Chapter II Bartley Doubtful
A great drake waddled out from the yard of Mrs. Crocker’s dwelling, and some white ducks followed him. The male bird was grey, but his head shone with the rich black-green of the fir trees behind him on the hill and the light of these metallic and glittering feathers made a fine setting for his brown eyes. He marched to the stream, put down his bill and tasted the water; he then threw up his bill again, quacked an order to set forth, and so floated away with the current, while his household followed after. Under the little bridge they went, and the drake, screwing round his head, cast an upward glance at the parapet as he passed by. There he might have marked a familiar figure, for Bartley Crocker, with his hands in his pockets and his pipe in his mouth, sat and talked to a woman who stood beside him. Their position was public, but the subject of their discourse might have been considered confidential. For the woman the revelation he now made opened a desirable possibility. The man spoke half in jest, yet it seemed clear that he found himself perfectly serious and meant all that he said on the main question.
“Set down your basket, Madge, and listen. I’ll carry it along for you presently; but I can’t talk and walk together—not when the subject is so large. Where are you going?”
“Over to they old Elfords down at Good-a-Meavy. They be terrible poor, you know, and he’s fallen ill and the pair of ’em was pretty near starving last week. One of the Bowden boys—Wellington, I think it was—called there, and he told his father; and of course the matter was looked to. I’m just taking them a thing or two, till the old man can get out again.”
“’Tis only putting off the workhouse.”
“Maybe—yet a good thing to put it off. They’ll be too old to smart soon; and then it won’t matter.”
“How’s Rhoda Bowden?” he asked suddenly.
“Very well, so far as I know.”
“I’ve hardly seen a wink of her since I came back. Yet somehow, Madge, I find her terrible interesting.”
“She’s a fine character, Bartley.”
“Well, when I went up to Barnstaple for three months after the fight, I did two things: I learned a trade, as you know, and I thought a lot off and on of Rhoda Bowden.”
“Yes.”
“’Tis something to be anything at all. Now, if anybody asks what I am, I can say I am an upholsterer. My uncle was well pleased for me to learn the business, and a very nice girl helped me how to do it. But, somehow, while I looked at her clever hands I thought of Rhoda Bowden.”
“You ought to tell Rhoda, then—not me.”
“Why should I? It’s all ridiculous nonsense, of course; but you see I can’t forget the peculiar way we were flung together. If you’d seen her after I kissed her! A princess couldn’t have raged worse. Then—at the fight—time and again I tried to catch her eye; but never once she looked at me—always busy with David. Did you hear that she came down two nights after, all by herself, through the snow, to ask my mother how I was faring?”
“No!”
“She did; but nobody ever heard it—not even David, I believe. She told my mother not to mention it; and mother began to give her a piece of her mind; but she didn’t wait for that.”
“’Tis just like her. Something got hold of her to do it, no doubt, while she was walking through the night. She feels kindly to all sorts of dumb things; but she don’t often show any interest in humans—except David, of course.”
“If I was a dog now, she and me would be very good friends—eh?”
“Not a doubt of it. Anyway this is terrible interesting to me, Bartley—for more reasons than you’d guess. David and I were telling together only a week agone. I said that when we were married, we must set to and find Rhoda a husband; but David felt a bit doubtful about it.”
“Well he may be!”
“You think that too?”
“I’m going to scrape acquaintance with her when you’re married. Mind I don’t say ’twill go very far. I’m a bit frightened of her yet, and ’twouldn’t be very clever to offer marriage to a female that makes you feel frightened. But a man must get a wife some day or other, I suppose, and my mother’s at me morning, noon and night to find one.”
“You do tell me wonderful things!”
“But for the Lord’s sake keep ’em dark. I can trust you—and only you. You’ve been a rare brick where I was concerned all your life, and ’tis very hard we couldn’t have been married, as I shall always think whoever takes me. Still, you’ll have to go on wishing me well.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Say no more about it then. ’Tis only a moonshiney fancy at best, and very like I’d hate the woman if I knew her better—hate her as much as she does me. You know what a fool I am about ’em. I always see her sponging the blood off David’s face and always catch myself wishing she’d been doing the same for mine. But I should have felt the same silly wish about any girl, no doubt.”
“There’s not another girl that ever I heard about would have done it.”
“I know—and I ask myself if that’s to praise her or to blame her. To hear my mother—”
“Better hear David. She didn’t do it for fun, I can tell you. Not to me—not to no woman—did she ever tell what she felt afterwards; but she did tell David; and he says that she didn’t know where she was for the first four rounds, and that once or twice after, when it looked like David being beat, that ’twas all she could do by sticking her nails into herself to keep herself from dashing out to help David against you.”
Bartley nodded admiringly.
“I believe it,” he said. “I saw it in her face.”
“And now I must get on,” declared Madge. “Can’t waste no more time along with you to-day.”
“I’ll walk up over then and carry your basket,” he answered. “When are you going to be married?”
“Not till the house is ready. They’ve started. There’s a lot of the old building will work very suent into our new cottage.”
“Yes,” he said. “I was over there watching ’em at it yesterday evening. And d’you know what I was wondering?—What I should give you and David for a wedding present.”
“No need, I’m sure.”
“Every need. You’m like your mother. You’d give your head away if you could; yet when people think to do you a turn, you always cry out against it. ’Twill be a joy to many more people than your humble thoughts will guess, to bring something to help you set up house.”
“It ’mazes me, the kindness of the world.”
“It might—if the world followed your example. ’Tis your due, and it oughtn’t to ’maze you. ’Twould be funny if anybody could be unkind to you.”
