Chapter VII Eylesbarrow
Margaret Bowden not seldom visited the haunts of her youth, for many favourite places lay within a walk of her home, and she had a measure of loneliness in her life which might be filled according to her fancy. Sometimes she blamed herself that life should offer intervals for amusement or for rest. David found no such leisure from dawn until after dark; Rhoda was always busy out of doors, and even when she had nothing left to do, as happened in the evening, would often sequester herself afield under the night. But Margaret’s holiday generally followed the midday meal; and after noon she often went to see her mother, or sought some holt in Dennycoombe Wood, or beside Crazywell, or among the heathery hillocks of Eylesbarrow. That great eminence upon the forest boundary was familiar and pleasant to her. She knew it well, from its tonsure of stone, piled above a grave, to its steeps and slopes and water-springs. A pool with rushes round about spread under the highest elevation and mirrored the sky; while southerly the ling grew very large, and there were deep scars and embouchures torn by torrents from the sides of the hill.
Hither came Margaret to keep tryst with Bartley Crocker on a day in June. She had not seen him save for a moment since his interview with Rhoda, but meeting a week before at Sheepstor, he made a plan and she promised to join him on Eylesbarrow and hear what he had to tell her. The east wind roared over Madge where she sat snug in a little pit; but the sun was warm and found her there. From time to time she rose and lifted her head to see if Bartley was coming. Then she sat down again and fell back upon her own thoughts. She began to apprehend the mixed nature of marriage and those very various ingredients that complete the dish. As yet only one cloud hung over her united life with David. But time might reasonably be trusted to lift it. They were a happy pair, and if his stronger will lacked ready and swift sympathy on all occasions, it still served the fine purpose of controlling her sentimentality. He hurt her sometimes, but she kept the pain to herself. His sledge-hammer methods were new to her; while he could not understand her outlook, and, indeed, he made no attempt to do so. But she never argued; she always gave way and she loved him so dearly that it was easy to give way. Rhoda, too, she liked better as she knew her better. She felt sorry for Rhoda and longed to round off her life into a more complete and perfect thing. It appeared an outrage on nature that such a girl should remain unmarried. She strove to enlarge Rhoda’s sexual sympathies and make her more tolerant of men. But she did not succeed. And so it gradually happened that the future of Rhoda rather obsessed the young wife’s mind. She was determined to see Bartley and Rhoda man and wife if she could bring it about. She was here upon that business now. That he had spoken to Rhoda she did not yet know; but she suspected it.
Again Margaret looked round about her, while the wind flapped her sunbonnet till it stung her cheeks. At hand morning and night alternately swung up over the uttermost eastern desolation that even Dartmoor offers. By Cater’s Beam and the sources of Plym and Avon, the solemn, soaking undulations ranged; and they were shunned by every living thing; but to the north a mighty company of tors thrust up about the central waste; and westerly stretched the regions of her home. Far beneath lay Dennycoombe under Coombeshead, and Sheep’s Tor, like a saurian, extended with a huge flat head and a serrated backbone of granite. She saw her father’s fields on the hillside and knew them by their names. In their fret of varied colour under the stone-crowned hill, they looked like a patchwork coverlet dragged up to some old, gnarled chin. Men were working there and elsewhere on the land; and in the stone quarries, far off on Lether Tor, men also worked. She gazed upon the familiar places, the homesteads and the solitary homes. She busied her mind with the life histories advancing beneath these roof-trees; and here she smiled when she marked a dwelling where joy harboured for a little; here she sighed at sight of one where joy had ceased to visit: here she wondered at thought of houses where the folk hid their hearts from the world and stared heavy-eyed and dumb upon their kind. But she had an art to win secrets, and few denied her knowledge or declined her sympathy.
