Front matter (continued 3)

A storm played over her face which she made no attempt to hide. Tear-stained Margery, peeping from the kitchen window, noticed it, and Samuel Pinsent, as he passed from the vegetable garden, observed that his salute received no recognition.

Honor Endicott knew very well what she now confronted, and she swept from irritation to anger, from anger to passion before the survey. Ignoring the great salient tragedy that underlaid the position, she took refuge in details, and selecting one—the determination of Myles to depart—chose to connect Christopher Yeoland directly with it, decided to believe that it was at Yeoland's desire her cousin now withdrew. The rectitude of the act added the last straw to her temper. The truth perhaps was not wholly hidden from her; she had been quick to read Myles by light thrown from her own heart. And here, at a point beyond which her thought could not well pass, she turned impatiently to the letter from her lover, tore it open, and scanned the familiar caligraphy.

Half a page sufficed, for her mood just then was ill-tuned to bear any sort of reproof. Anger had dimmed both her sense of proportion and her knowledge of Christopher; round-eyed she read a few lines of stern rebuke and censure, a threat, an offer of liberty, and no more. The real Christopher, who only began upon a later folio, she never reached. There was a quick suspiration of breath, a sound suspiciously like the gritting of small teeth, and her letter—torn, and torn, and torn again—was flung into the hand of the rough wind, caught, hurried aloft, swept every way, scattered afar, sown over an acre of autumn grass.

"This is more than I can bear!" she said aloud; and after the sentiment—so seldom uttered by man or woman save under conditions perfectly capable of endurance—she entered the house, tore off her gloves, and wrote, with heaving bosom, an answer to the letter she had not read.

CHAPTER XI.

PARTINGS

When Christopher Yeoland received his sweetheart's letter at the hand of Tommy Bates, he read it thrice, then whistled a Dead March to himself for the space of half an hour.

He retired early with his tribulation, and spent a night absolutely devoid of sleep; but Nature yielded about daybreak, when usually he rose, and from that hour the man slumbered heavily until noon. Then, having regarded the ceiling for a considerable time, he found that Honor had receded to the background of his mind, while Myles Stapledon bulked large in the forefront of it. To escape in their acuteness the painful impressions awakened by his letter, he destroyed it without further perusal; he then wandered out of doors, and climbed above his pine woods to reflect and mature some course of action. He retraced the recent past, and arrived at erroneous conclusions, misled by Honor's letter, as she had been deceived from the introductory passages in his. He told himself that she had yielded to his importunities through sheer weariness; that in reality she did not love him and now knew it, in presence of this pagan cousin, sprung up out of the heather. From finding herself in two minds, before all the positive virtues of Stapledon, she was doubtless now in one again, and he—Christopher—had grown very dim, had quite lost his old outline in her eyes, in fact had suffered total eclipse from the shadow of a better man.

To these convictions he came, and while still of opinion—even after the catastrophe of her letter—that no more fitting husband could have been found for Honor than himself, yet was he equally sure, since her indignation, that he would never ask her to marry him more. Thus he argued very calmly, with his body cast down under the edge of the pine woods, his eyes upon the dying gold of oak forests spread over an adjacent hill. Against Honor he felt no particular resentment, but with Stapledon he grew into very steadfast enmity.

Under his careless, laughter-loving, and invertebrate existence Yeoland hid a heart; and though none, perhaps not Honor herself, had guessed all that his engagement meant to him, the fact remained: it began to establish the man in essential particulars, and had already awakened wide distaste with his present uncalculated existence. Thus Honor's promise modified his outlook upon life, nerved him, roused him to responsibility. He was not a fool, and perfectly realised what is due from any man to the woman who suffers him henceforth to become first factor in her destiny. Yet his deeply rooted laziness and love of procrastination had stood between him and action up to the present. All things were surely conspiring to a definite step; but events had not waited his pleasure; another man now entered the theatre, and his own part was thrust into obscurity even at the moment when he meditated how to make it great. But the fact did not change his present purpose. Ideas, destined to produce actions during the coming year, were still with him, and recent events only precipitated his misty projects. He resolved upon immediate and heroic performance. He began by forgiving Honor. He marvelled at her unexpected impatience, and wondered what barbed arrow in his own letter had been sharp enough to draw such serious wrath from her. There was no laughter in her reply—all thunder, and the fine forked lightning of a clever woman in a passion on paper. He felt glad that he had destroyed the letter. Yet the main point was clear enough, though only implicitly indicated; she loved him no more, for had she done so, no transient circumstance of irritation or even active anger had been strong enough to win such concentrated bitterness from her. He did not know what had gone to build Honor's letter; he was ignorant of Stapledon's decision, of the fret and fume in his sweetheart's spirit when she heard it, of the mood from which she suffered when she received his note, and of the crowning fact that she had not read all.

So Christopher made up his mind to go away without more words, to let Godleigh to the enamoured linen-draper for a term of years, and join his sole surviving relative—an ancient squatter in New South Wales—who wrote to his kinsman twice a year and accompanied each missive with the information that Australia was going to the dingoes and must soon cease to be habitable by anything but a "sun-downer" or a kangaroo. Hither, then, Christopher determined to depart; and, viewed from beneath his whispering pines, the idea had an aspect so poetical that he found tears in his eyes, which set all the distant woods swimming. But when he remembered Myles, his sorrow dried, scorched up by an inner fire; and, as he looked into the future that this stranger had snatched away from him, he began to count the cost and measure the length of his life without Honor Endicott. Such calculations offered no standpoint for a delicate emotion. They were the difference between visions of billowing and many-breasted Devon, here unrolled before him, glorious under red autumn light, and that other in his mind's eye—a sad-coloured apparition of Australian spinifex and sand.

His anger whirled up against the supplanter, and he forgot his former charitable and just contentions uttered before this blow had fallen. Then he had honestly affirmed to Honor that in his judgment Stapledon was in love with her and scarcely realised his position. That utterance was as nearly true as possible; but in the recollection of the woman's anger he forgot it. How the thing had come about mattered nothing now. To inquire was vain; but the knowledge that he had done no deed to bring this storm upon himself proved little comfort. His patience and humour and philosophy went down the wind together. He was, at least to that extent, a man.

To Honor's letter he returned no answer; neither did he seek her, but avoided her rather and pursued an active search for Myles Stapledon. Accident prevented a meeting until the morning of the latter's departure, and, wholly ignorant that his rival was at that moment leaving Bear Down for good and all, Christopher met him in a dog-cart on the road to Okehampton, not far from the spot where had fallen out their first introduction.

The pedestrian raised his hand, and Myles bid Bates, who drove him, pull up.

"Well met," he said.

"Would you mind giving me a few minutes of your time, Stapledon?" inquired Christopher coldly; whereupon Myles looked at his watch, and then climbed to earth.

"Trot on," he said to his driver, "and wait for me at the corner where Throwley road runs into ours. And now," he continued, as the vehicle drew out from ear-shot, "perhaps you won't mind turning for half a mile or so. I must keep moving towards Okehampton, or I shall miss my train."

They walked in step together; then Yeoland spoke.

"You'll probably guess what I've got to say."

"Not exactly, though I may suspect the subject. Hear me first. It'll save you trouble. You know me well enough to grant that I'd injure no man willingly. We must be frank. Only last Sunday did I find what had overtaken me. I swear it. I didn't imagine such things could happen."

"Don't maunder on like that! What do I care what's overtaken you? You say you suspect the thing I want to speak about. Then come to it, or else let me do so. When first we met you heard that I was the man your cousin had promised to marry. You won't deny that?"

"You told me."

"Then why, in the name of the living God, did a man with all your oppressive good qualities come between us? That's a plain question anyway."

A flush spread over Stapledon's cold face and as quickly died out. He did not answer immediately, and the younger spoke again.

"Well? You're the strong man, the powerful, self-contained, admirable lesson to his weak brethren. Can't you answer, or won't you?"

"Don't pour these bitter words upon me. I have done no deliberate wrong at all; I have merely moved unconsciously into a private difficulty from which I am now about to extricate myself."

"That's too hard a saying for me."

"It is true. I have wakened from an error. I have committed a terrible action in ignorance. A blind man, but not so blind as I was, showed me my stupidity."

"Say it in so many words. You love Honor."

"I do. I have grown to love her—the thing farthest from my thoughts or dreams. I cannot help it. I do not excuse it or defend myself. I am doing all in my power."

"Which is——?"

"Going—going not to come back."

"It is too late."

"Do not say so, Yeoland. What could I be to her—such a man——?"

"Spare me and yourself all that. And answer this one question—on your oath. Did she tell you of the letter she wrote to me?"

"She did not."

"Or of my letter?"

"Not a word."

"One question more. What did she say when you told her you were going?"

"She deemed it unnecessary at the time."

"She asked you to stop?"

Stapledon did not answer immediately; then his manner changed and his voice grew hard. He stood still, and turned on his companion and towered above him. Their positions were suddenly reversed.

"I will suffer no more of this. I have done you no conscious wrong, and am not called upon to stand and deliver at your order. Leave a man, who is sufficiently tormented, to go his way alone. I am moving out of your life as fast as my legs will carry me. I mourn that I came into it. I acknowledge full measure of blame—all that it pleases you to heap upon me; so leave me in peace, for more I cannot do."

"'Peace!' She did ask you not to go?"

"I have gone. That is enough. She is waiting for you to make her your wife. Don't let her wait for ever."

"You do well to advise—you who have wrecked two lives with your—'private difficulty'!"