“’Tis all very hopeful and beautiful, I’m sure—yet here and there I feel a doubt. Wouldn’t name it to none but you; but mother don’t seem at all hopeful—”
“Don’t let her fret you,” urged Mr. Crocker. “I beg you won’t do that, Madge. There’s not a kinder, humbler-hearted woman on the Moor than Mrs. Stanbury; but she’s far too superstitious and given to the old stories—you know it.”
Margaret looked troubled. These folk belonged to a time when still a few fine spirits from the middle place between man and angel haunted Dartmoor. The pixies were yet whispered of as frequenting this farmer’s threshing-floor, or that housewife’s dairy; the witch hare leapt from her lonely form; herbs and simples in wise hands acted for potions of might; and the little heath hounds were well known to hunt the Evil One through the darkness of winter nights and along the pathway of the storm. The toad still held a secret in its head; the tarn, in its heart; rivers hungered for their annual banquet of human life; the corpse candle burned in lonely churchyards; charms were whispered over sick children and sick beasts; the evil eye still shone malignant; the murmur of the mine goblins was often heard by the workers underground.
But the time of these mysteries has quite passed by. Back to the opal and ivory dream-palaces of fairy-land, back to the shores of old romance, have Dartmoor’s legendary spirits vanished; they are as dead as the folk whose ruined homes still glimmer grey on twilight heaths at sunset and at dawn. Knowledge has stricken our traditions hip and thigh; our lore is obsolete; and our Moor children of to-day, as they pass through the stages of learning’s dawn, see only an unlikeness to truth that stamps the faces of these far-off things. Yet who shall say that knowledge and wisdom are one? Who shall deny that not seldom the story loved in life’s dawn-light and rejected at noon, is welcomed again and only understood when evening shadows fall?
Mrs. Stanbury was saturated with the ancient myths, and they brought her more sorrow than joy.
“I could wish that dear mother didn’t believe so many things,” admitted Margaret. “But there it is—father haven’t changed her in all these years, so it isn’t likely that ever he will. She was full of Crazywell Pool only yesterday. You know it—a wisht place, sure enough, and it tells about nothing but death and such-like dismal matters. But if you was to say to her ’twas all nonsense—not that I would go so far as that myself—she’d answer that you was courting your undoing and would surely come to harm.”
“I know she would and you yourself are as bad, pretty near.”
“Crazywell is harmless enough every night but Christmas Eve,” explained Margaret. “Only then can you say that there’s aught out of the common hidden in the water. But then—well, you know what they say.”
“Stuff and nonsense! Your mother believes that you hear a voice there after dark on Christmas Eve; and that it calls out the names of them that’ll die afore another year’s out. What can be sillier than that?”
“Strange things have happened, all the same,” argued Margaret. “I don’t say I trust in all that dear mother does, though she can give chapter and verse for most of it; but Crazywell have spoken out the death year of more men than one. Why, only ten year agone you know how Joseph Westaway, being over-got by the fog, was along there on Christmas Eve and heard an awful voice saying, ‘Nathan Snell! Nathan Snell!’ And didn’t Nathan Snell—Mr. Simon Snell’s own father—actually die the March afterwards, of a kick from his horse? You can’t deny that, Bartley, because Joseph Westaway heard it with his own ears—him being on the way to eat his Christmas dinner at Kingsett Farm, with the Pierces, and not so much as market merry.”
“You’re as bad as your mother, Madge, and worse than Bart. You’ll believe in the pixies next, I doubt. But there’s one thing I do say where Mrs. Stanbury’s right, though I can’t be supposed to know much about such matters—a bachelor man like me. Your mother told mine how ’twas arranged that Rhoda joins you and David at ‘Meavy Cot’ after you’m married; and Mrs. Stanbury said that somehow, though far be it from her to set her opinion over other people, she couldn’t think ’twas a wise plan; and my mother who never beats about no bush, and always sets up her opinion over everybody, said for her part ’twas flat foolishness, not to say madness, and would end in a rumpus. What d’you think of that?”
“’Tis taken out of my hands, Bartley. I wasn’t asked—no more was mother. Some might think that it wouldn’t suit Rhoda—living along with a young married couple; but I know, and you know, what Rhoda is to David. ’Tisn’t a common friendship of brother and sister, but a lot more than that. She’d be lost at the Warren House without him.”
“But surely the man doesn’t want her now that he’s going to take a wife?”
“Yes, he does—to look after his dogs.”
“Can’t you look after his dogs?”
“No,” said Margaret, firmly, “I can’t. I don’t treat dogs right. I spoil ’em.”
“Well, if the three of you are of one mind, I can’t see that it’s any other body’s business. Here’s the top of the hill, and I can’t go no farther, though I’d like to.”
He put down her basket, and she thanked him for carrying it.
“And what you say is true, I’m sure! if we three—Rhoda and David and me—be well pleased at the thought of biding together, why shouldn’t we do so?”
“Of course. You can but try it. Perhaps she’ll marry afore long, and you’ll have the dogs on your hands yet afore you expect it.”
“I’m sure I hope—at least—good-bye, for the present,” said Margaret, and hurried off.
“Ah! she told the truth then!” thought the man; “told the naked truth and caught herself up too late! ‘I’m sure I hope she will go,’ was what her heart prompted her to say. Maybe ’twill be my luck to cut the knot. Anyhow, as a full-blown upholsterer equal to making two pound a week at any time, I’ve a right to cast my eye where I please. Funny ’twould be if I should ever kiss Rhoda Bowden again. But ’twill be ‘by your leave’ next time, I reckon, if ever that happens.”