sez 'No.' I forbids you to speak a word of the matter, for I reckon your way be more tame an' soft than the likes of her or any other high-spirited female would suffer."

"You'm tu violent--I swear you be," protested Mr. Collins. "You'd have been the fust to blame me if I'd spoke wi'out axin' you. Besides, caan't a man talk apart from usin' his tongue in this matter? I've a looked at her time an' again wi' all the power of the eye. Theer's a language in that, an' she knawed what I meant, or I'm a fule."

"Theer be such a language for sartain," admitted Jonah; "but not for you. No more power o' speech in your gert eyes than a bullock's--I don't mean as it's to be counted any fault in you, but just the will of Nature. An' so enough's said."

"Quick! Run, the pair of 'e!" cried Tommy's voice. "Her's risin' nigh the edge o' Kes Tor Rock all copper-red!"

Cramphorn quickened his pace, and Collins, now merged in blank despair, strode alter him. Together they approached Mr. Ash, and joined the aged man upon a little granite elevation at the south-eastern extremity of Scor Hill. Below them, a watercourse, now touched to fire, wound about the shoulder of the elevation; and beneath, much misty, new-born verdure of silver birch and sallow, brightened the fringe of fir woods where Teign tumbled singing to the morning.

Over against the watchers, lifted above a grey glimmer of ruined Damnonian hut villages and primaeval pounds, there towered the granite mass of Kes Tor, and from the distant horizon arose the sun. He bulked enormous, through the violet hazes of nightly mist that now dwindled and sank along the crowns of the hills; then the effulgent circle of him, ascending, flashed forth clean fire that flamed along unnumbered crests and pinnacles of far-flung granite, that reddened to the peaty heart each marsh and mire, each ridge and plane of the many-tinted garment that endued the Moor.

Silently the labourers watched sunrise; then was manifested that heliacal phenomenon they had come to see. A play of light, proper to the sun at ascension, ran and raced twinkling round his disc; and, like an empyreal wheel, the blazing star appeared to revolve and spin upon its upward way.

"He be dancin'! He be dancin', now!" declared Mr. Ash.

"For sure, if I could awnly keep the watter out o' my eyes," added Jonah; while Collins, by his comment, reflected personal tribulations and exhibited an impatient spirit in presence of this solemn display.

"I've seed un shimmer same as that scores o' times on working-days," he said sourly.

"Granted--in a lesser fashion; but not like he be doin' now. He knaws as the Lard o' Hosts leapt forth from the tomb to the biddin' of cherub angels 'pon this glad marnin'--nobody knaws it better than him. An', for all his size, he'm as giddy an' gay an' frolicsome by reason of it, as the high hills what hop in the Psalms o' David."

Thus speaking, Gaffer Ash regarded the source of light with a benignant and indulgent smile.

"An' us all did ought to feel the same, I'm sure," moralised Jonah Cramphorn, wiping the tears from his eyes and blinking at a huge red spot now stamped upon his retina and reproduced in varying size against everything which he regarded. "For my part I hold that not a heathen in the land but ought to rise into a gude Christian man afore that gert act."

They waited and watched until the growing glory defied their vision; then all started to return homewards, and both the elder men declared themselves much refreshed, invigorated, and gladdened by what they had seen. Each, inspired by the incident, occupied himself with time past and matters now grown musty. They related stories of witches and of ghosts; they handled omens, and callings, and messages from dead voices heard upon dark nights; they explained the cryptic mysteries hidden in hares and toads, in stars, in 'thunder-planets,' and the grasses of the field. They treated of turning stones against an enemy; of amulets to protect humanity from the evil eye; of ill-wishing and other magical misfortunes; of oil of man; and of the good or sinister forces hidden in wayside herbs.

"'Tis the fashion 'mongst our young school-gwaine fules to laugh at auld saws an' dark sayings because theer teachers laugh at 'em; but facts doan't change, though manners may," said Mr. Cramphorn. "Theer's witches descended from Bible witches, same as theer be saints an' 'postles comed from laying on of hands. An' Cherry Grepe's of 'em; she doan't want for power yet, or my brain be no better'n tallow. I seed Chowne's oxen charmed into gude health again, an' gerter wonders than that onder my awn eyes. Ten shillin' she had of mine--" he added, lowering his voice for the ear of Mr. Ash alone--"ten shillin' to bring harm 'pon Christopher Yeoland. An' she drawd a circle against un before my faace an' done a charm wi' wax an' fire. ''Twill all act presently,' she said; and act it did, as you knaw, for he'm crossed in love, an' a wanderer 'pon the faace of the airth, like Cain at this minute; an' worse to come, worse to come."

Mr. Ash looked very uneasy.

"I could wish as you hadn't told me that," he answered. "You'm allus lickin' your lips on it, an' I'd rather not knaw no more. Ban't a pleasant side o' your carater."

Shouts from Tommy interrupted Churdles, and all looked where the boy pointed--to see some white object vanish under a gate before their eyes. As for himself, heedless of Cramphorn's loud warning, Tommy Bates picked up a stone and ran after the object.

"'Ful to me!" cried Cramphorn, "did 'e see it--a rabbit as I'm a sinful man!"

"The white coney o' Scor Hill! An' that's death wi'in the year to some wan us knaws! Fegs! A bad business for sartain."

"Death inside the week," corrected Jonah solemnly. "It may have awvertook some poor neighbour a'ready."

"Or it may be ordained for wan of ourselves," murmured Mr. Ash gloomily.

"I wish to Christ I'd gone to church then!" burst out Collins. "For it's been a cruel hard marnin' for me from time I rose, sun dance or no sun dance; an' now to cap it wi' this gert, hidden calamity, an' death in the wind."

"Sure as night follows day," declared Churdles Ash.

The love-sick Collins tramped on his way without further speech; Tommy did not return from pursuit of the apparition, and Ash argued with Cramphorn as to who might now be numbered with the majority. Upon this delicate point they could by no means agree; and they were still wrangling as to the identity of their ill-starred acquaintance when a man met them hard by the main entrance of Bear Down, and they saw that it was Myles Stapledon.

After Doctor Clack's departure and within a few days of the scene in gathering snow upon Scor Hill, Myles had left Endicott's and taken him rooms at Little Silver, in the dwelling of Noah Brimblecombe, sexton to the parish. This man owned a pleasant abode somewhat greater than a cottage--an establishment the bulk of which its possessor annually under-let to advantage in the summer months. Hither came the rejected, his plans for the future still unformed. And here he dwelt for three long months and laboured like a giant to crush the agony of his spirit, the black misery of every waking hour. Bear Down once thoroughly invigorated by his capital and improved by his knowledge, he determined to leave; but while work still remained to do he stopped at the gates of the farm and exercised a painful self-control. Honor he saw not seldom, but the former friendship, while still quite possible for her, was beyond the power of the man. She pitied him, without wholly understanding; and very sincerely pitied herself in that circumstances now deprived her not a little of his cherished society. The difficulty lay in her attitude towards him. To behave as one who loved him was impossible under the constraint that now hedged him in; so she attempted to imitate his manner, and failed. A great awkwardness and unreality characterised present relations, and Honor found in these circumstances ample matter for mental distraction, if only of a painful nature; while Stapledon waited for the season of spring to finish his labours, and counted that each post might bring some message from Christopher.