Chapter V: Visit to a Hermit

The evidences of former humanity that abound upon Dartmoor may be divided into remains prehistoric and mediæval. Amid the first shall be found the ruins of the stone-man's home and the scattered foundations of his lodges and encampments. To him also belong certain cirques of stone lifted here and there in lonely places, together with parallelitha, or avenues, and those menhirs and cairns that rise solitary upon high hills to mark the sleeping-places of neolithic heroes. Profound antiquity wraps up these memorials, and the significance of their record is still matter of antiquarian doubt. To what purpose was erected the hypæthral chamber and the long aisle of stone, may never now be understood; but later entries in the granite cartulary of Dartmoor are more easily deciphered. From the middle ages date the tin-streamers' works, where Tudor miners laboured; and scarce a river valley shall be searched without offering many evidences of their toil; while upon the higher grounds, marking some spot of special note, indicating boundaries or serving as guide-posts from goal to goal, the old stone crosses stand.

It was significant of the different attitudes of Sarah Jane and her husband that she found a measure of interest in the pagan hut-circle or grave; he only cared to see the chance symbol of his faith. These Christian evidences were rare round about Ruddyford, but marks of the old stone men did not lack, and Sarah Jane, to whom Hilary Woodrow had once explained their meaning, always professed active interest in these fragments, and told the things that she had heard concerning them to her husband.

There came a Sunday in March when the Brendons went up to see Gregory Friend, that they might convey a great piece of news to him. The young heather was rusty-red in the shoot, and here and there swaling fires had scorched the bosom of the hills to blackness. The day was wintry, yet clear, but many snug spots offered among the boulders, where one might sit facing the sun and sheltered from the east wind.

Such a place Brendon presently found and bade his wife rest awhile.

"'Tis another of them hut-circles master tells about," said Sarah Jane. "That was where the door opened without a doubt. To think as folk lived here, Dan--thousands and thousands of years ago."

"Poor dust! I like the crosses better: they be nearer to our own time, I suppose, and mean a comfortabler thing. 'Tis wisht to hear farmer tell how savage, skin-clad folk dwelt here afore the coming of Christ."

"They couldn't help coming afore He did. He ought to have come sooner, if He wanted for them to know about Him," she answered.

Brendon frowned.

"You'm always so defiant," he said. "I still catch the master's way of speech in your tongue now and again. An' very ugly it sounds."

"I'm bound to stop and listen to him sometimes, when he begins to talk. But since he comed of a morning for his glass of milk and you stopped it--or I told him I'd rather he didn't--us have had no words about holy things. He's got a side all the same."

"I'm sorry to hear you say so. If you say so, you think so, no doubt."

Sarah Jane laughed.

"'Tis a free country--as far as thoughts be the matter."

"That's him again. I heard him say the only sort of freedom we could have was freedom of thought. But unbelievers shouldn't have that if I could help it."

She looked at him with love rather than respect.

"You'm deep but not wide in your way of thinking. I mind once last autumn coming to you and marking as you'd been trampling in the whortleberries. Your boots was all red and purple, and it looked for all the world as if you might have been stamping somebody to death."

"What things you say!"

"All the same now, be honest, Daniel--couldn't you do it? Can't you feel that things might happen so bad that you'd even kill a person? There's death in your eyes sometimes, when you talk of evildoers, and them that are cruel to children, and suchlike."

"'Tisn't a wifely thing to remind me I've got a temper. You've never had to regret it, anyway."

"How do you know that? But 'tis true: I never have. You're a deal too soft with me, bless your big heart. I can't do wrong in your eyes; and yet, sometimes, I wonder how you'd take it if I did do wrong--such wrong as there could be no doubt about. There's some things you'd kill me for, I do believe."

"You'm talking to a Christian man; but you don't seem to know it."

"A man be a man--Christian or heathen. Things do happen to men sometimes, and their religion don't make any more difference then to what they do than the hat on their heads. Quite right, too. I like to think there's a bit of metal in you. Sometimes I almost wish you'd make me feel it, when I startle you and say my silly speeches."

"How can I be angry with such speeches as yours? They'm silly enough only too often; but they'm frank as light. 'Tis the hidden and secret thing I'd rage against."

"If you found it out."

