Book IV
Chapter I The Passage of Two Years
Upon the death of Myles Stapledon great changes marked the administration of Bear Down. The event stood for a landmark in the history of the farm, and served as an occasion from which its old, familiar name of ‘Endicott’s’ fell into disusage; for the place now passed into alien hands, and from it departed the last of the old stock, together with not a few of those whose fortunes had been wrapped up with the farm for generations.
Honor determined to leave her home within a month of her husband’s death. To roam awhile alone seemed good to her, and, for a space of time that extended into years before her return, she absented herself from Devon. Her farm had appreciated much in value of late years, and a tenant for it did not lack long; but the new power brought new servants, and certain of the older workers took this occasion to retire from active service. Churdles Ash went to live with an elderly nephew at Little Silver; Mr. Cramphorn also resigned, but he continued to dwell in his cottage at Bear Down and was content that Sally and Margery should still work upon the farm. Collins, promoted to deputy headman, took his life with increasing seriousness—a circumstance natural when it is recorded that matrimony with Sally Cramphorn had now become only a question of time.
Mark Endicott also left Bear Down for a cottage at Chagford, and Mrs. Loveys accompanied him as housekeeper. This great uprooting of his life and necessary change of habits bewildered the old man at first; but his native courage aided him, and he unfolded his days in faith and fortitude. From Honor he heard erratically, and gathered that she drifted rudderless amid new impressions now here, now there. Then, as the months passed by, into the texture of her communications came flashes or shadows of herself, and the blind man perceived that Time was working with her; that her original, unalterable gift of mind was awakening and leavening her life as of yore.
Humour she still possessed, for it is an inherent faculty, that sticks closer than a spouse to the heart that holds it from puberty to the grave. It wakens with the dawn of adult intelligence, and neither time nor chance, neither shattering reverse nor unexpected prosperity can rob the owner of it. Earthly success indeed it brightens, and earthly failure it sets in true perspective; it regulates man’s self-estimate and personal point of view; enlarges his sympathies; adjusts the too-staring splendours of sudden joys; helps to dry the bitterest tears humanity can shed. For humour is an adjunct divine, and as far beyond the trivial word for it as “love” is, or “charity.” No definition or happy phrase sums it correctly, or rates it high enough; it is a balm of life; it makes for greater things than clean laughter from the lungs; it is the root of tolerance, the prop of patience; it “suffers long and is kind”; serves to tune each little life-harmony with the world-harmony about it; keeps the heart of man sweet, his soul modest. And at the end, when the light thickens and the mesh grows tight, humour can share the suffering vigils of the sleepless, can soften pain, can brighten the ashy road to death.
In the softness of the valley air lived Mark Endicott, and still knitted comforters for the Brixham fishers.
His first interest was Honor and her future. Of these, he prophesied to those few who loved her and who came to see her uncle from time to time. To Mrs. Loveys, to Ash, to Jonah Cramphorn the old man foretold a thing not difficult of credence. Indeed, eighteen months after the death of her husband, a letter from Honor, despatched at Geneva, came as confirmation, and informed Mark that she had met Christopher Yeoland there.
“They will part no more,” said he when the letter was read to him; and he was right.
An interval of six months separated this communication from the next, and when his niece wrote again, she signed herself “Honor Yeoland.” The missive was tinctured with some unusual emotion, and woke the same in Mrs. Loveys as she rehearsed it, and in Mark as he listened. “I am just twenty-seven,” said the writer. “Do not tell me that it is too late in life to seek for a little happiness still. At least I know what Myles would think.”
But the deed demanded no excuse in her uncle’s judgment, for he had long anticipated it, and was well content that matters should thus fall out.
And a few months later, when August had passed again, the master of Godleigh and his lady returned home. Special directions prevented any sort of formal welcome, and the actual date of their arrival was only known to a few. Through a twilight of late summer they came, unseen and unwelcomed; and one day later, upon a fair afternoon in mid-September, Honor, escaping from the flood of new cares and responsibilities, slipped valleywards away to traverse the woods alone and visit her uncle at Chagford.
A chill touched her heart as she proceeded, for in these dear glades, at Doctor Clack’s command, the woodmen had been zealous to help Nature during the preceding spring. Wide, new-made spaces innocent of trees awaited her; light and air had taken the place of many an old giant, and raw tablets of sawn wood, rising in the vigour of bramble, and refreshed undergrowths were frequent beside her path. Then, at a familiar spot, no pillar of grey supporting clouds of mast and foliage met Honor’s eyes. Instead there opened a little clearing, created by one effort of the axe, with the frank sky above and a fallen column below—a column shorn of branch and lopped of bough—a naked, shattered thing lying in a dingle of autumn grasses and yellow, autumn flowers, like, yet unlike, the old nest of memories.
And this fallen tree, so unexpected, came as right prelude to the matter that awaited her beside it. The beech of her joy and sorrow was thrown down, and its apparition awakened in her heart none of that gentle and subdued melancholy she anticipated. Rather, such emotions were smothered in active regret at its downfall. And now a howling, winter storm descended upon her spirit—a tempest very diverse from the silver-grey, autumnal rainfall of placid sadness that here she had foreseen and expected.
The stricken tree struck a chord of deeper passion than it had done beheld in prosperity; whereupon, looking forward, Honor found herself not alone. Close at hand, in a spot that he had favoured through the past summer, sat Mark Endicott with his knitting; and a hundred yards away, beside the river, a boy, successor to Tommy Bates, stood with his back turned watching the trout.
Mark sat in the sunshine with his head uplifted.
There was speculation in his face, but his hands were busy, and the old wooden needles flashed in white wool.
She watched him a moment, then her eyes caught sight of something nearer at hand.