Chapter XI A Clean Breast of it
As discoveries of moment hidden for long years or through all past time will suddenly and simultaneously burst, like Neptune, upon students widely separated, yet pursuing one goal by divers roads, so now this extraordinary circumstance stumbled upon by Jonah Cramphorn and his companion during their secret enterprise was noised abroad within a fortnight, yet without any action or intervention from them.
It is true that, despite his solemn promises, Henry Collins soon found himself constitutionally unequal to preserving the secret, and he confessed the same within a week of the incidents relating to it; but those before whom he published his experience took no step upon it until they heard the story in full detail at a later date. Then the whole curious truth was blazed abroad.
Mr. Cramphorn, as soon as Noah Brimblecombe’s keys were back on their nail without awakening of suspicion, shut up his adventure stoutly enough, while he pondered how best to reveal the discovery; but his accomplice found the position far less endurable. Henry existed henceforth like a man struggling under some grim incubus by day as well as night. Sleep deserted him; his head ached; he found himself bungling his work, and, upon this development, the man grew alarmed for his brains and believed that he must be going mad. Even poor Henry’s love-star dwindled somewhat while yet this cloud of horror hung over him, and though he had won permission from Sally’s father to propose marriage, such was the tremendous nature of the price paid and its appendage of mental chaos that he found himself unequal to thoughts on any other theme. He could not profit by his new powers for the present; indeed, he felt that, until this knowledge was shifted on to other shoulders, life would hold no happy moment. Five days he spent with his secret; then, being strung to a pitch when his promise to Jonah ceased to weigh with him, he determined to make a clean breast of the whole matter. Everything should be divulged excepting only the name of his partner. First rose the question of an ear for this confession, and, hesitating only a moment between Mark Endicott and Myles, Mr. Collins decided that he would tell them both. He thought also of the vicar, but held, doubtless correctly, that his personal offence would bulk larger in the eyes of Mr. Scobell than upon the view of those at Bear Down.
Chance to make his revelation offered within two nights of Henry’s decision, for then it happened that Cramphorn, his daughters, Churdles Ash, and other of the hands tramped off to Chagford, where a travelling circus was attracting the countryside. Henry, though he angered Sally not a little by refusing to accompany her, found an opportunity excellent for his purpose, and seized upon it. Left alone with the blind man and Stapledon, Collins began tremulously to tell his story; and his eyes rolled as he proceeded; and his voice often failed him or rose into high squeaks between gulps of emotion; but he made his meaning clear, and so lifted a weight from off his soul.
“Please, your honours, I’ve got a thing in my head as be burstin’ it, an’ I’ll thank you to let me have a tell now I be alone with you. A devilish secret ’tis, an’ I caan’t keep my lips shut ’pon it no more, or I shall go daft.”
“Out with it then,” said Stapledon. “Your brains weren’t built for devilish secrets, Henry.”
“No, they wasn’t,” admitted Collins, “an’ I’m glad to hear you allow it. I do best I can wi’ the gifts I’ve got—an’ who could do more? An’ ’twas last week as I promised to go along wi’ another man whose name theer ban’t no call to mention. He’ll answer for hisself ’pon the Judgment Day; but I can’t wait so long. I wants to get it awver now.”
“Begin at the beginning, lad; talk quietly, and light your pipe. We’re friends and shan’t let out your secret where it can hurt you,” said Mark.
“I’m sure I pray God to bless you for them words,” answered Collins earnestly; “but I can’t smoke—the very taste of tobacco be changed since. ’Tis like this—us wanted oil of man, which you might knaw ’bout, bein’ so wise as you are.”
“An old wife’s remedy—well?”
“Whether or no, it was told to my mate that awnly oil of man stood between missus here an’ her death. So we ordained to fetch what was needed in the faace of all men.”
“For that old witch on the hill, I suppose?” asked Myles.
