Chapter XII Light
Beside his sleeping wife did Stapledon recline, and endeavoured, through the hours of a weary night, to gather the significance of those great things that he had gleaned. Sometimes he surprised his own thought—as a man’s conscience will often burst in roughly upon his mind—and found himself hoping that this news was untrue and that Christopher Yeoland filled a coffin, if not at Little Silver. But the edifice of probability so carefully reared by Mark Endicott showed no flaw, and even amid the mazes of his present doubt Myles found time to marvel at the ratiocination of the old man. Before this explanation it seemed difficult to believe that another clue to the puzzle existed. A note of inner unrest, a question within a question, finally brought Myles out of bed at dawn. He rose, soon stood in the air, and, through the familiar early freshness of day, walked upwards to the Moor for comfort. What was it to him if this harebrained soul had thus played at death? He, at least, was no dreamer, and moved upon solid ground. He passed beside the kingdom of the blue jasione and navel-wort on the old wall, while above him wind-worn beeches whispered in the dawn wind. From force of habit he stood at a gate and rested his arms upon the topmost bar, while his great dog roved for a rabbit. Now the man’s eyes were lighted to the depths of their disquiet from the east, and at sight of the distant woods his thoughts turned back to that meeting responsible for his child’s death. He had yet to learn from Honor whether his uncle’s suspicion was correct concerning the incident, but little doubt existed within his mind, and he breathed heavily, and his emotions almost bordered upon malignity. Better such a futile soul under the earth in sober earnest. So ill-regulated a human machine looked worse than useless, for his erratic course impeded the progress of others more potent, and was itself a menace and a danger. This man had killed his little son—that child of many petitions and wide hopes; had crushed him, like a sweet wild flower under the heel of a fool. So bitterly he brooded; then pondered as to how his wife would receive this tremendous message.
Upon the first heather ridges the cold breath of the Moor touched the man to patience and brought him nearer himself. He looked out into the dayspring; noted where one little flame-coloured forerunner of dawn already shone upon lofty granite afar off; and saw the Mist Mother rise from the ruddy seeding rushes of her sleeping-place. He beheld the ancient heron’s grey pinion brighten to rose beside the river; heard cry of curlew and all the manifold music of the world waking again. Above him the sky flushed to the colours of the woodbine, while upon earth arose an incense and a savour of nightly dews sun-kissed. From marsh and moss, from the rush beds and the peat beds; from glimmering ridges cast upward by workers long gone by; from the bracken and the heather, and the cairns of the old stone men; from the gold eyes of the little tormentils, the blue eyes of the milkworts, the white stars of the galiums woven and interwoven through the texture of the budding heath—from each and all, to the horizon-line of peak and pinnacle, a risen sun won worship. Then did Stapledon’s eyes soften somewhat and his brow clear in the great light, for there came songs from the Sons of the Morning—they who in time past had welcomed him as a brother; and their music, floating from the high places, soothed his troubled heart. Under that seraphic melody the life of man, his joys and his sorrows, peaked and dwindled to their just proportions; gradually he forgot his kind, and so thought only of the solemn world-order outspread, and the round earth rolling like an opal about the lamp of the sun, through God’s own estate and seigniory of space.
That hour and the steadfast nature of him presently retrieved his patience; then Myles shone forth unclouded as the morning. Recollection of his recent fret and passion surprised him. Who was he to exhibit such emotion? The Moor was his exemplar, and had been so since his boyish eyes first swept it understandingly. For him this huge, untamed delight was the only picture of the God he did not know, yet yearned to know; and now, as oftentimes of old, it cooled his blood, exalted his reflections, adjusted the distortions of life’s wry focus, and sent him home in peace.
Duty was the highest form of praise that he knew, and he prepared to fall back upon that. Let others order their brief journeys on lines fantastical or futile, he at least was wiser and knew better. He reflected that the folly of the world can injure no soul’s vital spots. Only a man’s self can wound himself mortally. He would live on agreeably to Nature—obedient as the granite to the soft, tireless touch of wind and rain; prompt as the bursting bud and uncurling tendril; patient as the cave spirits that build up pillars of stalagmite through unnumbered ages; faithful as the merle, whose music varies not from generation to generation. Life so lived would be life well guarded and beyond the power of outer evil to penetrate.
