Chapter III: Progress in Ideas

The Brendons always went to morning service at Lydford on Sunday. Sometimes Mr. Tapson, who was a churchman, accompanied them; but Agg and Lethbridge belonged to another sect, and their place of worship was at Mary Tavy. Neither John Prout nor his sister ever went. Indeed, Sunday dinner occupied the great part of Tabitha's energies on every seventh day.

Once, being early for service, Daniel and Sarah Jane wandered amid the tombs, and then sat down upon the churchyard wall and looked out over a wooded gorge beneath. Brendon was always very serious and sober on Sunday. It seemed to his wife that he donned a mental habit with his black coat, and in her heart she rejoiced when the day had passed. He looked strictly after her religion from the time of their marriage, and had lengthened her morning and evening prayers considerably with additions from his own. She fell in readily with his wishes, and was obedient as a child; but none the less she knew that the inward and spiritual signs he foretold from her increased religious activity, delayed their appearance. The daily act of faith was not necessary to her mental health, and it proved powerless to alter her natural bent of thought. Sometimes she still shocked him, but less often than of old.

She loved him with a great love; and love taught her to understand his stern soul a little. Not fear, but affection, made her careful. Meantime her own attitude to life and her own frank and joyous spirit were absolutely unchanged. Only, from consideration for him, she hid her thought a little, and often shut her mouth upon an opinion, because she remembered that it might give him pain.

"Do you ever think about the graves?" asked her husband, looking round thoughtfully at the grass-clad hillocks. But she kept her eyes before her and only shook her head.

"No, Dan--can't say as I do. The churchyard's the place for dead men--not living ones. Us shall spend a terrible lot of time here come presently, and I don't want to waste much of it here now."

"'Tis a steadying job to read the verses above all these bones," he said.

"Read 'em, then," she answered. "But don't ax me to. I hate graves, and I hate everything to do with death. With all my might I hate it."

"You shouldn't feel so. 'Tis a part of life, and no more can we have life without it, than we can have a book without a last page. And no one of all these men carried anything into the next world but his record in this. Yet to remember how soon we must give up our clay be a solemn, useful thought."

She did not answer, and he strolled apart and considered the trite warnings, pious hopes, and implicit pathos of dates, where figures often told the saddest tale.

A man came into the churchyard, and, looking round, Daniel, very greatly to his astonishment, saw Jarratt Weekes talking to his wife. Scarcely believing his own eyes, he strode over a row of the silent people and approached.

Neither his wife nor himself had spoken to the castle-keeper since their marriage; yet at last it seemed that the rejected suitor was recovering from his disappointment and about to forget and forgive the past. Weekes shook hands with Brendon, as he had already done with Sarah Jane; then he addressed them both.

"I'm hoping as you'll let bygones be bygones, Brendon. I was hard hit, and--well, 'tis no good going over old ground. I did my best to get you away from Sarah Jane here, and I failed. There's no more to be said."

"Except that you didn't fight fair," answered Daniel calmly. "You tried by very underhand ways to do me out of my own, and I'm sorry for it. All the same, I'm willing enough to forgive you and be friendly henceforth, Mr. Weekes."

"So am I," declared Sarah Jane. "'Twas a very great kindness in you to be so fond of me, and I never shall forget it. But there was but one man in the world for me after I met Daniel here, and so I hope there won't be no more feeling against us."

"Not on my side there won't," answered Jarratt. "I'm glad to let it go. Life's too short to harbour any bitterness like that. I hope you'll be happy all your days, and if ever I can serve you, Brendon, you've only got to tell me so."

Daniel glowed with satisfaction, took the other's hand again and shook it.

"This is an extra good Sunday for me," he answered, "and nothing better could have happened. And I'll say no more, except that I trust it may come into my power to do you good some day, Mr. Weekes. Which I will do, God helping."

"So be it," said the other. "I'll hold you friendly in my mind, henceforward--both of you."

He did not look at Brendon during this conversation, but sometimes cast a side glance into Sarah Jane's face. Now folk began to enter the churchyard, and presently the bells rang.

During service Brendon very heartily thanked Heaven for this happy event, and blessed his Maker, in that He had touched the angry heart of Jarratt Weekes to penitence. But Sarah Jane regarded the incident with a spirit less than prayerful. She was hardly convinced that her old lover meant friendship henceforth. She knew what he had attempted against Daniel; she remembered the things that he had said to her; and this sudden change of mind and expression of contrition found her sceptical.

As for Weekes himself, he had acted upon impulse and the accident of meeting them alone. But his motives were involved. He was not yet done with Sarah Jane. He rather wished to punish her, since he could not possess her. He certainly had not forgiven, and still desired revenge. Therefore he pretended a sudden regret, deceived Brendon, and so ordered his apologies that henceforth he might pose as a friend. He had, however, little thought of what he would do, and revenge was by no means the dominating idea of his mind at present. Much else occupied it, and so busy was he, that he knew quite well nothing practical might ever spring from his secret dislike of the Brendons. Time might even deaden the animosity, before opportunity arose to gratify it; but, on the other hand, with free intercourse once established, anything might fall out. So he left the situation vague for chance to develop. His malignancy was chronic rather than acute. It might leap into activity by the accident of events; or perish, smothered under the press of his affairs.

As they returned home from church, Sarah Jane warned her husband to place no absolute trust in the things that he had heard from Jarratt Weekes; but Daniel blamed her for doubting. He explained that Mr. Weekes was a Christian man and a regular attendant at worship. He felt positive that the other was truly contrite, and out of his own nature accepted these assurances without suspicion. He went further, and blamed his wife for her doubt.

