Book III
Chapter I Vanessa Io
Between Bear Down and the valley was fern and the breath of fern and great gleam and drone of summer flies under the living sun. Here Teign tumbled through deep gorges, and from the wind-swept granite of Godleigh hill, beneath unclouded noonday splendour, acres of bracken panted silver-green in the glare, dipped to the fringes of the woods below, and shone like a shield of light upon the bosom of the acclivity. At river-level spread a forest, where oak and alder, larch and pinnacles of pine shimmered in the haze. Dark shadows broke the manifold planes of them, and the song of the river beneath, with lull and rise on the lazy summer breeze, murmured from mossy granite stairways twining through the woods. Here shone masses of king fern, twinkled jewels of honeysuckle, and the deep, pink blossoms of eglantine. The atmosphere was very dry; the leaves on a little white poplar clapped their hands to the river melody; hirundines wheeled and cried in the upper blue, and there lacked not other signs, all dearer than rainbows to a farmer whose corn is ripe, of fine weather and its continuance.
In the shadow of a great stone upon the hillside, where, beneath the fairy forest of the fern, sad grasses robbed of sunlight seeded feebly, and wood strawberries gemmed the under-green, sat Honor Stapledon alone. Upon one hand sloped bare descents, already blistered somewhat by a hot July, patched with rusty colour where the heather had been roasted under the eye of the sun, painted with tawny, thirsty foliage, brightened by the blue spires of viper’s bugloss, starred with pink of centauries. A great bramble bore red fruit and pale blossom together; and here butterflies made dancing, glancing gleam and tangle of colour as they came and went, flashed hither and thither, or settled to sun themselves on the flowers and rocks. One—Vanessa Io—feared nothing, and pursued his business and pleasure upon the bramble within a few inches of Honor’s cheek.
As yet Christopher Yeoland had not plucked courage to return publicly, but that morning came rumours from Little Silver that he was upon a visit to Godleigh, as guest of the departing tenant. Noah Brimblecombe had actually seen him and mentioned the fact to Mr. Cramphorn. Honor, therefore, expecting an early visit, and feeling quite unequal to such an experience now that it had come so near—desiring moreover that Myles and not herself should first welcome the wanderer—had stolen away to the adjacent hillside, there to pass some hours with a book. But her thoughts proved of a nature more interesting than verses. Indeed they lacked not poetry and even images to be described as startling, for the matter was dramatic and sufficiently sensational to fire a less imaginative mind. So her book remained unopened, and she watched Vanessa Io, though her thoughts were not with him.
While Stapledon had grasped the fact of Christopher’s continued existence and pending return somewhat sooner than his wife, the positions a month later seemed reversed. He faced the upheaval on the first proclamation, and she shrank from it with emotion bred from her recent terror; but now it was Honor who discussed affairs in the calmer spirit, and Myles who changed the subject, not always without impatience. The woman’s frank interest daily grew, and she saw no cause to hide it; while the man, whose mind had been jolted from the rut of accepted things, now felt a desire to return into it and found himself come near resentment of this wonder. Such a tremendous circumstance hung over his days like a cloud, for it meant more to him than anybody, so at least he believed at that season. Stapledon’s intellect was of a sort likely to be impatient at such monkey tricks. He found all the solid building of the past, all the logical sequences of events and movements leading to possession of Honor, tumbled into ruins around him. To his order-loving nature the skein of life grew in some measure tangled before such sleight and jugglery. Though he strove hard to keep in sight the sure knowledge that Yeoland had played his part for love of Honor, yet indignation would now and then awake to burn in him; and that first spark of passion, lighted when he thought of his child, after the earliest confession from Henry Collins, was not as yet wholly extinguished. Now, while the return of the wanderer came nearer, Myles shook himself into a resolute attitude and told himself that the uncertain depths and shallows of his own emotions must be discovered and his future line of conduct determined, as Mark Endicott had forewarned him. But while he stood thus, in unfamiliar moods of doubt, Honor, contrariwise, from a standpoint almost approaching superstitious fear, was come to accept the truth and accept it thankfully. The tremendous mental excitement, the shock and clash of thoughts afforded by this event, possessed some tonic faculty for her, and, as Doctor Clack had predicted, wrought more good than harm within her nature. For a little while she had wept after the first wave of fear was passed; she had wept and wondered in secret at the snarling cruelty of chance that willed this man, of all men, to rob her of her baby treasure; but the thought of his sorrow when the truth should reach him lessened her own.