Yeoland stood still, but the other moved hastily on. Thus they parted without further words, and Christopher, at length weary of standing to watch Stapledon's retreating shape, turned and resumed his way.

He had determined, despite his sneer, to take Stapledon's advice and go back to Honor. The bonds woven of long years were not broken after all. How should events of a few short weeks shatter his lifelong understanding with this woman? Recent determinations vanished as soon as his rival had done so, and Yeoland turned and bent his steps to Bear Down, resolved that the present hour should end all and place him again in the old position or dethrone him for ever. His mind beat like a bird against the bars of a cage, and he asked himself of what, in the name of all malevolent magic, was this man made, who had such power to unsettle Honor in her love and worship, to thrust him headlong from his high estate. He could not answer the question, or refused to answer it. He swept on over the sere fern, with the soft song of the dead heather bells in his ear; but the message of stone and heath was one: She had asked the other man not to go.

Before that consummation his new-kindled hope faded, his renewed determinations died. The roads of surrender and of flight were all that stretched before him. To Honor he could be nothing any more; and worse than nothing if he stopped. Complete self-sacrifice and self-effacement seemed demanded of him if his love was indeed the great, grand passion that he had imagined it to be. Impressed with this conviction he passed from the Moor and sought his nearest way to Godleigh; and then the mood of him suffered another change, and hope spoke in the splendours of sunset. Myles Stapledon had certainly gone; and he had departed never to return. That was his own assurance. Honor at least might be asked, and reasonably asked, to tell her mind at this crisis in affairs.

And so he changed the road again and set his face for Bear Down. A dark speck met his gaze while yet he was far distant; and he knew it for the mistress and hastened to her, where she walked alone on the little lawn.

Coming quietly over the grass Yeoland surprised her; she lifted a startled face to his, and he found her moist of eye while in her voice was a tremor that told of tears past.

"Why d'you steal on me like this?" she asked suddenly, and her face flushed, and her hands went up to her breast. "You frighten me. I do not want you. Please, Christopher, go away."

"I know you do not want me, and I am going away," he answered gloomily, his expectations stricken before her words. "I'm going, and I've come to tell you so."

"How much more am I to suffer to-day?"

"You can ask me that, Honor? My little girl, d'you suppose life's a bed of roses for me since your letter?"

"A bed of roses is the sum of your ambitions."

"Why, that's like old times when you can be merely rude to me! But is the old time gone? Is the new time different? Listen, Honor, and tell me the truth."

"I don't know the truth. Please go away and leave me alone; I can tell you nothing. Don't you see I don't want you? Be a man, if you know how, and go out of my sight."

The voice was not so harsh as the words, and he thought he saw the ghost of a hope behind it.

"Curious!" he said. "You're the third person this week who has told me to be a man. Well, I'll try. Only hear this, and answer it. I've just left Myles Stapledon on his way to Okehampton—gone for good."

"What is that to me?"

"Your looking-glass will tell you. Now, Honor, before God—yes, before God, answer me the truth. Do you love him?"

"You've no right to stay here prattling when I bid you go."

"None; and I'm not going to stay and prattle. But answer that you shall. I've a right at least to ask that question."

The girl almost wrung her hands, and half turned from him without speaking; but he approached and imprisoned both her arms.

"You must tell me. I can do nothing until I know, Your very own lips must tell me."

"You don't ask me if I love you?"

"Answer the other question and I shall know."

"Blind—blind—selfish egotists—all of you," she cried. Then her voice changed. "Is it my fault if I do love him?" she asked.

"I'm no judge. To part right and wrong was a task beyond me always—excepting on general, crude principles. Answer my question."

"Then, I do."

He bent his head.

"I love him, I love him, I love him."

Neither spoke for some seconds; then the man lifted up his head, shook it as though he had risen from a plunge, and laughed.

"So be it. Now here's news for you, that I can relate since you've been so frank. D'you remember what I whispered to you when I was a little boy, of the cracks on my ceiling and the chance patterns I found on my window-blind when I used to lie awake in the grey of summer mornings, waiting for the first gold? You forget. So had I forgotten until a few days since. Then, being lazy, I lay abed and thought, and thought, and fell to tracing the old stories told by the lines on blind and ceiling. Chance patterns of bays and estuaries, continents and rivers, all mapped out there—all more real to me than those in my atlas. I remember a land of blackamoors, a sea of sharks, an island of cannibals, a desert of lions, in which the little flies figured as monsters of the wilderness. Such dreams of deeds by field and flood I weaved in those grey, gone mornings to the song of the thrush and the murmur of the old governor snoring in the next room! And now—now I'm smitten with the boy's yearning to speed forth over the sea of sharks—not after lions, but after gold. I'm going to justify my existence—in Australia."

"You couldn't go further off if you tried."

"Not well—without slipping over the edge altogether."

"You mustn't do this, Christopher."

"It's done, dearest. This is only a ghost—an adumbration that's talking to you. I ask for my freedom, Honor—sweetheart Honor. Thank God we are humorists both—too sensible to knock our knuckles raw against iron doors. You'll be happy to-morrow, and I the day after. We mustn't miss more laughter than we can help in this tearful world. And friends we must always be. That can't be altered."

"I quite understand. You shall not do this, Christopher. I love you for suggesting it. You may go—as far as London, or where the steamer starts from. Then you must come back to me. You've promised to marry me."

"Forget it. I'm in earnest for once. At least you must credit that. There's Mrs. Loveys at the window calling you to tea. We'll meet again in a day or two very likely."

"Don't go; don't go, Christo; I'm so lonely, and wretched, and——"

But the necessary iron in him cropped up at this hour of trial. He hardened his heart and was gone before she had finished speaking.

Two days later Honor, who had heard nothing of Christopher since their last meeting, sent a message to him. He returned an evasive answer, which annoyed her for the space of three days more. Then, still finding that he kept at home, she went to seek him there. Between ten and eleven o'clock one morning she started, but breaking her bootlace near the outset, returned home again. The total delay occupied less than fifteen minutes, and presently she reached Godleigh to find Mrs. Brimblecombe, wife of Noah Brimblecombe, the sexton of Little Silver, on her knees, scrubbing in the porch. The charwoman readily desisted from work and answered Honor's question.

"He kept it that 'mazin' quiet from us all, Miss. An' you never told nobody neither. Gone—gone to foreign lands, they tell me; an' the place in a jakes of a mess; an' the new folks comin' in afore Christmas."

As she spoke a dog-cart wound up the steep hill to Chagford, and a man, turning in it, stopped and looked long at the grey house in the pines. Had anybody walked on to the terrace and waved a handkerchief, he must have seen the signal; but as Honor spoke to Mrs. Brimblecombe the trap passed from sight.

"When did he go?" she asked unguardedly.

"Lard! Doan't 'e knaw 'bout it—you of all folks?"

"Of course; of course; but not the exact hour."

"Ten minutes agone or less—no more certainly; an' his heavy boxes was took in a cart last night, I hear."

Honor hurried on to the terrace and looked at the road on the hill. But it was empty. Mrs. Brimblecombe came also.

"Sails from Plymouth this evenin', somebody telled us, though others said he'm gwaine to Lunnon fust; an' it seems that Doctor Clack knawed, though how a gen'leman so fond of the moosic of his awn tongue could hold such a tremenjous secret wi'out bustin' I can't fathom."

Honor Endicott walked slowly back to Bear Down. The significance of her own position, as a woman apparently jilted, did not weigh with her in the least. She reflected, with a dull ache and deadness, that her accident, with a delay of ten little minutes resulting from it, had altered the whole scope and sweep of her life and another's. That Christopher Yeoland had taken his great step with very real difficulty the fact of his continued absence before it made sufficiently clear. He had not trusted himself to see her again; and now Honor's conviction grew: that her presence even at the last moment, must surely have broken down his determination and kept him at home had she so willed.

She asked herself what she might have done in the event of that ordeal, and believed that she would have tried hard to keep him.

CHAPTER XII.

THE DEFINITE DEED

Life, thus robbed of love for Honor Endicott, was reduced to a dreary round of mere duties. Within one fortnight of time these two men, severally responsible for the music and sunshine of her life, had departed out of it in a manner perfectly natural, conventional, and inevitable. Given the problems that had arisen, this was the solution to have been predicted. Mark Endicott, indeed, put it very bluntly to her; but Honor viewed the tragedy with more tender pity for her own feelings. She marvelled in secret at the great eternal mystery of human affections, at the evolution of the love instinct, which now, ennobled and sublimated through the generations of men, had achieved its present purity and perfection in the civilisation of monogamous nations; while her uncle told her, in fewer words and homelier, that between two stools she had fallen to the ground.

She was supremely miserable through dwindling days, and each of them to her seemed longer than those of the summer that was past. The shadows of two men often accompanied her lonely rides, and circumstances or places would remind her of each in turn, would suddenly stab her into acute suffering as they wakened the image of Christopher or of Myles in very life-colours.

There came a laugh once, when she overheard Pinsent and Collins congratulating each other that Bear Down had not been too precipitate in the purchase of the wedding "momentum"; but the salt was gone out of humour for a little while; and with her uncle, at least, she never laughed at all. His boundless sympathy was strained before her wayward unhappiness. She flew to paradoxes, contradictions, and whimsical conceits, all vain, and worse than vain in his judgment. She sometimes talked at random with no particular apparent object save to waken opposition. But the knitting-needles ticked placidly through long evenings beside the glowing peat: and it asked an utterance beyond measure flagrant to set them tapping, as an indication that the blind man's patience was exhausted.

