Читать книгу Sons of the Morning - Eden Phillpotts - Страница 7

While Myles Stapledon played a busy part at the farm and found ample outlet for his small capital, ample occupation for his energies, Honor roamed dreaming through the August days with Christopher. As for Myles, he was a practical farmer and soon discovered what Mark Endicott had anticipated, that no mean possibilities lurked in Bear Down. The place indeed cried out for spending of money and increase of stock, but it promised adequate return upon outlay—a return at least reasonable viewed from the present low estate and reduced capabilities of English land. Stapledon was not hungry for any immediate or amazing profit, but Endicott's seemed certain to produce a fair interest upon the two thousand pounds he embarked there; he liked the farm and he was satisfied. At his cousin's particular desire, Myles stayed to see the money spent according to his will. Some of it went in building; and bygone beauties of old ripe thatches and cob walls that crumbled their native red through many coats of mellow whitewash, now vanished, yielding place to bricks, blue slates, and staring iron. A new atmosphere moved over the stagnation of Endicott's and the blind man settled into a great content.

The mistress had other matters to fill her thoughts, and, as the autumn approached, private concerns wholly occupied her. For Honor was more frank with herself than is possible to a soul that lacks humour; and a problem now rose ahead of her beyond the solution of days and nights; a mystery that developed, deepened, heightened, until it became a distraction and a trouble. Yet there was laughter in it, but of a sub-acid sort, neither wholesome nor pleasant.

Once in position of proud possessor, Christopher Yeoland exhibited no further alarm and but little apparent eagerness in the matter of his united future with Honor. Marriage appeared to be the last thing in his thought, and the temperament of the man at this crisis became visible and offered matter of comment for the most cursory observers. The fact of delay suited Honor well enough in reality, for she had little intention or desire to marry immediately, but that Christopher should be of this mind piqued her. His perfect equanimity before the prospect of an indefinite engagement secretly made Honor somewhat indignant. It did not become her lover in her eyes. He was not indifferent, that she knew; he was not cold, that she hoped; but his temper in this perfect readiness to postpone matrimony showed him to Honor in a new sidelight. Naturally enough she did not understand the trait, though it was characteristic; and her discomfort existed in a vague sense that his attitude, so much the reverse of a compliment to her, must have been awakened by some deficiency in herself. That the imperfection lay in him she did not imagine; that his love was a little anæmic in a positive direction she could not be supposed to suspect. Intellectually at least Christopher always sufficed, and Honor's uneasiness usually evaporated when in his company, though it was prone to take shape and substance again when absent from him. He always spoke of marriage as a remote goal—wholly desirable indeed—but approached by such pleasant ways that most rambling and desultory progress thereto was best; and, though entirely of his mind, it is a fact that the girl felt fluctuations of absolute annoyance that this should be his mind.

From which cause sprang secret laughter, that was born of fretfulness, that died in a frown.

Other trouble, of a sort widely different, also appeared upon Honor's horizon. After a period of supreme command, to find another enjoying almost like share of obedience and service at Bear Down seemed strange. But with absolute unconsciousness Myles Stapledon soon blundered into a prominence at Endicott's second only to her own. Nor was his position even second in some directions. Labouring folk follow a strong will by instinct, and Myles was striking such a dominant note of energy, activity, despatch in affairs, that the little community came presently to regard him as the new controller of its fortunes. Stapledon's name was upon the lips of the people more often than Honor's; even Jonah Cramphorn, whose noblest qualities appeared in a doglike and devout fidelity to the mistress, found Myles filling his mind as often as the busy new-comer filled his eye. At such times, in common with Churdles Ash and any other who might have enough imagination to regret an impossibility, Jonah mourned that it was Yeoland rather than Stapledon who had won his mistress's heart.

But the latter, full of business and loving work as only those love it who have devoted life thereto, overlooked the delicacy of his position at various minor points; and with sole purpose to save his cousin trouble he took much upon himself. It was sufficient that she said nothing and Mark Endicott approved. Once he offered to pay the hands at the accustomed hour of noon on Saturday; whereupon Honor blushed, and, becoming aware that he had hurt her, Myles expressed contrition with the utmost humility and heaped blame upon his blunder.