So he believed very earnestly, and knew not that his noble theory asked a noble nature to practise it. Only a great man can use perfectly a great tool; and this obtains with higher rules of conduct than Stapledon’s; for of all who profess and call themselves Christians, not one in a thousand is mentally equipped to be the thing he pretends, or even to understand the sweep and scope of what he professes. It is not roguery that makes three parts of Christendom loom hypocrite in a thinker’s eyes, but mental and constitutional inability to grasp a gospel at once the most spiritual and material ever preached and misunderstood. Centuries of craft stretch between man and the Founder’s meaning; confusion bred of passion has divided the House against itself; politics and the lust of power have turned religion into a piece of state machinery; and the rot at the root of the cumbrous fabric will, within half a century, bring all down in far-flung conflagration and ruin. Then may arise the immortal part out of the holocaust of the Letter, and Christianity, purged of churchcraft as from a pestilence, fly back to brood upon the human heart once more in the primal, rainbow glory of the Sermon on the Mount, preached under heaven by a Man to men.
That day Myles Stapledon, with all caution and such choice of words as he had at command, broke the story to Honor, and his tactful language, born of love, was so skilful that the shock brought no immediate collapse with it. The narrative asked for some art, yet he developed it gradually, and found his reward where Mark had predicted. First Honor learnt what she herself had seen upon that fateful night; and when, in a very extremity of amazement, she confessed to the secret of a fancied spectre, Myles went further and led her to understand that what she had witnessed was flesh and blood, that a confusion, probably not intentional, had been created, and that Christopher Yeoland might be suspected still to live. Stapledon spared himself nothing in this narrative. Asked by his wife as to the reason that could have prompted her former lover to a step so extravagant, he reminded her of her own determination to marry neither of them; he explained how he had begged Christopher to come back, that her life might be as it had been; and added that doubtless the wanderer on his side, and for love of her alone, had put this trick upon them in the belief that such a course would contribute to her final happiness. Having set out this much with extreme impartiality, a human question burst from the heart of the man.
“For you he did this thing, love; he only thought of you and not of the thousand preposterous tangles and troubles likely to spring from such an action. Your happiness—that was all he saw or cared to see. And did he see it? Tell me, dear Honor—here on the threshold of his return perhaps—tell me; was it for your happiness? Thank God, I think I know; yet I should like to hear from your own lips the truth and that I am right.”
The truth, as she believed it before this most startling fact, came instantly to Honor’s lips. She was enfeebled and unstrung by weeks of wayward living consequent upon great fret of mind. She had nursed this dreadful belief in an apparition until it had grown into a sort of real presence, and the conviction, fabricated through weeks of brooding, would not be dispelled at a word. Deep was the impress left upon her mind, and time must pass before a shape so clear could fade. As a result, the man now thought to be returned from the dead frightened her for a season, scarcely less than his fancied ghost had done. She was timid before the amazing whisper that he still lived. In this fear she forgot for the moment what had prompted Yeoland to his typical folly; she dreaded him in the body as she had dreaded him in the spirit; she turned to the solid being at her side, clung to Myles in her weakness, and held his great arm tightly round her waist.
“For my happiness indeed, dearest one. You have loved me better than I deserved, and forgiven so many faults. This makes me shiver and grow cold and fear to be alone; yet how different to the thing I thought!”
“And he may come home.”
“He will never be real to me again—not if I see him and hear him. Never so real as there—-grey-clad with the moon on his face—a shadowy part of the great web of the night, yet distinct—all very ghost. I’m frightened still. You can forgive a little of what I made you endure, now that you know what I have suffered.”
He hugged her up to his heart at these words, believed her as thoroughly as she believed herself, and thanked Heaven that blind Mark Endicott had been led to such a true prophecy.