“I doan’t name no names, axin’ your humble pardon,” answered Collins uneasily. “This is my awn sacred confession—awnly my business an’ yours, if I may say it without rudeness. Anyway, we went for what was wanted; an’ that was a man’s head bones—a chap cut off in fulness of life for choice. An’ my mate—a deep man, I allow that much—thought fust of Bill Cousins—him took off by sunstroke two years ago; an’ then he reckoned ’twas beyond our power these short nights to dig for what we wanted between dimpsy-light of evening an’ morn. An’ when he comed to me he minded me how theer was quality buried above ground so well as poor folks under; an’ a young man slain in his strength by mischance. Squire Christopher Yeoland he meant. A gashly auld thought, sure enough; yet us steeled ourselves to it.”
“You dared that sacrilege!” burst out Stapledon; but Collins merely stared at him. Time had taken the labourer so far beyond this point in the tragedy that not only did he forget its dramatic significance upon a new listener, but also how he himself had felt when Jonah first broke it to him.
“Ess; us set about the job. That ban’t nothin’. ’Twas for love of missus us done it. An’ I watched while t’other worked; an’ when he stopped hammerin’ an’ I went back, he was starin’ an’ bristlin’, ’cause afore him laid—not the gen’leman us counted ’pon—but a very auld, aged man, berry-brown from keepin’, yet so sweet as a rose, wi’ a gert white beard to un.”
“You broke into the wrong coffin!”
“No fay, us didn’t. ’Tis the carpse what comed from furrin paarts—anyways the box as did. Christopher Yeoland, beggin’ his pardon, was the name ’pon the brass. An’ my mate was mazed; an’ us hammered back the lead all suent and tidy, an’ screwed on the lid, an’ put un ’pon his shelf wance more an’ slipped it home. That’s the tale, an’ I’ll take my oath of it afore God A’mighty’s angel.”
There followed a lengthy silence upon his story; then Mr. Collins made an end.
“’Tis the awful hardness of sharin’ such a dreadful secret wi’ wan other man as I caan’t endure no more. An’ I swear, by any deep word you choose, that I never meant no findin’ of anybody’s secrets—awnly gude to missus—as might have been saved by what we went for, but won’t never be better without it.”
“That’s as may be, Henry,” said Mr. Endicott. “For the rest, this thing is somebody’s secret, as you say. Anyway you’re not weighed down with it now. You may hold yourself free of it, and if you take my advice, having eased your mind, you’ll go off to rest with a quiet conscience. No great harm can fall on you at any rate. Perhaps none at all, for I’ll wager it was Cramphorn, not you, who hatched this piece of folly.”
“Please, please, doan’t name nobody, your honours!” implored Henry. “I promised the man to bide still as a worm ’bout it. In fact I swore I would. An’ I did try to keep him off my tongue at any rate, an’ thought as I had.”
“We shall not take any steps against him or you. Now go to bed and sleep. You’ve done the right thing in telling us; but don’t tell anybody else.”
Mr. Collins, not sorry to depart, did so, and for some minutes Stapledon and the blind man continued to sit in silence, each busy with his own thoughts. Then Mark spoke.
“A stunning, dislocating, play-acting piece of foolery, if it’s true. Yet somehow I know it is. There’s a deal of light shed on darkness for me, and for you too I reckon, by such an upheaval.”
“Not so. I see no light—unless you believe this means that Christopher Yeoland may still be alive.”
“Yes, I think it means that; and such a return must be an earthquake more or less in all the lives that were once connected with him. Men can’t die and live again without upsetting the world. A mad imagining. Perhaps no mother’s son but him would have dreamed of it. But the motive——”
“That,” said Myles quickly, “is all I can see. Knowing as much of the man as I do, so much looks clear. When Clack joined him, I sent a message. It was as urgent as need be, and to the effect that Honor loved him still. That she loved me too Clack probably added to my message. While one of us lived, Honor would never have married the other. So this thing he did to make her road easy.”
“If you’re right, the puzzle comes together piece by piece.”
“Excepting the old man in the coffin—supposing that it was a man.”
Endicott reflected; then was struck with an idea.
“It may be that the death of this old man put the cranky thought into Yeoland’s head. If it was his kinsman that lies there instead of himself, all’s smoothed out. What simpler way to clear Honor’s road? This parade of evidence is made that there may be no doubt in any mind. A Yeoland dies and is buried in the tomb of his forefathers. But after all it wasn’t our Yeoland.”