"It was only to save you trouble," he concluded.

"I know it; you are always doing so," she answered without irony. "But pay-day—that's the farmer's work."

Her answer, though not intended to do anything of the sort, forcibly reminded Myles that he had but a limited interest in Bear Down.

"Be frank," he said. "I'm such a thick-skinned fool that I may have blundered before and hurt you and never known it. Do not suffer me to do so again, Honor. I'm only very jealous for you and all that is yours."

"You are a great deal too kind to me, Myles, and have done more than I can find words to thank you for. You are the good genius here. I don't like to think of the loneliness we shall feel when you go from us."

"I'm not going yet awhile, I promise you," he answered.

Honor indeed appreciated her cousin's goodness fully, and, after this incident, had no more occasion to deplore his tact. She only spoke truth when affirming regret at the possibility of his departure. Her earliest sensations of oppression in his society had passed upon their walk over the Moor. From that moment the woman began to understand him and appreciate the strenuous simplicity of him. Sometimes he looked almost pathetic in his negations and his lonely and forlorn attitude towards the things of Hope; at others he rose into a being impressive, by that loneliness—a rare spirit who, upon "inbred loyalty unto Virtue, could serve her without a livery," and without a wage. Thus seen he interested Honor's intellect, and she speculated upon the strength of his armour if Chance called upon him to prove it. Not seldom she found herself in moods when a walk and a talk with Myles invigorated her; and she told her heart that such conversations made her return to Christopher with the greater zest, as an olive will reveal the delicate shades of flavour in fine wine. She assured herself of this fact repeatedly, until the reiteration of the idea caused her conscience to suspect its truth. She wilfully shut her eyes to its absurdity for a month, then changed her simile. Now she fancied that Christopher and Myles must impart an intellectual complement to one another, in that their qualities differed so extremely.

The result of this attitude was inevitable upon a woman of Honor's temperament. Comparison being impossible, she began to contrast the two men. One could be nothing to her; the other she had promised to marry; and even in the midst of her critical analysis she blamed herself, not without reason, in that her love for Christopher had no power to blind her. She asked herself bitterly what an affection was worth that could thus dwell in cold blood upon a lover's weaknesses. She answered herself that it was Christopher's own fault. She felt glad that he was what he was. His defects looked lovable; and only in the rather chilly daylight thrown by Stapledon's characteristics did Christo's blemishes appear at all. Then Honor grew very angry with herself, but tried to believe that her anger was directed against Myles. She flew upon him savagely to tear him to pieces; she strove furiously, pitilessly to strip him to his soul; but she was just between the ebullitions of anger, and, after her hurricane onset, the lacerated figure of her cousin still stood a man. He was difficult to belittle or disparage by the nature of him. One may trample a flower-bed into unlovely ruin in a moment; to rob a lichen-clad rock of its particular beauty is a harder and a lengthier task. Granted that the man was ponderous and lacking in laughter, he could yet be kind and gentle to all; granted that he appeared oppressed with the necessity of setting a good example to the world, yet he was in earnest, of self-denying and simple habit, one who apparently practised nothing he did not preach. She turned impatiently away from the picture of such admirable qualities; she told herself that he was little better than a savage in some aspects, a prig in all the rest. Yet Honor Endicott had lived too close to Nature to make the mistake of any lengthened self-deception. Myles was living a life that would wear, as against an existence which even her green experience of the world whispered was irrational; and though the shrewdness of Stapledon appeared a drab and unlovely compound beside Christopher's sparkling philosophy, yet Honor knew which stood for the juster views of life and conduct. One represented a grey twilight, clear and calm if wholly lacking any splendid height of hue; the other promised wide contrasts, tropical sunshine, and probable tempests. Not a little in the sobriety of the first picture attracted her; but she was none the less well pleased to think that she had already decided for the second. Herein she followed instinct, for her nature was of the sort that needed variable weather if intellectual health was to be her portion.

