Chapter VII: Part 7

The party now mingled with those already assembled in Little Silver. A crowd drawn from Throwley, Chagford, and elsewhere stood and admired flags that waved between green-garlanded poles at the churchyard gate. Many passed from the hot sunshine into the shadow of the holy building; many had already entered it.

"Us'll bide here till our brows be cool an' she've a-come. Then us'll go in an' sit usual plaace, left side o' the alley," said Mr. Cramphorn.

Presently Myles Stapledon appeared, and a hum of friendship rose for him. He looked somewhat anxious, was clad in a grey suit, white waistcoat, and a white tie with his solitary jewel in it--an old carbuncle set in gold that had belonged to his father and adorned that gentleman's throat or finger on the occasion of his marriage. In the bridegroom's buttonhole was a red rosebud, and now and again his hand went nervously across to an inner pocket, where reposed the money for the honeymoon. He walked to the vestry, made certain entries in the book spread open for him, and presented Mr. Scobell with two guineas. He then entered a choir stall and sat down there, facing the eyes of the increasing company without visible emotion.

Outside came stroke of horse-hoofs and grinding of wheels. Then entered an ancient aunt of the bridegroom's with her two elderly daughters. A second carriage held Honor's relatives from Exeter, and a third contained Mrs. Loveys and Sally and Margaret Cramphorn; for it was Honor's wish that her serving-maids should be her bridesmaids also, and she knew none of her sex who loved her better. Each had a bouquet of roses; each wore a new dress and now waited at the entrance for their mistress, with many a turn and twist, perk of head, and soft rustle from the new gowns. The eyes of Mr. Collins watered as he beheld Sally, and his huge breast rose, heaved up by mountainous sighs. Meantime, she had secretly handed a rosette to Mr. Greg Libby, who, in company of his old mother, adorned the gathering; and Margery too, at the first opportunity, presented the young man with a rosette. Thus it came about that Gregory gloried in dual favours and attached both to his marriage garment; whereupon two maiden hearts under dove-coloured raiment were filled with emotions most unsisterly, and all men, save one, laughed at the luck of the gilded hedge-tacker.

The glory of Little Silver church centres in an ancient screen of many colours. Upon it shall be found elaborate interlacing of blue and gold, pale blue and dark crimson; while through the arches of it may be seen the Lord's Table under a granite reredos. Pulpit and lectern are also of the good grey stone, and to-day a riot of roses that made the little place of worship very sweet climbed the old pillars and clustered in the deep embrasures of the windows. The walls, painted with red distemper, ascended to a waggon roof; and upon pews, where the humble living stood or knelt above dust of noble dead, frank daylight entered through plain glass windows.

Along the base of the ornate screen stood figures of the saints mechanically rendered, and about one, standing upon the right hand of the choir entrance, there twined a text that indicated this figure stood for John the Baptist. "The voice of one crying in the wilderness" were those graven words; and now by chance they caught a pair of downcast eyes, as Honor Endicott bent her young head and passed onward from independence into the keeping of a man.

She came with her uncle, and those in church rose amid mighty rustlings and clink of iron-shod boots, and those outside crowded into their places. A little harmonium groaned gallantly, and Mr. Scobell billowed up the aisle from the vestry. Honor walked to meet Myles with her hand holding Mark Endicott's. At the steps, under the screen, she stopped for him to feel the step, and as she did so caught sight of the text. Then a big, florid face, with the plainest admiration exhibited upon it, met her gaze, and she also became dimly conscious of a tall, grey man at her right elbow. The florid face belonged to Mr. Scobell, who, recollecting himself and chastening his features, frowned at the back of the church, and began the ceremony. But the grey man was waiting for her, longing for her, "to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish," until death should part them.

Yet the text--that voice in the wilderness--haunted her mind all the while, as it is the way with irrelevant ideas to intrude upon high moments. Presently Honor put her hand into her husband's, felt the gold slip over her finger, and marvelled to feel how much heavier this ring was than the little toy of diamond and pearl she had been wearing of late. Then all was accomplished, and Mr. Ash and his friends quite drowned the squeak and gasp of a Wedding March, with which the vicar's daughter wrestled upon the harmonium; for they all clattered out of church and drew up in a double line outside along the pathway. Churdles then produced his mysterious packet and exhibited a bag of rice. This was opened, and old, tremulous hands, knotted and veined like ivy-vines upon an oak, flung the grain as lustily as young plump ones, while man and wife came forth to face the benignant shower.

At the gate two stout greys and an old postillion--relic of days flown--were waiting to take Myles and his lady to Okehampton for the London train. Mark Endicott, led by Tommy Bates, stood at the carriage door; and now he felt warm lips on his blind face and a tear there.

"Be a good uncle," whispered Honor; "and don't weary your dear hands too much for those Brixham fishermen. Home we shall come again in a month; and how I'm going to do without you for so long, or you without me, I can't guess."

He squeezed her hands, and for once the old Spartan was dumb.

"God bless 'e!"

"Long life an' happiness to 'e!"

"Good luck to the both of 'e!"

Then a jumble and buzz of many speaking together; lifting of voices into a cheer; a gap in the road, where the carriage had stood; a puff of dust at the corner by the old pound; and courageous fowls, clucking and fluttering and risking their lives for scattered rice, among crushed roses and the legs of the people.