The reason for Christopher’s conduct Honor had of course learned. That much Myles set out for her with the most luminous words at his command; and he smarted even while he told of the other’s renunciation and self-sacrifice. He explained many times how for love of her Yeoland departed and let it be imagined that he was no more; how, from conviction that her happiness was wound up with her present husband, he had done this thing. Myles strove to live in an atmosphere of naked truth at this season, for his instinct told him that the way was strange and that salvation only lay in stripping off it every cloud or tissue of unreality.
As for Mark Endicott, from mere human interest at an event beyond experience, he passed to estimate and appraisement of Christopher’s deeds. Averse from every sort of deception, he yet found himself unable to judge hardly before the motives and the character of the first puppet in this tragi-comedy. Yeoland had meant well in the past, and the only question for the future was his own sentiments toward Honor. That these justified him in his return to Godleigh Mr. Endicott nothing doubted. He recollected the somewhat peculiar emotional characteristics of the man and felt no cause for fear, save in the matter of Myles.
As for Little Silver, intelligence that their squire, resuscitated in life and pocket, was returning to his own filled most hearts with lively satisfaction after the first amazement had sobered. Recollection of his generosity awakened; whereon the fathers of the village met in conclave and determined to mark their great man’s home-coming with some sort of celebration, if only a bonfire upon the hill-top and some special broaching of beer-barrels.
Honor moved her parasol a little, mused on time to come, and wished the ordeal of meeting with Christopher behind her. The chapter of their personal romance was sealed and buried in the past, and her feelings were not fluttered as she looked back. The interest lay ahead. She thought of the life he had lived since last they met, and wondered what women had come into it—whether one above all others now filled it for him. She hoped with her whole heart that it might be so, and sat so quiet, with her mind full of pictures and possibilities for him, that Vanessa Io settled within a foot of her and opened and shut his wings and thanked the sun, as a flower thanks him for his warmth, by display of beauty. His livery caught the thinker and brought her mind back behind her eyes so that she noted the insect’s attire, the irregular outline of his pinions, their dull brick-red and ebony, brown margins, and staring eyes all touched and lighted with lilac, crimson, yellow, and white. Within this splendid motley the little body of him was wrapped in velvet, and as he turned about upon a bramble flower his trunk, like a tiny trembling watch-spring, passed to the honeyed heart of the blossom. Then he arose and joined the colour-dance of small blue butterflies from the heath, of sober fritillaries, and other of his own Vanessa folk—tortoise-shells, great and small, and a gorgeous red admiral in black and scarlet.
Far beneath a horn suddenly sounded, and the music of otter-hounds arose melodious from the hidden valley. Flight of blue wood-pigeons and cackle of a startled woodpecker marked the progress of the hunt. Here and there, with shouts and cries, came glint of a throng through the trees that concealed them. Then Honor heard the grander utterance of an elderly foxhound who was assisting the pack. He had suddenly lighted on the scent of his proper prey, and a moment later she saw him away on his own account, climbing the opposite hill at speed. His music died, and the clamour beneath soon dwindled and sank until a last note of the horn, mellowed by distance, slowly faded away. But Honor was uninterested, for the modern fashion of otter-hunting at noon instead of grey dawn, though it may promise the presence of fair maidens at a meet, holds forth small likelihood of otters, who are but seldom slain upon these lazy runs.
Then the sound of a step sprang out of the silence, and the woman turned and drew breath at sight of Christopher Yeoland, standing knee-deep in the fern behind her. He was clad as when she saw him last, in grey country wear; and to her first startled glance he seemed unchanged.
“Never pass a parasol without looking under it, if I can,” he said; and then, before she could rise, he had flung himself beside her and taken her left hand and squeezed it gently between his. Her other hand went unconsciously towards her breast, but now she lowered it into his and suffered the greeting she had no power to speak, be uttered by that pressure of palm on palm.
“What tremendous, tragic things we ought to whisper at this moment,” he said; “yet, for the life of me, I can only think of a single question: Have you forgiven me for my far-reaching fool’s trick? If you haven’t, I can’t live at Godleigh under the shadow of Endicott’s frown. And I certainly can’t live anywhere else, so, should you refuse to pardon, I must die in real earnest.”