About mid-December they sat together in the little parlour of the kitchen, and Honor, who lolled beside the fire, employed her pretty fingers upon no more useful task than playing with a piece of string from a grocer's parcel.

"What are you doing?" asked Mark suddenly.

"Making cats' cradles," she answered, and won from him the reproof that such a confession invited.

"How is it you've given up reading of late days?"

"I've sunk into a lazy way. The lazier you are the less time there is for anything."

"You ought to read; you've ample leisure to improve your mind; and ample need to."

"That's just it—the ample leisure. When I had Christo to look after, though every precious moment of the day was full, I could find time for all. And that shows a busy man or woman's more likely to see well after affairs than a leisurely one. Some men can actually make time, I believe—Myles could. But now—through these black, hateful, sunless days—I feel I'm always wanting to creep off to bed, and sleep, and forget."

"That's never my brave girl spoke that?"

"I'm not brave; and I'm tired of the awful stores of things worth knowing collected by people who are dead. How the men who wrote books must look back from the other world and shiver at the stuff they've left behind them in this—knowing all they know there! But Myles was right in that. He used to say he'd learned more from leaning over gates than from any books. And I believe he had."

"He was grounded in solid knowledge by lessons from wise books to start with. They taught him to learn."

"Such a way as he had of twisting everything into a precept or example!"

"You'd have held that prosy talk presently."

"Speak of sermons in stones! He found whole gospels in a dead leaf."

"But you would have grown mighty impatient of all that after a while."

"Very likely indeed. And yet I doubt it; for never being in earnest myself, I admire it in others," she said.

"Never in earnest and never of one mind! 'Tis a poor character, and I'd not like to hear anybody give it to you but yourself, Honor."

"With two minds you get light and shade into life—shade at any rate. If I hadn't been—but you'll grow as weary of that as I am. Yet a woman's days are so drab if she never changes her mind—all cut and dried and dead. Why, every morning I open my eyes and hope I shall get a new idea. I love my ideas to jostle about and fight and shift and change and dance, like colours in a cloud. I like to find myself helpless, shaken, bewildered, clutching at straws. You don't understand that, Uncle Mark. Ideas are the beautiful, budding flowers of one's thoughts."

"And fixed opinions the roots—or should be. What's the value of poor blossoms 'pon the top of a tree when the storm comes an' puny petals are sent flying down wind? You talk foolishness, and you know 'tis foolishness. Done to vex me, I could almost think. 'Tis your ideas that make you miserable now. A feather in a gale is a stable thing beside you, Honor. You must turn to books if only to please me."

She promised to do so presently, but did not keep her promise; and thus, to little purpose, oftentimes they talked. Then a circumstance quite unexpected made Honor think less of her ill fate and start into new and lively touch with her existence. After long intervals it chanced that some intelligence both of Yeoland and Stapledon reached Bear Down on the same morning; and Doctor Clack it was who brought news of his friend; while information concerning Myles came more directly from himself.

Doctor Clack dismounted with some parade, and made his announcement before Honor and her uncle. That he might perchance move the girl to emotion troubled him but little, for the physician was a staunch partisan, and held that Christopher had been very badly treated.

"A communication from the wanderer," said he. "Yeoland was leaving Sydney for his kinsman's up-country place when he wrote six weeks ago. All is well with him—at least so he declares, and—what do you think? He desires me to join him. Such a romantic notion!"

"Well?"

"Well, Mr. Endicott, positively I don't see why I should not. Little Silver without Christopher is, frankly, a howling wilderness from my point of view—a mere solitary tomb. And nobody ever ill—nobody ailing—no opportunities. When folk do succumb it means the end of them and the inevitable dose of churchyard mould—that final prescription none can escape."

"The health of the place is your highest tribute surely."

"Not at all—far from it. I've nothing to do with the matter. Drugs decaying in their vases; steel rusting in its velvet. Besides, the loneliness. A fishing-rod is but a vain thing to save a man—especially when it's close time as now; and the new people at Godleigh haven't asked me to a single shoot. In fact there's to be no shooting this year at all. So my case is desperate."

"Come and see us oftener," said Mark.

"I will; I positively must; but I think I'll go abroad. There's a saying that a man who can live quite happily alone must be one of two things: an angel, or a demon. Now I'm neither to my knowledge, and since Christo has vanished I've lived alone, and it's telling on me. I shall drift into one of those extremes, and I leave you to guess which."

"But you're always welcome everywhere, my dear Clack."

"I know it—at least I think so; but there's such fear of wearing out a welcome in a small place. Hereditary modesty, you'll say. If so, it's on the mother's side, not the father's. But, in all seriousness, why should not I join him?"

"You know your own business best. Is there money to be made there?"

"Plenty for a professional man. They are to have a qualification of their own, I believe; but at present a practitioner with English degrees gets the pull—very right and proper of course. Thus the old country drives her sons away; but not before she's arranged ample accommodation for them elsewhere—God bless her! So I'm wise to go—eh?"

"Nothing like seeing the ends of the earth and enlarging the mind," said Mark.

"Well, don't any of you develop anything in the nature of an interesting indisposition to tempt me to stop."

Margery brought in a letter at this moment as the postman had just penetrated to Bear Down—a feat he rarely accomplished much before midday. Doctor Clack wondered in secret whether her old lover had also communicated with Honor, but seeing that his own missive was charged with a general message of goodwill to all at Endicott's, he suspected the letter came from elsewhere.

Soon he was gone; then, without comment, Mark's niece read aloud a brief note from Myles Stapledon. It did no more than set forth his determination to return in a fortnight's time. Reason for the step was not given, as the writer disdained any excuse. His words were bald. "I will arrive on such a date, if convenient," he concluded; and Mark Endicott, reading ahead and reading backwards also, was saddened, even amazed, as one standing before the sudden discovery of an unsuspected weakness or obvious flaw in a work he had rejoiced to believe near perfection.

The stages by which Myles had arrived at the determination now astonishing Mark Endicott had extended over three months, and the curtain rose upon his battle exactly a week after he left the farm, for at that date he learned how the engagement between Honor and Christopher was definitely at an end, and how the latter would be on the sea before his words were read. The announcement came from Yeoland himself, and was written in London on the eve of his departure. Then began the fight that ended with a determination to return, and caused such genuine disappointment in Mr. Endicott. Mark, however, forgot the force of the passion his niece had awakened in this man; and certain it is that neither he nor any other could have guessed at the storm which swept Stapledon's soul when he learned how Honor had regained her freedom. Soaked as he was in love, to remain away from Endicott's with this knowledge for three months had proved no mean task to Myles. The battle fought and won with his passion while it had no right to exist proved but a prelude to encounters far more tremendous upon Christopher Yeoland's departure.

There grew within him a web of sophistry spun through sleepless nights. This at first, with the oncoming of morning, he swept away; but, spider-like, and with a spider's patience, the love in him renewed each mesh, and asked his conscience a question that his conscience seemed powerless to answer. He fought, yet knew not the name of the foe. To-day he marvelled at his own hesitation, and asked himself what still held him back; to-morrow a shadow of Yeoland shamed his troubled longings, and the word of Mark Endicott, "between you is a great gulf fixed," reverberated drearily upon his thoughts. Then the cloud castles fell to earth, and the sanguine glow upon their pinnacles vanished away. Yet against that saying of the blind man's every pulse in his body often throbbed furiously. He knew better, and Honor knew better also. It was not for nothing that they had walked over the Moor together; not for nothing they had stood silently, each by the other's side, on moonlight nights.

Out of darkness Christopher Yeoland sometimes took shape, but only as an abstraction that grew more misty with passage of days. He had gone for all time; and Honor was left alone. Myles burnt to know something of her mind; how much or how little she had forgotten; how much or how little she wondered at his attitude; in what she blamed him; whether such blame grew daily greater or was already fading away—perhaps along with his own image—in her recollection.

The great apparition of Duty rose. In the recent past he had made others supremely unhappy and tormented himself. That was over; and now—the slave of duty from his youth up—he stood in doubt. For the first time the man discerned no clear sign-post pointing to his road. Wherein lay duty now? He wearied his brain with dialectics. Sometimes duty looked a question of pure love; sometimes it hardened into a problem of pure logic. He would have risked all that he had for one glimpse of Honor's attitude towards the position; and finally he decided that his duty lay in ascertaining that attitude. This much might very easily be done without a word upon the vital theme. He told himself that a few hours under the same roof with her—the sound of her voice, the light in her eyes—would tell him all he needed to know. He dinned this assurance upon his own mind; but his heart remained dead, even before such a determination, and the cloud by no means lifted itself from off him. He presented the somewhat uncommon spectacle of a man trying to deceive himself and failing. His natural instincts of justice and probity thrust Christopher Yeoland again and again into his thoughts. He began three letters to the traveller on three separate occasions, but these efforts ended in fire, and the letter that was written and posted went to Bear Down.

Through turmoil, tribulation, and deepening of frontal furrows he reached this step, and the deed done, his night thickened around him instead of lifting as he had hoped and trusted. Perhaps the blackest hour of all was that wherein he rode through familiar hamlets under the Moor upon his way to Honor. Then came the real sting of the certainty that he had lapsed from his own lofty rule; and love itself forsook him for a space beneath Cosdon's huge shadow at sunset time. He hastened, even galloped forward to the sight of the woman; he told himself that in her presence alone would be found balm to soothe this hurt; and the very feebleness of the thought fretted him the more.

