Chapter X Three Angry Maids
Upon the day that Myles Stapledon determined with himself to leave Little Silver, Christopher’s patience broke down, and he wrote to Honor concerning their protracted quarrel. This communication it pleased him to begin in a tone of most unusual severity. He struck the note in jest at first, then proceeded with it in earnest. He bid his lady establish her mind more firmly and affirm her desires. He returned her liberty, hinted that, if he so willed, he might let Godleigh Park to a wealthy Plymouth tradesman, who much desired to secure it, and himself go abroad for an indefinite period of years. Then, weary of these heroics, Christopher became himself on the third page of the note, expressed unbounded contrition for his sins, begged his sweetheart’s forgiveness, and prayed her to name a meeting-place that he might make atonement in person. With joke and jest the letter wound to its close; and he despatched it to Bear Down upon the following morning.
Mr. Gregory Libby happened to be the messenger, and of this worthy it may be said that, while now a person well-to-do in the judgment of Little Silver, yet he displayed more sense than had been prophesied for him, kept his money in his purse, and returned to his humble but necessary occupation of hedge-trimming. He was working about Godleigh at present, and being the first available fellow-creature who met Yeoland’s eye as he entered the air, letter in hand, his temporary master bid Gregory drop gauntlet and pruning-hook that he might play postman instead for a while.
The youth departed then to Endicott’s under a personal and private excitement, for his own romance lay there, as it pleased him to think, and he was conducting it with deliberate and calculating method. Libby found himself divided between the daughters of Mr. Cramphorn, and, as those young women knew this fact, the tension between them increased with his delay. Upon the whole he preferred Sally, as the more splendid animal; but the man was far too cunning to commit himself rashly. His desires by no means blinded him, and he looked far ahead and wondered with some low shrewdness which of the maids enjoyed larger part of her father’s regard, and which might hope for a lion’s share of Jonah’s possessions when the head-man at Bear Down should pass away. In this direction Mr. Libby was prosecuting his inquiries; and the operation proved difficult and delicate, for Cramphorn disliked him. Margery met the messenger, and gave a little purr of pleasure as she opened the kitchen door.
“Come in, come in the kitchen,” she said; “I’m all alone for the minute if you ban’t feared o’ me, Mr. Libby.”
“Very glad to see you again,” said Gregory, shaking her hand and holding it a moment afterwards.
“So be I you. I heard your butivul singing to church Sunday, but me, bein’ in the choir, I couldn’t look about to catch your eye.”
“Wheer’s Sally to?” he asked suddenly, after they had talked a few moments on general subjects.
The girl’s face fell and her voice hardened.
“How should I knaw? To work, I suppose.”
“I awften wonder as her hands doan’t suffer by it,” mused Libby.
“They do,” she answered with cruel eagerness. “Feel mine.”
She pressed her palms into his, considering that the opportunity permitted her so to do without any lack of propriety. And he held them and found them soft and cool, but a thought thin to his taste. She dropped her eyelids, and he looked at her long lashes and the thick rolls of dark hair on her head. Then his eyes ranged on. Her face was pretty, with a prim prettiness, but for the rest Margery wholly lacked her sister’s physical splendours. No grand curves of bosom met Mr. Libby’s little shifty eyes. The girl, indeed, was slight and thin.
He dropped her hand, and she, knowing by intuition the very matter of his mind, spoke. Her voice was the sweetest thing about her, though people often forgot that fact in the word it uttered. Margery had a bad temper and a shrewish tongue. Now the bells jangled, and she fell sharply upon her absent sister. She declared that she feared for her; that Sally was growing unmaidenly as a result of her outdoor duties. Then came a subtle cut—and Margery looked away from her listener’s face as she uttered it.
“Her could put you in her pocket and not knaw you was theer. I’ve heard her say so.”
Mr. Libby grew very red.
“Ban’t the way for a woman to talk about any chap,” he said.
“Coourse it ban’t. That’s it with she. So much working beside the men, an’ killin’ fowls, an’ such like makes her rough an’ rough-tongued. Though a very gude sister to me, I’m sure, an’——”
She had seen Sally approaching; hence this lame conclusion. The women’s eyes met as the elder spoke.
“Wheer’s faither to, Margery? Ah! Mr. Libby—didn’t see you. You’m up here airly—helpin’ her to waste time by the look of it.”
“Theer’s some doan’t want no help,” retorted the other. “What be you doin’ indoors? Your plaace is ’pon the land with the men.”
“Wheer you’d like to be, if they’d let ’e,” stung the other; “but you’m no gude to ’em—a poor pin-tailed wench like you.”
“Ess fay! Us must have a brazen faace an’ awver-blawn shape like yourn to make the men come about us! Ban’t sense—awnly fat they look for in a female of coourse!” snapped back Margery; and in the meantime the cause of this explosion—proud of his power, but uneasy before the wrath of women—prepared to depart. Fortune favoured his exit, for Honor appeared suddenly at the other end of the farmyard with some kittens in her hands and a mother cat, tail in air, marching beside her and lifting misty green eyes, full of joy.
Libby turned therefore, delivered his letter, and was gone; while behind him voices clashed in anger, one sweet, one shrill. Then a door slammed as Margery hastened away upon a Parthian shot, and her sister stamped furiously, having no word to answer but a man’s. Sally immediately left the house and proceeded after the messenger; but a possibility of this he had foreseen, and was now well upon his way back to Godleigh. Sally therefore found herself disappointed anew, and marked her emotions by ill-treating a pig that had the misfortune to cross her stormy path.