"I should find it out. There's no power of hiding in you, even if there was the will."

"You'm a dear man," she said, and lifted her mouth and kissed him.

"All the same," she added, "every woman's got a power of hiding--even the biggest fool amongst 'em--and--and the old gravestones of they lost people be quite as interesting to me as the crosses are to you."

"I don't say they are lost. I only say that we've no right to say anything about all them as went down to death before salvation came."

"Why couldn't Jesus Christ have hastened into the world quicker?" she asked. "'Twould have saved a deal of sad doubt about all them poor souls."

"You ought not to think such questions. I lay Woodrow said that."

"No, he didn't. 'Tis my very own thought. Suppose, Dan, that He'd been the earliest man born of a woman, and comed into the world Eve's first li'l one? How would that plan have worked?"

He stared at her.

"Who could have crucified Him?" he asked.

She sighed.

"I forgot that."

"It shows how ill-regulated your mind is, Sarah Jane. You oughtn't to let your ideas run so wild."

"'Tis no fault of yours that they do. And yet your fault it is, I do believe, Dan, for you keep me so terrible close to holy thoughts."

"The closer the better through the time that's coming. To think you could picture my boots stamping life out of a fellow-creature! 'Twasn't a kind fancy, to say no more of it. As much as to say I might be no better than a wild beast, given the temptation."

"All men are beasts when the wind blows from somewhere," she said. "Let a certain thing but happen, and they'll be as hot and stubborn and hard and fierce as the animals. Some would never forgive being robbed; some would never forgive being laughed at; some would never forgive being deceived by another person. Everybody's got one spot like that. Some will go mad for a woman; some for a thing. Why did Agg quarrel with Lethbridge and knock him off his feet into the stream last week? Such an easy, lazy man as Agg to do it!"

"Because Lethbridge said that Agg would get a girl at Mary Tavy into trouble before he'd done with her. 'Twas an insult, and Agg was quite right to knock him down. 'Twas no fault in him."

She did not answer. Then he spoke again.

"Don't think I don't know my faults. I know 'em well enough. The gospel light shows them up very clear. But jealousy ban't a fault, and I never will allow it is. 'Tis a virtue, and every self-respecting married Christian ought to be jealous. I'm jealous of the whole world that comes near you. I'm jealous of every male eye I catch upon your face--at church or anywhere. 'Tis my nature so to be. A man that marries hands over to his wife the best he's got, and 'tis just as precious to a day labourer as to a crowned king. He does well to be jealous of it. He'd be a mean-minded fashion of creature if he wasn't."

"I don't feel like that," she replied. "You've said yourself that nought can hurt a man from the outside; so how can a wife hurt a man?"

"Good Lord! what a lot you've got to learn, Sarah Jane! To talk of a wife as being outside! Ban't she the innermost of all--a man's own self--next to his God? 'Outside'! I wouldn't like for anybody else to hear you say a man's wife is outside him--and you a wife yourself."

"I'm rested," she said. "Us'll go on. I wish I was so deep-minded as you, but I never shall be. A regular Old Testament man you are."

"'Tisn't deep-mindedness," he answered; "'tis religious-mindedness. The puzzle to me is that you, who be so good as gold and honest as light, ain't more religious-minded. John Prout's the same. I know he's all wrong, yet I can't get up and point out where he's all wrong. 'Tis what he leaves undone that's wrong."

"It takes all sorts to make a world."

"But only one sort to make heaven," he answered very earnestly.

"Lucky we are not called upon to decide what sort."

He laughed rather grimly.

"You an' Prout would let all through, if you had to judge," he said.

They reached the peat-works presently, and found Mr. Friend awaiting them. Sarah Jane praised him for putting on his Sunday coat, but she expressed greater dissatisfaction than ever at seeing the place he called home. For Gregory had been true to his word, and left Dunnagoat cot after Sarah Jane's marriage.