A week passed, yet no step was taken, though the new position came to be accepted gradually by those acquainted with the secret. For Honor the knowledge was actually health-giving by virtue of the morbid cloud that it dispelled. Such tidings liberated her soul from a strange fear and offered her mind a subject of boundless interest. Many plans were proposed, yet scarcely a desirable course of action presented itself. Mark advocated no step, and Honor added her plea to his, for she openly expressed a hope that Christopher, if still he lived, would not return to Godleigh. And this she said upon no suspicion of herself, but rather from a continued dread of the man. It seemed impossible to her that she could ever think of him as among the living. Stapledon, on the contrary, desired an explanation, and his wish was gratified most speedily by an unexpected herald from Yeoland himself. An authentic representative arrived at Endicott’s—a somewhat shame-faced and apologetic messenger laden with the facts.
For, upon a morning in August, Doctor Courteney Clack appeared, desired to see Mr. Endicott alone, and not only told the blind man that his theory was in the main correct, but begged that from the stores of his common sense and wisdom he would indicate the most seemly and least sensational means by which this news might be broken to those concerned. The doctor did not pretend to excuse himself or his part in the play. There was, indeed, no necessity for recrimination or censure. The future lay at the door, and Christopher Yeoland, who had, in truth, haunted his own domain by night, designed to return to it in earnest during the autumn. The temporary lease would then terminate, and circumstances now enabled the owner to free his land of every encumbrance and henceforth administer Godleigh in a manner worthy of its traditions.
The interview was an old man’s triumph, for Mark Endicott, too frank to pretend otherwise, gloried in the relation of the story long afterwards, loved to dwell upon his own reasoned synthesis and explain how closely it fitted the revealed facts, despite their rare singularity. As for Courteney Clack, that gentleman’s amazement, when he found his intelligence more than a fortnight old, may be guessed, but can hardly be stated. Mr. Endicott sent for Myles to substantiate him, and finally the astounded physician unfolded his own narrative, now shrunk to a tame and trivial thing—an echo for the most part of Mark’s deductions.
On reaching Australia with Stapledon’s messages the physician’s first professional duty had been at the bedside of Christopher’s ancient kinsman, with whom the young man was dwelling. For only two days after Doctor Clack’s arrival, the old wool dealer was bitten by a whip-snake at his country seat on the Hawkesbury River, and there passed speedily out of life. This fact combined with Clack’s news from home to determine Christopher Yeoland in the action he had taken, and the scheme, once adumbrated upon young Yeoland’s mind, grew apace. The dead man, who was also named Christopher, proved to be very wealthy, and his money, willed to assist the establishment of technical schools in Sydney, had been withdrawn from that purpose after two months’ intercourse with the youthful head of the race. Thus, in ignorance of his own near exit, the elder left it within Christopher’s power to redeem the ancestral forests and roof tree in fulness of time. Apart from the imposition, built on the fact of his relative’s sudden death, the traveller had already determined that he should lie in the family grave at home. It was the right place for one who had saved Yeoland credit at the last gasp and given the head of that family wherewithal to lift honour from the dust. Then came Stapledon’s message and Clack’s fearless gloss; so that, with wits quickened and a mind enlarged by his own unexpected good fortune, Christopher made final sacrifice of all love hope—a renunciation worthy of honest praise in sight of his own altered circumstances—and, with Clack’s aid, practised his theatrical imposition that Honor’s road might stretch before her straight and certain. Nothing less than his death would decide her, and so he let the implicit lie be told, and determined with himself at all cost to keep out of his own country until expiration of the period for which he had let Godleigh.
Clack indicated a circumstance in itself satisfactory at this stage in his story. Christopher’s resurrection would not practically prove so far-reaching as Mark Endicott and Stapledon had imagined, for none existed with any right to question the facts. On the supposed death of the owner, Godleigh had reverted to a man of the same name in Australia—that was all the lawyers knew—and the legal difficulty of reclaiming his own and re-establishing his rights promised to be but trifling. Neither had the law very serious penalties in pickle for him, because it could not be showed where Christopher had wronged any man.