Yet these dissimilar men, as chance willed it, proved excellent friends, and, from the incident of their first meeting, grew into a sufficiently warm comradeship. Myles found himself gasping a dozen times a day before the audacities of Christopher. Sometimes indeed he suspected Yeoland's jewels of being paste; sometimes he marvelled how a professed Christian could propound certain theories; sometimes also he suspected that the Squire of Godleigh spoke truer than he knew. Christopher, for his part, welcomed the farmer, as he had welcomed any man whose destiny it was to lighten Honor's anxiety. That the new-comer was putting a couple of thousand pounds into Endicott's proved passport sufficient to Yeoland's esteem. Moreover, he liked Myles for other reasons. They met often in the fields and high places at dawn, and from standpoints widely different they both approached Nature with love. Christopher took a telescopic survey, delighted in wide harmonies, great shadows, upheavals of cloud, storms, sunsets, rivers overflowing and the magic of the mist. He knew the name of nothing and shrank from scientific approach to natural objects—to bird or bud or berry; but he affected all the wild animate and inanimate life of his woods and rivers; he was reluctant to interfere with anything; he hated the mournful echo of a woodman's axe in spring, though each dull reverberation promised a guinea for his empty purse. Stapledon, on the contrary, while not dead to spacious manifestations of force, was also microscopic. He missed much that the other was quick to glean, but gained an intimate knowledge of matters radical, and, being introspective, dug deeper lessons out of Devon hedgerows and the economy of Dartmoor bogs than Yeoland gathered from the procession of all the seasons as displayed in pomp and glory under the banner of the sun.

On a day when as yet no shadow had risen between them; when as yet Myles contemplated his cousin's engagement without uneasiness, and Christopher enjoyed the other's ingenuous commentary upon Honor's rare beauty of mind and body, they walked together at sunset on the high lands of Godleigh. Above the pine trees that encircled Yeoland's home and rose behind it, an offshoot from the Moor extended. Deep slopes of fern and grass, mountain ash and blackthorn, draped the sides of this elevation, and upon the crown of a little hill, sharing the same with wild ridges and boulders of stone, spread ruins and lay foundations of a building that had almost vanished. A single turret still stood, ceiled with the sky, carpeted with grass; and all round about a glory of purple heather fledged the granite, the evening scent of the bracken rose, flames of sunset fire touched stones and tree-tops, and burnt into the huge side of distant Cosdon Beacon, until that mountain was turned into a mist of gold.

"There would be a grand sky if we were on the Moor to-night," said Christopher; "not one of the clear, cloudless sort—as clean and uneventful as a saint's record—but what I call a human sunset—full of smudged splendour and gorgeous blots and tottering ruins, with live fire streaming out of the black abysses and an awful scarlet pall flung out to cover the great red-hot heart of the sun as he dips and dips."

"A sunset always means to-morrow to me."

"You're a farmer. Nothing ever means to-morrow to me."

"I can't believe that, Yeoland—not now that you've won Honor."

Christopher did not answer, but walked on where many an acre of fern spread over the southern face of the slope.

"Here you are," he said presently, indicating a burrow and a pile of mould. "Tommy Bates found it when he was here picking sloes and told me about it. I won't be sure it isn't a fox myself; though he declares the earth to be a badger's."

"Yes, I think that dead white grass means a badger. He brought it up from the valley."

"Then Tommy was right and I'm glad, for any distinguished stranger is welcome on my ground. What does the brute eat?"

"Roots and beech mast for choice. But he's carnivorous to the extent of an occasional frog or beetle; and I'm afraid he wouldn't pass a partridge's nest if there were eggs in it."

"That's a black mark against the beggar, but I'll pretend I don't know it."

They strolled forward and Myles kept his eyes upon the ground, while Christopher watched the sunset.

"It's a singular puzzle, the things that make a man melancholy," said the latter suddenly. "Once I had a theory that any perfect thing, no matter what, must produce sadness in the human mind, simply out of its perfection."

"A country life would be a pretty miserable business if that was so—with the perfect at the door of our eyes and ears all day long."

