Chapter V The Virgin and the Dogs
Rhoda Bowden loved the dogs, and her part in the little commonwealth of Ditsworthy lay with them. Ten were kept, and money was made from Elias Bowden’s famous breed of spaniels. To see Rhoda, solemn and stately, with puppies squealing and tumbling before her, or hanging on to her skirts, was a familiar sight at the warren.
“It takes all sorts to make a world,” said Mrs. Bowden, “and I must allow my Rhoda never neighboured kindly with the babbies—worse than useless with ’em; but let it be a litter, and she’s all alive and clever as need be.”
Indeed, the girl had extraordinary skill in canine affairs. She loved and understood the dogs; and they loved her. By a sort of instinct she learned their needs and aversions, and the brutes paid her with a blind worship that woke as soon as their eyes opened on the world. Yelping and screaming, the puppies paddled about after her; the old dogs walked by her side or galloped before. Sometimes she went to the warren with them and watched them working. After David they were nearer to her heart than most of her own species. She seemed to fathom their particular natures and read their individual characters with a closeness more intense and a judgment more accurate than she possessed for mankind.
Perhaps not only dogs woke this singular understanding in her. As a child she had chosen to be much alone, and in silent reveries, before the ceaseless puzzles of Ditsworthy, she had sat sequestered amid natural things and watched the humble-bees in the thyme, the field mice, the wheat-ears, and the hawks and lizards. She had regarded all these lives as running parallel with her own. They were fellow mortals and no doubt possessed their own interests, homes, anxieties and affairs. She had felt very friendly to them all and had liked to suppose that they were happy and prosperous. That they lived on each other did not puzzle her or pain her. It was so. She herself—and David—lived by the rabbits. Many thousands of the busy brown people passed away through the winter to make the prosperity of Ditsworthy. That was a part of the order of things, and she accepted it with indifference. Death, indeed, she mourned instinctively, but she did not hate it.
She loved the night and often, from childhood, crept forth alone into darkness or moonlight.
There was no humour in Rhoda. She smiled if David laughed, but even his weak sense of the laughter in life exceeded hers by much, and she often failed after serious search to see reason for his amusement. Such laughter-lovers as Bartley Crocker frankly puzzled her. Indeed, she felt a contempt for them.
Life had its own pet problems, and most of these she shared with David; but of late every enigma had sunk before a new and gigantic one. David was in love with a girl and certainly hoped to marry her. Until now the great and favourite mystery in Rhoda’s life was the meaning of the old sundial at Sheepstor church. Above the porch may still be seen a venerable stone cut to represent a human skull from whose eye-sockets and bony jaws there spring fresh ears of wheat. Crossbones support the head of Death, and beneath them stands a winged hour-glass with the words ‘Mors Janua Vitæ.’
This fragment had since her childhood been a fearful joy to Rhoda. It was still an object of attraction; but now she had ceased to want an explanation and would have refused to hear one: the mystery sufficed her. David, too, had shared her emotions in the relic and had often advanced theories to explain the eternal wonder of the wheat springing from human bones.
And now all lesser things were fading before the great pending change, and Rhoda went uneasy and not wholly happy, like an animal that feels the approach of storm. Margaret Stanbury interested her profoundly and there lurked no suspicion of jealousy in Rhoda’s attitude; but critical she was, and terribly jealous for David. Young Bowden’s mother had been much easier to satisfy than his sister. With careful and not unsympathetic mind Rhoda summed up Madge; and the estimate, as was inevitable, found David’s sweetheart wanting.
The irony of chance had cast Madge into a house childless save for her elder brother; and her instincts had driven her to pet and nurse the boulders on Coombeshead; while for Rhoda were babies and to spare provided, but she ever evaded that uncongenial employment and preferred a puppy to a child.