One house chained her attention and awoke in Madge personal thoughts again. She looked at a small cottage near Lowery, far distant on the opposite side of the river. It stood under a few trees and crouched meanly a hundred yards from the highway. The roof was of turf, mended with a piece of corrugated iron kept in its place by heavy stones; the broken windows were stuffed with clouts. A few fowls pecked about the threshold, and adjoining the dwelling stood a cow-byre under the same roof with it. The front gate was rotted away and rusty pieces of an old iron bedstead had taken its place. These details were hidden from the distant watcher, but she knew them well, and in her mind’s eye could see a flat-breasted, long-nosed, hungry-faced woman, with grey hair falling down her back and dirt grimed into her cheeks and hands. It was Eliza Screech, widow of a man who had blown himself to pieces with blasting powder in the adjacent quarry, and mother of William Screech, the mistrusted admirer of Madge’s sister-in-law, Dorcas. This young fellow had lately brewed a sort of familiar trouble; and while she thought upon it, David’s wife considered her own situation and wished that a thing presently to happen to Dorcas might happen to her instead, and so turn sorrow into rejoicing. This was the cloud on her horizon. Her mother, indeed, shared her pessimism but everybody else laughed at Margaret’s concern and declared it to be ridiculous in one scarcely six months a wife.
She debated on the ways of nature and the ironies of chance; then Bartley’s voice was lifted, and she popped up again, and he saw her and approached.
“Didn’t you hear me sooner?” he asked, flinging himself down near her.
“No, indeed. I was thinking so much about one thing and another, that I never heard you. Hope you’ve not been seeking for me a long time?”
He did not answer but struck at once into the subject that had brought him.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve started on her. I’ve begun and told her a few things to clear the way and get her into a better frame of mind. Pity I hadn’t stopped there and left what I said to soak in a bit; but I had to go on and give the reason for saying it.”
“You told her then?”
“I did, and she took it fairly quiet. Of course she said ’twas out of the question and never, never could be. I expected that. But I’m not going to believe it, Madge. The thing is how to go on with it. I want you to tell me what to do next. You promised you would. Mustn’t worry her, and at the same time mustn’t let her forget I’m at her elbow—dogged and determined and fixed in my mind. I want you to be clever for me, as well you know how, and tell me what line will please her best. I shall leave talking for a bit, and then I shall offer again. My only fear is that she’ll see somebody else in the meantime, and that while I’m planning and holding off and doing nought to fluster or anger her, some other pattern of fool will blunder in and shock her into saying ‘yes’ before she knows what she’s done. You can often surprise a woman into relenting who never would relent if you went on grinding away in a cold-blooded fashion. They’re obstinate themselves, but they don’t admire obstinacy in us. Would you have a dash at her and keep on, or would you hold off and busy yourself in other quarters? Which would bring her to the scratch quickest? You know her; you can give me a few good hints, surely.”
“Do neither of these things, Bartley. She hates anything like courting, or speech about marriage. And she hates surprises of any sort. She’s an old woman in the way she likes things to jog steady. If aught falls out unexpected, it flurries her. And that’s the hard thing you’ve got afore you, if you are going on with it. Because you’re all for dash and quickness and surprises, and she’s all against everything of the sort.”
“I must keep grinding on in a cold-blooded style, then?”
“Ess fay, and the more cold-blooded, the better like to please her.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Be damned if I think I’ve got patience for it, Madge. I love her well enough but I can’t bide like a lizard or a spider watching a fly. I lost you along of taking it too easy—yes, I did, for I swear you’d have married me if I’d offered myself a year before David came along. And now, perhaps, I’ll end by losing Rhoda. There’s nobody else in the field and she’s got no excuse for not taking me; and that’s just what will make her hard to catch. But I’m determined in reason to have her. Only I’m not built to wait till we’re both grey-headed.”
“Let me begin to help,” she said. “You bade me do nought so far, and I’ve done nought. Not by a word or wish have I let her guess I thought about you or about her. She don’t know that I’m interested yet. And I won’t let her know; but I can set to work witty and say the word in season and help the good cause on. Why not? I want to see her married just as much as I want to see you married. ’Twould mend you both—yes, you so well as her.”
“That wise you’ve grown since you took David! Though, for that matter, you was always wise enough for any two girls.”
“Not a bit wise—wish I was; far from that, worse luck; but sensible how things are and sensible how difficult ’tis to get two natures to fit in sometimes. I be sure as possible that you and she would make a happy couple and that you’ll never regret it if she takes you, and no more will she; but the difficulty is to see where your natures be built to fit together. ’Tis like a child’s puzzle: to fit you and her close.”
“There’s not much we’ve got in common except love of roaming by night.”