So he came back, and Chance, building as her custom is on foundations of the trivial, wrought from his return the subsequent fabric of all his days. For out of the deliberate action, whether begun in laughter or prayer, whether prompted by desire or inspired by high ambition, springs issue, and no deed yet was ever barren of consequence, hidden or revealed. Never, since conscious intelligence awakened here, has that invention of the dunces justified itself—never once has any god from any chariot of fire descended to cut one sole knot in a tangle of earthly affairs. The seeds of human actions are sown to certain fruition but uncertain crop, and Fate and Chance, juggling with their growth, afford images of the highest tragedy this world has wept at; conjure from the irony of natural operations all that pertains to sweet and bitter laughter; embrace and environ the whole apparition of humanity's progress through time. Life's pictures, indeed, depend upon play of ridiculous and tragic chance for their rainbow light, for their huge spaces of formless and unfathomable shadow, for their ironic architecture, their statuary of mingled mice and mountains—flung together, fantastic and awful. In Titan visions these things are seen by lightning or by glow-worm glimmer; or sunned by laughter; or rained upon with tears; or taking such substance and colour as wings above the reach of either.

Thus, his deed done, through chaos of painful thoughts, came Myles Stapledon; and then, standing amid the naked beds of Bear Down garden, he found Honor Endicott's little hand in his at last. Whereupon he whispered to his soul that he had acted wisely, and was now about to pass from storm into a haven of great peace.

CHAPTER XIII.

SNOW ON SCOR HILL

There came a day when Honor and Myles rode out upon a dry and frozen Moor under the north wind. The man, who had brought his own great horse to Endicott's, now galloped beside Honor's pony, and the pace warmed them despite the extreme coldness of the weather. Presently, upon their homeward way from Watern's granite castles, they stopped to breathe their horses, where a ring of horrent stones sprouted abrupt, uneven, irregular, out of the waste, and lay there, the mark of remote human activity. All the valley presented a stern spectacle unsoftened by any haze, untouched by any genial note of colour. The Moor's great, iron-grey bosom panted for coming snow; and Teign, crying among her manifold stairways, streaked the gorges with ghostly foam light, where naked sallows and silver birches tossed lean arms along the river. Only the water offered action and sound in the rocky channels; all else, to the horizon of ashy hills under a snow-laden sky, waited and watched the north.

Two horses stood steaming in Scor Hill Circle—that ancient hypæthral high place of the Damnonians—while their riders surveyed the scene and one another. Both long remembered the incident, and for them, from that day forward, the spot was lighted with a personal significance, was rendered an active and vital arena, was hallowed by interest more profound than its mere intrinsic attributes of age and mystery had formerly imparted to it.

Myles Stapledon did not reach the speedy conclusion he anticipated upon return to Bear Down. A month had now lapsed since his arrival, and, while very thoroughly assured of his own sentiments, while gulfed and absorbed, heart and soul, in a transcendent love of Honor that swept all before it and left him a man of one hope, one daily prayer, he had yet to learn her explicit attitude. His own humility helped to blind him a little at first, but she made no attempt to disguise her pleasure in his society, and by her unconventional companionship and intercourse wakened strong hopes within him. For he attached an obvious meaning to many actions, that had perhaps been conclusive of intention in any other woman, but were not in Honor. She went everywhere with him alone—to Chagford on horseback, to Exeter by train. Moreover, she let her cousin do as he would with the farm, and when he suggested embarking further capital and acquiring a half interest of all—she made no personal objection, but consulted Mr. Endicott. The inevitable sequel now stared Bear Down in the face, yet, when his niece put the question to him in private, Mark refused to give advice.

"That's a point none can well decide but yourself," he said. "The future's your own, as far as a human being can claim such control. As you act now, so the man will assume you mean to do afterwards."

"I mean nothing at all but the welfare of the farm and—you won't advise, then?"

"No. It looks all cut and dried to me."

Honor stamped her foot like a child.

"Everything's always cut and dried in my hateful life—try as I will," she said. Then she swept away, and he knitted on without visible emotion, though not lacking an inner sympathy. For he understood her desire to escape from the monotonous, and foresaw how this imminent incident would not bring about that end. Personally Stapledon had served to brighten his sightless life not a little, had set new currents running in his mind, had sweetened back waters grown stagnant by disuse; for Myles, as Endicott believed, was fine metal—wise, self-contained even in his love, a sober and discreet man—super-excellent save in the matter of his return to Bear Down. Even there, however, on second thoughts, Mark did not judge him. He only felt the lover to be human, and it was viewed in the character of a husband for Honor that the old man regarded his nephew without enthusiasm. Stapledon's very goodness, simplicity, and content with rural interests would suffice to weary the wife he wanted soon or late. And Christopher Yeoland must probably return to his home some day.

Thus he argued, but, meantime, full of hope, and arriving at a right logical conclusion on a wrong hypothesis of logical intention in Honor, Stapledon resolved to speak. And now, before the beauty of her, kissed into a sparkle by her gallop, her bosom rising and falling, a tiny cloud around her lips, caught and carried away by the wind at each expiration—before this winter vision his heart found a tongue; and, as they walked their horses in the grey circle, he spoke.

"It's a strange place this to tell you, yet these things are out of one's keeping. I must say it I must. Honor, do you care for me at all?"

"Of course I care for you."

"Do you love me?"

"Now, dear Myles, please don't say anything to make me cry in this wind. Think of the freezing misery of it! Please—Please."

"To make you cry! I hope not—indeed. I hope not that. Yet it's solemn enough—the most solemn thing a man can say to a woman."

"That's all right, then," she said cheerfully. "Nothing solemn ever makes me cry."

He looked bewildered, wistful, and her heart smote her; but the inopportune fiend would speak. She remembered how that Christopher had proposed marriage in a flippant spirit, while she craved for something so different. Here was no frivolous boy in a sunny wood, but a strong, earnest man under skies full of snow. His great voice and his eyes aflame made her heart beat, but they had no power to alter her mood.

"I love you!" he said simply. "I loved you long before I knew it, if you can believe so strange a thing. I loved you, and, finding it out, I left you and poured all the bitter blame on myself that I could. Then I heard how you had agreed to part. He was going. He went. And now I stand before you all yours. You are unlinked by any tie. He said so—he——"

"Oh you wretches of one idea!" she burst out, interrupting him. "You self-absorbed, self-seeking, selfish men! How can I explain? How can I lay bare my weaknesses before such superiority? He was the same—poor Christo—just the same. I suppose nearly all of you must be; and women are frightened to speak for fear of shocking you. So we pretend, and win from you a character for huge constancy that we often deserve no more than you do. Why attribute so many virtues to us that you don't possess yourselves? Why demand a single, whole-hearted, utter, ineffable love from us that not one in a thousand of you can give?"

"All this is nothing to the purpose," he said in a puzzled voice. "What can you answer, Honor?

"Well, I'll speak for myself, not for the hosts of single-hearted women. I won't tar them with my black brush. You want me to marry you, Myles?"

"God knows how dearly."

"And because I love you, you think I ought to marry you. Yet if I love somebody else too? I wish I had fine words, though perhaps plain ones are better to describe such an unheroic muddle. When I told Christo I loved you—yes, I told him that—he bowed his head as though he had heard his death knell. Yet I did not tell him I loved him less than before."

"You still love him?"

"Of course I do. Can a quarrel kill a live love? He was made for somebody to love him. And I love you—love you dearly too. And I'm not ashamed of it, however much you may think I should be."

"The end of that?" he said drearily.

"Clear enough. I've spoilt two lives—no, not all, I hope, but a part of two lives."

"It is I that have done so," he answered bitterly and slowly; then he stopped his horse and looked aloft where scattered flakes and patches of snow began to float heavily downward from the upper grey.

"No, no, no," said Honor. "It's just a snappy, snarling, unkind fate that wills it so. Two's company, and three's none, of course."

"Your knowledge is imperfect," he said, "and so your argument is vain. If you were a type, the foundation of civilisation would fail. Surely no woman worth thinking of twice can love in two places at once?"

"Then think of me no more," she answered, "for I do—if I know love at all. Is not the moon constant to earth and sun? A woman can love two men—as easily as a man can love two women. You couldn't—I know that; but you're not everybody. Most men can. Christianity has made a noble, exalted thing of love, and I was born into the Christian view. Yet I'm unfortunately a barbarian by instinct. Just an accidental primitive heathen who has cropped up in a respectable family. You can't alter any particular cranky nature by pruning. Oh, dear Myles, if I could marry you both! You for the working weeks and Christo for Sundays and holidays!"

He merely gasped.

"Yet I love to think you love me. But you know what naughty children say when they're crossed? I can't have you both, so I won't have either."

"This you say for love of him?"

"Don't trouble to find reasons. At any rate I'm speaking the truth. Should I have confessed to such a depraved and disgraceful frame of mind to a man I love if I had not been deadly serious despite laughter? Hate me, if you must, but I don't deserve it. I would marry you and be a good wife too; but there's a sort of sense of justice hid in me. Christo noticed it. So don't drive me into marriage, Myles dear."

"You love him better than me at any rate?"

"Arithmetic can't be brought to bear upon the question. I love you both."

There was a pause; then she added suddenly—

"And if there were a hundred more men like you and Christopher, I should love them all. But there are no more."

"You've got a big heart, Honor."

"Don't be unkind to me. It's a very unhappy heart."

"It should not be."

"That fact makes it so much the more unhappy."

"Do you know your own mind in this matter?"

"Of course I don't. Haven't you found that out?"

