Chapter V Arrival of Rhoda
A fortnight after her marriage there came a day when Madge roamed restlessly and rather nervously about her little house. She was very happy, yet with a clouded happiness, because this ideal bliss of dwelling with David alone drew to its close. Real life had yet to begin at ‘Meavy Cot,’ and real life included Rhoda Bowden. On this day David started early to fetch his sister. Among his other possessions was a horse and a light cart; and with these he set out in the chill half-light of six o’clock on a November morning for the Warren House.
Now Margaret’s preparations were complete. A dish of cakes kept hot upon the hearth; and aloft in Rhoda’s room the severe simplicity of the rosy-washed walls, low roof and little iron bedstead seemed to echo Rhoda’s maiden mind. But her sister-in-law was not content with the unadorned chamber. She had nailed an illuminated text or two upon the walls; she had hung there also an old grocer’s almanac with a picture of a deerhound’s head upon it, because she thought this portrait of a dog would please Rhoda; and she had made a little bouquet of wild berries and set it with a sprig of ivy in a vase on the chest-of-drawers. A few of Rhoda’s own possessions had already arrived. On the floor of the room lay no carpet; but the white deal boarding was broken by some skins—black, brindled and tawny. These memorials were all that remained of certain defunct dogs who had owned Rhoda as mistress during their bustling and eventful lives. She was wont to preserve the pelt of any special favourite; and her nature received a placid satisfaction in possession and use of these remains. The rough coats that had often-times received caress or chastisement as occasion demanded, now felt only her naked feet at morn and evening.
Margaret began to fear for the tea, but David was a punctual man, and at five minutes past the appointed time a light flashed in the outer darkness, a cart creaked and jolted over the rough way, a dog barked and Rhoda’s deep tones answered it. She was soon beside Margaret, and they shook hands and kissed affectionately.
“Come and see your room,” said Madge, “while David puts up the horse and cart. I’m afraid you was jolted a bit at the finish. The new road round the hill be terrible rough travelling for wheels.”
Rhoda was not cheerful and had little to say. She produced some parcels and one from Mrs. Bowden; but it seemed that some trouble sat upon her. She brightened up, however, on reaching her room and much admired it.
“Like your kind heart to think of all these things,” she said.
“You’ll see the sun of a fine morning rise ’twixt Hessary and Cramber,” explained Margaret. “And I’m afraid the noise of the waterfall may keep you waking a bit till you’m used to it. ’Tis quiet to-night, but after heavy rain Meavy comes down like thunder.”
“Nought keeps me awake,” declared Rhoda. She altered the position of the fragments on the floor. “That was the best collie ever I had,” she said, drawing a black and orange skin to her bedside; “a terrible fine dog, and only in his prime when he died. Father said he was going mad, though I never thought it. However, he was queer and snapped at the childer in a way very unlike himself, and father would not risk it, but put a charge of shot into his head when I was out of the way. You’d hardly believe it, Madge, but I cried! On my honour I cried—and a girl of near eighteen at the time.”
Rhoda had brought a few of her special treasures and Margaret now helped her to arrange them to advantage. Her library was trifling and included a Bible and prayer-book, an anthology of verses, which Madge saw for the first time and felt astonishment at seeing, and a work on canine diseases.
“You can have they rhymes if you’ve got any use for them,” said Rhoda. “They was given me by my gossip, old Martha Moon, when I was confirmed, but I don’t understand poetry, though you may.”
Then Rhoda admired the dog almanac, and she was still doing so when David’s voice below brought the women down together.
He was thirsty and wanted his tea.
Rhoda produced one of the famous Bowden cakes, famed alike for size and wealth of ingredients; but the meal, while lacking nothing of goodness, warmth and variety, awoke no answering glow in the master’s mind. He was clearly troubled, and Rhoda’s passing brightness also gave place to a taciturn demeanour before her brother’s concern. Margaret thereupon rated David and he explained his annoyance.
“What ever has come over you?” she asked. “So glumpy and glowry as you are! What’s amiss with him, Rhoda? But I’ll wager I know. It all looked so cosy and homelike at the Warren House that David felt homesick and didn’t want to came back to me!”
David was bound to laugh at this absurd theory.
“Homesick!” he said. “I’m only homesick when I’m out of the sight of our brave chimney; and well you know it.”
