Chapter III A Secret
Mark Endicott showed not a little interest in the matter of Cherry Grepe. Such a survival astonished him, and being somewhat of a student in folk-lore, he held that, far from discouraging the wise woman, she should be treated with all respect, and an effort made to gather a little of her occult knowledge.
By a coincidence, soon after Stapledon’s conversation with the wise woman, there came further corroboration of Cherry’s powers from the mouth of one among her steadfast clients. After supper, at that hour when the hands were wont to utter their opinions or seek for counsel from those in authority over them, Mr. Cramphorn opened a great question vital to his own peace of mind and the welfare of his daughters. Jonah loved them both with a generous measure of paternal regard for one of his mental restrictions. Next to his mistress in his esteem came Sally and Margery; and now, with passage of days, there grew in him a great perplexity, for his daughters were old enough to take husbands and both apparently desired the same; while, as if that did not present complication sufficient, the man their ardent hearts were fixed upon by no means commended himself to Cramphorn’s judgment.
As for Mr. Libby, with an impartiality very exasperating, he committed himself to no definite course. He made it plain that he desired an alliance with Jonah; yet, under pressure of such monkey brains as Providence had bestowed upon him, and secretly strong in two strings to his bow, he held the balance with great diplomacy between these maids and exercised a patience—easy to one who in reality possessed little love for either. His aim was to learn whether Sally or her sister had greatest measure of her father’s regard, for he was far-seeing, knew that Mr. Cramphorn might be considered a snug man, and must in the course of nature presently pass and leave his cottage and his savings behind him. The cottage lease had half a hundred years to run, and an acre of ground went with it. So Gregory, while he leant rather to Sally Cramphorn by reason of her physical splendours, was in no foolish frenzy for her, and the possible possession of a house and land had quickly turned the scale in favour of her sister. Moreover, he was alive to the fact that the father of the girls held him in open dislike; another sufficient cause for procrastination.
With indifferent good grace Jonah recorded his anxieties to Myles and Mark Endicott.
“Both wife-auld, an’ be gormed if I knaw what to do ’bout it. A gude few would have ’em, but not wan’s for theer market seemin’ly except that fantastical chap, Greg Libby, who stands between ’em, like a donkey between two dachells. I may as well awn up as I seed Cherry Grepe on it, but for wance seems to me as I thrawed away my money. Two shillin’ I gived her an’ got nought.”
“What did she say?” asked Mr. Endicott.
“Her took me by a trick like. Fust her said, ‘Do ’e reckon your gals have brains in theer heads?’ An’ I said, ‘Coourse they have, so gude as any other females in theer station o’ life.’ Then her said, ‘You’m satisfied with theer intellects?’ An’ I said, ‘Why for shouldn’t I be?’ Then said Cherry, ‘Very well, Jonah; let ’em bide an’ find men for theerselves. Ban’t your business, an’ you’ll be a fule to make it so. ’Tis awnly royal princesses,’ she said, ‘an’ duchesses an’ such like as have to set other people husband-huntin’ for ’em. But us humble folks of the airth—’tis the will of Providence we may wed wheer we love, like the birds. Let ’em bide, an’ doan’t keep such a hell-hard hold awver ‘em,’ said her to me, ‘an’ then they’ll larn you in theer awn time what they be gwaine to do ’bout husbands,’ she said.”
“Don’t see who can give you better advice, Jonah. I can’t for one. Looks to me as if old Cherry’s got more sense than I was led to believe. Let them find their own men—only see to it when found that they’re sound in wind and limb. Libby’s got a cleft palate, and, likely as not, his child will have one. ’Tisn’t in reason that a lovesick girl should think for her unborn children; but for his grandchildren a man ought to think if chance offers. Anyway, never give a flaw any opportunity to repeat itself, when you can prevent such a thing. Not enough is done for love of the unborn in this world. ’Tis them we ought to make laws for.”