The bells rang out; the dust died down; personages drove slowly up the hill to the banquet; certain persons walked up. Mr. Cramphorn, fearful of a love contagion in the air, convoyed his daughters home himself, and Libby, growing faint-hearted before the expression on Jonah's face, abandoned his design of walking by Sally's side for half the distance and with Margery for the rest. Henry Collins was also deprived of the society he craved, and by ill-fortune it chanced that Ash, Pinsent, and the two rivals found themselves in company on the journey home. Collins thereupon relieved his wounded soul by being extremely rude, and he began with a personal remark at the expense of Gregory's best coat and emerald tie.

"All black an' green, I see--mourning for the devil that is," he said, in a tone not friendly.

"Aw! Be he dead then?" inquired Mr. Libby with great show of interest.

"Not while the likes of you's stirrin'. An' what for do 'e want to make a doomshaw of yourself--wearin' two rosettes, like a Merry Andrew, when other men have but wan?"

"Grapes are sour with you, I reckon, Henery. You see I puts this here left bow just awver my 'eart, 'cause Sally Cramphorn gived it to me."

Collins blazed into a fiery red, and a fist of huge proportions clenched until the knuckles grew white.

"Have a care," he said, "or I'll hit 'e awver the jaw! Such a poor penn'orth as you to set two such gals as them by the ears!"

"Who be you to threaten your betters? You forget as I'm a man wi' money in the bank, an' you ban't."

"Ah, so I did then," confessed Collins frankly. "I did forget; but they didn't. Keep your rosettes. 'Tis your gert store o' money winned 'em--same as bullock, not farmer, gets the ribbons at Christmas fair. So, every way, it's dam little as you've got to be proud of!"

Mr. Libby became inarticulate before this insult. He rolled and rumbled horrible threats in his cleft palate, but they were not intelligible, and Collins, striding forward, left him in the rear and joined Gaffer Ash and Pinsent, who dwelt peaceably on the joys to come.

"A talk of moosicians there was," said Samuel.

"Right. The Yeomany band to play 'pon the lawn. An' gude pleasure, tu, for them as likes brass moosic."

"How Maister Stapledon girned like a cat when the rice went down onderneath his clean collar!"

"Ess, he did; 'twas a happy thought of mine."

"What's the value or sense in it I doan't see all the same," objected Collins, whose day had now suffered eclipse. "'Pears to me 'tis a silly act whether or no."

"That shaws how ill you'm learned in affairs," answered Mr. Ash calmly. "The meanin' of rice at a weddin's very well knawn by onderstandin' men. 'Tis thrawed to ensure fruitfulness an' a long family. A dark branch of larnin', I grant 'e; but for all that I've awnly knawed it fail wance; an' then 'twern't no fault of the magic."

But Henry had been taught to regard a full quiver as no blessing.

"If that's what you done it for, 'twas a cruel unfriendly act," he declared, "an' I stands up an' sez so, auld as you be. Devil's awn wicked self caan't wish no worse harm to a innocent young pair than endless childer. I knaw--who better?--being wan o' thirteen myself; an' if I heard that was the use of it, not a grain would I have thrawed at 'em for money."

Churdles blinked, but was quite unmoved.

"You speak as a bachelor, my son, not to say as a fule. Black dog's got 'pon your shoulder this marnin'. A pity tu, for 'tis a perspiring day wi'out temper. No rough language to-day. All peace an' plencheousness; an' a glass o' black port, please God. Us'll feast wi' thankful hearts; an' then go forth an' sit 'pon the spine-grass in the garden an' smoke our pipes an' listen to the moosickers in the butivul sunshine."

"'Pears to me," said Gregory Libby, who had now rejoined them, "that you chaps o' Endicott's did ought to give some return for all this guzzling an' holiday making."

"Theer you'm wrong, as you mostly be, Greg," answered old Ash with a serene smile, "for 'tis awnly a small mind caan't take a favour wi'out worrittin' how to return it."

*BOOK II.*

*CHAPTER I.*

*THE SEEDS*

In late summer a strong breeze swept the Moor, hummed over the heather, and sang in the chinks and crannies of the tors; while at earth-level thin rags and tatters of mist, soaked with sunshine, raced beneath the blue. Now they swallowed a hill in one transitory sweep of light; now they dislimned in pearly tentacles and vanished magically, swept away by the riotous breezes; now moisture again became visible, and grew and gathered and laughed, and made a silver-grey home for rainbows. Beneath was hot sunshine, the light of the ling, the wild pant and gasp of great fitful zephyr, as he raced and roared along the lower planes of earth and sky; above, free of the fret and tumult, there sailed, in the upper chambers of the air, golden billows of cloud, rounded, massed and gleaming, with their aerial foundations levelled into long true lines by the rush of the western wind beneath them. Other air currents they knew and obeyed, and as they travelled upon their proper way, like a moving world, their peaks and promontories swelled and waned, spread and arose, billowed into new continents, craned and tottered into new golden pinnacles that drew their glory from the gates of the sun. To the sun, indeed, and above him--to the very zenith where he had climbed at noon--the scattered cloud armies swept and ascended; and their progress, viewed from earth, was majestic as the journey of remote stars, compared with the rapid frolics of the Mother o' Mist beneath.

A man and a woman appeared together on the high ground above Bear Down, and surveyed the tremendous valleys where Teign's course swept to distant Whiddon and vanished in the gorges of Fingle. There, gleaming across that land of ragged deer park and wild heathery precipices crowned with fir, a rainbow spanned the river's channels, and the transparent splendour of it bathed the distance with liquid colour, softened by many a mile of moist air to the melting and misty delicacy of opal.

