Chapter IV The Kiss
Some days later Christopher Yeoland was returning from the village of Throwley to Little Silver, by a road that winds along the flank of the Moor. He carried a basket in which reposed a young collie pup. Himself he wanted no such thing, but the little beast came of notable stock, possessed a special value, and seemed worthy of Honor. Among those delights represented by his engagement was the facility it afforded for giving of presents. He had already sketched on paper the designs of many engagement rings. A circle of gold with diamonds and emeralds in it was his vague intention; while his visions of how he should come at such a jewel were still more doubtful. This man possessed great power in the direction of dreams, in projecting the shadows of pleasant things and winning happiness from these conceits despite their improbability. Love of beauty was a characteristic in him, but otherwise he could not be described as sensual. Beauty he adored; yet delight of the eye appeared to suffice him. His attitude towards the opposite sex is illustrated by an event now to be described.
The day was done and the hour of rest had come upon the workers. Labouring folk moved through the long July twilight upon their own concerns, as private pleasure or business led them; and now, under the huge shadow of the Moor, there unfolded a little drama, slight enough, yet reflecting sensibly upon the future concerns of those who played in the scene. Christopher Yeoland, his mind quite full of Honor, overtook Sally Cramphorn in the valley, and being upon friendly terms with all the countryside, marched awhile beside her. He allowed no social differences at any time to obtain between him and a pretty face. Sally was good to see, and as for Yeoland, of late days, chiefly by reason of an exceeding honour that the mistress of Bear Down had done him, he felt pliable, even reverential before all things feminine, for her dear sake. He was not of that sort who find all other women sink into shadows after the unutterable One has joined her fate with his for evermore; but, contrariwise, the possession of Honor heightened his interest in her sex. He might have been likened to a bee, that indeed loved clover before all else, yet did not disdain a foxglove or purple lupin upon occasion. So he walked beside Sally and contemplated her proportions with pleasure, watched her throat work and the rosy light leap to her cheek as he praised her.
In Sally’s heart was a wish that Greg Libby might see her with such a courtier; but unfortunately a very different person did so. Mr. Cramphorn, with an ancient muzzle-loading gun at full-cock and a fox-terrier under the furzes ahead of him, was engaged in stalking rabbits a few hundred yards distant. His keen eye, now turning suddenly, rested upon his daughter. He recognised her by her walk and carriage; but her companion, in that he bore a basket, deceived Mr. Cramphorn. Full of suspicion and growling dire threats in his throat, Jonah forgot the rabbits for this nobler game. He began stalking the man and woman, skulked along behind the hazels at the common edge, and presently, after feats of great and unnecessary agility, found himself snugly hidden in a lofty hedge immediately beneath which his daughter and her escort must presently pass.
Meanwhile, she strolled along and soon recovered her self-possession, for Yeoland was in no sense awe-inspiring. The young woman had now come from securing a priceless thimbleful of water that bathed the roots of forget-me-nots. She carried this magic liquid concealed in a little phial; the rest of the ingredients were hidden at home; and she hoped that night to brew the philtre destined for Mr. Libby.
“Sally,” said Christopher, “I’ll tell you a great piece of news. No, I won’t; you must guess it.”
She looked up at him with a knowing smile on her red mouth.
“You’m gwaine to marry missis, sir—be that it?”
“You gimlet of a girl! But, no, you never guessed—I’m positive you didn’t. Somebody told you; Miss Endicott herself, perhaps.”
“None told me. I guessed it.”
“How jolly of you! I like you for guessing, Sally. It was a compliment to us.”
“I doan’t knaw what you mean by that, sir.”
“No matter. You will some day, and feel extremely flattered if people congratulate you before you’ve told them. If you simply adore one girl, Sally, you love them all!”
“Gude Lard! Ban’t so along wi’ us. If we’m sweet in wan plaace, we’m shy in t’others.”
“Only one man in the world for you, then?”
“Ess—awnly wan.”
“He’s a lucky chap. Mind that I know all about it in good time, Sally. You shall have a fine wedding present, I promise you—whatever you like, in fact.”
“Things ban’t come to that yet; though thank you kindly, sir, I’m sure.”
“Well, they will.”
“He haven’t axed ezacally yet.”