Rhoda held her own opinions concerning the opposite sex, and they were contradictory. A vague ideal of man haunted her mind, but it was faint and indefinite. She required some measure of special consideration for women from men; but personally she could not be said to offer any charm of womanhood in exchange. She expected attention of a sort, but she never acknowledged it in a way to gladden a masculine heart. And yet her loveliness and her presence made men forget these facts. They began by being enthusiastic and only cooled off after a nearer approach had taught them her limitations. In the general opinion Rhoda “wanted something” to complete her; but here and there were those who did not mark this shadowy deficiency. Mr. Simon Snell regarded her as the most complete and admirable woman he had ever seen; and David also knew of no disability in his sister. It is true that she differed radically from Margaret; but that was not a fault in his estimation. He hoped that these two women would soon share his home; he believed that each must win from the other much worth the winning; and he held each quite admirable, though with a different sort of perfection.
On a day at edge of winter, the mistress of the dogs sat on a rock and watched her brothers Napoleon and Wellington, and her sister Dorcas, engaged with a ferret. The long, pink-eyed, lemon-coloured brute had a string tied round its neck and was then sent into the burrows. Anon the boys dug down where the string indicated, and often found two or three palpitating rabbits cornered at the end of a tunnel. Then they dragged them out and broke their necks. At Rhoda’s feet four spaniel puppies fought with a rabbit-skin, while she and their mother watched them admiringly.
Towards this busy scene there came a woman, and Rhoda, recognising Mrs. Stanbury, walked to meet her.
“Be your mother at home, my dear?” asked the elder. “’Twas ordained us should have a bit of a tell about one or two things, and I said a while ago, when us met Sunday week, that I’d pick a dry day and come across.”
“She’s at home, and faither too. We’re making up a big order for Birmingham and everybody’s to work.”
“Such a hive as you be here. Bless them two boys, how they do grow, to be sure!”
She pointed to the twins, Samson and Richard, who had just joined their elder brothers.
Rhoda led the way and they approached the house. White pigeons and blue circled round about the eaves, and sweet peat smoke drifted from the chimney. A scrap of vegetable garden protected from the east by a high wall, lay beside the dwelling, and even unexpected flowers—gifts from the valleys—made shift to live and blossom here. Aubrietias struggled in the stones by the garden path, and a few Michaelmas daisies, now in the sere, also prospered there. Sarah Bowden herself, and only she, looked after the flowers. They were a sort of pleasure to her—especially the daffodils that speared through the black earth and hung out their orange and lemon and silver in spring. Walls of piled peat and stone surrounded the garden, and the grey face of the Warren House opened upon it. At present the garden and porch were full of rabbit baskets packed for market. One could only see rows and rows of little hind pads stained brown by the peat.
Mr. Bowden was doing figures at a high desk in the corner of the kitchen, and his wife sat by the fire mending clothes. Rhoda left Mrs. Stanbury with them and went out again to the boys.
Sarah Bowden had grown round-backed with crouching over many babies. She loved them and everything to do with them. Had Nature permitted it, she would gladly have begun to bear another family. Now she picked up her skirt and dusted a chair.
“Don’t, please, demean yourself on my account,” said Constance Stanbury. “I’ve come from master. As you know, my dear, there’s something in the wind, and Bartholomew thought that perhaps you’d be so kind as to spare the time and tell me a little how it strikes you and what you feel about it.”
“Fetch out elderberry wine and seedy cake,” said Elias. “Mrs. Stanbury must have bit and sup. She’ve come a rough road.”
“No, no. No occasion, I’m sure. Don’t let me put you to no trouble, Sarah.”
“Very pleased,” said Mrs. Bowden. “’Tis about David and your maiden you be here, of course?”
“So it is then. My children ain’t nothing out of the common, you must know—haven’t got more sense than, please God, they should have. But all the same Margaret’s a very good, fearless girl, and kind-hearted you might say, even.”
“Kind-hearted! Why, her name’s knowed all up the countryside for kindness,” said Mrs. Bowden. “She’s a proper fairy, and we be very fond of her, ban’t we, Elias?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Bowden. “She’s got every vartue but cash.”
“She’m to have twenty-five pounds on her wedding-day, however. Of course to people like you, with large ideas about money, such a figure be very small; but her father’s put it by for her year after year, and she’ll have it.”
“Well done, Stanbury!” said Mr. Bowden.