Now he dwelt at the scene of his futile work, and only left it once or twice a week to gather his supplies. He had taken a chamber in the ruin, boarded the floor, built up a wall in the midst, removed his grate and oven from Dunnagoat, and established himself, much to his satisfaction, in the very midst of the skeleton of the peat-works. There he dwelt perfectly happy and content. No anchorite ever chose a spot more lonely and desolate for a home; but a repellent condition usually absent from the hermit's cell belonged to Mr. Friend's abode. Here were no surroundings of a natural grot, no ivy curtain at the door, no matin song of birds to rouse the recluse. Instead scowled rotting roofs, broken walls, rusting metal and a sullen spirit of failure. The very perspective of the tram-lines, stretching straight into the midst of the ruins, by some accidental stroke upon the mind through the eye, added another mournful character to this scene.

Mr. Friend greeted them cheerfully. Tea was made, and chairs were set about his little table. His daughter protested with all her might at the miserable conditions in which he now chose to dwell.

"Look at the damp on the walls! Ban't a place for a dog to live in, let alone a man. Dunnagoat was weather-proof, anyway."

"'Twill serve very well. There's a talk of something definite come the spring. So like as not we shall set to work again afore another year's gone; and I must be on the spot. I be going to see if I can get steam in the boiler this week. But I almost doubt it. Then there's an order for Plymouth will fetch best part of a five pound note."

"Us have brought 'e a bit of news," announced Dan; "but Sarah Jane's set on telling you herself."

"Guess, father," she said.

"That Dan's got advancement. 'Twas time he had too."

Brendon shook his head.

"I wish you was right," he answered. "But you're not. It don't look as if I was ever to be raised. However, farmer may see it presently."

"He does see it," declared Sarah Jane. "He's sharp as a needle behind his quiet, casual way. He knows what you're good for. Who is it he seeks if any thing's to be done? Who is it gets the difficult work, where brains be wanted to a thing? 'Twill come right, only us can't hurry it."

Brendon laughed.

"I shall get advancement the same time that you'll set your peat-works going again, and not sooner, father," he told Gregory.

"I hope so. They be both things delayed; but both be bound to happen sooner or later. You'm like Amicombe Hill--good all through, Dan. The time will come when other people will be sorry enough they didn't find it out sooner."

They discussed the various problems of Daniel Brendon and Amicombe Hill for some time. Both men were sanguine, and both wondered why other people so obstinately failed to see with their eyes. Daniel put his faith in God and declared that he felt no fear of the ultimate issue; but Mr. Friend inclined to trust man. It was idle to suppose that the results of his personal investigations on Amicombe Hill peat would be ignored for ever. He believed that some sagacious spirit must presently arise at headquarters, justify his patient belief, and delve for the treasure that he still so zealously guarded.

Presently Gregory turned to his daughter.

"And what's the secret only you are to tell me, my dear?" he asked.

"I be going to have a little baby," said Sarah Jane.

"A big one more like! And a boy I do hope. That's capital news, and I wish you both joy of him with all my heart. If 'tis a boy, call him 'Amicombe' for luck--eh?"

"No, no! He shall be called 'Gregory' after his grandfather," declared Daniel.

The news cheered Mr. Friend, and he became very solicitous for Sarah Jane.

"Don't you let her do too much work," he said. "She mustn't tramp up here no more. I'll come down of a Sunday instead."

But his daughter laughed.

"You old dear! I shall call you a grandmother instead of a grandfather."

"I can see him running about here taking his first lessons in peat, an' messing his little self up to the eyes in it," said Mr. Friend. "An' right welcome he'll be. There's many wonders up here as I'll show him."

"Might be a girl, however," said Daniel.

"I hope not and I think not," declared the peat-master. "'Twill be a brave boy, I'm pretty sure. Us may be doing a roaring business before he appears; but be that as 'twill, I'll always make time to play a game with him. When's he coming, Sarah?"

"In September, I reckon."

"A very good time. Well, well--what would your mother think!"

"She knows all about it, be very sure," said Daniel. "And now us must get going, for the dusk be down a'ready."

"I'll come to you next Sunday," promised Gregory, as he bade them "good-bye," after walking part of their road with them. "And there's four sacks more of my special fuel for you when you can draw them, Dan. You must keep her so warm as a toast through the spring weather, and 'if you want heat, burn Amicombe peat,' as I made up twenty years ago."

"'Tis a rhyme that will never be forgot," said his son-in-law; and Gregory, well pleased at the compliment, kissed Sarah Jane, then left them and returned to his den.