“Ass! Fool! Dolt! But perhaps he’s in mortal fear of you—frightened to speak and not able to trust his pen. You’re too good for him, Sally, and he knows it.”
“I be his awn order in life, for that matter.”
“I see, I see; it’s this hidden flame burning in you that made you so quick to find out our secret. I love you for it! I love every pretty face in Devonshire, because my lady is pretty; and every young woman on Dartmoor, because my lady is young. Can you understand that?”
“No, I caan’t,” confessed Sally. “’Tis fulishness.”
“Not at all. At this moment I could positively hug you—not disrespectfully, you know, but just out of love—for Miss Endicott.”
“It do make a man dangerous seemin’ly—this gert love of a lady.”
“Not at all. Far from it. It draws his claws. He goes in chains. Did anybody ever dare to hug you, Sally?”
“No fay! Should like to have seed ’em!”
“You wouldn’t have minded one though?”
“Caan’t say, as he never offered to.”
“D’you mean he’s never even kissed you, Sally?”
“Wance he axed if he might.”
“‘Axed’! And of course you said ‘No’ like any other girl would?”
“Ess, I did.”
“Fancy asking!”
“What should he have done then?”
It was a dangerous inquiry on Miss Cramphorn’s part, and it is within the bounds of possibility that she knew it. Had she been aware that her sole parent was glaring, like an angry monkey, from a point in the hedge within six yards of her, Sally had scarcely put that disingenuous problem. The answer came instantly. Honor’s pup fell headlong into the road and greeted its descent with a yell; like lightning a pair of tweed-clad arms were round Sally, and a rough, amber-coloured moustache against her lips.
“Sir—give awver! How dare ’e! What be doin’ of? You’m squeezin’ me—oh——!”
There was a crash in the hedge, the bark of a dog and the oath of a man. Then Christopher felt himself suddenly seized by the collar and dragged backwards. He turned red as the sunset, swore in his turn, then realised that no less a personage than Jonah Cramphorn had been witness to his folly. Trembling with rage, Bear Down’s head man accosted the squire of Little Silver.
“You! You to call yourself a gen’leman! Out ’pon ‘e—to rape a gal under her faither’s awn eyes! By God, ’tis time your wicked thread was cut an’ Yeolands did cease out of the land! Small wonder they’m come down to——”
“Shut your mouth, you fool!” retorted Christopher savagely. “How dare you lay a finger upon me? I’ll have you up for breaking other people’s hedges, and, what’s more, I’ve a mind to give you a damned good hiding myself.”
“You tell like that, you hookem-snivey young blackguard! I’d crack your blasted bones like a bad egg—an’ gude riddance tu! Ban’t she my awn darter, an’ wasn’t you carneying an’ cuddlin’ of her in broad day? ‘Struth! I could spit blood to think such things can happen! An’ me to be threatened by you! You’ll hide me—eh? Thank your stars I didn’t shoot ’e. An’ if I’d slayed the pair of ’e ’twouldn’t have been no gert loss to clean-livin’ folks!”
“I’m ashamed of you, Cramphorn—reading evil into everything that happens,” said Yeoland calmly.
“God stiffen it! Hear him! Hear him! Preachin’ my duty to me. You lewd, stalled ox, for two pins——”
“Put that gun down or I’ll break it over your head!” answered Christopher; but the other, now a mere maniac, shaking and dancing with passion, refused. Whereupon Yeoland rushed at him, twisted the gun out of his hands, and threw it upon the ground. The next moment Jonah had hit his enemy in the face with a big fist; Christopher struck back, Sally screamed, and Cramphorn spit blood in earnest. Then they closed, and Jonah’s dog, grasping the fact that his master was in difficulties, and needed assistance, very properly fastened on one of Yeoland’s leathern leggings and hung there, as both men tumbled into the road.
The girl wrung her hands, lifted her voice and screamed to the only being visible—a man with a cart of peat outlined against the sunset on the heather ridges of the Moor. But he was a mile distant and quite beyond reach of poor Sally’s frantic appeal. Then both combatants rose, and Cramphorn, returning to battle, got knocked off his feet again. At the same moment a man came round the corner of the road, and mended his steps upon hearing a frenzied announcement that two fellow-creatures were killing each other. A moment later he hastened between the combatants, took a hard blow or two from both, swept Christopher aside with no particular difficulty, and saved the elder from further punishment.