"Then I discovered that it depended on other considerations. Love of life is concerned with it. Youth saddens nobody; but age must. Our love of life wakes our sorrow for the old who are going out of it. 'Tis the difference between a bud and a withered blossom. Sunrise makes no man sad. That's why you love it, and love to be in it, as I do. The blush of dawn is like the warm cheek of a waking child—lovely; but sunset is a dying thing. There's sadness in that, and the more beautiful, the more sad."

"I cannot see anything to call sad in one or other."

"No, I suppose you can't; you've got such a devilish well-balanced mind."

A faint shadow of annoyance if not absolute contempt lurked in the tones of the speech; but Stapledon failed to see it.

"I wish I had," he answered. "There are plenty of things in Nature that make a man sad—sounds, sights, glimpses of the eternal battle under the eternal beauty. But sadness is weakness, say what you will. There's nothing to be sentimental about really. It's because we apply our rule of thumb to her; it's because we try to measure her wide methods by our own opinions on right and justice that we find her unjust. I told Honor something of this; but she agrees with you that Nature's quite beyond apology, and won't be convinced."

"You've told her so many things lately—opened her eyes, I'm sure, in so many directions. She's as solemn as an owl sometimes when I'm with her. Certainly she doesn't laugh as often as she used to."

Myles was much startled.

"Don't say that; don't say that. She's not meant to take sober views—not yet—not yet. She's living sunlight—the embodiment of laughter, and all the world's a funny picture-book to her still. To think I should have paid for the pleasure she's brought me by lessening her own! I hope you're utterly wrong, Yeoland. This is a very unquieting thought."

The man spoke much faster than usual, and with such evident concern that Christopher endeavoured to diminish the force of his speech.

"Perhaps I'm mistaken, as you say; perhaps the reason is that we are now definitely engaged. That may have induced gravity. Of course it is a solemn thing for an intelligent girl to cast in her lot with a pauper."

But Myles would not be distracted from the main issue.

"Her laughter is characteristic—marvellously musical—part of herself, like bells are part of a fair church. Think of making a belfry dumb by a deliberate act! Honor should always be smiling. A little sister of the spring she seems to me, and her laughter goes to my heart like a lark's song, for there's unconscious praise of God in it."

Yeoland glanced at the other.

"You can be sentimental too, then?"

"Not that, but I can be sad, and I am now. A man may well be so to think he has bated by one smile the happiness of Honor."

"Sorry I mentioned it."

"I'm glad. It was a great fault in me. I will try desperately to amend. I'm a dull dog, but I'll——"

"Don't, my dear chap. Don't do anything whatever. Be yourself, or you won't keep her respect. She hates shams. I would change too if I could. But she'd be down on me in a second if I attempted any reformation. The truth is we're both bursting with different good and brilliant qualities—you and I—and poor Honor is dazzled."

Stapledon did not laugh; he only experienced a great desire to be alone.

"Are you going to wait for the badger?" he asked, as they turned and retraced their way.

"Good Lord, no! Are you?"

"Certainly. It's only a matter of hours at most. I can sit silent in the fern with my eyes on the earth. I thought you wanted to see him."

"Not an atom. It's enough for me that he's here in snug quarters. My lord badger will show at moonrise, I expect. You'd better come down to the house and have a drink after the manifestation."

He tramped away; his footfall faded to a whisper in the fern; and Myles, reaching a place from which the aperture below was visible, settled himself and took a pipe from his pocket from habit, but did not load or light it. He had an oriental capacity for waiting, and his patience it was that had won much of his curious knowledge. A few hours more or less under the stars on a fine summer night were nothing but a pleasure to him. Rather did he welcome the pending vigil, for he desired to think, and he knew that a man may do so to best purpose in the air.