"It's going to snow," he said. "We'd better hurry."

"No, walk to the top of the hill; I like it."

"You must be made happy somehow," he continued. "It's everybody's duty who loves you to make you that, if it can be done."

"You great, generous thing! How I wish I could do what you ask me to; but I should be haunted if I did. You don't want a haunted wife, Myles?"

"Leave that. I have spoken and you have answered. I shall not speak again, for I pay you the respect and honour to believe your 'No' means no."

"Yes," she said; "you would." Then she turned away from him, for her tears were near at last. "Every flake lies on the frozen ground. D'you see how black the spotless snowflakes look against the sky? Isn't there some moral or other to be got out of that, Myles?"

"Why did you let me buy half Endicott's?" he asked, not hearing her last speech.

"Because you wanted to. And I wanted some money."

"Money!"

"Yes—I can tell you just at this moment. It will help to show you what I am. I sent a thousand pounds to Christo."

"He'll never take it!"

"Of course not. Yet, somehow, it comforted me for quite two days to send it."

"How we fool ourselves—we who think we stand firm! I fancied I was getting to understand you, Honor, and I knew nothing."

"You'd know everything, and find that everything was nothing if you weren't in love. There's nothing to know beyond the fact that I'm a very foolish woman. Uncle Mark understands me best. He must do so, for he can always make me angry, sometimes even ashamed."

Snow began to fall in earnest, and fluttered, tumbled, sidled, scurried over the Moor. The wind caught it and swept it horizontally in tattered curtains; the desolation grew from grey into white, from a spotted aspect, still lined and seamed with darkness, into prevailing pallor. The tors vanished; the distance was huddled from sight; Honor's astrakhan hat caught the snow, and her habit also. She shook her head, and shining drops fell from her veil. Then Myles went round to ride between her and the weather, and they hastily trotted down the hill homeward.

Already a mask of snow had played magic pranks with the world, reduced known distances, distorted familiar outlines, brought remote objects close, dwarfed the scene, and much diminished its true spaciousness. The old familiar face of things was swallowed by a new white wilderness, like in unlikeness to the earth it hid.

Early darkness closed down upon the land before tremendous snow. Within the farm candles guttered, carpets billowed, cold draughts thrust chill fingers down stone passages, and intermittent gusts of wind struck upon the casement, like reverberations of a distant gun.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE WISDOM OF DR. CLACK

That night, despite the heavy snow, and not averse from a struggle with the weather, Myles set out, after supper, for Little Silver, three-quarters of a mile distant, in the valley beneath Bear Down. Progress was difficult, but though snow already stood above Stapledon's knees in the drifts, he found strength more than sufficient for the battle, and presently brought a blast of cold air and a snow wreath into the small dwelling of Doctor Clack, as he entered without formal announcement. Courteney Clack—deeply immersed in packing for his departure—marvelled at the advent of any visitor on such a night and abandoned his labours.

"Get out of that coat and come to the fire," he said. "I'm afraid this means something serious, or you wouldn't have turned out in such a tempest. Who's ill, and what's amiss?"

"Nobody—nothing. I wanted this wild weather against my face to give me a buffet. I also want a talk with you—if I can trespass on your time."

The physician was much relieved to learn that it would not be necessary for him to go out of doors.

"I sail on Thursday," he said, "but, until that date, I am, as usual, at the beck and call of all the world. Sit down and I'll get the necessary ingredients. Need I say that I refer to a glass of punch?"

"In six weeks," began Myles abruptly, "you'll be seeing Christopher Yeoland."

"God willing, that pleasure is in store for me."

Stapledon took out his pipe, and began to fill it mechanically.

"I want you to do a very delicate thing," he said. "The task will need even all your tact and skill, doctor. Yet it happens that if I had to pick a man out of England, I should have chosen you."

"Now that must be flattery—a mere country apothecary."

"No, it's true—for particular reasons. You are Yeoland's best friend."

"A proud privilege. I have his word for it."

"And, therefore, the man of all others to tackle him. Yet it's not to your personal interest either. I'll be frank. That is only fair to you. In the first place, what was the position between Miss Endicott and your friend when he finally left here?"

"Well, Stapledon, I suppose you've the right to ask, if anybody has; and not being blind, I can't speak the truth, perhaps, without hurting you. The rupture was pretty complete, I fancy—final in fact. I didn't know whether to be glad or sorry. Miss Honor is a girl who wants a tight hand over her. I say it quite respectfully, for her good—and yours."

"Don't drag me in, Clack. The point is that she still loves Yeoland. That's what I came here to explain to you. It is right that he should know it, and you are the man to tell him. The information must come from yourself, remember—from nobody else. The point is, how are you to be furnished with proofs?"

"Are you sure there exist proofs? Is it true?"

"She told me so herself."

Doctor Clack had little difficulty in guessing at the nature of the conversation wherein such a confession had made a part. He was impulsive, and now did a thing that a moment's reflection had left undone. He stretched out his hand and gripped Stapledon's.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You have my sincere sympathy. Forgive me if I offend."

Myles flushed, and as the other had been surprised into sudden speech, so now was he. Indeed he answered most unexpectedly, on the spur of the moment, stung thereto by this assault on self-esteem.

"You mistake!" he answered. "She loves me also."

Doctor Clack whistled.

"How spacious! These times are really too cramped for such a girl. This is the sort of knot that could be cut so easily in mediæval days; but now the problem is most difficult. You want to drop out of the running in favour of Christo? Carlyle says that the heroic slumbers in every heart. It woke in Yeoland's when he turned his back on Little Silver and everything that made life worth living for him. Now it wakes in you."

"I do not want her life to be made a lonely, wretched thing by any act of mine."

"Of course not."

"We must save her from herself."

"Ah, that means that she has announced a determination not to marry at all."

"Yes. We are both so much to her that she cannot marry either."

The doctor smothered a smile—not at Stapledon's speech, but before the monumental sternness with which he uttered it.

"How characteristic!"

"Against that, however, I have the assurance that she does not know her own mind. Women, I think, if I may say so without disrespect and upon slight experience, are very contradictory. Miss Endicott has not been in the habit of analysing her emotions. Not that she is not lucidity itself. But—well, if he were here and I—if I were out of the way—I only want her happiness. It seems to lie there. He must come back to her. I can't say all I feel about this, but you understand."

"You're set on her happiness. Very altruistic and all the rest; but I'm afraid she's not built for it. To get happiness into her life will be difficult. Too humorous to be happy, don't you think? Omar al Khattab remarks, very wisely, that four things come not back to man or woman. They are the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity. She sent Yeoland about his business. Now there is a sort of love that won't brook cruelty of that pattern."

"Cruelty's too big a word for it. She called it a lover's quarrel herself. Eliminate me, and judge whether the spoken word might not be retrieved and forgotten if he came back to her again."

"Of course improbability's the only certainty with a woman. Don't fancy I'm letting my own interest stand in the way. I, too, in common with all human clay, contain the germ of the heroical. I'll tell Christo everything; that he still has half—is it half or a lesser or greater fraction?—of Miss Honor Endicott's heart. Here we are—three able-bodied men: you, Christo, and myself. Well, surely with a little expenditure of brain tissue we can—eh? Of course. One of you chaps is the obstacle to the other. You pull her heart different ways. She is suspended between your negative and positive attractions like a celestial body, or a donkey between two bundles of hay. So you both go free. Now, if one of you heroes could only find comfort in another woman such a circumstance might determine—you follow me?"

"Her happiness?"

"Not so much her happiness as her destination. Well, I'll urge upon Yeoland the advisability of coming home; I'll tell him how things stand, and of course keep you out of it."

"She would be happier with him than with me: that's the point."

"Say rather: that's the question. He may not think so. I don't want to flatter you, but I don't think so myself. There is that in Christo not usually associated with the domestic virtues. He and I are bachelors by instinct—natural, unsophisticated beasts, in no sense educated up to the desirable and blessed, but extremely artificial, state of matrimony. You, on the contrary, are a highly trained creature with all your emotions under your own control, and capable of a consistent unselfishness in the affairs of life which is extremely rare in the male animal. No; merely considered as a husband, Christo would not have a look in with you—could hardly expect to get a vote—certainly not mine."

"He might make a better husband for Honor."

"Not for any woman."

"Don't tell him so, if you think it."

"Leave me to do what I deem wise. Like you, I'm solely actuated with a desire to brighten Miss Endicott's life. But you must not dictate my line of action. My judgment is not wont to be at fault."

"I know that very well. This great cause is safe in your hands. Put it first. Put it first, before everything. You can't feel as I do, and as Yeoland must; but you're a man of very wide sympathy—that's to say a man of genius more or less. And you're his first friend—Yeoland's, I mean; so for his sake—and hers——"

"And yours—yes. I shall glory in bringing this matter to an issue—happy for choice, but definite at any rate—if only to prove all your compliments are not vain. Light your pipe and drink, and fill your glass again."

"No more—perfect punch—perfect and very warming to the blood."

"Your punch-maker, like your poet, is born. The hereditary theory of crime, you know."

"Now I must get up the hill. And thank you, Clack. You've lightened my anxiety, I think. We shall meet again before you go?"

"Certainly—unless you are all snowed up at Bear Down. Good-night! Gad! I hope nobody will want me! Not my weather at all."

The storm screamed out of the darkness. Beyond a narrow halo of light from Courteney Clack's open door all was whirling snow and gloom; and through it, his head down, Stapledon struggled slowly back to the farm.