"How flat the bow looks from this height," said the man.

"Fancy noting the shape with your eyes full of the colour!" answered the woman.

He started and laughed.

"How curiously like poor Christopher Yeoland you said that, Honor. And how like him to say it."

Myles and his wife were just returning from payment of a visit. They had now been married a few months, and, with the recent past, there had lifted off the head of the husband a load of anxiety. He looked younger and his forehead seemed more open; he felt younger by a decade of years, and his face only clouded at secret moments with one daily care. Despite his whole-hearted and unconcealed joy he went in fear, for there were vague suspicions in his head that the happiness of his heart was too great. He believed that never, within human experience, had any man approached so perilously near to absolute contentment as he did then. Thus in his very happiness lay his alarm. As a reasonable being, he knew that human life never makes enduring progress upon such fairy lines, and he searched his horizon for the inevitable clouds. But none appeared to his sight. Every letter he opened, every day that he awakened, he expected, and even vaguely hoped for reverses to balance his life, for minor troubles to order his existence more nearly with his experience. He had been quite content to meet those usual slings and arrows ranged against every man along the highway side of his pilgrimage; and tribulation of a sort had made him feel safer in the citadel of his good fortune. Indeed, he could conceive of no shaft capable of serious penetration in his case, so that it spared the lives of himself and his wife. Now the balance was set one way, and Providence blessed the pair with full measure, pressed down and running over. All succeeded on their land; all prospered in their homestead; all went well with their hearts. On sleepless nights Stapledon fancied he heard a kind, ghostly watchman cry out as much under the stars; and hearing, he would turn and thank the God he did not know and sleep again.

"Gone!" said Honor, looking out where the rainbow died and the gleam of it was swept out of being by the sturdy wind.

"So quickly; yet it spoke a true word before the wind scattered it; told us so many things that only a rainbow can. It is everlasting, because it is true. There's a beauty in absolute stark truth, Honor."

"Is there? Then the multiplication table's beautiful, dear love. If a rainbow teaches me anything, it is what a short-lived matter beauty must be--beauty and happiness and all that makes life worth living."

"But our rainbow is not built upon the mist."

"Don't think about the roots of it. So you are satisfied, leave them alone. To analyse happiness is worse and more foolish, I should think, than hunting for rainbow gold itself."

"I don't know. What is the happiness worth that won't stand analysis? All the same, I understand you very well. I believe there is nothing like prosperity and such a love of life as I feel now to make a man a coward. Anybody can be brave when he's got everything to win and nothing to lose; but it takes a big man to look ahead without a quickened pulse when he's at the top of his desire, when he knows in the heart of him that he's living through the happiest, best, most perfect days the earth can offer. Remember that to me this earth is all. I know of nothing whatever in me or anybody else that merits or justifies an eternity. So I cling to every moment of my life, and of yours. I'm a miser of minutes; I let the hours go with regret; I grudge the night-time spent in unconsciousness; I delight to wake early and look at you asleep and know you are mine, and that you love to be mine."

"It's a great deal of happiness for two people, Myles."

"So much that I fear, and, fearing, dim my happiness, and then blame myself for such folly."

"The rainy day will come. You are like poor, dear Cramphorn, who scents mystery in the open faces of flowers, suspects a tragedy at crossing of knives or spilling of salt; sees Fate busy breeding trouble if a foot but slips on a threshold. How he can have one happy moment I don't know. He told me yesterday that circumstances led him to suspect the end of the world by a thunder-planet before very long. And he said it would be just Endicott luck if the crash came before the crops were gathered, for our roots were a record this year."

"His daughters bother him a good deal."

"Yes; I do hope I may never have a daughter, Myles. It sounds unkind, but I don't like girls. My personal experience of the only girl I ever knew intimately, inclines me against them--Honor Endicott, I mean."

"Then we disagree," he said, and his eyes softened.

"Fancy, we actually differ, and differ by as much as the difference between a boy and a girl! I would like a girl for head of the family. I've known it work best so."

Honor did not answer.

While her husband had renewed his youth under the conditions of & happy marriage, the same could hardly be said for her. She was well and content, but more thoughtful. Her eyes twinkled into laughing stars less often than of old. She made others laugh, but seldom laughed with them as she had laughed with Christopher Yeoland. In the note of her voice a sadder music, that had wakened at her first love's death, remained.

Yet she was peacefully happy and quietly alive to the blessing of such a husband. Her temperament found him a daily meal of bread and butter--nourishing, pleasant to a healthy appetite, easy to digest. But, while he had feared for his happiness, she had already asked herself if his consistent stability would ever pall. She knew him so thoroughly, and wished that it was not so. It exasperated her in secret to realise that she could foretell to a nicety his speech and action under all possible circumstances. There were no unsuspected crannies and surprises in him. Surprises had ever been the jewels of Honor's life, and she believed that she might dig into the very heart's core of this man and never find one.

"He seems to be gold all through," she thought once. "Yet I wish he was patchy for the sake of the excitement."