Once out of sight Christopher also stopped awhile and sat down upon a rock with his face uplifted. The rosy sky was paling, and already a little galaxy of lights afar off marked the village of Chagford, where it stood upon its own proper elevation under the Moor. Thus placed, in opposition to the vanished sun, detail appeared most clearly along the eastern hills and valleys. Cot, hamlet, white winding road stood forth upon the expanse, and while Christopher Yeoland watched the dwindling definition on earth there ascended a vast and misty shield of pearl into the fading sky. Through parallel bands of grey, like a faint ghost, it stole upwards into a rosy after-glow. Then the clouds faded, and died, and wakened again at the touch of the moon, as she arose with heightened glory and diminished girth, to wield a sceptre of silver over sleep. There descended then the great silence of such places, the silence that only country dwellers understand, the silence that can fret urban nerves into absolute suffering. Bedewed fern-fronds gathered light, and flung it like rain across the gloom, and brought far-reaching peace and contentment to the mind of Christopher. He dreamed dreams; he rose in spirit through the moony mist—a dimensionless, imponderable, spirit thing, ready to lose himself in one drop of diamond dew, hungry to fill high heaven and hug the round moon to his heart. For a little season he rejoiced in the trance of that hushed hour; then the moment of intoxication vanished, and he rose slowly and went his way.

The other man, after long waiting, was also rewarded. From beneath him, where he sat, there came at last a sound and a snuffling. The badger appeared, and the moonlight touched his little eyes and gleamed along his amber side-streaks as he put up his nose, sniffed the air with suspicion, stretched himself, scratched himself, then paddled silently away upon his nightly business through the aisles of the fern.

CHAPTER VIII.

OUT OF THE MIST

The calm awakened of moonlight, as quickly died, and Christopher Yeoland found himself in some uneasiness when he thought of his love. Whereon he based this irritation would have been difficult to determine, but a variety of small annoyances conspired to build it. These trifles, separately, laughter could blow away at a breath, but combined they grew into a shadow not easily dispelled. Already the name of Myles had oftener sounded upon Honor's lips than seemed necessary, even when Stapledon's position and importance at Bear Down were allowed; and now her name similarly echoed and re-echoed in the utterances of her cousin. Still Christopher smiled in thought.

"It's the novelty of him after me. I'm a mere rollicking, irresponsible brook—only good to drink from or fish in—for ideas; he's a useful, dreary canal—a most valuable contrivance—smooth, placid, not to say flat. Well, well, I must shake Honor up; I must——"

He reflected and debated upon various courses though immediate marriage was not included amongst them. But a fortnight later the situation had developed.

Honor and Christopher were riding together over the Moor; and, albeit the physical conditions promised fair enough until sunset-time, when both man and woman turned homewards very happy, yet each had grown miserable before the end, and they parted in anger upon the heathery wastes where northern Teign and Wallabrook wind underneath Scor Hill. For the weather of the high land and the weather of their minds simultaneously changed, and across both there passed a cloud. Over against the sunset, creeping magically as she is wont to creep, from the bosom of the Moor and the dark ways of unseen water, arose the Mist Mother. She appeared suddenly against the blue above, spread forth diaphanous draperies, twined her pearly arms among the stocks and stones and old, wind-bent bushes of the waste. Catching a radiance from the westering sun, she draped the grey heads of granite tors in cowls of gold; she rose and fell; she appeared and vanished; she stole forward suddenly; she wreathed curly tendrils of vapour over sedge and stone, green, quaking bog, still waters, and the peat cuttings that burnt red-hot under the level rays of the sun. Great solitary flakes of the mist, shining with ineffable lustre of light, lessened the sobriety of the heath; and upon their dazzling hearts, where they suddenly merged and spread in opposition to the sun on the slope of western-facing hills, there trembled out a spectral misty circle—a huge halo of colourless light drawn upon the glimmering moisture. Within it, a whitethorn stood bathed in a fiery glow without candescence; and from beneath the tree some wild creature—hare or fox—moved away silently and vanished under the curtain, while a curlew cried overhead invisible. The riders reined up and watched the luminous frolics of the Mist, where she played thus naked, like an innocent savage thing, before them.