The significance of his own position, the bitterness of his defeat, the nature of his loss, and the gnawing sting of suffering had yet to come. This effort to ameliorate the lonely life of Honor by bringing Yeoland back into it was indeed laudable; but mere consciousness of right has no power to diminish the force of great blows or obliterate the awful meaning of a reverse in love. His future stretched desolate as the weather before Myles Stapledon, and these physical exercises under the storm, together with his attempts on behalf of others, might serve to postpone, but could not diminish by one pang, the personal misery in store for him.

CHAPTER XV.

SUN DANCE

On the morning of Easter Sunday, some three months after the departure of Doctor Clack from Little Silver, certain labouring men in their best broadcloth ascended Scor Hill at dawn. Jonah Cramphorn, Churdles Ash, Henry Collins, and the lad Tommy Bates comprised this company, and their purpose was to behold a spectacle familiar and famous in ancient days but unheeded and little remembered at the period of these events. Ash had attracted the younger men to see the sun dance on Easter morn, and of those who accompanied him, Mr. Cramphorn was always willing to honour a superstition, no matter of what colour; Collins came to gain private ends; while the boy followed because he was promised a new experience.

"T'others may go to the Lard's Table for their bite an' sup, an' a holy act to theer betterment no doubt," declared Churdles; "but, for my paart, 'tis a finer deed to see the gert sun a-dancin' for sheer joy 'pon Resurrection Marnin', come it happen to be fine. A butivul day, sure enough, an' the elements all red an' blue, like the Saviour's clothes in the window-glasses to church."

Mr. Ash's dim eyes scanned the sweetness of an April sky, and the party moved onward to the crown of the hill. Through pearly dews they went, and passed forward where the soft, green mantle of on-coming spring hung like a veil on hedgerows and over wild waste places. A world stretched before them lighted by the cold purity of spotless dawn, and the day-spring, begemmed with primrose stars, was heralded by thrushes in many a dingle, by the lark on high. As yet earth lay in the light that is neither sunshine nor shadow, but out of the waxing blue above, from whence, like a shower, fell his tinkling rhapsody, one singing bird could see the sun, and himself shone like a little star.

To the upland heath and granite plodded these repositories of obsolescent folk-lore; and they talked as they went, the better to instil Collins and the boy with a proper understanding in the matter of those superstitions a scoffing generation agreed to disregard. Henry, on his part, felt more than uneasy, for he much doubted the sanctity of this present step. But love was responsible; Collins pined for Sally in secret, and his great desire to conciliate Mr. Cramphorn was such that, when Jonah invited him to the present observation, he undertook at once to be of the party. Now he recollected that he had also promised the vicar to go to the Sacrament that morning.

"You must knaw," said Churdles Ash to Tommy, "that this holy season be a gert time for signs an' wonders up-along an' down-along. I tell 'e these things, 'cause you'm a young youth, an' may profit an' hand 'em on to your childern in fulness of time. Theer be Gude Friday—a day of much vartue, I assure 'e. Not awnly the event o' the Lard's undoing by they bowldacious Jews, but the properest for plantin' vegetables in the whole of the year."

"An' the best for weanin' of childern," said Mr. Cramphorn. "Sally was weaned 'pon that day, an' went straight to cow's milk so natural an' easy as a born calf; an' look at her now!"

Mr. Collins sighed deeply.

"Butivulest gal in Debbensheer, I reckon," he said.

Jonah grunted assent, and Henry, feeling the moment for a certain vital question had arrived, mopped his wet brow and tremulously approached the matter.

"Fall back a pace or two, will 'e, maister? Your darter—I daresay you might have seed as I was a bit hit in that quarter?"

"I've seed it, I grant you. I'm all eyes wheer my gals be consarned."

"These things caan't be helped. I mean no disrespect, I'm sure. 'Tis the voice of nature in a man."

"I'm sorry for 'e, Henery."

"For that matter I couldn't wish myself out o' the evil, though 'tis perplexin' an' very onrestful to my head. I be mazed when I consider how a man of my modest way could think twice 'bout a rare piece like Sally. Never seed such a wonnerful strong arm 'pon any woman in all my born days."

Jonah frowned and shook his head.

"Never mind her paarts. Don't become you or any man to name a limb of her separate from the rest. Baan't respectful!"

"Then I'm sorry I said it. An' as for respectfulness, I'd go on my bended knees to her to-morrow."

"Have you?" inquired the parent. "That's the question. Have 'e axed her an' got a answer?"

"Not for the world," stammered Henry. "Not for the world afore gettin' your leave. I knaw my plaace better."

Mr. Cramphorn's nose wrinkled as though it had caught an evil odour.

"Bah! You say that! You'm so chicken-hearted that you come to me 'fore you go to she! Then I sez 'No.' I forbids you to speak a word of the matter, for I reckon your way be more tame an' soft than the likes of her or any other high-spirited female would suffer."

"You'm tu violent—I swear you be," protested Mr. Collins. "You'd have been the fust to blame me if I'd spoke wi'out axin' you. Besides, caan't a man talk apart from usin' his tongue in this matter? I've a looked at her time an' again wi' all the power of the eye. Theer's a language in that, an' she knawed what I meant, or I'm a fule."

"Theer be such a language for sartain," admitted Jonah; "but not for you. No more power o' speech in your gert eyes than a bullock's—I don't mean as it's to be counted any fault in you, but just the will of Nature. An' so enough's said."

"Quick! Run, the pair of 'e!" cried Tommy's voice. "Her's risin' nigh the edge o' Kes Tor Rock all copper-red!"

Cramphorn quickened his pace, and Collins, now merged in blank despair, strode alter him. Together they approached Mr. Ash, and joined the aged man upon a little granite elevation at the south-eastern extremity of Scor Hill. Below them, a watercourse, now touched to fire, wound about the shoulder of the elevation; and beneath, much misty, new-born verdure of silver birch and sallow, brightened the fringe of fir woods where Teign tumbled singing to the morning.

Over against the watchers, lifted above a grey glimmer of ruined Damnonian hut villages and primæval pounds, there towered the granite mass of Kes Tor, and from the distant horizon arose the sun. He bulked enormous, through the violet hazes of nightly mist that now dwindled and sank along the crowns of the hills; then the effulgent circle of him, ascending, flashed forth clean fire that flamed along unnumbered crests and pinnacles of far-flung granite, that reddened to the peaty heart each marsh and mire, each ridge and plane of the many-tinted garment that endued the Moor.

Silently the labourers watched sunrise; then was manifested that heliacal phenomenon they had come to see. A play of light, proper to the sun at ascension, ran and raced twinkling round his disc; and, like an empyreal wheel, the blazing star appeared to revolve and spin upon its upward way.

"He be dancin'! He be dancin', now!" declared Mr. Ash.

"For sure, if I could awnly keep the watter out o' my eyes," added Jonah; while Collins, by his comment, reflected personal tribulations and exhibited an impatient spirit in presence of this solemn display.

"I've seed un shimmer same as that scores o' times on working-days," he said sourly.

"Granted—in a lesser fashion; but not like he be doin' now. He knaws as the Lard o' Hosts leapt forth from the tomb to the biddin' of cherub angels 'pon this glad marnin'—nobody knaws it better than him. An', for all his size, he'm as giddy an' gay an' frolicsome by reason of it, as the high hills what hop in the Psalms o' David."

Thus speaking, Gaffer Ash regarded the source of light with a benignant and indulgent smile.

"An' us all did ought to feel the same, I'm sure," moralised Jonah Cramphorn, wiping the tears from his eyes and blinking at a huge red spot now stamped upon his retina and reproduced in varying size against everything which he regarded. "For my part I hold that not a heathen in the land but ought to rise into a gude Christian man afore that gert act."

They waited and watched until the growing glory defied their vision; then all started to return homewards, and both the elder men declared themselves much refreshed, invigorated, and gladdened by what they had seen. Each, inspired by the incident, occupied himself with time past and matters now grown musty. They related stories of witches and of ghosts; they handled omens, and callings, and messages from dead voices heard upon dark nights; they explained the cryptic mysteries hidden in hares and toads, in stars, in 'thunder-planets,' and the grasses of the field. They treated of turning stones against an enemy; of amulets to protect humanity from the evil eye; of ill-wishing and other magical misfortunes; of oil of man; and of the good or sinister forces hidden in wayside herbs.

"'Tis the fashion 'mongst our young school-gwaine fules to laugh at auld saws an' dark sayings because theer teachers laugh at 'em; but facts doan't change, though manners may," said Mr. Cramphorn. "Theer's witches descended from Bible witches, same as theer be saints an' 'postles comed from laying on of hands. An' Cherry Grepe's of 'em; she doan't want for power yet, or my brain be no better'n tallow. I seed Chowne's oxen charmed into gude health again, an' gerter wonders than that onder my awn eyes. Ten shillin' she had of mine—" he added, lowering his voice for the ear of Mr. Ash alone—"ten shillin' to bring harm 'pon Christopher Yeoland. An' she drawd a circle against un before my faace an' done a charm wi' wax an' fire. ''Twill all act presently,' she said; and act it did, as you knaw, for he'm crossed in love, an' a wanderer 'pon the faace of the airth, like Cain at this minute; an' worse to come, worse to come."

Mr. Ash looked very uneasy.

"I could wish as you hadn't told me that," he answered. "You'm allus lickin' your lips on it, an' I'd rather not knaw no more. Ban't a pleasant side o' your carater."

Shouts from Tommy interrupted Churdles, and all looked where the boy pointed—to see some white object vanish under a gate before their eyes. As for himself, heedless of Cramphorn's loud warning, Tommy Bates picked up a stone and ran after the object.