Another woman’s soul was also in arms; and while Margery wept invisible and her sister used the ugliest words that she knew, under her breath, their mistress walked up and down the grass plot where it extended between the farm and the fields, separated from the latter by a dip in the land and a strange fence of granite posts and old steel rope.
Honor had now come from seeing Myles Stapledon. Together, after breakfast, they had inspected a new cow-byre on outlying land, and, upon the way back, he told her that he designed to return to Tavistock at the end of that week. Only by a sudden alteration of pace and change of foot did she show her first surprise. Then she lifted a questioning gaze to his impassive face.
“Why?” she asked.
“Well, why not? I’ve been here three months and there is nothing more for me to do—at any rate nothing that need keep me on the spot.”
“There’s still less for you to do at Tavistock. You told me a month ago that there was nothing to take you back. You’ve sold the old house and let the mill.”
“It is so; but I must—I have plans—I may invest some money at Plymouth. And I must work, you know.”
“Are you not working here?”
“Why, not what I call work. Only strolling about watching other people.”
Honor changed the subject after a short silence.
“Did you see Christopher on Sunday? I thought you were to do so?”
“Yes; the linen-draper from Plymouth has been at him again. He’s mad about Godleigh; he makes a splendid offer to rent it for three years. And he’ll spend good money upon improvements annually in addition to quite a fancy rent.”
“Did you advise Christopher to accept it?”
“Most certainly I did. It would help to lessen his monetary bothers; but he was in one of his wildly humorous moods and made fun of all things in heaven and earth.”
Honor tightened her lips. Their first great quarrel, it appeared, was not weighing very heavily on her lover.
“He refused, of course.”
“He said that he would let you decide. But he vows he can’t live out of sight of Godleigh and can’t imagine himself a trespasser on his own land. He was sentimental. But he has such an artist’s mind. ’Tis a pity he’s not got some gift of expression as an outlet—pictures or verses or something.”
“That can have nothing to do with your idea of going away, however, Myles?” asked Honor, swinging back to the matter in her mind.
“Nothing whatever; why should it?”
“I don’t want you to go away,” she said; and some passion trembled in her voice. “You won’t give me any reason why you should do so, because there can be none.”
“We need not discuss it, cousin.”
“Then you’ll stop, since I ask you to?”
“No, I cannot, Honor. I must go. I have very sufficient reasons. Do not press me upon that point, but take my word for it.”
“You refuse me a reason? Then, I repeat, I wish you to stay. Everything cries out that you should. My future prosperity cries out. It is your duty to stay. Apart from Bear Down and me, you may do Christopher much good and help him to take life more seriously. Will you stay because I ask you to?”
“Why do you wish it?” he said.
“Because—I like you very much indeed; there—that’s straightforward and a good reason, though you’re so chary with yours.”
She looked frankly at him, but with annoyance rather than regard in her eyes.
“It is folly and senseless folly to go,” she continued calmly, while he gasped within and felt a mist crowding down on the world. “You like me too, a little—and you’re enlarging my mind beyond the limits of this wilderness of eternal grass and hay. Why, when Providence throws a little sunshine upon me, should I rush indoors out of it and draw down the blinds?”
He was going to mention Christopher again, but felt such an act would be unfair to the man in Honor’s present mood. For a moment he opened his mouth to argue the point she raised, then realised the danger and futility. Only by an assumption of carelessness amounting to the brutal could he keep his secret out of his voice. And in the light of what she had confessed so plainly, to be less frank himself was most difficult. Her words had set his heart beating like a hammer. His mind was overwhelmed with his first love, and to such a man it was an awful emotion. It shook him and unsteadied his voice as he looked at her, for she had never seemed more necessary to him than then.
“Don’t be so serious,” he said. “Your horizon will soon begin to enlarge with the coming interests. I’ve enjoyed my long visit more than I can tell you—much more than I can tell you; but go I must indeed.”
“Stop just one fortnight more, Myles?”
“Don’t ask it, Honor. It’s hard to say ‘No’ to you.”
“A week—a little week—to please me? Why shouldn’t you please me? Is it a crime to do that? I suppose it is, for nobody ever thinks of trying to.”
“I cannot alter my plans now. I must go on Saturday.”
“Go, then,” she said. “I’m rewarded for being so rude as to ask so often. I’m not nearly proud enough. That’s a distinction you’ve not taught me to achieve with all your lessons.”
She left him, but he overtook her in two strides, and walked at her right hand.
“Honor, please listen to me.”
“My dear cousin, don’t put on that haggard, not to say tragic, expression. It really is a matter of no moment. I only worried you because I’m spoiled and hate being crossed even in trifles. It was the disappointment of not getting my way that vexed me, not the actual point at question. If you can leave all your interests here without anxiety and trust me so far—why, I’m flattered.”
“Hear me, I say.”
“So will the whole world, if you speak so loud. What more is there to hear? You’re going on Saturday, and Tommy Bates shall drive you to Okehampton to catch the train.”
“You’re right—and wise,” he said more quietly. “No, I’ve nothing to say.”
Then he made a ghastly effort to be entertaining.
“And mind, Honor, I shall be very sharp if my cheque does not come each quarter on the right day. A hard taskmaster I shall be, I promise you.”
“Don’t, Myles,” she answered instantly, growing grave at his simulated merriment.
A few minutes afterwards she left him, sought out the squeaking kittens to calm her emotions, presently deposited them in a sunny corner with their parent, and, taking Christopher’s letter, walked out again upon the grass.
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.