Chapter IV: The Farmer Comes Home

Hilary Woodrow returned home during the latter part of May, and Ruddyford rejoiced to see him. But despite his assurances, all found him a little changed. He was tolerably active and cheerful, yet thinner than of yore, and his love of the saddle had decreased. He rode abroad less than formerly, and he read more; but he showed no indifference to the minor questions of the passing hour. Of old, nothing was too small for him to bestow thought upon it; and he still liked to be consulted as to the affairs of his farm.

Yet in certain particulars it seemed that he had slightly changed his attitude to most things.

"'Tis more like a visitor in the house, somehow, than the master," said Peter Lethbridge to Daniel; and the other admitted it.

"Too easy for a master now," he answered. "'Tis a very bad sign in my opinion, and I shall have a tell with him about it."

He was as good as his word, and explained his uneasiness in very clear language.

"I feel I'm largely the cause of this," he declared while once they walked together homeward from the railway station of Lydford. "It hurts me terrible--'tis as though you felt Ruddyford was gone already. I wish to God you'd burn them papers, and put dying out of your mind. If I may say so, you'm a man running to meet the end of life. And you, please Heaven, with thirty years of usefulness before you."

"I like you to say these things, Dan; because it shows you're the same always. You don't change. I wish we were all as steadfast. But to be honest with you, I'm come to a time when the rest of the road can be seen pretty clear. The things that make life worth living shrink very small as soon as life ceases to be worth living."

"Life's worth living while we've got the power left to think a good thought."

Woodrow did not answer for some time. Then he said:

"I want you to go to Bristol for me next month. Don't think I've lost interest in my farm and my stock. There's a sale there of pedigree stuff, and I've ideas. I'll buy three beasts--a bull and two heifers."

"They'll cost a mint of money."

"Why not?"

Brendon rejoiced.

"A pity there ban't more with your great ideas on Dartymoor. The place is the best grazing ground in England, yet who knows its worth? I'll go, and gladly. You must put a limit on the purchases if 'tis an auction."

"I'll tell you to-night, if you'll come in for an hour. How's little Gregory this morning?"

Daniel's animation waned somewhat.

"Not all us could wish--fretful seemingly, and off his food. Sarah Jane be going to have doctor to him if he ban't better next week."

"Don't put it off."

"He's growing that fast."

"A very good lad--more like you than his mother. You'll make a farmer of him, Daniel?"

"I mean to. 'Twas my hope us should have had another boy to grow up with him--but----"

"Plenty of time."

A month later Brendon started for Bristol. It was a great incident, and his wife and he felt much excited about it. She had so far seen but little of Hilary since his return; now, during the three days' absence of Daniel, it became possible to spend some hours in the master's company.

By appointment they met in the old peat-works, but the relation between them was different from of old. Woodrow's fever had departed with possession; his appetence had quite faded. Now he loved her, with all his soul rather than with all his heart. The words were his own, and she questioned them.

"'Tis a higher thing, no doubt, and I'm thankful you feel so," she said. "'Twill surely grow up so great in you that all else will be forgot. I wish I could see more of you, and look to your comfort closer. Tabitha's a kind woman, but hard at the edges."

They sat in the great empty drum at the peat-works. It was dry and littered with sweet fresh fern, for Sarah Jane sometimes climbed thither to reflect and think upon the dead, when leisure served. She brought the child with her to play in the peat, and liked to see him at his games, because she knew that his grandfather would have loved the sight. On these occasions he was allowed to play with the famous knife. Then Sarah Jane hid it safely until their next visit.

Where now they sat, she could see the little figure busy with rusty tools that a man had used in earnest, though in vain. Upon Gregory Friend's death the last spark of human life departed from Amicombe Hill, and now only Nature worked there.

Woodrow reclined beside Sarah Jane, and stroked her hand. From time to time came the thud of a hoof, where his horse was tethered close by.

"And yet," she said, "to hear you put your soul afore your heart be a wonder, Hilary, for 'twas only a little time agone that you'd have none of the word. I be glad and sorry both to hear you say it. Glad because it makes you a thought happier."

"Why sorry?" he asked.

"I don't know--down deep in me I be. Can't find a word for it. 'Tis giving up something in my feeling to put anything afore our bodies When I think of father, I see his round shoulders and beard and shining eyes. I'm so small-minded, I can't fancy them I love save in their dear flesh."

"You beautiful thing! Well may you say it--such a queen of the flesh as you are! But for me 'tis different. A pain-stricken wretch, sinking away back to the dust so fast."

"Don't say that. 'Tis only your hands be thinner, because you never use 'em save for turning the pages of books. I do wish you'd be on your horse more."

