Chapter XVII Spring on Scor Hill
Often it happens that small matters demand lengthy spaces in time for their development, while affairs of import and interests involving high changes are carried through at comet speed upon the crest of some few splendid or terrible moments. Thus did concerns of note to those playing a part of their history under our eyes tumble unexpectedly to the top, and an event take place wholly unforeseen by Myles Stapledon, though predicted and prophesied for a more or less remote future by Uncle Endicott. For this surprise one woman was responsible.
Honor returned from Exeter in time to be present at Christopher Yeoland’s funeral; and with her she bore a fair wreath of Eucharis lilies, which Mr. Brimblecombe consigned to a rubbish heap behind the church tower as soon as her back was turned, because he held flowers out of place on the coffin of quality. Those now occupying Godleigh for a term of years gladly allowed the recent possessor to pass his last night among men beneath that roof, and not a few folk representative of the district attended the obsequies in person or by proxy. So Christopher Yeoland was laid upon his shelf of slate, and Doctor Courteney Clack, for the benefit of such as cared to listen, told how a whip snake, falling from a tree, had fastened upon the dead man’s neck, and how, with few words and one wish to be buried at home, he had quickly passed away under the poison.
So that chapter closed at the mausoleum, whose guardian cherubs were moss-grown skulls; and day followed day, month succeeded upon month, into the time of early summer; of misty silver nights and shining noons; of warm rain and steaming fields; of the music of life from birds’ throats; of the scent of life in the chalices of bluebells; of the very heart-beat and pulse of life under the glades of green woods and beside the banks of Teign.
Then, in a June day’s shape, Time, of many disguises, began his work with Honor Endicott. A revulsion followed the gloom that had passed and pressed upon her; she mourned still, but for choice in the sunshine; and, growing suddenly athirst for the river and the manifold life that dwelt upon the brink of it, she took her rod as an excuse, passed upward alone, descended Scor Hill, and pursued her way eastward to a lonely glen where Teign winds into the woods of Godleigh. Many fair things broke bud about her, and in secret places the splendour of summer made ready. Soon the heather would illuminate these wastes and the foxgloves carry like colour aloft on countless steeples of purple bells; soon woodbine and briar would wreathe the granite, and little pearly clusters of blossom spring aloft from the red sundews in the marsh; while the king fern already spread his wide fronds above the home of the trout, and the brake fern slowly wove his particular green into the coombs and hills.
Despite a sure conviction that melancholy must henceforth encompass her every waking hour, Honor Endicott was not armed against the magic of this blue and golden day. She could fish with a fly, and that skilfully; and now, before the fact that a brisk rise dimpled and dappled the river, passing temptations to kill a trout wakened and were not repulsed. She set up her rod, and by chance mused as she did so upon Myles Stapledon. Him she had not seen for many days, but her regard had not diminished before his abstention. Indeed she appreciated it up to a point, though now it began to irk her. She did not know that he was about to depart definitely; for Mark Endicott had deemed it unnecessary to mention the fact.
At her third cast Honor got a good rise, and hooked a fish which began its battle for life with two rushes that had done honour to a heavier trout. Then it leapt out of the water, showed itself to be a half-pounder or thereabout, and headed up stream with a dozen frantic devices to foul the line in snag or weed. But Honor was mistress of the situation, turned the fish with the current, and, keeping on the deadly strain, soon wearied it. Then she wound in the line steadily, steered her victim to a little shelving backwater, and so, having no net, lifted the trout very gently out of its element on to the grass. Flushed with excitement, and feeling, almost against her will, that she was young, Honor gazed down upon gasping fario, admired the clean bulk of him, his fierce eye, dark olive back spotted with ebony and ruby, the lemon light along his plump sides, his silver belly, perfect proportions, and sweet smell. He heaved, opened his gills, sucked deep at the empty air, and protested at this slow drowning with a leap and quiver of suffering; whereupon, suddenly moved at thought of what this trout had done for her, Honor picked him up and put him back into the water, laughing to herself and at herself the while. After a gulp or two, strength returned to the fish, and like an arrow, leaving a long ripple over the shallow, he vanished back to the deep sweet water and his own sweet life.