But Myles by no means wearied his wife in these halcyon hours. She was very proud of him and his strength, sobriety, common sense. She enjoyed testing these qualities, and did so every day of the week, for she was a creature of surprises herself, and appreciated juxtaposition of moods as an epicure desires contrary flavours. She never found him wanting. He was as patient as the high Moor; and she believed that she might as easily anger Cosdon Beacon as her husband. He ambled by her side along the pathway of life like a happy elephant. If ever they differed, it was only upon the question of Honor's own share in the conduct of the farm. Formerly she had been energetic enough, and even resented the man's kindly, though clumsy attempts to relieve her; since marriage, however, she appeared well content to let him do all; and this had not mattered, in the opinion of Myles, while Honor found fresh interests and occupations to fill those hours formerly devoted to her affairs. But she did not do so; she spent much time to poor purpose; she developed a passing whim for finer feathers than had fledged her pretty body as a maiden; she began buying dresses that cost a ten-pound note apiece. These rags and tags Myles cared nothing for, but dutifully accompanied to church and upon such little visits of ceremony as the present. Then he grew uncomfortable and mentioned the trifle to Mark Endicott, only to hear the old man laugh.

"'Tis a whim," he said; "just one blind alley on the road towards happiness that every woman likes to probe if she can; and some live in it, and, to their dying day, get no forwarder than frocks. But she won't. Praise the new frill-de-dills when she dons them. Please God there's a time coming when she'll spend money to a better end, and fill her empty time with thoughts of a small thing sprung from her own flesh. No latest fashions in a baby's first gear, I believe. They don't change; no more do grave clothes."

Man and wife walked homeward beside tall, tangled hedges, full of ripeness and the manifold delicate workmanship and wrought filigrane of seed-vessels that follow upon the flowers. Honor was in worldly vein, for she had now come from calling upon folks whose purse was deeper than her own; but Myles found the immediate medley of the hedgerow a familiar feast, and prattled from his simple heart about what he saw there.

"You hear so often that it's a cheerless hour which sees the summer flowers dying, but I don't think so, do you, sweetheart? Look at the harvest of the hedges in its little capsules and goblets and a thousand quaint things! But you've noticed all this. You notice everything. Take the dainty cups, with turned rims, of the campions; and the broadswords or horse-shoes of the peas-blossomed things; and the cones of the foxgloves and the shining balls of starry stitchworts; and the daggers of herb Robert; and the bluebell's triple treasure-house; and the violet's; and the wood-sorrel, that shoots its grain into space; and the flying seeds of dandelions and clematis. And the scarlet fruits--the adder's meat, iris, the hips and aglets, bryony and nightshade; and the dark berries of privets and madders and wayfaring-tree and dogwood; and then the mast of oak and beech and chestnut--it is endless; and all such fine finished work!"

She listened or half listened; then spoke, when he stopped to draw breath.

"Poor Christo used to say that he saw Autumn as a dear, soft, plump-breasted, brown woman sitting on a throne of sunset colours--sitting there smiling and counting all the little cones and purses and pods with her soft hazel eyes, until falling leaves hid her from his sight in a rain of scarlet and gold and amber, under crystalline blue hazes. And sometimes he saw her in the corn, with the round moon shining on her face, while she lingered lovingly in the silver, and the ripe grain bent to kiss her feet and stay her progress. And sometimes"--she broke off suddenly. "You have an eye like a lynx for detail, Myles. Nothing escapes you. It is very wonderful to me."

He was pleased.

"I love detail, I think--detail in work and play. Yet Yeoland taught me more than he learned from me. The seeds are symbols of everlasting things, of life being renewed--deathless."

Honor yawned, but bent her head so that he should not see the involuntary expression of weariness. Believing that he had her attention, he prosed on.

"For my part I often think of the first sowing, and picture the Everlasting, like a husbandman, setting forth to scatter the new-born, mother-naked earth with immortal grain."

"And I suppose the slugs came as a natural consequence; or d'you think Providence only had the happy thought to torment poor Adam with prickles and thorns and green flies and caterpillars and clothes after he'd made that unfortunate effort to enlarge his mind?"

Myles started.

"Don't, Honor love! You should not take these things so. But I'm sorry; I thought I was interesting you."

"So you were; and those heavy, brick-red curtains of Mrs. Maybridge were interesting me still more. I don't know whether I liked them or hated them."

"Well, decide, and I'll write to Exeter for a pair if they please you. Where you'll put them I don't know."

"More do I, dearest. That's why I think I must have a pair--to puzzle me. Nothing ever puzzles me now. I've read all the riddles in my world."

"How wise! Yet I know what you mean. I often feel life's got nothing left that is better than what it has brought. We want a hard winter to brace us--with anxiety, too, and perhaps a loss here and there. So much honey is demoralising."

She looked at him with curiosity.

"Are you really as happy as all that? I didn't know any human being could be; I didn't think it possible to conscious intelligence. That's why I never quite grasped the perfect happiness of the angels--unless they're all grown-up children. Nobody who has trodden this poor, sad old world will ever be quite happy again even in heaven. To have been a man or woman once is to know the shadow of sorrow for all eternity."

But he was thinking of her question, and heard no more. It came like a seed--like some air-borne, invisible, flying spore of the wild fern--touched his heart, found food there, and promised to rise by alternative generation to an unrest of like pattern with the mother-plant in Honor's own heart.

"You're not as happy as I am then?" he asked, with a sudden concern in his voice. "D'you mean that? You must mean it, for you wonder at the height of my happiness, as though it was beyond your dreams."

"I'm very, very happy indeed, dear one--happier than I thought I could be, Myles--happier by far than I deserve to be."