“Did he mean to let this farce go on for ever?”
“No farce for him; yet, maybe, he got some solid joy out of it. A quick mind for all his vagabond, empty life. He saw the position, and reckoned that in fulness of time she might come to be a happy wife along with you. Then this old relative dies at the right moment and sets a spark to his imagination. No, I suppose we should never have known. His idea would be to keep his secret close hid for ever from those it concerned most—unless——”
He broke off and pursued his reflections in silence. Myles waited for him to speak again, but the blind man only resumed his knitting.
“He blotted himself clean out of life for love of Honor,” Stapledon at length declared.
“That I believe. A strange, unlawful deed, yet ’tis a question whether the law has any punishment. To think of the immense confusion of human life if many graves yielded up their dead again!”
“And what is our course? Who can benefit or suffer if we state these things? There’s such huge folly about it when you think of details that I feel as if it must all be a nightmare of Henry’s.”
“No, no; it’s true enough.”
“Then he may be married himself by this time, and in a new home, with England a mere dream behind him?”
“I wish I thought he was, Myles—for—for general peace of mind; but I don’t. If he had a live, guiding, absorbing passion, after Honor, it was Godleigh—the woods and hills and songs of Teign. These things were in his blood. If I know him, they might have drawn him back with bands of steel.”
“Why didn’t they do so then?”
“How can we say that they didn’t?”
“What! He may have been here—at our elbows?”
“I see the likelihood of that clearer than you, being blind. Yes, I can very easily think of him under shadow of night, with the true feel of a ghost, rambling beneath his own trees—his and not his—or listening to the river, or creeping to his own door when all men slept; or in the dawn—such a lover of cock-light as he was—he would steal through the dew with the birds to watch sunrise, then vanish and hide himself, or get above to some wild ridge of the moor and lie there till darkness gathered again. Such freaks would be meat and drink to him; and also to remember that he was only a live man in Australia, but a dead one in his own land. Just for argument suppose that was so; then look back a little way and think it out.”
But Myles could by no means divine his uncle’s drift. Practical even before this surprise, he was looking to the future, not backward, for study of the past appeared vain, and doubly vain to him in this crisis.
“Not much use turning back,” he said. “I want to know about the time to come. These two—Collins and Cramphorn—through their fool’s errand have certainly unearthed an extraordinary fact: Christopher Yeoland’s secret, so to call it. And it is for us to determine whether our duty is to proclaim the thing or not. There’s Godleigh—it falls empty again next autumn, for the people don’t renew their lease.”
“Well, Godleigh reverts to the man in Australia. The lawyers believe that man is an ancient settler; we know, or think we know, that the place has not really changed hands. Yeoland may reappear after giving Little Silver due warning.”
“Or, being a rolling stone, and probably no better off now than when he left England, he may stop in Australia. Still, there’s the chance of his returning.”
“Be sure he will, even if he has not done so,” said Mark Endicott firmly. “If ’tis only to the old life and old ways, he’ll come back. He’ll say, as likely as not, that the thing he meant to do is done. Honor is married and a happy wife. Who would deny him his own again after that sacrifice?”
“I only think of Honor and the awful shock to her. It might kill her.”
“Don’t fret yourself there, or torture over that point. Now I’ll say what will astound you: I think Honor may very possibly be less amazed and staggered at this news than ever you were, or I either.”
“Not amazed! What do you—what in God’s name do you mean by that? That she knew? Knew it and hid it from me? That she suffers now because——”
He broke off and sprang to his feet, while the other maintained silence and let the stricken man stride away his passion and regain his self-control. Soon enough Myles grew cool and contained. Then he walked to Mark and put his hand on the old man’s shoulder.
“Forgive me; but this is the utter, blasting wreck and ruin of my whole life that you are hinting at,” he said calmly.
“I hint at nothing,” answered the other with unusual roughness. “Had I thought any such impossible thing I should have been as big a fool as you are. You ought to know your wife better than to believe she’d act a lie of that sort.”