Other trout were not so fortunate, however, and by noon, at which time all rise ceased, the angler had slain above half a dozen and was weary of slaughter. She fished up stream, and had now reached the tolmen—a great perforated stone that lies in the bed of Teign near Wallabrook’s confluence with it. And resting here awhile, she saw the figure of Myles Stapledon as he approached the river from a farm on the other side. The homestead of Batworthy, where it nestles upon the confines of the central waste, and peeps, with fair silver thatches, above its proper grove, shall be seen surrounded by heather and granite. The river babbles at its feet, and on every side extends Dartmoor to the high tors—north, south, and west. From hence came Myles Stapledon, after gathering certain information from a kindly colleague; and now he strode across the stream and on to within ten yards of Honor, yet failed to see her, where she sat motionless half hidden by ferns and grasses. He moved along, deep plunged in his own thoughts, and she determined to let him pass, until something in the weary, haggard look of him tempted her to change her mind. He was lonely—lonelier than she; he had nobody to care about him, and all his life to be lived. Perhaps, despite these sentimental thoughts, she had suffered him to go, but one circumstance decided her: on the arm of his workaday coat appeared a band of black. And, guessing something of his recent tribulations, she lifted her voice and called him.
“Myles! Why do you avoid me?”
He started and slipped a foot, but recovered instantly, turned, and approached her. His face betokened surprise and other emotion.
“How good of you to call me—how kind. I did not know that you were out on the Moor, or within a mile of this place. Else I would have gone back another way.”
“That’s not very friendly, I think. I don’t bite.”
“I thought—but like all thoughts of mine, though I’ve wasted hours on it, nothing was bred from it. At least I may accompany you back. It was most kind to call me. And most strange and culpable of me not to see you.”
She noticed his gratitude, and it touched her a little.
“I’ve killed eight trout,” she said; “one nearly three-quarters of a pound.”
“A grand fish. I will carry them for you. Fine weather to-day and the summer really at the door.”
“It was thoughtful of you to keep away, Myles. I appreciated that.”
“I should have gone clean and haunted the land no further; but there was much to do. Now all is done, and I’m glad of this chance to tell you so. I can really depart now. You’ll think it a cry of ‘Wolf!’ and doubt my strength to turn my back on Bear Down again; but go I must at last.”
She was reflecting with lightning rapidity. That he meant what he said she did not doubt. The news, indeed, was hardly unexpected; yet it came too suddenly for her peace of mind. There existed a side to this action in which she had an interest. Indeed with her might lie the entire future of him, if she willed it so. Decisions now cried to be made, and while even that morning they had looked afar off, vague, nebulous as need be, now they rushed up from the horizon of the future to the very zenith of the present. Yet she could not decide thus instantly, so temporised and asked idle questions to gain time.
“Of what were you thinking when I saw you cross the river with your head so low?” she asked, and hoped that his answer might help her. But nothing was further from his mind than the matter in hers. He answered baldly—
“My head was bent that I might see my way on the stepping-stones. As to my thoughts, I only had a muddled idea about the season and the green things—friends and foes—all growing together at the beginning of the race—all full of youth and sap and trust—so to speak; and none seeing any danger in the embrace of his companion. Look at that pest, the beautiful bindweed. It breaks out of the earth with slender fingers, weak as a baby’s, yet it grows into a cruel, soft, choking thing of a thousand hands—more dangerous to its neighbour than tiger to man—a garotter, a Thug, a traitor that hangs out lovely bells and twines its death into fair festoons that it may hide the corpse of its own strangling.”
“And then?”
“That was all my thought. Yet I seemed to feel akin to the plant myself.”
“Something has changed you since we dropped out of one another’s lives. Fancy a practical farmer mooning over such nonsense! Bindweed can be pulled up and burnt—even if it’s growing in your heart.”
“How like you to say that! It is good to me to hear your voice again, Honor.”
“Take down my rod then, and tell me why you are going. Half of Endicott’s is your own.”
“I thought—I believed that you would be happier if I did so. And I still suspect that is the case. I owe you deeper reparation than ever a man owed a woman.”