“If anybody can forgive you, it is I, Christopher. Oh dear—I am glad we are over this meeting. It has made me feel so strange, so curious. It seems only yesterday that I saw you last; and I could laugh, now that you are alive once more, to think your spirit had power to frighten me—or anybody. Yet I do not quite believe I shall ever feel that you are flesh and blood again.”
“It will take time. I began to doubt myself when I came home and stole about in the old haunts, and felt how ghosts feel. Once a keeper chased me out of Godleigh, and I only escaped by the skin of my teeth! Thrice I saw you—at your window in moonlight, and driving with your husband, and—the last time.”
His voice faltered; she saw tears in his eyes and knew that he had learned of the misfortune in the wood. The fact pleased her, in that this sorrow was bound to come to him and now it would not be necessary for Myles to speak about the past. A moment of silence passed between them, and she looked at Christopher softly and saw him unchanged. Every feature and expression, every trick of voice and gesture was even as it used to be. She knew his careless tie, his jerk of head, his habit of twisting up the corner of his moustache and then biting it.
“How wonderful this is!” she said, not heeding his broken sentence. “How mysterious to think I sit here talking to a man I have believed for two years to be dead! And yet each moment my heart grows calmer and my pulse beats more quietly.”
“Things are always commonplace when you expect them to be theatrical and rise to fine, giddy heights. That’s the difference between plays and real life. Chance works up to her great situations and then often shirks them in the most undramatic and disappointing way. But when she does want a situation, she just pitches people headlong into it—like our meeting at the old tryst by the beech. Memory took me there; what took you? God forgive me, I——”
“Leave that,” she said quickly. “It can’t be talked about. Have you seen Myles or Uncle Mark yet?”
“No; a proper attraction brought me here, and somehow I knew that I should find you. But I long to meet him too—your husband. It’s a blessing to know that among the many who blame me he won’t be counted. Please Heaven, I shall see a great deal of you both in the future. I always loved the west wind best, because it blew over Bear Down before it came to me. Sunshine ahead, I hope, and some for me. I’ve come home to be happy.”
“Have you found a wife?”
“Honor!—No, I haven’t looked for one. Godleigh’s my wife. And I must set about spending some money on her, now I’ve got plenty. So strange—that lonely old cadet of our family. He was, I thought, as poor as a church mouse. Three parts of a miser, and lived hard and laughed at luxuries, as so many do who have had to make their own fortunes. Money-grubbing carries that curse along with it, that it often turns the grubber blind and deaf to all save the sight and clink of the hateful, necessary stuff. But the dear old boy somehow warmed to me; and I drew pictures of home for him; and he promised to come home and see me some day when he grew old. He was seventy-three then, but utterly refused to accept the fact. Then death suddenly rushed him, in the shape of a whip-snake, and dying, his thoughts turned home, and it was his wish, not my whim, that he should lie there. That put my plot into my head, for he was of the same name. Not until after his death did I know he had altered his will; and I can tell you, seeing the style he lived in and the size of his ideas, that I was staggered when I found he had left me a real fortune. That’s my adventure—a mere bit of a story-book, yet a very pleasant bit to the hero of it.”
Vanessa Io returned, and so still sat Honor that he settled boldly upon the sun-kissed folds of her skirt.
“Do you remember how I used to say you were all butterfly, though in grave moments you rather claimed for yourself the qualities of staid and sober twilight things—solemn beetles, whose weight of wing-case reminds them that life is real and earnest?”
“You were right upon the whole. I’ve got the same spirit in me as that little, gaudy, self-complacent atom there, opening and shutting his wings, like a fairy’s picture-book upon your knee. Our rule of life is the same. I only hope he’s having more luck with his existence than I have had with mine.”
She reflected a moment. This was the first hint of his own sorrows in the past, of the price he had paid.
“But I’m not changed, for all the world of experiences that separates us,” he continued quickly. “I’m only a thought older. Time is beginning to do a little gradual work in grey just above my ears. So delicate and apologetic and gentle he is that I can’t grumble. Is Mr. Endicott well?”
“Very well.”
“And Myles and the farm?”
“Both flourishing abundantly, I believe.”
“And to think the sadness on your face is solely of my bringing—yet you can welcome me after what I have done!”
