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 havage3 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.”
“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.”
“Yes, yes. Take Him as He is; and take what He brought, and be thankful. Lord of the Blessings! Isn’t that a title high enough? But here’s my thought and sure belief, uncle. The discovery called Christianity depended on no man, no single advent of a prophet, or poet, or saviour. It was a part of human nature always, a gold bred in the very heart’s core of humanity. And Christ’s part was to find the gold and bring it into the light. Burn your book; let the beautiful story go. It is ruined, worm-eaten, riddled by the centuries and follies and lies heaped upon it. Sweep your institutions all clean away and Christianity remains, a sublime discovery, the glorious, highest known possibility of man’s mind towards goodness. Lord of the Blessings! What dogma intrudes amongst them to blind and blight and make our hearts ache? They are alive and eternal—as all that is true must be eternal. They were waiting—hidden in human hearts—left for a man to discover, not for a God to invent. Who cares for the old dead theories that explained rainbows and precious stones, and the colour of a summer-clad heath and the strength of the solid earth? We have the things themselves. And so with the message of Christ.”
“Wild man’s talk,” said Mark. “And quite out of your usual solid way of thought. There’s more hid in the Rock of Ages than a vein of gold opened by a chance good man; but you and me won’t argue on that, because we’re not built to convince each other. With years may come light; Potter Time may mould a bit of faith into the fabric of even you presently; who can tell? But spin slow and sure, as you mostly do—look to the thread and see you leave no knot or kink behind as won’t stand the strain that life may call it to bear any moment.”
“There’s another thought rises from what you said; and I’ll tell you why I’m on that morbid tack in a moment. You declare the length of the thread is out of our keeping, and that a mind will shrink naturally from death so long as life is good. But how many a poor fool does determine the length and cut the thread when life ceases to be good?”
“Determine the length they don’t. They are the puppets, and when the string is pulled they make their bow and go off the scene—by their own hand, if it is to be.”
“Humanity holds suicide a crime now. Once, I learn, it was not so. Great heathen men destroyed themselves, yet do not lack marble statues for it. Only yesterday, as one might say, a man was cut off and buried at crossroads with a stake through his belly if he dared to die by his own hand. The Church recognises no shades of meaning in this matter, and so to-day, as often as not, a coroner’s jury bleats out a solemn and deliberate lie—so that a man shall be buried with the blessing of the Church and rest in God’s acre against the trump. But there’s no greater piece of solemn humbug than that eternal verdict.”
“I thought much of these things when my eyes were put out. I have been on the brink myself, but ’twas ordained my thread should run. A man must be mad to destroy himself—mad or else a coward.”
“Most times cowardly perhaps,” answered Myles. “But to be a coward is not to be a lunatic. Suicide is one of those matters we shut our eyes about—one of the things we won’t face and thresh out, because the Church is so determined on the point. Not but a man may picture circumstances when a self-death would be a great deed. You may lay down your life for your friend in more ways than one. Such a thing can rise to greatness or sink to contempt according to the mainspring of the action. Some at least might think so, and that’s why I’m on this subject. I feel a shadowy fear sometimes that Christopher Yeoland might have had some such fancy—would even have done such a crack-brained deed for love of Honor. I bid his friend be very plain with him and explain the gap that his going left in her life. I made it as clear as I had power to. Honor distinctly told me that she still loved him too well to marry any other man. That was all he had need to know, and I asked Clack to make Yeoland return to her on the strength of her confession.”
“And now he does.”
“How might he have argued when you consider his great love for her? Is it not possible that he thought so? Is it not possible that he said, ‘I am the obstacle. Let me go beyond reach, and Honor—who still feels that nothing can wipe out our old understanding—will be in reality free?’ Might he not reason in that way?”
The old man shook his head.
“Not to the extent of blotting himself out by death. Had the cases been reversed, I could almost picture you destroying yourself, since your views are what they are. You might do it, worse luck—Yeoland never. Besides, what necessity? Such a course would be merely like a stage play under these circumstances.”
“But there was an inclination towards just that in him; towards a theatrical sort of way—unreal.”
“You read him like that. But he wasn’t so superficial as he seemed to a man of your build of mind. You don’t find Honor superficial? No—he wouldn’t kill himself, because the necessity wouldn’t appear from his point of view. As I say, you’d blunder into the act much sooner than Yeoland.”
“Not so at all. You misunderstand me.”
“Well, at least you can’t see what would be easier and pleasanter, and answer the purpose just as well under our present civilisation. Consider. How stands the problem if Yeoland married somebody else? You’ll find that meets the case at every point. I’m not belittling Yeoland. Who knows what chances of greatness there may have been hidden and lost in him? Life only calls into play a thousandth part of any man’s powers during his brief tale of days, and most of us die full of possibilities unguessed even by ourselves, because the hazard never rose; but Yeoland’s greatness, if greatness he had, would not have led him off the stage by that road. He didn’t die willingly, I promise you. Come back he might have upon your message, if he had lived; or married he might have, even out of consideration for Honor’s future. We’ll allow him all the credit belonging to possibilities. Meantime, the only thing that we know beyond his death is a last wish expressed to Clack—a wish quite in keeping with his character.”
“To be brought home again.”
“Yes, the desire to rest his bones in Little Silver. Struck for death, the thought in his mind was not death, nor Honor, nor you. His love for the grass and the trees and the earth of his mother-land woke in him; dying, his heart turned to Godleigh and his own old roof-tree. The picture of the place was the last on his brain when all things were fading away.”
The other bowed his head; then he asked concerning Honor.
“It’s hit her hard,” answered Mark Endicott. “This sudden end of him has been a burnish on the glass of memory—polished it very bright. She has lived through the summer weather with him and talked fitfully of woodland walks by him, and chatter of birds, and shining of Teign, and cutting of letters on tree trunks. The glow and glory of love slowly growing in them—sad enough to look back on for those that love her.”
“Sad enough. And my share of the pain’s all too light.”
“Who knows how much or how little you deserve? You were sent to play your part in her life. Just a bit of the machine. Change—change—change—that’s the eternal law that twists the wheel and opens the womb; digs the grave and frets the name off the tombstone; gnaws away the stars; cools the sun in heaven and the first love of a young maid’s heart. You brought something new into her life—for better or for worse. Something new and something true, as I think; but maybe truth’s not always the right medicine at all hours. Anyhow change will work its own way with time and space and the things that belong to them. She was torn in half between you, and brave enough to make naked confession of it. That proclaimed her either a greater character than we thought once, or a poorer thing every way—according to the mind that views the case.”
“I didn’t know such a tangle could happen.”
“Every sort of tangle can happen where men and women are concerned. Not that she’s not a puzzle to me, too, every hour. She has gone now for a while to Exeter. I advised that she should bide there until after the funeral, but she scorned the thought. ‘I’m chief mourner in truth, if not in name,’ she said; and so she will be. Time must do the rest.”
“The last resource of the wretched.”
“And the best to be relied on.”
“I can only hope to God she’s not to be unhappy for ever.”
“She gets her happiness, like a bee gets honey—here, there, everywhere, by fits and snatches. Too quick to see the inner comedy of human affairs to be unhappy for ever, or happy for long. And what are you going to do, Myles?”
“I thought to go for good—yes, for good this time.”
“Couldn’t do better. She will read you into these chapters of her life. Can’t help it. But Time’s on your side too, though you slight him. And this, at least, you’ll remember: if she wants you to come back, she won’t hesitate to let you know it.”
Notes
3 Havage = ancestry.