“You are too good, but your goodness becomes morbid.”
“I’m only a clumsy fool, and never knew how clumsy or how much a fool until I met you.”
“No, I say you are really good. Goodness is a matter of temperament, not morals. Some of the most God-fearing, church-going people I know can’t be good; some of the worst people I ever heard about—even frank heathens like yourself—can’t be bad. There’s a paradox for you to preach about!”
But he shook his head.
“Your mind’s too quick for me. Yet I think I know what you mean. By ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ you signify a nature sympathetic or otherwise. It’s all a question of selfishness at bottom.”
“But the day looks too beautiful for such talk,” answered Honor.
“So it is; I don’t desire to talk of anything. You can’t guess what it is to me to hear your voice again—just the music of it. It intoxicates me, like drink.”
“You’re dreaming; and, besides, you’re going away.”
The light died out of his face, and they walked together in silence a few paces. Then the girl’s mind established itself, and her love was a large factor in that decision, though not the only one. She determined upon a course of action beyond measure unconventional, but that aspect of the deed weighed most lightly with her.
They were passing over the face of Scor Hill when she turned to the left, where stood that ancient monument of the past named Scor Hill Circle.
“I’m going down to the old ring,” she said; “I’ve a fancy to visit it.”
He followed without speech, his mind occupied by a frosty picture of their last visit to the same spot. Now it basked under sunlight, and spring had touched both the splinters of granite and the lonely theatre in which they stood. Upon the weathered planes of the stones were chased quaint patterns and beads of moss, together with those mystic creatures of ochre and ebony, grey and gold, that suck life from air and adamant and clothe the dry bones of Earth with old Time’s livery.
Upon a fallen stone in the midst, where young heather sprouted in tufts and cushions, Honor sat down awhile; and seeing that she remained silent, Myles uttered some platitudes concerning the spot and the ceremonies of heathen ritual, state, or sacrifice that had aforetime marked it. The upright stones surrounded them where they sat beside a sort of central altar of fading furze. The giant block of the circle stood on the north of its circumference, and upon more than one of the unshaped masses were spots rubbed clean by beasts and holding amid their incrustations red hairs of cattle, or flecks of wool from the fleeces of the flocks. Even now a heifer grazed upon the grass within the circle; its herd roamed below; round about the valley rose old familiar tors; while sleepy summer haze stole hither and thither upon the crowns of Watern and Steeperton, and dimmed the huge bulk of Cosdon Beacon where it swelled towards the north.
“When did we last come here?” began Honor suddenly.
“On the day of the snowstorm.”
“Ah, yes. We were riding, and stopped a moment here. Why?”
Stapledon looked at her, then turned his head away.
“If you have forgotten, it is good,” he said.
“What did I say to that great question, Myles?”
“Spare me that, Honor. I have been punished enough.”
“Don’t generalise. What did I say?”
“That you could marry neither of us—neither Yeoland nor me—out of consideration for the other.”
“And you gasped when you heard it; and I kept my word. Now the pity is that you must keep yours.”
“Mine?”
“Never to ask again what I would not give then.”
“Honor!”
“Hush. Don’t break your word for such a trifle as a wife. I’m accustomed to doing unmaidenly, horrible things, so this doesn’t hurt me as much as it would a proper-thinking, proper-feeling woman. I love you; I always have loved you since I knew you. And I suppose you love me still—more or less. He who has gone—has gone. There will never be another Christo for me, Myles. You cannot take his place; and if you were dead and he was alive, he could never have taken yours. That’s my peculiarly deranged attitude. But here I sit, and I should like to be your wife, because life is short and a woman’s a fool to throw away good love and starve herself when plenty is offered.”
Stapledon’s dog looked up from his seat on the heather, barked and wagged his tail, knowing that his master was happy; and the heifer, startled by these canine expressions of delight and sudden ejaculations uttered aloud in a man’s deep voice, flung up her hind legs wildly and cutting cumbrous capers, to indicate that she too appreciated the romance of the moment, shambled away from the grey circle to join her companions in the valley below.