“A pretty useful taste in common for lovers, I should think. But I’ll find more out than that. I know a lot more about her now than once I did; and I’ll tell you this: I’m not so much in secret fear of her as once I was. Yes—fearful I felt at first—so off-handed and stern and aloof she was. But now I’ve come to see she’s terrible simple really, and not very different from other girls—except here and there. She’s interested in all that falls out, and she’s hopeful to-day and cast down to-morrow like anybody else. She sits of a night thinking—yes, she thinks. Lord knows what about, but ’tis a sign of a heart in her that she can pucker up her forehead thinking. Kind, mind you, too. Not partickler kind to me, or interested in me away from David—I must grant that. But kind to living things in general.”
“But I don’t want her to be kind—to anybody but me. I want her to be grand and odd and unlike t’others. ’Tis her oddness as much as her loveliness took my fancy; but if her oddness ends in her being an old maid, that’ll mean a good deal of my time wasted.”
“Don’t think it. A rare good wife’s hid in Rhoda, and, please God, you’ll be the man to find it out. I’ll set to work, Bartley. Don’t fear I’ll be clumsy. Too fond of you both for that. We’ll meet again in a month, if you can wait so long—”
“Which I certainly can not.”
“In a fortnight then. Thursday’s always David’s morning for Tavistock; so this day fortnight we’ll meet again, unless anything falls out to prevent it. And I won’t be idle. But I mustn’t frighten her; and she’s easily frighted when men are concerned. Fellows drop in of a night often to speak to David; but nine times out of ten, if she’s to home, she’ll pick up her work and pop up to her chamber, or take her hat and away out of the house by the back door.”
“Never was such another, I believe. All the same, I’m a hopeful fashion of man. I’ll win her yet, with your help.”
“I do trust so, Bartley.”
Silence fell between them, only broken by the hiss of the wind above their heads.
“I must get back-along now,” she said at length. “How goes on Mrs. Crocker? Better, I hope?”
He shook his head but did not reply.
“I shall come to see her again next week, if I may.”
“Do, and welcome, Madge. Strange how illness breaks down the pride and shows the naked truth of a man or woman. She’s frightened to think of dying—her that you might have said was frightened of nothing.”
“And still frightened of nothing really. ’Tisn’t this world that frights her, nor yet the next—only the link snapping between. There’s a lot like that.”
He changed the subject again and followed her eyes that had roamed across the valley once more.
“You’re looking at Screech’s house,” he said. “I hope this thing they tell about isn’t true?”
“I hope not, Bartley, but I think it is.”
“And if it is? However, it don’t become a giddy bachelor to make light of it. Only you’ll hear such a devil of a lot on the other side, that perhaps before long you’ll be thankful to find one here and there who can keep his nerve about it.”
“Yes, I shall hear enough about it—and to spare: you’re right there.”
He laughed.
“I’m not one of those that can see no good in Billy Screech,” he said. “Too like him myself, I reckon. All the same, I know if the right woman came along to make it worth while, I could stand to work—for her—as well as any man. You’ll see some day. I can’t be bothered to work for myself, Madge, but if ever I get hold of Rhoda, ’twill surprise you to find what a knack for earning money I shall show. And same with yonder hairy chap. He’s clever and cunning. He’ll make a very good partner, if the woman ban’t too hard to please, and don’t worry him with silly questions.”
They parted a few minutes later; but before he went Bartley Crocker shook Madge’s hand very heartily as he thanked her with great earnestness for her promises.
“What you’ll do for me I can’t guess,” he said; “yet well I know that what you can do you will.”
“Couldn’t name it in words myself,” she answered. “But all the same, I feel as one woman might have a bit of power over another in such a matter. I put my hope in her common sense. She don’t lack for that, and, once you win her, her common sense will be a tower of strength for the both of you.”
“That’s good to know, I’m sure; for common sense never was my strong point and never will be,” he confessed.
“And if I’ve promised more than I can perform, you must forgive me,” she said. “I must guard myself against your disappointment, Bartley, for it may come to that.”
“You’ll do what you can,” he answered, “for liking of me; and you’ll do the best you can; and if I lose, ’twill be no blame to you; and if I win, ’twill be such a feather in your cap as few of the cleverest women can boast.”