"You mustn't be small like that," he said. "It isn't worthy of you."

"I know him better than you do. He was very much in love with me. He offered me a horse if I'd have him. That was pretty good for such a mean man as him."

"You must always allow for the part that God plays in a person. When anybody says or does a thing outside his character, don't jump to the idea he's lying or playing a part. But just ask yourself if God may not have touched the man and lifted him higher than himself."

"You can't be higher than yourself--so Mr. Woodrow says. I forget what we was telling about, but, coming for his milk one morning, he got very serious and full of religious ideas."

Daniel frowned.

"There's no true foundation to his opinions--always remember that."

"He's just as religious as you, in his own way, all the same," she said. "He told me religion be like clothes. If it fits, well and good; but 'tis no good trying to tinker and patch up the Bible to make it suit your case if it won't. I dimly see what the man means."

"Do you?--well, I don't, and I don't want to; and I won't have him talk to you so; I ban't too pleased at this caper of his, to come out every morning for a glass of warm milk when you'm with the cows."

"And of an evening too, he comes."

"It must be stopped, then. He shall talk no more of his loose opinions to you. 'Tinker and patch the Bible'! What will he say next? Sometimes I feel a doubt if I did ought to bide here at all. I'm not sure if one should be working and taking the money of a man's that not a Christian."

"He's a good man enough. I've heard you say yourself that you never met a better."

"I know it. And that's the mystery. I hope he'll come round and see truth as the years pass by."

"He's the better for the milk, and a kinder creature never walked," said Sarah Jane.

In truth she had seen a good deal of Hilary Woodrow since first he strolled abroad after a sleepless night and drank at her bidding. It pleased him to find her at her work, for she was always the first to be stirring; and now he had fallen into the way of rising early, walking in the air, and talking with the dairymaid while she milked the cows.

Sarah Jane, in some small measure, appeared to have revived his faith and interest in women. Her artless outlook upon life came as a novelty to him. Everything interested her; nothing shocked her. An almost sexless purity of mind characterized her speeches. An idea entering her brain came forth again chastened and sweetened. Her very plainness of speech made for purgation of thought. The things called "doubtful" were disinfected when she spoke about them.

Hilary Woodrow found Daniel's wife not seldom in his head, and as time advanced he grew to anticipate the dawn with pleasure, and looked forward to the fresh milk of her thoughts, rather than that she brought him from the cow.

He protested sometimes at the narrowness of the opinions round about, and told her, with gloomy triumph, that certain local ministers of the church declined to know him.

"Which is best," he asked, "to say that every man is born wicked, as they do, or say that every man is born good, like I do? Why, 'tis to condemn without a trial to say that every man is born wicked."

"Men be born little, dear, dinky babbies," she said--"no more wicked than they blind kittens in the loft."

"Of course not; but that's dogma. They find it in the Bible. It's called the Fall. I can't talk to the men about these things--except Prout. But I wish I could get at your husband a bit, because he's in earnest. The fault with earnest folk so often is, that they never will understand other people are earnest too."

"He knows you'm very good, sir, for all your opinions."

"You see, conscience and the moral sense are two different things; but Brendon would never allow that. He says that conscience comes from God. I say it is what you've been taught, or learned for yourself. If I believed in God--then I'd say the moral sense was what came direct from Him. But I don't, and so I explain it by the laws of Evolution."

She shook her head.

"That's all a rigmarole to me, though I dare say Dan would follow it. You don't believe in no God at all, then?"

"None at all--not the shadow of the shade of a God."

In her blue eyes nothing but the sky was reflected; in his there was much of earth; and his own earth was unrestful as he looked at her morning loveliness.

"Drink your milk afore the warmth be out of it," she said. "'Twould be a terrible curious thing if there was no God, certainly."

"The sun's my God."

"Well, then, there is a God--though we don't see over-much of Him up here."

"But we believe in him, and trust him with the seed, and the lambs; and know that he'll bring back Spring again when Winter is done. So, after all, I'm talking nonsense, because I've got as great faith in my god as your husband has in his."

"To hear you run on! Like a book, I'm sure."

"I can talk like this to you, because you don't look at me as if I was damned and you weren't sorry for it. That's what I get from most people. Have you ever read about Jehovah and the burnt offerings and the sin offerings, and how His altar was to be sprinkled with fresh blood all day long, and how the dumb beasts and birds were to be torn to pieces for a sweet savour before Him? That's the blood-sucking vampire the parsons think made the stars, and the flowers, and--you! I wish I'd lived a hundred years later: then I shouldn't have been fretted with so many fools, Sarah Jane."

"Us ought to live and let live, I suppose."

"Charity--that's all I ask. I only want 'em to practise the first and last thing their Lord begged for, and preached for, and prayed for."

"You'm very charitable, I'm sure--and never name the kind things you do--though John Prout tells about them."

"Does he? No, no, they're in his imagination. Prout spoils me and thinks too well of me. So do you."

"I'm sorry for you, because you've got such a lot of queer opinions, seemingly, and none to let 'em off upon. You must feel like bursting with trouble sometimes, from the look of your eyes."

He laughed at that and abruptly left her. It was his custom now to appear and depart without any formal salute. Sometimes, after absence of days, he would suddenly be at her side after dawn, or at evening. Then he would resume the thread of his last speeches, as though no interval had fallen between.

There was no secrecy in these interviews, and often another, or Brendon himself, might be present at them. But when once Woodrow appealed to Daniel, before his wife, to be larger-minded and more tolerant, the giant shook his head. He held it wickedness to be easy with wrong ideas. To him that man was dishonest, who had not the courage of his own opinions; and disloyal, who could even endure arguments directed against his faith.