"These are the moments when I seem to glimpse antique life through the grey—wolf-skins and dark human skins, coarse faces, black hair, bead-bright eyes, strange speech, the glimmer of tents or rush thatches through the mist. These, and the bark of dogs, laughter of women, tinkle of stone on stone, where some Damnonian hunter fabricates his flints and grunts of the wood-bears and the way to kill them."

"Always dreaming, dearest. I wonder what you would have done in those days? Did the Damnonians have Christos too?"

"Undoubtedly. I should have been a bard, or a tribal prophet, or something important and easy. I should have dreamed dreams, and told fortunes, and imparted a certain cultured flavour to the lodge. I should have been their oracle very likely—nice easy work being an oracle. In it you'll find the first dawn of the future art of criticism."

"Creation is better than criticism."

"That's your cousin, I'll swear! The very ring of him. No doubt he thinks so. Yet what can be more futile than unskilful creation? For that matter the awful amount of time that's wasted in all sorts of futile work."

"You're certainly sincere. You practise the virtues of laziness as well as preach them," said Honor without amusement.

"I do; but there's not that old note of admiration at my theories in your voice of late, my angel girl."

"No, Christo; I'm beginning to doubt, in a fleeting sort of way, if your gospel is quite the inspired thing you fancy it."

"Treason! You live too much in the atmosphere of honest toil, sweetheart. And there's hardly a butterfly left now to correct your impressions."

"No; they are all starving under leaves, poor things."

"Exactly—dying game; and the self-righteous ant is counting his stores—or is it the squirrel, or the dormouse? I know something or other hoards all the summer through to prolong his useless existence."

Honor did not answer. Then her lover suddenly remembered Myles, and his forehead wrinkled for a moment.

"Of course I'm not blind, Honor," he proceeded, in an altered tone. "I've seen the change these many days, and levelled a guess at the reason. Sobersides makes me look a weakling. Unfortunately he's such a real good chap I cannot be cross with him."

"Why should you be cross with anybody?"

"That's the question. You're the answer. I'm—I'm not exactly all I was to you. Don't clamour. It's true, and you know it's true. You're so exacting, so unrestful, so grave by fits lately. And he—he's always on your tongue too. You didn't know that, but it's the case. Natural perhaps—a strong personality, and so forth—yet—yet——"

"What nonsense this is, Christopher!"

"Of course it is. But you don't laugh. You never do laugh now. My own sober conviction is this; Stapledon's in love with you and doesn't know it. Don't fall off your pony."

"Christopher! You've no right, or reason, or shadow of a shade for saying such a ridiculous thing."

"There's that in your voice convinces me at this moment."

"Doesn't he know we're engaged? Would such a man allow himself for an instant——?"

"Of course he wouldn't. That's just what I argue, isn't it? He stops on here because he doesn't know what's happened to him yet, poor devil. When he finds out, he'll probably fly."

"You judge others by yourself, my dearest. Love! Why, he works too hard to waste his thoughts on any woman whatsoever. Never was a mind so seldom in the clouds."

"In the clouds—no; but on the earth—on the earth, and at your elbow."

"He's nothing of the kind."

"Well, then, you're always at his. Such a busy, bustling couple! I'm sure you're enough to make the very singing birds ashamed. When is he going?"

"When his money is laid out to his liking, I suppose. Not yet awhile, I hope."

"You don't want him to go?"

"Certainly I don't; why should I?"

"You admire him in a way?"

"In a great many ways. He's a restful man. There's a beautiful simplicity about his thoughts; and——"

"And he works?"

"You're trying to make me cross, Christo; but I don't think you will again."

"Ah! I have to thank him for that too! He's making you see how small it is to be cross with me. He's enlarging your mind, lifting it to the stars, burying it in the bogs, teaching you all about rainbows and tadpoles. He'll soak the sunshine out of your life if you're not careful; and then you'll grow as self-contained and sensible and perfect as he is."

"After which you won't want me any more, I suppose?"

"No—then you'd only be fit for—well, for him."

"I don't love you in these sneering moods, Christo. Why cannot you speak plainly? You've got some imaginary grievance. What is it?"

"I never said so. But—well, I have. I honestly believe I'm jealous—jealous of this superior man."

