Book II
Chapter I ‘Meavy Cot’
On a day in summer, David Bowden wandered up the higher valleys of Meavy and stopped in a little dingle where the newborn river tumbled ten feet over a great apron of granite into a pool beneath. In four separate threads the stream spouted over this mossy ledge, and then joined her foaming forces below. Grey-green sallows thronged the top of this natural weir and the wind flashed a twinkle of silver into their foliage as the leaves leapt and turned. Low hills sloped to this spot and made a natural nest. Black Tor and Harter ascended at hand, and on the horizon northerly Princetown’s stern church tower rose against the sky. Beside the pool, wherein Meavy gathered again her scattered tresses, an old ruin stood; and round about the dwelling-places of primæval man glimmered grey upon the heath.
David Bowden had chosen this spot for his home, and his reason was the shattered miner’s cottage of Tudor date that rose there. Four-square, crowned with heather and fretted with pennyworts and grasses, stone-crop, grey lichens and sky-blue jasione, the old house stood. Broken walls eight feet high surrounded it; an oven still gaped in one angle, and the wide chimney-shaft now made a green twilight of dewy ferns and mosses. Bowden crept into the ruin and looked about him, as he had already done many times before. At his feet lay old moulds hollowed out of the granite; and where molten tin once ran, now glittered water caught from the last shower.
Since first he found the place, David, with his scanty gift of imagination, had pictured a modern cottage rising on these venerable foundations. And soon the thing was actually to happen. He knew that the hearth whereon his feet now stood would presently glow again with fires lighted by Margaret’s hands; he thought of white wheaten loaves baking in the oven; he almost smelt them; and he saw above this loneliness the thin blue ringlets of peat smoke that soon would rise and curl on the west wind’s fingers and tell chance wanderers that a home lay hidden by water’s brink in the glen beneath. The place was very sequestered, very remote from all other habitations; and he liked it the better for that. Here was such privacy as the man desired. Margaret would do her shopping at Princetown; and since she knew scarcely anybody there, the chances of gossip and vain conversation were small. His ambition was a life far from trivial social obligations and the talk of idle tongues. He desired opportunity to pursue success without distractions and waste of time. Whether this home might suit the sociable Margaret, he did not pause to consider. As for Rhoda, she would certainly be of his mind.
The facts that most impressed Bowden at the moment were certain loads of lime and sand, together with granite boulders, water-worn, from the stream bed close at hand. Materials for his house were already collected and the building of it was to begin during the following week. It would need five or six months to finish, and Bowden proposed to be married and settled in his future home before another Christmas came.
While he sat here now, slowly, stolidly planning the future and waiting for Margaret to meet him, certain black-faced, horned sheep approached, drew up at a safe distance and lifted their yellow eyes to him inquiringly. David returned their regard with interest, for they were his own.
Presently came Margaret and he kissed her, then pointed with satisfaction to the preparations.
“They’ve kept their word, you see. Next week our house is to be started. There’s a good bit of pulling down to do first, however. And Sir Guy have given way about that ruined spot t’other side the stream. It’s going to be built again for a lew place for stock; and I’m to pay two pound a year more rent.”
“’Twill be good for the kennel,” said Madge. “Rhoda tells me as you’ll have five or six dogs at the least for her to watch over, not counting ‘Silky’ here.”
‘Silky’ had grown from puppyhood into adolescence. He was now a beautiful but a spoiled spaniel, who never wandered far from his mistress.
Bowden looked down and shook his head at ‘Silky,’ where he sat with his nose between his fore-paws at Margaret’s feet.
“A good dog ruined,” he said. “If you was to do the proper thing, you’d let me shoot it. ’Twill never be any manner of use here.”
“He’ll be of use to me, David. I should miss him cruel now.”
“God send you don’t bring up the childer so, when they come, Madge.”
“No childer of yours will ever be spoilt,” she said.
“I hope not. And I hope they don’t prove of wayward nature; for that sort’s a thorn in the parent’s side. Take Dorcas now—so different to the rest of us as you can think. Light-minded and a chatterer—colour and mind both different. I hope as I’ll never have a red child, Madge.”
“I’m very fond of Dorcas. She’s the happiest of you all, anyway—light-minded or not. Only her father sees her good points. I don’t think, David, that you rate her high enough.”
“I know her very well—light-minded and a laugher,” he repeated. “And now there’s that insolent chap, Screech, after her; and he had the cheek to talk to faither and mother about it, and offer to take her—a beggarly man, with none to say a good word for him—a man that have lived on his widowed mother all his days, and haven’t even got regular work, but picks up an uneven living where he can.”
“What did your father answer?”
“Sent him away with a flea in his ear! There was a few high words, and then I seed my gentleman marching off across Ringmoor, and Dorcas with her apron to her eyes. ‘Better bide single all your days than marry an out-at-elbows good-for-nought like that,’ I told her; but, of course, she knowed better, and said he was all he should be, and that her life would be gall and wormwood without him.”
“Your father’s not one to be flouted.”
“He is not; and Dorcas knows it very well. Us shan’t hear no more about the chap.”
“She’ll tell me, however.”
“Mind you speak sense to her then, Madge. Don’t go pitying her. You’re too prone to pity every mortal thing that’s in trouble, or thinks it is. You know as well as any one that Billy Screech is a bad and lazy man. You know that he’s not built to make any female a good husband. Therefore tell her so.”