"'Ful to me!" cried Cramphorn, "did 'e see it—a rabbit as I'm a sinful man!"

"The white coney o' Scor Hill! An' that's death wi'in the year to some wan us knaws! Fegs! A bad business for sartain."

"Death inside the week," corrected Jonah solemnly. "It may have awvertook some poor neighbour a'ready."

"Or it may be ordained for wan of ourselves," murmured Mr. Ash gloomily.

"I wish to Christ I'd gone to church then!" burst out Collins. "For it's been a cruel hard marnin' for me from time I rose, sun dance or no sun dance; an' now to cap it wi' this gert, hidden calamity, an' death in the wind."

"Sure as night follows day," declared Churdles Ash.

The love-sick Collins tramped on his way without further speech; Tommy did not return from pursuit of the apparition, and Ash argued with Cramphorn as to who might now be numbered with the majority. Upon this delicate point they could by no means agree; and they were still wrangling as to the identity of their ill-starred acquaintance when a man met them hard by the main entrance of Bear Down, and they saw that it was Myles Stapledon.

After Doctor Clack's departure and within a few days of the scene in gathering snow upon Scor Hill, Myles had left Endicott's and taken him rooms at Little Silver, in the dwelling of Noah Brimblecombe, sexton to the parish. This man owned a pleasant abode somewhat greater than a cottage—an establishment the bulk of which its possessor annually under-let to advantage in the summer months. Hither came the rejected, his plans for the future still unformed. And here he dwelt for three long months and laboured like a giant to crush the agony of his spirit, the black misery of every waking hour. Bear Down once thoroughly invigorated by his capital and improved by his knowledge, he determined to leave; but while work still remained to do he stopped at the gates of the farm and exercised a painful self-control. Honor he saw not seldom, but the former friendship, while still quite possible for her, was beyond the power of the man. She pitied him, without wholly understanding; and very sincerely pitied herself in that circumstances now deprived her not a little of his cherished society. The difficulty lay in her attitude towards him. To behave as one who loved him was impossible under the constraint that now hedged him in; so she attempted to imitate his manner, and failed. A great awkwardness and unreality characterised present relations, and Honor found in these circumstances ample matter for mental distraction, if only of a painful nature; while Stapledon waited for the season of spring to finish his labours, and counted that each post might bring some message from Christopher.

To-day he had news definite and tremendous enough The last of the Yeolands was coming back to his fathers—that he might sleep amongst them; for he was dead.

With a face darkened, Myles asked Cramphorn where he might find Mr. Endicott, and Jonah, seeing that something was amiss, himself made an inquiry.

"Maister Mark be in the garden most likely. An' what ill's walkin' now, sir, if a man may ax? Theer's a black story in your faace as you caan't hide."

"Black enough," said Stapledon shortly. "You'll know in good time."

He passed by and left them staring.

"That dratted white rabbit!" murmured Mr. Ash; while the messenger of sorrow approached Mark, where he walked up and down under the walls of the farm, beside uprising spikes of the orange-lilies and early growth of other things that stood along his way.

"You, Stapledon? Good morning. There's the feel of fine weather on my cheek."

Above them a window, set in cherry-buds, stood open, and within Honor, who had just returned with her uncle from a celebration of the Lord's Supper, was taking off her hat at her looking-glass.

"Good morning, uncle. I've brought some awfully sad and awfully sudden news. Here's a letter from Clack. I rode early to Chagford about another letter I expected, and found this waiting, so saved the postman. Christopher Yeoland—he has gone—he is dead."

"Dead! So young—so full of life! What killed him?"

"Died of a snake-bite near Paramatta. It's an orange-growing district near Sydney, so the doctor says. He was there with his cousin—an old settler—a survivor from a cadet branch of the family, I fancy. And it seems that it was Yeoland's wish to lie at home—his last wish."

"Then no doubt Clack will look to it. Gone! Hard to credit, very hard to credit."

"I'm thinking of Honor. It will be your task to tell her, I fear. My God! I can't believe this. I had hoped for something so different. She loved him—she loved him still."

"Is there any reason why she should not read the letter?" asked Mr. Endicott.

"None—not a line she need not see. It is very short—cynically short for Clack. He was probably dazed when he wrote; as I am now."

"Give it to me, then. I will go up to her at once. Yes, I must tell her—the sooner the better."

But Honor Endicott knew already. She had heard through her casement, and stood like a stone woman staring up into the blue sky when Mark knocked at her door.

"Come in, uncle," she said; and then continued, as he entered groping, "I have heard what you want to say. So you are spared that. Give me the letter and I will read it to you."

"You know!"

"My window was open. I could not choose but hear, for the first word chained me. Christo is dead."

He held out the letter and left her with it; while she, as yet too shocked to see or feel beyond the actual stroke, read tearlessly.

And, gazing with the eye of the mind through those great spaces that separated her from this tragedy, she saw her old lover again, remembered his joy of life, heard his laughter, and told herself that she had killed him.

Below, in the kitchen, all Bear Down assembled about breakfast. Then Mark Endicott told the company this news, and unutterable glances passed between Ash, Cramphorn, and Collins.

"You'd best to keep dumb 'bout your share, Jonah," muttered Churdles under his breath, with round eyes that indicated aversion. "I wouldn't say the law mightn't overget 'e, if it knawed."

"As to that, I fear nothin', an' the tears I shed won't drown a midge," answered the other in a defiant whisper. "I've forgived his wrong; forget it I never shall."

Collins was busy telling Sally and Margery of the spectral rabbit.

"An' 'tis plain the ill-convenient beast didn't run for nought. Who shall laugh at such deeds now? Not the vainest man amongst us," he concluded.

"Him of all to go!" sighed Mrs. Loveys; "an' when us thinks of what might have been an' how one short word will make or mar a life——"

Then a question from Margery as to where Tom Bates might be was answered by the sudden appearance of that youth, and Mrs. Loveys, with a mind somewhat overwrought, found outlet for emotion in an attack upon him.

"Doan't 'e knaw the hour for eatin', you ugly li'l twoad?" she demanded sharply. "An' to come to the table in such a jakes of a mess tu! You ought to be shamed."

But the boy paid no heed. He returned breathless with a comforting discovery, and now cried it aloud to his companions of the morning.

"'Tis all right," he said; "no call for no upstore nor trouble at all. That theer white bastey I mean. I followed un half a mile to the furze meadows down-long to make sartain, then I lost un, an' presently if I didn't see un again—wi' a young rabbit he'd catched! Nought but that baggerin' auld ram cat as they've got to Creber Farm!"

"Quiet! you young fule!" said Mr. Cramphorn roughly; "shut your mouth, will 'e? or I'll scat 'e awver the ear-hole! You to pit your green brains against our ripe wans! A man be dead, an' so 'tis sartain us seed what us seed."

"Sartain as doom us seed what us seed," echoed Gaffer Ash, "for a man be dead."

CHAPTER XVI.

A SHELF OF SLATE

A blackbird, with sleepy notes and sad, warbled in a green larch at dawn; and the pathos proper to his immemorial song was well suited to the scene. For the larch raised her lovely foliage, begemmed with rubies, above many graves in the burying-place of Little Silver; and a streamlet also murmured there, uttering a sort of purring harmony that mingled with the contralto of the bird. From an ivy-tod, at hand in the grave-yard hedge, bright eyes peeped and the mother, with head and tail alone visible and sooty-brown body pressed close upon four eggs, listened to her lord. Elsewhere a man also heard the music, but heeded it not. He stood at his house door, yawned and sniffed the morning; while his whitewashed walls that faced the east were warmed into a glowing melon colour, and sunshine wove golden threads along the ancient straw of the thatch above.

Noah Brimblecombe, the sexton, was a man of middle age, with grey whiskers, clean-shaved lips and chin, a strong mouth, and a reflective forehead. His back had grown rounded by digging of graves from early manhood, and the nature of his life's labours appeared in a tinge of gloom that marked his views. He passed through the world with an almost morbid severity in his disparagement of all mundane concerns, triumphs or possessions. The man now stood and fixed his small grey eyes upon the church, but little more than a hundred yards distant. Then, bearing great keys in one hand, an inch or two of candle in the other, he proceeded to the burying-ground upon an errand connected with his calling.

Little Silver is a hamlet of almost beggarly simplicity. In the midst stands a trinity of three great buildings beneath the bosom of a hill; certain ruined barns, with a few thatched cots and a pound, embrace the remainder of the village; while a duck-pond outside the churchyard gate, orchard lands sloping to the valleys beneath, a little winding road and a stone wall, beside which grow yellow bullace plums, complete the picture. Variety in form and wide divergence in point of age characterise the central features of this spot. Paramount, by virtue of years and pristine significance, stand the ruins of Little Silver Castle; the church comes next—an erection of the customary moorland pattern, with a ring of small, sweet-toned bells, and a crocketted tower, something too tall for its breadth; while, between these two, there stands an old-time manor-house—empty as the ruined castle at the date of this narrative; but more recently repaired for habitation. Here spread the familiar theatre of Mr. Brimblecombe's life. Every stone of the old fourteenth-century castle was familiar to him, and he delighted to take chance visitors of antiquarian taste upward by a winding stair into the time-fretted, ivy-mantled abode of the lords of Little Silver. Now the sky was its covering; the lancet windows, through which once frowned war-like faces behind crossbow, matchlock, or petronel, were the dwelling of a thousand soft green things and framed the innocent eyes of wild flowers; in the upper chamber rowans stood rooted upon old hearthstones; briar and many grasses, pellitory of the wall and blue speedwells superseded bygone mural tapestries; and where antlers of the red deer hung and brazen sconces for the torch aforetime sprang, there now rose the fronds of hart's-tongue and shield ferns, with tangle of woodbine and ivy and networks of rootlets that hid the mossy homes of wrens. Beneath the ruin there still existed a dungeon-vault, gloomy and granite-groined; yet, save for broken wall and stairway, perfect as when poor wretches mouldered there at the mercy of their feudal masters. Now not so much as one spectre of a vanished sufferer haunted the place; only the bats passed their sleeping hours among the arches of the roof, and hung from five-clawed hands, with sinister, wrapped wings—like little dusky cherubim that worship with veiled faces at some mystery-seat of evil.