She marvelled a little that he could speak of it
“Pray, Christo, do not harp upon that. None accuses you. How could such a thing be thrown as blame upon anybody? Fate so often uses the kindest of us to do her cruel deeds. ’Tis the height of her cynic fun to plan parts in her plots and make the wrong actor play them.”
“I ought to have used common sense and kept away altogether.”
“Common sense!”
“I know; but I found it in Australia. There was no excuse for me. Can he forgive me?”
“I have not heard him breathe so much as one hasty word since he has known. You do not understand him to ask such a question. He is above admiration. No woman ever had such a good husband. And the better I love him, Christo, the better shall I love you, for giving him to me.”
“Good God! you mustn’t talk like that, must you?” he asked with some flutter; but she regarded him calmly as she answered.
“Why should not I? He knows that I loved you, and, therefore, love you. I am a most logical woman, and unchanging. It has all been very smooth and clear between Myles and me from the first, because we both hated any shadow of misunderstanding. That’s the strength of our married life.”
“My only fear centred in the recollection of his great straightness. He hates a trick, even though he may win by it.”
“He loves me with all his heart.”
“Yes—there it is. I didn’t feel very anxious about the thing I did first; only about what I have done since I sometimes get a doubt. The question is whether, once dead, I was justified in coming to life again. Man’s only built to be heroic in snatches—at least the average man—and when I found myself rich, instead of keeping it up and going through to the bitter end, as a bigger chap would have done, I thought of Godleigh. If you had lived a year and more among gum trees I think you might find it in you to forgive me for coming back. Those eternally lost gum trees! And springtime calling, calling from home! And here I am in God’s good green again—His always, mine for a little while.”
“Who can wonder that you came? The wonder would have been if you had stopped away. The thing you desired to bring about is done—happily and for ever.”
“But Myles? He’s so thorough. What does he think? Half-measures wouldn’t win his respect.”
“Half-measures you call them; but even a saint’s life is only patchwork—all wrought in the drab colours of human nature, with a few bright stars marking the notable deeds. Yes, and lesser existences are a mere patchwork of good intentions, mostly barren.”
“Not barren for certain. We sow decent grain and dragon’s teeth mixed; and the poor sowers so often don’t know which is which—till the crop’s past praying for.”
“That’s your philosophy, then. I was wrong; you have changed.”
“It’s true. These things are in copybooks, but we never heed them when we are young. So that is why sometimes I have my doubts about Myles. Then I think along another line and the cloud vanishes.”
“There can be no cloud, and he will soon rejoice that such a friend is in the land of the living.”
But suspicion had already wakened in Yeoland.
“You say ‘he will rejoice’; you don’t say ‘he does.’”
“Of course he does. How can you doubt it?”
“Tell him you have seen me, and that I am a perceptible shade wiser than when I left England. Tell him that incident in the wood has come near breaking my heart. I can feel great griefs if I don’t show them. I do not expect him to slip into the old relations as you have. You and I were a couple of wild wood children together for years, until our elders trapped us and attempted to tame and educate and spoil us. Yet between him and me now there are close bonds enough—bonds as deep to me, as binding, as eternal as the dawn-light we both adore. But he’s a fire-worshipper, or something, and I’m a Christian; so, when all’s said, we shall never get straight to one another’s hearts like Honor and Christo. It isn’t possible. I thought to meet him with a handshake to bridge the years, and a silent understanding too deep for words; I pictured him all the way home as my friend of friends, and now—now I ought to go upon my knees to him and ask him to put his foot on my neck and forgive me for that moonlight madness.”
“Now I know that it is you, not I, who fail to understand my husband,” said Honor. “He is a greater man by far than you think or I know. Never utter or dream these things any more, for they are wrong. Forget them and look forward to happiness.”
They talked a while longer on divers themes; then the woman rose to return home, and Christopher, declaring an intention to visit Endicott’s that evening, went back to Godleigh.
Each now marvelled much from a personal point of view at this, their first meeting—at its familiarity of texture and lack of distinction. Both indeed felt dumbly astonished that, after such a gap, converse could be renewed thus easily; yet they joyed in the meeting; and while Yeoland ingenuously gloried in the sight and voice of the woman he had loved, Honor’s pleasure was of a colour more sober, a quality more intricate.