But the seed was sown, and he grew silent. In his egotism the possibility of any ill at the root of his new world, of a worm in the bud of his opening rose, had never struck him. His eyes had roamed around the horizons of life; now there fell a little shadow upon him from a cloud clean overhead. He banished it resolutely and laughed at himself. Yet from that time forward it occasionally reappeared. Henceforth unconsciously he forgot somewhat his own prosperity of mind in attempting to perfect Honor's. He laboured like a giant to bring her measure of full peace. Her days of light and laughter were his also; while when transitory emotions brought a chill to her manner, a cloud to her eyes, he similarly suffered. The wide distinctions in their nature he neither allowed for nor appreciated. Concerning women he knew nothing save this one, and all the obvious, radical differences of essence and nature, he explained to himself as necessary differences of sex.

Man and wife proceeded together homeward, and Honor, acutely conscious of having raised a ripple upon the smooth sea of his content, entered with vigour into her husband's conversation, chimed with his enthusiasm, and plucked seeds and berries that he might name them. Without after-showing of the bitter she had set to his lips, Myles serenely returned to the hedgerow harvests; and so they passed downward together towards the farm, while the sky darkened and pavilions of the coming rain loomed large and larger.

"Just in time," said the man. "I heard Teign's cry this morning; but bad weather is not going to last, I think."

Yet the day closed in drearily, after set of sun. The wind fell at that hour and backed south of west; the mist increased and merged into the density of rain; the rain smothered up the gloaming with a steady, persistent downpour.

*CHAPTER II.*

*CHERRY GREPE'S SINS*

Where Honor's head lay upon her pillow by night, a distance of scarcely one yard separated it from the famous cherry tree of Endicott's. This year, owing to a prevalence of cold wind, the crop, though excellent, had been unusually late, and it happened that the thrushes and blackbirds paid exceptional attention to the fruit. Once, in a moment of annoyance at sight of her shining berries mutilated by sharp bills, and pecked to the purple-stained stones, Honor had issued an impatient mandate to the first servant who chanced to meet her after discovery of the birds' theft. Henry Collins it was, and his round eyes grew into dark moons as she bid him shoot a few of the robbers and hang their corpses Haman-high as a dreadful lesson to the rest.

For a fortnight after this stern decree Collins, full of private anxieties, paid no heed to his mistress's command, and Honor herself dismissed the matter and forgot her order as completely as she forgot those moments of irritation that were responsible for it; but anon Henry recollected the circumstance, borrowed Jonah Cramphorn's gun, rose betimes, and marched into the garden on a morning soon after the rainstorm. A flutter of wings in the cherry tree attracted him, and firing against the side of the house he brought down a fine cock blackbird in a huddled heap of ebony feathers now streaked with crimson, his orange bill all stained with juice from the last cherry that he would spoil. The shot echoed and re-echoed through the grey stillness of dawn, and Myles, already rising, hastened to the window, while Honor opened her eyes, for the report had roused her.

"It's Collins!" exclaimed her husband, staring into the dusk of day; "and the brute has shot a blackbird! Is he mad? How did he dare to come into the private garden with his gun? And now you'll most probably have a headache--being startled out of sleep like that. Besides, the cruelty of it."

"What a storm in a teacup, my dear! The man is only doing as I ordered him. The birds are a nuisance. They've eaten all my cherries again this year. I bid Collins thin them a little."

"_You_ told him to shoot them? Honor!"

"Oh, don't put on that Sunday-school-story look, my dearest and best. There are plenty of blackbirds and thrushes. The garden is still my province, at any rate."

"The birds do more good than harm, and, really, a handful of sour cherries----"

"They're _not_ sour!" she cried passionately, flaming over a trifle and glad of any excuse to enjoy an emotion almost forgotten. "My father loved them; my great-grandfather set the tree there. It's a sacred thing to me, and I'll have every bird that settles in it shot, if I please."

"Honor!"

"And hung up afterwards to frighten the rest."

"I'm surprised."

"I don't care if you are. You'll be more surprised yet. 'Sour'! They're better cherries than ever you tasted at Tavistock, I know."

"Collins----"

"Collins must do what I tell him. You're master--but I'm mistress. If the house is going to be divided against itself----"

"God forbid! What in heaven's name are you dreaming of? This is terrible!"

"Then let Collins kill the thrushes and blackbirds. I wish it. I hate them. If you say a word I'll turn the man off."

But two go to a quarrel. Myles, much alarmed and mystified by this ebullition, vowed that Collins might shoot every bird in the county for him; then he departed; and his lady, only regretful that the paltry little quarrel had endured so short a time, arose much refreshed by it. The sluggish monotony of well-balanced reciprocal relations made her spirits stagnant, while pulses of opposition, like sweet breezes, seemed always a necessity of health to invigorate and brighten it. Stapledon appeared at breakfast with anxious eye and a wrinkle between his brows; his attitude towards Honor was almost servile, and his demeanour to the household more reserved than common; but the mistress had obviously leapt from her couch into sunshine. She chatted cheerfully to all, granted Sally a morning away from work, when that maiden begged for some leisure; and herself, after breakfast, announced a determination to go afield and see whether the recent rain had improved the fishing. Myles offered to make holiday also, but, with the old ripple in her voice and between two kisses, she refused him.