By no means satisfied, Cramphorn presently went to bed, and Myles pursued the subject for a while. Then he too retired, taking the lamp with him, and the blind man knitted on for a space, while a choir of crickets chirruped and sped about upon the hearth.
But though Stapledon went to his chamber, the day was not yet done for him, the theme in his thoughts not yet to be extinguished. Since their trivial quarrel Honor and her husband had been as happy together as man and woman need pray to be, and that dim, dreary shadow which Myles had stared at, Honor shut her eyes upon, might be said to have retreated to a point of absolute disappearance. The ache in the man, that showed at his eyes, had passed like any other pain; the twinge in the woman, revealed not at all, though generally followed by a humorous speech, troubled her no more at this moment. She grew pensive and very self-absorbed; she stared absently through the faces of those who addressed her; she dwelt much with her own thoughts and discoveries.
This night she was not in bed when Myles entered her room, but sat beside the open window, her elbows upon the sill and her face between her hands.
“Myles,” she said, “there’s a man down in the meadow. I saw him distinctly pass between two of the sleeping cows. Then he drifted into the shadow of the hedge—a man or a ghost.”
“A man, sweetheart, though I know you would rather think it something else and so get a new sensation. Pinsent probably, as a matter of prosy fact. I bid him get me some rabbits. Shut the window and come to bed. You’ll catch cold.”
“No; I’m cold-proof now—so the old wives say when—— Come here a minute, Myles, and sit here and look at the moon and listen to the dor beetles. There will not be many more such nights and such silvery mists this year.”
“You can almost see the damp in the air,” he said.
“Yes, and down below, with ear to grass, one might hear the soft whisper of the little mushrooms breaking out of Mother Earth, while the fairies dance round them and scatter the dew.”
“You’re not wise to sit there, dear love.”
“I must be humoured—we must be.”
He threw off his coat and stretched his great arms in pleasant anticipation of rest and sleep.
“Whatever do you mean, my pretty?”
“I mean that I have a long, tedious, tremendous enterprise in hand. A most troublesome enterprise. You’re always at me not to waste time. Now I’m really going to be busy.”
“You couldn’t tell me anything I’d like to hear better.”
“Couldn’t I? Remember!”
He did remember.
“That—yes—all in good time.”
“Not a moment more shall I waste. You’ll guess I’m in earnest, for I’m going to work night and day.”
“A fine resolve! But keep your work for working hours, sweetheart. And how many are to benefit by this great achievement?”
“Who can tell that? It may be for good or for harm. Yet we have a right to be hopeful.”
“You make me most curious. How shall I view it, I wonder?”
“Well, you ought to be rather pleased, if you’ve told me the truth. And—look!”
A meteor gleamed across the misty moonlight. It seemed to streak the sky with radiance, was reflected for an instant in the pond among the rhododendrons, then vanished.
“D’you know what that means?” asked Honor.
“A wandering atom from some old, ruined world perhaps, now burnt up in our atmosphere.”
“And do new-born souls come wandering from old, ruined worlds, I wonder? The German folk say that a shooting-star means a new life brought down from above, Myles. And—and how I do wish next May was come and gone; and if it’s a girl, my dear one, I believe I shall go mad with disappointment.”
So new fires were lighted in the man’s deep heart, and blazed aloft like a signal of great joy and thanksgiving. His first impulse was to cuddle her to his breast; then he felt her to be a holy thing henceforth, separated from him by a veil impenetrable.
Long after his wife slept he lay in thought, and his spirit was much exalted, and his grey mind filled to bursting with sense of unutterable obligations. Nature was not enough to thank; she alarmed him rather, for, upon the approach of such experience, men fear the impassive Earth-Mother as well as love her. But that night he felt with unusual acuteness the sense of the vague power behind; and it pressed him on to his knees for a long, silent, wordless hour with his soul—an hour of petition and thanksgiving, of renewed thanksgiving and renewed petition.