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.