"No, dear heart. 'Tis my whim to go alone. I'm feeling a good girl to-day, and that's so rare that I don't want to spoil the sensation. So I mean catching some trout for your supper and Uncle Mark's. Don't come. A day alone on the Moor will blow away some cobwebs and make me better company for my dear, good husband."

Presently she tramped off to northern Teign, where it tumbles by slides and rocky falls through steep valley under Watern's shoulder; and as she left the men at the garden, Mr. Endicott turned his blind eyes upon Myles with a sort of inquiry in them.

"What's come over her to-day? Fresh as a daisy seemingly, and happy as a lark. Got a new ring or bracelet out of you? The old note, that I've missed of late and sorrowed to miss. But I can name it now, because it's come back. What's the reason?"

"I can't tell you. You hurt me a good deal when you say you've missed any indication of happiness in her. As a matter of fact we had a brief passage of words this morning. Nothing serious of course. That wasn't it at any rate."

Mr. Endicott chuckled.

"But it was though, for certain! You set a current flowing. You've done her a power of good by crossing her. I don't want any details, but a word to the wise is enough. Labour keeps your life sweet; she wants something else. Some women must have a little healthy opposition. I wager she loves you better for denying some wish or issuing some order."

"Not at all. Since we're on this incident I may mention that I gave way completely. But 'twas a paltry thing."

"Then if a breeze that ends tamely, by her getting her will, can shake her into such brave spirits, think how it would be if you'd forbid her and had your way! Learn from it--that's all. Some natures can't stand eternal adoration. They sicken on it. There's no good thing, but common-sense, you can't have too much of. So don't be--what's the word?"

"Uxorious," said Myles Stapledon drearily.

"Yes. Don't pamper her with love. You're all the world to her and she to you; but take a lesson from her and hide more than you show. Man and woman's built for stormy weather, and as calm seas and snug harbours breed grass and barnacles on a ship's bottom, so you can reckon it with sheltered souls. I've seen whole families rot away and vanish from this sort of self-indulgence. It saps strength and sucks the iron out of a man. There's metal in you both. Don't try and stand between her and the weather of life."

"I understand you, uncle. I'm only waiting for trouble to come. I know all this happiness isn't entirely healthy. But it's natural I should wish to shield her."

"Right, my son. Only remember she's a hardy plant and won't stand greenhouse coddling. How would you like it yourself?"

They parted, the younger impressed with a new idea; yet, as the day wore on, he began to think of Honor, and presently strolled up the hill to meet her. Once he laughed to himself as he tramped to the heights; but it was a gloomy laugh. This idea of quarrelling as a counter-irritant, of coming nearer to her by going further off, he little appreciated.

Myles wandered to the circle of Scor Hill and mused there. Here she had denied him in snow, offered herself to him in springtime. Honor he did not see, but another woman met his gaze. She was aged and bent, and she passed painfully along under a weight of sticks gathered in the valley. He spoke from his seat on a stone.

"I should not carry so much at one load, Cherry; you'll hurt yourself."

Gammer Grepe, thus accosted, flung her sticks to the ground and turned to Myles eagerly.

"'Tis a gude chance I find 'e alone," she said, "for I'm very much wantin' to have a tell with 'e if I may make so bold."

"Sit down and rest," he answered.

Then the gammer began with tearful eagerness.

"'Tis this way. For years an' years the folks have been used to look sideways 'pon me an' spit awver theer shoulders arter I'd passed by. An' I won't say the dark things my mother knawed be hid from me. But I never could abear the deeds I've been forced into, an' was allus better pleased doin' gude than harm. God's my judge of that. But I've so fair a right to live as my neighbours, an' I've done many an' many a ugly thing for money, an' I shall again, onless them as can will come forrard and help me. Eighty-four I be--I'll take my oath of it; an' that's a age when a lone woman did ought be thinkin' of the next world--not doin' dark deeds in this."

Myles had seen his wife far off and caught the flutter of her dress in the valley a mile distant. She was still fishing as her tardy progress testified, but where she stood the river was hidden under a tumble of rocky ledges. He turned in some surprise to the old woman.

"D'you mean that here, now, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy-one, folks still ask you for your help to do right or wrong and seriously think you can serve them?"

"Ess fay; an' I do serve them; an' 'tis that I'm weary of. But, seein' theer's nought betwixt me an' the Union Workhouse but theer custom, I go on. Theer's cures come fust--cures for childern's hurts an' the plagues of beasts."

"That's not doing harm, though it's not doin' good either."

"Listen, caan't 'e? Ban't all. I killed a man last year for ten shillin'! An' it do lie heavy upon me yet. An' the mischief is, that my heart be so hard that I'd do the same to-morrow for the same money. I must live, an' if I caan't get honest dole at my time of life, I must make wicked money."

Stapledon inwardly decided that the sooner this old-time survival was within the sheltering arm of the poor-house the better. He suspected that she was growing anile.

"You mustn't talk this nonsense, mother. Surely you know it is out of your power to do any such thing as 'ill-wish,' or 'overlook,' let alone destroy anybody?"

"That's all you knaw! Us o' the dark side o' life be so auld as Scripture. The things we'm taught was never in no books, so they'm livin' still. Print a thing and it dies. We'm like the woman as drawed up Samuel against Saul. We can do more'n we think we can here an' theer. I killed a man other end of the world so sure's if I'd shot un through the heart; for them as seed my deed, which I offered up for ten shillin' o' money, has ears so long as from here to hell-fire; an' they sent a snake. I drawed a circle against Christopher Yeoland, an' picked him, like a bullace, afore he was ripe. An', along o' poverty, I'd do the same against anybody in the land--'cepting awnly the Lard's anointed Queen--so theer! That's the black state o' wickedness I be in; an' 'tis for you at Bear Down to give me gude money an' a regular bit weekly, else theer'll be more mischief. Yet 'tis a horrible thing as I should have to say it--me so auld as I be, wi' wan foot in the graave."