Time passed, and even the limits of patience that he had set himself were too great for Yeoland of Godleigh. Now he was rich, and hated Australia with a deep hatred. He returned home therefore, and those events related had fallen almost act for act as Endicott declared. In the flesh had the man haunted Godleigh. Once a keeper nearly captured him upon his own preserves; once, during the past spring, he had crept to the great beech tree, impelled thither at the same hour and moment as his old sweetheart. Her collapse had frightened him out of his senses, and, on seeing Stapledon approaching, he had retreated, concealed himself, and, upon their departure, returned to his hidden horse. Deeply perturbed, but ignorant of all that the incident really signified, he had ridden back that night to Exeter, and so departed to the Continent, there to dwell unrecognised a while longer, and wait, half in hope, half in fear, that Honor might proclaim him.
But no sound reached his ear, and of Little Silver news neither he nor Courteney Clack had learnt anything of note for many weeks. Now, however, with only two months between himself and his return to Godleigh, Christopher Yeoland felt the grand imposture must be blown away. It had at least served his purpose.
Thus spoke Clack; then his own curiosity was satisfied, and he learned how, by the lawless operation of obscure men, that secret hidden in the churchyard had become known, and how, upon the confession of one conspirator, three others beside the two discoverers had come to hear of it.
“And as for that terrible thing—the child killed by him accidentally—my child—” said Stapledon without emotion, “little use tearing a tender-hearted creature with that to no purpose. I do not want him to know it.”
“I won’t tell him, you may be sure,” answered the doctor, still in a dream before this unexpected discounting of his great intelligence. “He will not hear of it from me. But know he must sooner or later. That can’t be spared him. Only a question of time and some blurted speech.”
“I’ll tell him, then,” declared Myles. “There’s nobody more fitting. I don’t forget.”
The question next arose as to how Little Silver should be informed, and Mr. Endicott declared that the vicar must make a formal announcement after morning service on the following Sunday. Then, with further conversation upon minor points, Doctor Clack’s great confession ended; while as for the matter of the desecration, he held with Mr. Endicott that no notice need be taken beyond, perhaps, warning Mr. Cramphorn that his egregious enterprise was known, and that his own safety rested in silence.
The doctor stopped a few days at Endicott’s; saw Honor, who heard him with deep interest and decreasing fear; then wrote at length to Christopher in London; but, not caring to face the publication of Yeoland’s existence and pending return, Clack finally took himself off until the sensation was on the wane. Before he set out, Myles had a private conversation with him in nature comforting enough, for, concerning Honor, the medical man gave it as his professional opinion that this counter-shock would serve adequately to combat her former hopeless, nerveless condition. The truth, despite its startling nature, must bring wide relief from spiritual terrors, and so probably participate in and hasten the business of recovery.
Then came the thunder-clap, whose echoes reverberated in journals even to the great metropolitan heart of things, and Christopher Yeoland achieved a notoriety that was painful to him beyond power of words to express. Only one gleam of satisfaction shone through all the notes and comments and unnumbered reasons for his conduct: not one came nearer the truth than the utterance of a West Country journalist, who knew the history of the Yeoland family, and opined that a touch of hereditary eccentricity was responsible for all.
Of Little Silver, its comments, theories, bewilderment, and general suspicion that there must be something rotten at the roots of the world while such deeds could be, there appears no need to discourse. How Ash and his kind reviewed the matter, or with what picturesque force it appealed to Noah Brimblecombe, janitor of the mausoleum, may easily be imagined; while for the rest it would be specially interesting, if pertinent, to describe the emotions of Jonah Cramphorn. Relief and disappointment mingled in his mind; he had made no history after all; he was not the mainspring of this commotion, and when he nodded darkly and showed no surprise, folks merely held him too conceited to display honest amazement like everybody else, and laughed at his assumption of secret knowledge. There came a night, however, when Mr. Endicott spoke with him in private, after which Jonah desired nothing more than silence for himself, and poured his pent-up chagrin and annoyance upon Charity Grepe, who—poor soul—derived little lustre from this resurrection.