"You child!"

"There it is! It's come to that. I wasn't a child in your eyes a month ago. But I shall be called an infant in arms at this rate in another month."

"He can't help being a sensible, far-seeing man, any more than you can help being a——"

"Fool—say it; don't hesitate. Well, what then?"

Honor, despite her recent assertion, could still be angry with Christopher, because she loved him better than anything in the world. Her face flushed; she gathered her reins sharply.

"Then," she answered, "there's nothing more to be said—excepting that I'm a little tired of you to-day. We've seen too much of one another lately."

"Or too much of somebody else."

She wheeled away abruptly and galloped off, leaving him with the last word. One of her dogs, a big collie, stood irresolute, his left forepaw up, his eyes all doubt. Then he bent his great back like a bow, and bounded after his mistress; but Yeoland did not attempt to follow. He watched his lady awhile, and, when she was a quarter of a mile ahead, proceeded homewards.

She had chosen a winding way back to Bear Down, and he must pass the farm before she could return to it.

The man was perfectly calm to outward seeming, but he shook his head once or twice—shook it at his own folly.

"Poor little lass!" he said to himself. "Impatient—impatient—why? Because I was impatient, no doubt. Let me see—our first real quarrel since we were engaged."

As he went down the hill past Honor's home, a sudden fancy held him, and, acting upon it, he dismounted, hitched up his horse, and strolled round to the back of the house in hope that he might win a private word or two with Mark Endicott. Chance favoured him. Tea drinking was done, and the still, lonely hour following on that meal prevailed in the great kitchen. Without, spangled fowls clucked their last remarks for the day, and fluttered, with clumsy effort, to their perches in a great holly tree, where they roosted. At the open door a block, a bill-hook, and a leathern gauntlet lay beside a pile of split wood where Sally Cramphorn had been working; and upon the block a robin sat and sang.

Christopher lifted the latch and walked through a short passage to find Honor's uncle alone in the kitchen and talking to himself by snatches.

"Forgive me, Mr. Endicott," he said, breaking in upon the monologue; "I've no right to upset your reveries in this fashion, but I was passing and wanted a dozen words."

"And welcome, Yeoland. We've missed you at the Sunday supper of late weeks. How is it with you?"

"Oh, all right. Only just now I want to exchange ideas—impressions. You love my Honor better than anybody else in the world but myself. And love makes one jolly quick—sensitive—foolishly so perhaps. I didn't think it was in me to be sensitive; yet I find I am."

"Speak your mind, and I'll go on with my knitting—never blind man's holiday if you are a blind man, you know."

"You're like all the rest in this hive, always busy. I wonder if the drones blush when they're caught stealing honey?"

"Haven't much time for blushing. Yet 'tis certain that never drone stole sweeter honey than you have—if you are a drone."

"I'm coming to that. But the honey first. Frankly now, have you noticed any change in Honor of late days—since—well, within the last month or two."

Mr. Endicott reflected before making any answer, and tapped his needles slowly.

"There is a change," he said at length.

"She's restless," continued Christopher; "won't have her laugh out—stops in the middle, as if she suddenly remembered she was in church or somewhere. How d'you account for it?"

"She's grown a bit more strenuous since her engagement—more alive to the working-day side of things."

"Not lasting, I hope?"

"Please God, yes. She won't be any less happy."

"Of course Myles Stapledon's responsible. Yet how has he done it? You say you're glad to see Honor more serious-minded. Well, that means you would have made her so before now, if you could. You failed to change her in all these years; he has succeeded in clouding her life somehow within the space of two months. How can you explain that?"

"You're asking pithy questions, my son. And, by the voice of you, I'm inclined to reckon you're as likely to know the answers to them as I am. Maybe more likely. You're a man in love, and that quickens the wits of even the dullest clod who ever sat sighing on a gate, eating his turnip and finding it tasteless. I loved a maid once, too; but 'tis so far off."

"Well, there's something not wholly right in this. And they ought to know it."

"Certainly they don't—don't guess it or dream it. But leave that. Now you. You must tackle yourself. The remedy lies with you. This thing has made you think, at any rate."