"So it is horrible," said Myles sternly, "and if you were not so old I should say the ancient remedy of a ducking in a horse-pond would be the best way to treat you. To wish evil to that harmless man! Surely you are not such a malignant old fool as to think you destroyed him?"

"Me! Gude Lard A'mighty, I wouldn't hurt a long-cripple or a crawling eft. 'Twas awnly to earn bread. Who paid me I caan't tell 'e, for we has our pride; but I was awnly the servant. Us larns a deal 'bout the inner wickedness of unforgiving sawls in my calling."

"It must have been a strange sort of brute who would wish to hurt Christopher Yeoland; but you needn't be concerned, old woman. Be sure your tomfoolery didn't send death to him."

Cherry reddened under her wrinkles.

"'Tis you'm the fule!" she cried. "I knaw what I knaw; an' I knaw what power be in me very well, same as my mother afore me. An' best give heed or you might be sorry you spoke so scornful. I'm a wise woman; an' wise I was years an' years afore your faither ever got you. I doan't ax for no opinions on that. I ax for money, so I shall give up these things an' die inside the fold of Jesus--not outside it. Because my manner of life be like to end in an oncomfortable plaace, an' I'd give it up to-morrow if I could live without it."

"You're a very wicked woman, Charity Grepe!" flamed Stapledon, "and a disgrace to the countryside and all who allow themselves to have any dealings with you. I thought you only charmed warts and such nonsense. But, here at the end of your life, you deal in these disgusting superstitions and apparently gull intelligent human beings with your tricks. Be sure a stop shall be put to that if I can bring it about. The hands at Endicott's at least won't patronise you any more. You might be locked up if half this was known."

"Then you won't help me to a higher way of living an' regular wages?"

"You must reform first. I can promise nothing."

Cherry, in doubt whether to bless or curse, but disposed towards the latter expression of her emotions, rose and eyed Stapledon suspiciously. He too rose, helped her with her bundle, and again assured her that she must promise reformation before he could undertake any practical assistance. So she hobbled away, uneasy and angered. Actual wounded feeling was at the bottom of her resentment. Whatever her real age, she was human, and therefore not too old to be vain. Since the death of Christopher Yeoland, Gammer Grepe had taken herself very seriously and been much impressed with the nature of her own powers.

Ten minutes later husband and wife met, and Stapledon spoke of his recent experience.

"Scor Hill Circle seems destined to be the theatre of all my strangest accidents."

"And most terrible, perhaps?"

"And most precious. But this last is grim enough. Just now that old hag Cherry Grepe was here begging and threatening in a breath. Think of it: she says she killed Christopher Yeoland!"

Time is like a Moor mist and weaves curtains of a density very uncertain, very apt to part and vanish in those moments when they look most impenetrable. Moods will often roll away the years until memory reveals past days again, and temperaments there are that possess such unhappy power in this sort that they can rend the curtain, defy time, and stand face to face at will with the full proportions of a bygone grief, though kindly years stretch out between to dim vision and soften the edges of remembrance.

Honor often thought of her old lover, and during this day, alone with her mind and the face of the Moor, she had occupied herself about him. She had a rare faculty for leaving the past alone, but, seeing that he was now dead, and that she believed in eternity, Honor pictured that state, and wondered if a friendship, impossible between two men and a woman, would be practicable for the three when all were ghosts. An existence purely spiritual was a pleasant image in her esteem, and to-day, while all unknowing she hovered on the brink of incidents inseparably entwined with flesh and womanhood, she bent her thoughts upon radiant pictures and dreamed strange dreams of an eternal conscious existence clothed only with light.

The crude announcement of Gammer Grepe's confession came inharmoniously upon her thoughts from one direction, yet chimed therewith at the standpoint of the supernatural. She shivered, yet laughed; she declared that Cherry and her cottage should be conveyed entirely to Exeter Museum as a fascinating relic of old times; yet recollected with a sort of discomfort the old woman's predictions concerning herself when, as a girl, and in jest, she had sought to hear her fortune.

*CHAPTER III.*

*A SECRET*

Mark Endicott showed not a little interest in the matter of Cherry Grepe. Such a survival astonished him, and being somewhat of a student in folk-lore, he held that, far from discouraging the wise woman, she should be treated with all respect, and an effort made to gather a little of her occult knowledge.

By a coincidence, soon after Stapledon's conversation with the wise woman, there came further corroboration of Cherry's powers from the mouth of one among her steadfast clients. After supper, at that hour when the hands were wont to utter their opinions or seek for counsel from those in authority over them, Mr. Cramphorn opened a great question vital to his own peace of mind and the welfare of his daughters. Jonah loved them both with a generous measure of paternal regard for one of his mental restrictions. Next to his mistress in his esteem came Sally and Margery; and now, with passage of days, there grew in him a great perplexity, for his daughters were old enough to take husbands and both apparently desired the same; while, as if that did not present complication sufficient, the man their ardent hearts were fixed upon by no means commended himself to Cramphorn's judgment.