“I hope she’ll soon find a better to make her forget him.”
“I hope she won’t then. She’ve got Sophia’s poor luck before her eyes. Better for a woman not to wed at all than wreck her life in it. Dorcas is better at home in my judgment. Nought but a tramp would fancy such a homely creature as her.”
“You’re wrong there, David. A girl’s face isn’t everything. But no brother ever yet knew what his sisters were worth.”
“’Tis you who are wrong to say that,” answered David. “I know their virtues very well. Sophia was far too good for her husband, and Rhoda—well, never was a better than her—a marvel of a woman.”
“She is—yet the men keep off. But her heart’s so warm and soft as any woman’s, I daresay.”
“Men generally want something less fine and high-minded,” said David. “Something weaker and wilfuller than Rhoda. They are frighted of her. She makes ’em see how small they are, if you can understand that.”
“She does. So strong and fearless. Looks through men and women with those eyes of hers. Yet you wouldn’t have her bide a maiden into old age surely, David? There’s men good enough—even for Rhoda.”
Not a spark of spite marked the speech, and Madge only meant what she said.
“We must find her a husband, David!”
He shook his head doubtfully.
“A kicklish business. She’s not the sort to let others do that work for her. She’ve got no use for a man in my opinion. There’s only one male as ever I saw her eye follow for a yard, and that, if you please, be the leat-keeper, Simon Snell.”
Madge laughed.
“Poor Mr. Snell! I can’t picture him ever daring to lift his eyes to Rhoda.”
“No more can’t I,” agreed David. “And don’t you breathe what I’ve told you to Rhoda, for I may be wrong, and, right or wrong, she’d never forgive even me for saying it. She’ll be happy enough here with us, and if a husband comes—come he will. But I don’t want him to come in a hurry.”
“Such a lover of the night as she is!” declared Margaret. “Never was a stranger girl in some ways, I think—to say it lovingly. Give her a dog or two and nightfall, and off she’ll tramp to meet the moonrise. Whatever do she do out in the dark, David?”
“Blest if I can answer that. She’ve got her secrets—like everything else that goeth in petticoats, no doubt. But few enough secrets from my ear, I reckon. ’Twas always a great desire in her to be out by night, and more’n once faither whipped her, when she was a dinky little maid, because she would go straying in the warrens when she ought to have been in bed, and fright her mother nigh to death. I’ve axed her many a time about it, but she can’t or won’t offer reasons. It pleases her to see the night creatures at their work, I suppose. She’ll tell you things that might much surprise you about the ways of the night, and what happens under it.”
“She likes the moon better than the sun, I believe. Sometimes I’m tempted to think her blood’s cold instead of hot, David.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen her kiss my smashed face after the fight last winter;—no, nor heard her when she spoke of Bartley Crocker kissing hers.”
“I believe Bartley would marry her joyfully,” said Margaret; but David doubted it.
“Not him—not after what she said to him in the Pixies’ House, and after what I said to him in the bull-ring. No man ever paid dearer for a kiss than him, I reckon. But very good friends now, thank God. But my brother-in-law—no. He’ll never come to be that. He don’t want Rhoda and Rhoda don’t want him.”
“He told me that well he knew he’d have beat you, if Rhoda had been o’ his side.”
“I daresay that’s true.”
They sat together in the theatre of their future life, and Madge brushed David’s hair away from his right ear. The organ was slightly larger than the other and she shook her head discontentedly.
“’Twill never be just so beautiful as the left one,” she said.
He laughed.
“What do it matter so long as I can hear with it?”
“And your dear eyelid will droop for ever.”
“Yes, but the eye behind be all right. Bartley’s got his mark too—where I hit him that last time.”
“He’s coming up one evening to see this place. Not but he knows it well enough already. He told me that the valley under Harter up along and beyond be nearly always good for a snipe at the season of the year.”
“A pity he don’t come and lend a hand here, if ’twas only mixing mortar. ’Twould be something for him to do. How any living being can waste his life like that man is a mystery and a shame.”
“Always happy too,” said Madge. “He’ve got a very kind heart, David.”
“I know that—else he’d have licked me instead of my licking him. Don’t think I bear the man any ill-will—far from it. We’re real good friends and he’s very clever by nature. I’m only sorry he can’t find man’s work. He’ve larned a trade now, then why don’t he use it?”
The conversation shifted to their house presently and Madge declared her longing to see it grow.
“And what be us to call the place?” she asked.
“I thought of ‘Black Tor Cottage,’” he said, “since Black Tor’s just above us.”
But Madge little liked the name.
“‘Black’ ban’t a comely word for a home,” she said. “Think again, David.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“’Tis only the name of the tor,” he answered; “black or white be no more than words.”
“Call it ‘Meavy Cot,’” she said. “’Tis an easy name for folks to bring to mind, and I’d sooner my home was called after the river than they great stones up over, though I daresay I’ll get very fond of them too.”
“So be it,” he answered. “‘Meavy Cot’ is the name! and I hope that a good few prosperous years be waiting for us in it. But if ever I come to be Moorman of this quarter, I might have to leave it.”
“You’ll do greater things than that some day, David.”
“I hope I shall,” he answered; “but to be Moorman is a very good stepping-stone, mark you.”