"Well, yes. Honor isn't so satisfied with me as of old, somehow. Of course that's natural, but——"

"She loves you a thousand times better than you love yourself."

"And still isn't exactly happy in me."

"Are you happy in yourself? She's very well satisfied with you—worships the ground you walk on, as the saying is—but that's not to say she's satisfied with your life. And more am I, or anybody that cares about you. And more are you."

"Well, well; but Myles Stapledon—this dear, good chap. He's a—what? Why, a magnifying glass for people to see me in—upside down."

"He thinks very little about you, I fancy."

"He's succeeded in making me feel a fool, anyhow; and that's unpleasant. Tell me what to do, Mr. Endicott. Where shall I begin?"

"Begin to be a man, Yeoland. That's what a woman wants in her husband—wants it unconsciously before everything. A man—self-contained, resolute—a figure strong enough to lean upon in storm and stress."

"Stapledon is a man."

"He is, emphatically. He knows where he is going, and the road. He gets unity into his life, method into his to-morrows."

"To-morrow's always all right. It's to-day that bothers me so infernally."

"Ah! and yesterday must make you feel sick every time you think of it, if you've any conscience."

"I know there isn't much to show. Yet it seems such a poor compliment to the wonderful world to waste your time in grubbing meanly with your back to her. At best we can only get a few jewelled glimpses through these clay gates that we live behind. Then down comes the night, when no man may work or play. And we shall be an awfully long time dead. And what's the sum of a life's labour after all?"

"Get work," said Mark, "and drop that twaddle. Healthy work's the first law of Nature, no matter what wise men may say or poets sing. Liberty! It's a Jack-o'-lantern. There's no created thing can be free. Doing His will—all, all. Root and branch, berry and bud, feathered and furred creatures—all working to live complete. The lily does toil; and if you could see the double fringe of her roots above the bulb and under it—as I can well mind when I had eyes and loved the garden—you'd know it was so. There's no good thing in all the world got without labour at the back of it. Think what goes to build a flash of lightning—you that love storms. But the lightning's not free neither. And the Almighty's self works harder than all His worlds put together."

"Well, I'll do something definite. I think I'll write a book about birds. Tell me, does Honor speak much of her cousin?"

"She does."

"Yet if she knew—if she only knew. Why, God's light! she'd wither and lose her sap and grow old in two years with Stapledon. I know it, in the very heart of me, and I'd stake my life on it against all the prophets. There's that in close contact with him would freeze and kill such as Honor. Yes, kill her, for it's a vital part of her would suffer. Some fascination has sprung up from the contrast between us; and it has charmed her. She's bewitched. And yet—be frank, Mr. Endicott—do you believe that Stapledon is the husband for Honor? You've thought about it, naturally, because, before she and I were engaged, you told me that you hoped they might make a match for their own sakes and the farm's. Now what do you say? Would you, knowing her only less well than I do, wish that she could change?"

The other was silent.

"You would, then?"

"If I would," answered old Endicott, "I shouldn't have hesitated to say so. It's because I wouldn't that I was dumb."

"You wouldn't? That's a great weight off my mind, then."

"I mean no praise for you. I should like to chop you and Stapledon small, mix you, and mould you again. Yet what folly! Then she'd look at neither, for certain."

"Such a salad wouldn't be delectable. But thank you for heartening me. I'm the husband for your niece. I know it—sure as I'm a Christian. And she knew it a month ago; and she'll know it again a month hence, I pray, even if she's forgotten it for the moment. Now I'll clear out, and leave you with your thoughts."

"So you've quarrelled with her?"

"No, no, no; she quarrelled with me, very properly, very justly; then she left me in disgrace, and I came to you, hoping for a grain of comfort. I'm a poor prattler, you know—one who cannot hide my little dish of misery out of sight, but must always parade it if I suspect a sympathetic nature in man or woman. Good-bye again."

So Christopher departed, mounted his horse, and trotted home in most amiable mood.

CHAPTER IX.

THE WARNING