As for Mr. Libby, with an impartiality very exasperating, he committed himself to no definite course. He made it plain that he desired an alliance with Jonah; yet, under pressure of such monkey brains as Providence had bestowed upon him, and secretly strong in two strings to his bow, he held the balance with great diplomacy between these maids and exercised a patience--easy to one who in reality possessed little love for either. His aim was to learn whether Sally or her sister had greatest measure of her father's regard, for he was far-seeing, knew that Mr. Cramphorn might be considered a snug man, and must in the course of nature presently pass and leave his cottage and his savings behind him. The cottage lease had half a hundred years to run, and an acre of ground went with it. So Gregory, while he leant rather to Sally Cramphorn by reason of her physical splendours, was in no foolish frenzy for her, and the possible possession of a house and land had quickly turned the scale in favour of her sister. Moreover, he was alive to the fact that the father of the girls held him in open dislike; another sufficient cause for procrastination.

With indifferent good grace Jonah recorded his anxieties to Myles and Mark Endicott.

"Both wife-auld, an' be gormed if I knaw what to do 'bout it. A gude few would have 'em, but not wan's for theer market seemin'ly except that fantastical chap, Greg Libby, who stands between 'em, like a donkey between two dachells. I may as well awn up as I seed Cherry Grepe on it, but for wance seems to me as I thrawed away my money. Two shillin' I gived her an' got nought."

"What did she say?" asked Mr. Endicott.

"Her took me by a trick like. Fust her said, 'Do 'e reckon your gals have brains in theer heads?' An' I said, 'Coourse they have, so gude as any other females in theer station o' life.' Then her said, 'You'm satisfied with theer intellects?' An' I said, 'Why for shouldn't I be?' Then said Cherry, 'Very well, Jonah; let 'em bide an' find men for theerselves. Ban't your business, an' you'll be a fule to make it so. 'Tis awnly royal princesses,' she said, 'an' duchesses an' such like as have to set other people husband-huntin' for 'em. But us humble folks of the airth--'tis the will of Providence we may wed wheer we love, like the birds. Let 'em bide, an' doan't keep such a hell-hard hold awver 'em,' said her to me, 'an' then they'll larn you in theer awn time what they be gwaine to do 'bout husbands,' she said."

"Don't see who can give you better advice, Jonah. I can't for one. Looks to me as if old Cherry's got more sense than I was led to believe. Let them find their own men--only see to it when found that they're sound in wind and limb. Libby's got a cleft palate, and, likely as not, his child will have one. 'Tisn't in reason that a lovesick girl should think for her unborn children; but for his grandchildren a man ought to think if chance offers. Anyway, never give a flaw any opportunity to repeat itself, when you can prevent such a thing. Not enough is done for love of the unborn in this world. 'Tis them we ought to make laws for."

By no means satisfied, Cramphorn presently went to bed, and Myles pursued the subject for a while. Then he too retired, taking the lamp with him, and the blind man knitted on for a space, while a choir of crickets chirruped and sped about upon the hearth.

But though Stapledon went to his chamber, the day was not yet done for him, the theme in his thoughts not yet to be extinguished. Since their trivial quarrel Honor and her husband had been as happy together as man and woman need pray to be, and that dim, dreary shadow which Myles had stared at, Honor shut her eyes upon, might be said to have retreated to a point of absolute disappearance. The ache in the man, that showed at his eyes, had passed like any other pain; the twinge in the woman, revealed not at all, though generally followed by a humorous speech, troubled her no more at this moment. She grew pensive and very self-absorbed; she stared absently through the faces of those who addressed her; she dwelt much with her own thoughts and discoveries.

This night she was not in bed when Myles entered her room, but sat beside the open window, her elbows upon the sill and her face between her hands.

"Myles," she said, "there's a man down in the meadow. I saw him distinctly pass between two of the sleeping cows. Then he drifted into the shadow of the hedge--a man or a ghost."

"A man, sweetheart, though I know you would rather think it something else and so get a new sensation. Pinsent probably, as a matter of prosy fact. I bid him get me some rabbits. Shut the window and come to bed. You'll catch cold."

"No; I'm cold-proof now--so the old wives say when---- Come here a minute, Myles, and sit here and look at the moon and listen to the dor beetles. There will not be many more such nights and such silvery mists this year."

"You can almost see the damp in the air," he said.

"Yes, and down below, with ear to grass, one might hear the soft whisper of the little mushrooms breaking out of Mother Earth, while the fairies dance round them and scatter the dew."

"You're not wise to sit there, dear love."

"I must be humoured--we must be."

He threw off his coat and stretched his great arms in pleasant anticipation of rest and sleep.

"Whatever do you mean, my pretty?"

"I mean that I have a long, tedious, tremendous enterprise in hand. A most troublesome enterprise. You're always at me not to waste time. Now I'm really going to be busy."

"You couldn't tell me anything I'd like to hear better."

"Couldn't I? Remember!"

He did remember.

"That--yes--all in good time."

"Not a moment more shall I waste. You'll guess I'm in earnest, for I'm going to work night and day."

"A fine resolve! But keep your work for working hours, sweetheart. And how many are to benefit by this great achievement?"

"Who can tell that? It may be for good or for harm. Yet we have a right to be hopeful."

"You make me most curious. How shall I view it, I wonder?"

"Well, you ought to be rather pleased, if you've told me the truth. And--look!"