Mr. Brimblecombe was not concerned with castle or with church at the present time. His eye roamed forward to a ponderous mausoleum that lay amid lush grasses and rank, sappy, umbelliferous plants in a corner of the churchyard. A conical yew tree flanked each angle, and the larch, whereon a blackbird sang, extended high overhead. Here stood the vault of the Yeolands, and the last six generations of them slept within, for no further accommodation existed under the church flags, where earlier members of the race lay jowl to jowl with their historic enemies, the Prouzes. The family tomb was of granite, with white marble tablets upon three sides and a heavy metal door in the fourth or eastern face. Above grinned decoration of a sort, and the architect, following sepulture fashions at that date, had achieved a chaplet of marble skulls, which Time was toying with from year to year. Now their foreheads, their crowns, and occiputs were green and grimy; their eyes and jaws were stuffed with moss; trailing toad-flax crept out of their noses; and stray seeds, bird-planted, hung bright blossoms above them in summer-time.

Hither came Brimblecombe, and his feet stamped over the graves of many more dead than the mounds of the churchyard indicated. A young man, the sexton's assistant, sat and smoked among the marble skulls, waiting for his master there; and now he rose, put out his pipe, and gave Noah "Good morning." A moment later the blackbird had fled with a string of sharp ejaculations, for a harsh note grated upon the air as the sexton turned his key in the Yeoland vault door. A flood of light from the risen sun streamed in where, "sealed from the moth and the owl and the flitter-mouse," lay the dead. A few giant woodlice rushed to concealment before this shattering incursion of sunshine, and other curling, crawling things made like haste to disappear. Then Brimblecombe's blinking eyes accommodated themselves to the inner gloom. Two ledges of slate lay on each side of the mortuary, and coffins, whose nails had long turned green, poked head and feet from rotting palls upon three of these. The place struck very cold, with a fungus smell. A few puny fragments of asplenium found life amid the interspaces of the stone-work and lived dismally in the dark where damp oozed and granite sweated. The fourth ledge bore a coffin that held Christopher Yeoland's father, and its pall had as yet resisted the decaying influences of this gloomy spot, for only a few round circles of mould dimmed the lustre of the velvet.

It was the custom of the family that the last four of their dead should lie here upon these shelves; but now another needed his place and the most ancient of the four—a matron who had flourished in the first George's days—was to be deposed and lowered into the charnel below. Brimblecombe moved an iron grating in the floor; then, with his assistant's help, carried a slight and much tarnished shell to its place in the ultimate desolation beneath.

"'Tis awful how the watter gains down here," declared Noah. "Small wonder them ducks of Mother Libby's do graw to be so heavy. They gets the very cream an' fatness of the churchyard into 'em, an' 'tis a'most a cannibal act to eat 'em."

"'Tis lucky this here gen'leman's last of his race seemin'ly," said the younger man, raising a candle above his head and spitting among the coffins; "for theer ban't no more room to bury a beetle. Full up above an' below by the look of it."

"Last of his line—'tis so—an' comed of gude havage[#] as ever a man need to boast on. A poor end to such a high family. Just a worm stinged un an' he'm falled into lifeless dust, no better than the founder of the race. To think this heap o' rags an' bones be all that's left of a mighty folk as was."

[#] Havage = ancestry.

"An' not a Yeoland left to carry on the name, they tell me."

"Not wan, Sam Reed; not a single bud left to bloom. Auld tree be dead of sheer age, I reckon, for 'tis with families as with nations, as parson said 'pon the Sunday after auld Jarvis died. They rise up gradual an' slow to theer high-watter mark; then, gradual or fast, they tumble back into the dust wheer they started. All dust—nations an' men like you an' me—all draws our life an' power from dust—airth, or gold, or grass, or what not. An' awnly lookin' 'pon the whole story of a man or a family when 'tis told to the end, can you say wheer 'twas it reached the high-watter mark an' measure the sum weight of the gude or bad to be set against its name. Do you take me?"

Young Reed nodded.

"In paart I do," he said.

"Very well, then. Now I be gwaine to my meal."

Having made all ready for a new-comer, as yet upon the sea, Mr. Brimblecombe locked up the Yeoland vault again. He then walked to a rubbish heap at the back of the church behind the tower, there deposited the rags of a pall taken from the coffin that he had just deposed, and so returned home.

At his door stood Stapledon, smoking a pipe before breakfast; indeed of late Myles had fallen much upon tobacco and the company of his horse and dogs. But neither narcotic nor the trustful eyes of the dumb animals he loved possessed power to lighten loads that now weighed upon his heart. They lay beyond the alleviation of drug or the affectionate regard of beasts. This sudden death had shocked him immeasurably, and in process of time he began to accuse himself of it and saddle his conscience with the self-same deed that Honor had instantly committed to her own account on hearing the ill tidings. Stapledon felt that he was sole cause of the disastrous catastrophe; that by blundering blindly into the united lives of this woman and man he had destroyed the one and blackened all the future days of the other. Before this spectacle, very real, very bitter contrition and self-accusation overwhelmed him. And that the lash fell vainly rendered its sting the greater. But he could not punish himself adequately, and at length even remorse fainted before the sure knowledge that Yeoland was beyond all reach of prayer or petition. Stapledon's was not a nature that could grieve for long over an evil beyond possibility of cure. In any sort of future he disbelieved; yet, if such existed, then there might be time in it for Christopher Yeoland to settle with him. Meanwhile, a living, suffering woman remained. He thought without ceasing of Honor, he asked himself by how much this event altered his duty with regard to her, and finally determined, through turmoil of sleepless nights and much torture of the mind, to do as he had already determined before this sad news came, and leave Bear Down when certain buildings were completed and the new stock purchased.

For some weeks he had seen nothing of Honor, and purposely abstained from seeking her. Concerning her, however, he had learnt from Sally Cramphorn, who described how the mistress kept her room for two days from Easter Sunday, how she had then reappeared, dressed in mourning, and how that ever since she had spent most of her time with Mr. Endicott, and preserved an unusual silence. For nearly three weeks Honor did not pass beyond her garden; and this fact confirmed Stapledon in a suspicion that she had so acted and avoided the land to escape from sight of him. He felt such a desire natural in her, and only wondered that she had not known him well enough to rest assured he would not seek her or cross her path.

Then he learned that the girl was going from home for a while to visit an aunt at Exeter; and, once assured of her departure, he hastened to Bear Down and won a lengthy conversation with Mark Endicott. Women were at work in the kitchen; so, setting down his needles and worsted, Mark walked out of doors, took the arm Myles offered, and moved with him slowly along the hillside. They spoke first of Christopher Yeoland.

"I can't believe it yet somehow. A man so full of life and possibilities, with all the world before him to do some good in. A sad death; a cruel death."

"As to that, I don't know," answered the elder. "He's out of earshot of our opinions now, poor fellow; but I'm not ashamed to say behind his back what I told him to his face more than once. Never a man played a poorer game with his time. 'Tis the life of him looks sad and cruel to me—not the death."

"So young as he was."

"What's that? Only a woman would be soft enough to mourn there. 'Tisn't the years of a man's life that matter, but the manner of living 'em. The length of the thread's no part of our labour—only the spinning of it. He went—poor soul—but left no ball of yarn behind him—nought but a tangle of broken ends and aimless beginnings. 'Tis the moral sticking out of this I speak for—not to blame the man. God knows I don't judge him unkindly. My youth was no better spent—maybe not so well."

Stapledon's mind continued to be occupied by the former figure.

"The spinning—yes, the spinning," he said. "That's a true saying; for, if you look at it, all life's much like a ropewalk, where we toil—walking backwards—with our faces turned away from fate."

"Some are blind for choice—such as you," answered Mr. Endicott; "some judge they've got the light; some hope they have; some know they have. That last sort denies it to all but themselves, an' won't even let another soul carry a different pattern candlestick to their own. But a man may envy such high faith, for it's alive; it rounds the rough edges of life; sets folk at peace with the prospect of their own eternity; smooths the crumples in their deathbeds at the finish."

"I don't know. I've never heard that your thorough-paced believers make a better end than other folks," Myles answered. "My small experience is that they regard death with far more concern and dread than the rudderless ones who believe the grave is the end."

"That's only to say a fear of death's nature-planted and goes down deeper than dogma. Most makes of mind will always shrink from it, so long as life's good to live. Faith is a priceless treasure, say what you may, if a body has really got it. I'll maintain that so long as I can talk and think. The man who pretends he has it, and has not, carries his own punishment for that daily lie with him. For the Lord of the Blessings never could abide pretence. Take Him or leave Him; but don't play at being sheep of His fold for private ends. That's a game deserves worse damnation than most human baseness."