Chapter VI: Awakening of Woodrow

Daniel Brendon had long since stopped the meetings of his master and his wife at dawn, when Sarah Jane milked the cows. He was naturally a jealous man, but in this matter emotion took an elevated form. No earthly consideration tainted it. His only concern was for Sarah Jane's soul. To let her come within the breath of infidelity, from Daniel's standpoint, seemed deliberate sin. His God was a jealous God, and, as he himself declared, he held jealousy, in certain aspects, a passion proper to healthy man. Therefore he had desired his wife not to speak with Hilary Woodrow more than she could help, for her soul's sake; and she had obeyed him, and avoided the master as far as she might without rudeness. Yet her heart felt sorrow for Woodrow. She perceived the wide want in his life and explained it more correctly than could her husband or any other man.

On the Sunday after their visit to the peat-works, Daniel took Sarah Jane to Mary Tavy instead of to Lydford. They went to chapel with Agg; and the service pleased Brendon well. He had debated as to the propriety of praying in a place of dissent, but Agg spoke highly of his minister, and induced the other to accompany him. The incident served powerfully to affect Brendon's future, for this service, largely devoid of the familiar formulæ of his own church, impressed him with its life and reality. The people were attentive, their pastor was earnest and of a warm and loving heart. A few got up and spoke as the sitting extended; and presently, to the amazement of Sarah Jane, her husband rose and uttered some words. He rehearsed a text from Isaiah, proclaimed it to be his favourite book in the Bible, declared that it covered all things and was tremendous alike in its threats and promises. For three minutes he stood up, and his great voice woke echoes in the little, naked, white-washed meeting-house. When he knelt down again there followed a gentle hum of satisfaction.

From that day forward Brendon threw in his lot with the Luke Gospellers and made Sarah Jane do the like.

Agg congratulated him very heartily as they returned home, and Daniel explained that to have acted thus was far from his thought when he started.

"Something pulled me on to my feet and made me speak. 'Twas a force, like a strong voice, whispering in my ear. I oped Isaiah at hazard--my Bible always falls open there--and them words fell under my eye, and I had to speak."

"You'd make a very valiant hand at it with a bit of practice," declared Agg, "and the deaf would come miles for to hear you. Your voice be like a big drum."

"There was a bird sat up on the rafters," said Sarah Jane. "The poor thing had flown in, an' couldn't find the window. It sat so still as a mouse through the sarvice, till Dan spoke. Then the rafter shook, I suppose, for it flew about, and drove against the window with its little wings."

"I'm mazed to look back and think that I've actually stood afore my fellow-men and spoke to 'em from God," said Daniel. "To do such a thing never entered into my mind."

"'Twas a terrible brave deed," declared Sarah Jane. "But I ban't surprised; there's nothing you can't do, if you think 'tis right to do it."

That night Agg took Brendon again to chapel; but the wife stayed at home.

It happened that Hilary was returning from a long ride after the hour of dusk, and as he came up through his fields he met Sarah Jane alone. She had walked to meet Daniel, who would presently be returning with Agg from the evening service at Mary Tavy.

The farmer stopped, and when she prepared to go on her way, bade her wait for a few moments.

"I'm in luck," he said. "I wanted to speak to you, Sarah Jane, and here's the chance. Where are you off to at this hour?"

"Going to meet Dan. Him and Agg have gone to worship with the Luke Gospellers down-along."

"You astonish me. Such a pillar of the church as Brendon to seek some new thing!"

"We went this morning, and Daniel was terrible pleased, and liked the homely feeling of it. They'm kind folk, and Mr. Matherson, the minister, speaks and prays beautiful."

Woodrow had often mentioned serious subjects to this woman without perceiving the futility of such a course. But he did so more for the pleasure of hearing his own ideas, than from any wish to influence her. There was none to heed his opinions, none with whom to exchange thoughts and arguments touching the topics that so largely interested him. At first, therefore, he had regarded Sarah Jane as a useful listener, and enjoyed talking to her for the sake of talking. Then her own attitude attracted him, and he spoke less and listened more. Her views arrested his mind a little. She was uneducated, yet nature had actually led her to some ideas that he had only reached through the channel of books. Once or twice, in her blunt speech and with her scanty vocabulary, she uttered a thing that wise men had only found by taking thought. Her natural mind drew Woodrow; then the lovely body of her interested him, and she began to fill his attention.

Women had almost passed out of his life after one of them jilted him; now this particular woman reminded him that they were not all alike. His eyes opened; it struck him that he was deliberately depriving himself of a great part of the joy of life by ignoring them. His thoughts began to play upon the subject, and his memory revived events of the past.

Whether it was Sarah Jane's sex, or Sarah Jane's self that had awakened him, remained to be seen. He told himself, despite his admiration for her spirit and her beauty, that it could not be the individual who had aroused dormant sense, but rather the accidental fact of having been thrown into contact with her. The world was full of women. He pondered the problem, and now, by light of moon, told Brendon's wife of a decision at which he had recently arrived.

"A great one for the Bible, my Dan," said she. "Miles of texts he've got by heart. A regular word-warrior he is."

"If he believes it, he's right to stick to it. Why, if I believed 'twas the Word of God--actually the very thoughts of the Almighty sent by Him--I'd never open any other book, Sarah Jane. I'd think that every second of my reading time spent with man's writings was a wasted moment. If I had faith--it would move mountains."

"That might be my Dan speaking. But you know pretty near so many verses as him, for all you don't believe in 'em."

"We free thinkers are much keener students of the Bible than thousands who profess to live by it."

"And yet you reckon there's no God and not another life after we die?"