"I know--I know. Man cannot live by books alone. I'll do everything. But think--what a great, precious thought--to believe there's a time after! Aren't you glad I've got to believe that?"

"Do you believe it?"

"I do."

"I'll say no hard thing against your books no more then. Somehow--after what fell out--I wanted to be the same as you. I was torn in half between Dan and you; and sometimes I thought heaven would be good, and oftener I couldn't see how. Then I felt as if the sleep without end and without dreams that you trusted to was best. But if you and Daniel both think for sure that there's a time coming will find us alive for ever, and no growing old in it--then I'll believe it too--I must."

"Believe it," he said. "'Tis worth anything. We call death endless sleep and all the rest of it, to make it sound less terrible; but that is only playing with words. Death is dust if it is the end. I prayed to God--the God I didn't believe in--to make me believe. Such vain things will a sad heart do. Not vain either, for He heard and answered. The sea it was that fetched the answer. Miles and miles I tramped along lonely shores and watched the waves. They brought the idea of endlessness so near to me. My watch in my pocket ticked time; but the great, sad-coloured waves beat out eternity. I want to walk on that beach with you and see the water-scythes sweep round and mow the sand. And when the sand sighs I feel it is the sigh of the weary earth, that knows no rest from the unwearying sea. The sea's a better lover than I was. Twice a day he worships the shore."

"I might come maybe when autumn's back. A change would do the child good belike."

"Well thought. What more natural? Somehow I want you there--just to walk over the sand and hear the long sob and hopeless sigh of sea against stone. It will force you to believe in your soul, Sarah Jane."

"Do it make you glad--this new feeling?"

"Yes, it does. It opens out so many doors to hope. It teaches so much. I told you once that if there was another world, there was a God. It is so."

"Do it make right and wrong plainer?"

"In time--in time it will. I've flung over a lot of old opinions already. 'Tis like parting with the very stuff of your brain; for my thoughts were my life--till you came into it. But you--you've taught me such a lot too. You taught me that truth was beyond our reach--that was a great piece of learning. Once hold that and comfort grows out of it--a sort of desolate comfort to a hungry heart--still comfort. Truth's got to be softened behind a veil for things with no more intellect than we have. The stark, naked light would blind us for ever and make us mad. God knows that. Truth is God's face, Sarah Jane."

She was secretly amazed at this great mental change in him. For his sake she was glad, because he had evidently welcomed the possibility of a new belief that was strong to throw hope over the present desert of his mind. With weakened physical circumstances, reason had also weakened; but Woodrow believed otherwise and told himself that unimpaired intellectual powers, working unceasingly on the problem he conceived to be paramount, had at last purged his understanding and lifted him into a purer belief. He was, moreover, proud that he had attained to this triumph by the exercise of what he believed to be pure reason. He doubted not that such faith as he had now attained was the only faith worthy of mankind.

But in the woman's heart lurked something akin to regret. She could not name the emotion; she lacked words to analyze it; but she knew that it was there; and while her nature leapt to gladness--because Hilary was glad--behind the joy persisted something of disquiet and even distrust.

"I'll be well pleased to think like you do, then," she said; "but--but, oh, Hilary, for God's sake don't you grow to think like Daniel do--else--else----"

He shook his head.

"Never fear that--that would be to go down the hill--not up it. It's cost the life-work of my brains to get where I have got, dear heart. I shan't go backward now."

Presently she left Woodrow and went to her child. Then Gregory and his mother set off homeward.

The farmer watched them sink--a large spot and a little one--into the waste. Presently he rose and mounted his horse. He thought long upon Sarah Jane and that last note of fear--so foreign to her fearless voice. He reflected, too, upon his own altered attitude and sublimated affection for her. He supposed that belief in immortality must be a force very elevating to the human mind; he doubted not that it lifted glorious flowers when once the root struck down and flourished. He considered the great matter from divers points of view, but not from one. He did not know that decaying physical circumstances frequently open the door to superstition and make a fading intellect succumb before what, in full vigour of intellectual life, it scorned.

The day chimed with his mood, and he told himself very honestly that none could gaze upon this outspread world and believe that it represented but a display of natural laws, a casual compact of heat and light and substance, a chance conglobation of matter whirling beautifully about the sun's throne at the moment of summer solstice.

The light of noon shone over the world. Cloud shadows flew along the silvery planes of the earth's surface, and life teemed in a myriad shapes even to the pinnacles of the land. Day herself scarcely died now, and night was a shadow rather than a darkness. Even in the midnight watches, light, like a ghost, stole under the stars and behind the northern hills until day returned. So spirits might haunt the nether gloom, he fancied, ere they vanished again at the glorious advent of day.

To Woodrow, gazing upon the June world, it seemed that he was the only faulty thing in the visible universe; and he longed to cast his slough and also be without fault.