“I don’t believe it—I never said that I believed it Your words seemed to imply that you must believe it. Else why do you suggest that Honor would be less astonished to hear of this resurrection than you and I are?”
“If you had taken a look back as I bid you, Myles, instead of rushing forward without looking, you need not have asked me that question. Glance back, even now, and what has been dark as the pit may lighten and lift somewhat. Just call to mind the sorrow that has hung so heavily over us of late days—the little chick that we counted so precious—too soon.”
But Stapledon was in no mental mood for retrospective or other thought. A wide turmoil tossed the sea of his soul into storm; the terrible weakness of the strong got hold upon him, and he rocked in one of those moments when capacity to think deserts the mind, when intellect seems overwhelmed.
“I cannot see what you see,” he said. “I admit that I am blind and a fool, but for God’s sake don’t ask me any more questions beyond my power to answer. Tell me what you think, or know, or believe you know. Consider what this means to me—the fact that Christopher Yeoland may be alive—may have stood behind a hedge yesterday, and watched me pass, and laughed. Don’t you see? I’ve got Honor by falsehood—a false pretence—a fraud.”
“Not of your own breeding, if it is so. Your true and loving wife she is for all time now, whether the man be dead or alive—though of that there’s a certain proof in my mind. I’d be the last to tear you with questions at this minute. I only wanted you to see what has rushed in upon me so sudden and fierce. Light in it every way—light in it for you and for Honor, I pray God. If what I make out of this puzzle is true, and Christopher Yeoland alive, then there may be matter for rejoicing in the fact rather than gloom. Not darkness anyway. Now call home to your mind that night in the woods, when at her silly whim, which I was fool enough to support, you took your wife for a drive to Lee Bridge.”
“I remember it well enough.”
“You left her to fetch water from the river, and while you were away she got out of the pony carriage, light-footed and silent as a moonbeam, to pick bluebells. Then suddenly there! Out of the mist and night—out of the dim woods—the man! Wandering alone no doubt They met, and she, being in no trim for such a fearful shock as the sight of one long dead walking the earth again, went down before it. Think of her suddenly eye to eye and face to face with him in the midst of night and sleep! It froze her blood, and froze the poor little one’s blood too—that thawed no more. For she thought him a spectral thing, an’ thinks so still—thinks so still! That’s the dark secret she’s dumb about and won’t whisper to you or me, though she’s been near telling us once or twice. That’s what has been eating her heart out; that’s what neither your prayers nor mine could get from her. She must be made to understand in careful words that will ask your best skill to choose aright She must learn that you have discovered what she’s hiding, and that it was flesh and blood, not phantom, she saw. ’Tis a pity, if what I say is fact, that the fool ran away when he saw you coming to succour her. The harm was done by that time; and if we had known, how many of these ghost-haunted hours might we have saved her! I may be spinning thin air, yet I think what I tell is true.”
But Stapledon was glaring at the impassive face before him with a gaze that seemed to burrow through Mark’s sightless eyes and reach his brain. Now Myles spoke in a voice unfamiliar to his listener, for it was loud-pitched and turbulent with sudden passion.
“That man killed my child!”
A glass vessel 90 the dresser echoed the deep, dominant note of this cry and reverberated it; one moment of silence followed; and then came shuffle of feet on the flagged way, with laughter and echo of time-worn jests, as Churdles Ash, Pinsent, and the others returned from their pleasure. Mark Endicott, however, had opportunity for a final word.
“It may be as you say—a dark accident, and worse ten thousand times for him than even you. Be just—be very just to the madman, if he has really done this wayward deed and is coming back into your life again. Be just, and don’t swerve an inch out of your even-handed course, for your road is like to get difficult if you do.”
“Us have viewed a gert pomp of braave horsemanship,” announced Mr. Ash. “Never seed no better riders nor merry-men nowheer, though the hosses was poor.”
“An’ Tommy Bates here be all for joinin’ of ’em,” laughed Samuel Pinsent; “but I tell un as he turns out his toes tu far to do any credit to hisself in such a wild course of life.”