"My old grandfather had a saying, 'When a man's dead, there's no more to be said.' That was his philosophy, and though my father called him a godless heathen, yet I always agreed with the old man, though I wouldn't have dared to say so. But mind this, Sarah Jane--this I will grant: if there's another world after death, then there's a God. You won't have one without the other. Nature can look after this world; but it will take a God to look after the next. Don't think I believe there's another. I'd scorn to believe anything that nature doesn't teach me. But, none the less, it may come true; and if it does, that means God."

"This life's mighty interesting," she said. "To me 'tis full to the brim; but Dan says the only drop in the cup that matters is the sure thought of the Kingdom of Heaven after."'

"Trust to this life. That's a certainty, at any rate. Look after this life, and the next will look after itself."

"Funny you should say that. Dan's way's just different. He says, 'Look after the next life, and this one will look after itself'!"

"Nonsense--I'm right. And you know I'm right."

Sarah Jane felt in a mind to tell him that she was with child. As yet only her husband and her father knew it. She was about to do so, when he spoke again.

"I shall not live to be an old man," he said. "I know, as well as I know anything, that the longest half of my days are done. I thought the best of them were done too. But you've made life very interesting again and well worth living."

"You shouldn't say things like that, I'm sure, though I'm very glad you like me, Mr. Woodrow. What's amiss with you?"

"Nothing--everything."

"Your cough's better, so Mr. Prout says. I wish you'd find a wife, sir. That might be the best physic for you."

He did not answer immediately. The moon came from behind a cloud, and Sarah Jane strained her eyes into the distance.

"Dan ought to be coming," she said.

"A wife?" he asked suddenly. "Perhaps if I could find another Sarah Jane----"

"My stars! what a thought! Poor company for 'e--the likes of me!"

"I've never seen such another, all the same."

She laughed.

"Well, why for don't you look round?"

He stood still and did not reply.

"My! how bright the moon be this evening," she said. "There they are--Daniel and Walter Agg. I see 'em long ways off.":

"Do you know that the moon was alive once?" he asked. "She was a mother; and now she's only a grave for all the things she bore. She's our picture, too--the skeleton at the world's feast of life. It will be just the same here, Sarah Jane--cold--dead--the earth and moon going round together--like two corpses dancing at a dying fire."

"What dreadful things you know!"

"Life's only conjuring with dust. I suppose we shall never find out how 'tis done. But there are clever chaps in the audience always jumping up and saying 'That's it! I see the trick!' Only they don't. Each new book I get hold of gives the lie to the last. There's nothing true that I can see. Like a boy chasing a butterfly: down comes his hat after a long run. But the butterfly's in the air."

"Proper place for it."

"Perhaps so. A butterfly pinned into a case is only half the truth of a butterfly. Words in a book can never be more than half the truth of ideas. But I'm sick of reading. I'm sick of everything--but you. Don't be frightened. You said just now I ought to go and look about. Well, I'm going. I'm going to London for a while, and then down to Kent to a cousin of mine--a hop-grower there."

"The change will do you a world of good."

"That's doubtful. I shan't be very contented out of sight of Dartmoor. Perhaps if I can't see Great Links for a while, I shall value it all the more when I come back."

"And do, for pity's sake, bring a wife with 'e."

Daniel Brendon and Agg approached, and Hilary spoke to them as they arrived.

"I'm telling Mrs. Brendon that I mean to take a holiday, Dan. Going to look at London again. 'Twill make me long to be back home pretty quick, if it does nothing else."

"You might buy one of them new mowing machines against the hay-harvest, if you be up there, master," suggested Agg; but Daniel did not speak. He had returned from chapel in a spirit very amiable, and to find Sarah Jane under the moonlight with Woodrow instantly changed his mood.

They parted immediately, and Brendon spoke to Sarah Jane as they entered their home.

"What be you doing, walking about with the man after dark?"

"I was afraid you might be vexed. We met quite by chance as I came to seek you, and he stopped, and would be talking. He said he ban't going to be a long-lived man, and I told him he wants a wife; and then he said if he could get another like me he might think of it."

"Be damned to him!" said Brendon violently. "I can't stand no more of this. I won't have this talking between you. 'Tisn't right or seemly, and you ought to know it, if you're a sane woman."

"He's never said one syllable to me you couldn't hear," she answered, believing herself, but forgetting a word or two. "All the same, I'll avoid him more, Daniel, when he comes back. He may fetch along a wife with him. But don't you be angered, dear heart. I'd rather up and away from Ruddyford at cocklight to-morrow for evermore, than you should frown. 'Tis silly to be jealous of the sun for throwing my shadow, or the wind for buffeting me."

"I am jealous. I'm a raging fire where you be concerned, and always shall be--for your soul first. I won't insult you to speak of any other thing. Any other thing's not speakable. You know I'm built so, and you don't strive to lessen it, but just the contrary. I wish you was more religious-minded and more alive to the sacredness of the married state."

"I'm myself, Dan--for good or bad."

The man was gloomy for some days after this scene, and Sarah Jane went her way with patience and unfailing good humour. She felt no anger with him on her side. She understood him a little; but jealousy was a condition of mind so profoundly foreign to her own nature, that her imagination quite failed to fathom its significance and its swift power of growth in congenial soil.

Hilary Woodrow kept his word, and presently left home for an indefinite period. He told himself that he was going away to escape temptation; in reality he went to seek it. His object was simple: to learn whether the arrival of Brendon's wife at Ruddyford had merely awakened his old interest in women generally, or whether it was she herself, and only she, who had roused him out of a long sexual apathy.