Sally wept, thanked God, and went to minister to her parent; while the new-comer, in a passionless voice that contrasted strangely with the rapidity of his actions, accosted Yeoland.
“What is this? Don’t you know better than to strike a man old enough to be your father?”
“Mind your own business,” gasped Christopher, brushing the dust off himself and examining a wound in his wrist.
“It’s anybody’s business, surely.”
The other did not answer. His passion was rapidly cooling to shame. He scanned the speaker and wished that they might be alone together. The man was tall, very heavily built, one who would naturally move with a long and tardy stride. His recent energy was the result of circumstances and an action most unusual. He still breathed deep upon it.
“I’m sure you’ll regret what has happened in a calmer moment, and pardon me for helping you to your senses,” he said.
“So he shall regret it, I’ll take my dying oath to that,” spluttered Mr. Cramphorn. “Idle, lecherous, cold-hearted, hot-blooded beast as he be.”
“Get cool,” said the stranger, “and don’t use foul language. There are remedies for most evils. If he’s wronged you, you can have the law of him. Put some cold water on his head.”
Sally, to whom the last remark was addressed, dipped her apron in the brook by the wayside, but Mr. Cramphorn waved her off.
“Get out o’ my sight, you easy minx! To think that any cheel o’ mine would let strange men put theer arms around her in broad day!”
“I’m entirely to blame—my fault altogether—not hers,” said Christopher. “I felt in a cuddling mood,” he added frankly. “I wouldn’t have hurt a hair of her head, and she knows it. Why should it be worse to kiss a pretty girl than to smell a pretty flower? Tell me that.”
“Theer’s devil’s talk for ’e!” gurgled Jonah.
“You miserable old ass—but I’m sorry—heartily sorry. Forgive me, and go to Doctor Clack and get a soothing something. And if I’ve hurt your gun I’ll buy you a new one.”
“Likely as I’d have any dealin’s wi’ a son of Belial Beelzebub same as you be! I’ll put the law to work against ’e, that’s what I’ll do; an’ us’ll see if a woman be at the mercy of every gen’leman, so-called, as loafs ’pon the land because he’m tu idle to work!”
“That’ll do. Now go off about your business, Cramphorn, and let us have no more nonsense. We ought both to be ashamed of ourselves, and I’m sure I am. As a Christian man, you must forgive me; I’m sure, as a Christian girl, Sally will.”
“Leave her alone, will ’e! I won’t have her name on your tongue. Us’ll see if folks can break the laws; us’ll see——”
He strode off, pulling his daughter by the hand, and entirely forgetting his gun beside the way; but after the irate father had departed, Yeoland recovered his weapon and found it unhurt. He then picked up Honor’s pup, and overtook the stranger who was proceeding in the direction of Little Silver.
“How came you to get that man into such a white heat?” the latter asked him.
“Well, I kissed his daughter; and he was behind the hedge at the critical point and saw me.”
“Ah!”
“I’m a chap who wouldn’t hurt a fly, you know. But I’m particularly happy about some private affairs just at present, and—well, my lightness of heart took that turn.”
The other did not smile, but looked at Christopher curiously.
“You said a strange thing just now,” he remarked, in a deep voice, with slow, dragging accents. “You declared that to kiss a girl was no worse than to smell a flower. That seemed a new idea to me.”
Yeoland opined that it might well be so. This was no woman’s man.
“I believe it’s true, all the same,” he answered.
“Isn’t there a lack of respect to women in the idea?”
The speaker stood over Christopher by two inches. His face had a cold comeliness. His features were large, regular, and finely modelled; his complexion was dark; his eyes were grey; he wore a moustache but no other hair upon his face. A great solidity, slowness, and phlegm marked his movements and utterances, and his handsome countenance was something of a mask, not from practised simulation or deliberate drilling of feature, but by the accident of flesh. A high forehead neither declared nor denied intellect by its shape; the man in fact showed but little of himself externally. One might, however, have predicted a strenuous temperament and suspected probable lack of humour from a peculiar sort of gravity of face. His eyes were evidently of exceptional keenness; his speech was marked by an uncertainty in choice of words that denoted he was habitually taciturn; his manner suggested one who kept much of his own company and lived a lonely life—either from necessity or choice.