“’Tis Dorcas,” explained Rhoda. “She’s giving mother and father a lot of trouble for the minute. She’ll see sense come presently, we’ll hope.”
“Billy Screech?”
Rhoda nodded.
“She’ll come round; but for some cause us common folk can’t fathom, she’s in love with the man. So she says, anyhow, though ’tis hard to believe it.”
“As to that,” declared Margaret, “Billy ban’t particular ugly. He’ve got a long, sharp nose, I grant you—”
“Yes,” interrupted David, “and he’ve been told to keep that nose away from the Warren House; and the mischief is he won’t obey father’s commands. Two nights agone the moon was full, and Rhoda went out for to breathe the air and see if there was a fox down by the fowl-house. And a fox there was—long nose and all, and his name was Billy Screech.”
He looked at his sister and she continued the narrative.
“I hate spying,” she said, “and God, He knows I didn’t go afield to seek that man, or any other man. And I thought Dorcas was to bed, for she’d gone off after supper with a faceache. But travelling quick and silent, as my way is, over the close surf of the warrens, I came round a rock right on top of ’em. And—” Rhoda grew hot at the unpleasant recollection and broke off.
“And he was sitting on a stone, and she was sitting on his lap,” said David, who spared his sister the details. “Little red-headed fool! I wish I’d found ’em, for I’d have thrashed the man to jelly afore her eyes, and cured her that way.”
“What did you do, Rhoda?” asked Margaret.
“I made her come in. As her elder sister I had the right. She wasn’t in the least ashamed of herself seemingly. I boxed her ears, when the man had gone, and she forgot herself and tried to bite my hand.”
“She’s like a rat in a trap over this business,” said David. “Never would you have guessed or dreamed ’twas in her to show her teeth so.”
“All laughter and silly jokes till this miserable man came after her,” continued his sister. “And now—I blush for her. ’Tis very horrid and shameful to think that any girl can demean herself so.”
David here left the room and Madge continued to Rhoda.
“She feels ’tis her great chance for a home of her own, I expect. Us all gets that hope sometimes, so why not Dorcas?”
But the other did not sympathise with this theory.
“Us don’t all feel it,” she declared. “A many women never do. And if all of us was to marry, the work of the world would stand still. There’s a great deal for free women to do that nobody else can do so well as them; and it seems to me that the first thing a female does, after she’s brought childer into the world, be to look about and try to find an unmarried woman to help her do her work. There’s scores of spinsters spending their lives messing about with their sisters’ babbies.”
“Babbies ban’t everything, I grant that,” said Margaret; but she said it doubtfully. In her heart children certainly took the first place. Indeed, Madge felt a little guilty of being untrue to herself in the last sentiment. Therefore she modified it.
“All the same, they mean a lot to most women, and I long for ’em cruel and ban’t ashamed to say it.”
“The likes of you would; and so do David; and when they come, you’ll want for me to look after some young things beside puppies,” said Rhoda. She smiled, but did not laugh. There was a saying at Warren House that none had ever heard her laugh.
“As to that,” answered her sister-in-law, boldly, “you talk like an old maid a’ready, and you but a few and twenty. We’ll soon larn you different! When you see what ’tis to have a li’l home of your very own, and a man of your very own, I’m sure you’ll begin to find that marriage is good. Now come and look at my parlour and tell me if there’s not something there that you’d wish away.”
She lighted a candle and exhibited the glory of her best room to Rhoda’s gaze.
“’Tis everything it should be, and you’ve arranged it beautiful, I’m sure,” declared Rhoda; “and the presents do look better far than they did afore. This here, that me and Sophia bought for you”—she indicated a little looking-glass in an ornate gold frame—“why, it’s ever so much finer than ever I thought it in the shop at Tavistock where we bought it; and father’s sideboard do look splendid.”
“You must see the pictures by daylight,” said Madge. “They be proper painted pictures that David picked up in a sale. He got the four for seven shillings, and the auctioneer said the frames were worth the money.”
Rhoda admired very heartily and again congratulated Margaret on her skill and taste.
“What should I wish away?” she asked. “I can’t sec nothing that isn’t just where it should be, I’m sure.”
“Look round again.”
But the other, after a further scrutiny, only shook her head.
“Why, those two handkerchiefs in the glass frames hanging each side of your lovely looking-glass. There’s poor Bartley’s purple and yellow and David’s blue and white spots. Now surely, surely, Rhoda, it ban’t a seemly thing to hang ’em up there to remind everybody of that horrid fight? And besides, as ’tis only of a Sunday the parlour’s likely to be used, that makes it worse, for who wants to think of such a business on the seventh day, of all days?”
Rhoda was looking at the colours, but showed only interest.
“They come out very nice,” she said, “and of course they ought to be here. If I was you, I should be prouder of them two things and the great, valiant battle they stand for, than anything else belonging to David. And if you’d been there, Madge, as I was, and had seen David, despite all that he went through, come out top and smash in t’other man’s face with his last strength afore he went blind—if you’d seen it, you wouldn’t wish the colours away. ’Twas I hitched ’em off the post when everybody else had forgot ’em.”
“There’s the other man to think of, however.”
“Why?” asked Rhoda. “I’m sure that Bartley Crocker, who be pretty large-minded with all his faults, wouldn’t think none the worse of David for hanging up the handkerchers like this. He’d have done the same quick enough—or his mother would have done it for him. The men be good friends, and so they ought to be. But that’s no reason against it.”
Margaret admitted the justice of the argument.
“If you think it can’t hurt anybody’s feelings, no doubt there’s no real harm,” she said.
“Of course not. Men be men, and not so tender and touchy as the likes of you. Why, what did Mr. Crocker say at your wedding? Nothing but what was friendly and kindly, I’m sure.”
“No, indeed—a beautiful speech; and ’twas as much for that reason as any other that I thought perhaps, if ever he came to see us and caught sight of the colours—”
“He’ll be the first to say they look very fine,” prophesied Rhoda. “All the same, I hope I shan’t be here when he calls—if he does call—for—”
She stopped and Margaret answered.
“Don’t say that. I’m sure, after what he spoke about you in his speech, you ought to let bygones be bygones and feel friendly.”
“That’s all past and forgiven,” said Rhoda; “but I won’t pretend I feel to him like I do to other men.”
“I hope you don’t,” replied Madge, laughing. “That’s just what I want to hear, Rhoda.”
The younger was puzzled and her sister-in-law, unconscious of the fateful moment, made the first move in a game that was to determine three destinies.
“I hope you don’t. I hope you feel that Bartley Crocker be worth a little more thought than most men. At any rate, don’t set your mind against him. That wouldn’t be fair—to yourself, Rhoda.”
“My mind’s neither for nor against any human creature outside my own people. Why should it be?”
“There’s no reason at all. You’re young and you’re terrible pretty, and not a soul that’s ever set eyes upon you feels anything but kind thoughts of you.”
Rhoda did not answer for a few moments; then a bewildered expression faded from her face.
“I’ll go out and see the kennel now.”
“Leave that till the morning and unpack your things. ’Twill be dark as a wolf’s mouth over there.”
“I’ve brought my own lantern,” said Rhoda; “I’ll go over now, if you’ll show me the way.”
The horn lantern was lighted and Madge led Rhoda where her husband had planted a row of flat stepping-stones across the river. The kennel and a byre stood there together, and four dogs whined a welcome to their new mistress. In the light of the flame their shining noses and lustrous eyes flashed out of the gloom, and they leapt about the women. David appeared; then Madge went in to wash up and prepare supper, while Rhoda stayed beside her brother.
“’Tis good to be back-along with you,” she said, “and I do think, all ways, it must be better. Joshua be coming out wonderful and surprising father every day since you went; and Sophia will take my place; and Nap and Wellington, between them, will look after Joshua’s work with the traps. ’Tis all right but for Dorcas. There’s nobody left to keep her in order now I’m gone—hateful little toad! I axed father to set parson on her; but he wouldn’t. Something will have to be done, but I don’t know what.”
“I’ll see father later,” replied David. “Dorcas be the first Bowden that’s a fool, and we must treat her according.”
They all supped together presently, and David planned the nature of the life before his sister. The course of laborious days did not spare her and left little margin for idleness; but Rhoda neither knew nor wished to know the meaning of leisure. She appeared well content with David’s plans and nodded from time to time, but said little.