“They ban’t tokened yet, and you might think us a thought too pushing, which God forbid, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Stanbury, crumbling her cake and not eating it. “But it’s going to be. I know the signs. Your David’s set on her, and he’s the sort who have their way. That man’s face wouldn’t take ’no’ for an answer, if I may say so. Not that he’ll get ’no’ for an answer. There’s that in my daughter’s eyes when his name is named.—So ’tis just so good as done so far as they’re concerned.”
Mr. Bowden left his desk and came to the table. He poured out a glass of elderberry wine for himself and drank it.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Wool is worth one shilling and sevenpence a pound, and David be going to buy fifty sheep. You might ax how? Well, his Uncle Partridge—Sarah’s late brother—left him five hundred pound under his will; and when he marries and leaves here, he’ll spend a bit of that on sheep—old Dartmoor crossed with Devon Long Wool. ’Tis a brave breed and the wonderfulest wool as you’ll handle in England. The only care is not to breed out the Dartmoor constitution. I may tell you an average coat is twelve pounds of wool. So there you are.”
Mr. Bowden instantly returned to his stool and his ledger. He appeared to regard his statement as strictly relative, and, indeed, Mrs. Stanbury so understood it. In their speech, as in their written communications, the folk shear off every redundancy of expression until only the bare bones of ideas remain—sometimes without even necessary connecting links.
“We never doubted that he was snug. But where be he going, if I might ask?” said Mrs. Stanbury.
“Wait,” answered Elias, twisting round but not dismounting. “We haven’t come to that. I should mention ponies also. There’ll be ponies so well as sheep, and in God’s good time, when old Jonathan Dawe’s carried to the yard, David may become Moorman of the quarter. Nobody’s better suited to the work. Well—ponies.—With ponies what live be all profit, and what die be no loss. In fact, if you find the carpses soon enough, they be a gain too, for the dogs eat ’em. The chap as was up here afore me twenty-five year ago, was a crooked rogue, and many a pony did he shoot when they comed squealing to the doors in snowy weather—for his dogs.”
“David be going to build a house,” said Mrs. Bowden. “He couldn’t abide living in no stuffy village after the warren, so he’s going to find a place—he’ve got his eye on it a’ready, for that matter.”
“Not too far away, I hope—if I may venture to say so.”
“Not at all far, and closer to you than us. He was full of a place under Black Tor as he’d found by the river. There’s a ruin of the ’old men’ there, as only wants building up to make a very vitty cottage.”
“And you see no objection and think ’tis a good enough match for your boy?”
“Just so,” said Elias.
“Then I won’t take up no more of your time, for I mark ’tis a rabbit day with you.”
“There’s a thought comes over me, however,” said Sarah, “and ’tis about the young youth, Bartley Crocker. Mind, Constance, I’m not saying anything against him. But David’s had the man on his mind a bit of late, and perhaps you know why.”
“No doubt I do,” said Mrs. Stanbury. “You see, Nanny Crocker have took up with Madge lately, and I believe she actually thinks as my girl be almost good enough for her boy. ’Tis a great compliment, but she’ve begun at the wrong end—curious such a clever woman as her. Margaret likes Bartley Crocker very well, as all the maidens do for that matter. A very merry chap, but terrible lazy and terrible light-minded.”
“You’ll not often find a young man so solid and steady as our David.”
“Never seed the like, Sarah. An old head on young shoulders.”
“I’ve said of him before, and I’ll say of him again that nought could blow David off his own bottom,” declared Elias. “As to t’other chap, he may have a witty mother, but bottom—none; ballast—not a grain. A very frothy, fair-weather fellow.”
“What I say is, with so much open laughter there must be hidden tears. Nobody can always be in such a good temper—like a schoolboy just runned out of school,” said Mrs. Stanbury.
“Why, ’tis so—ever grinning and gallivanting, that chap,” answered the man. “David’s built of different clay, and though your daughter may not have much to laugh at, for I’ll grant he’s a bit solemn, yet she’ll have nought to cry at; and that’s a lot more to the point.”
“Her nature do tend to laughter, however; I won’t hide that from you. Madge will get a bit of fun out of married life. Her very love for David will make her bright and merry as a dancing star.”
“Why not? Why not?” asked Mrs. Bowden.
“No reason,” summed up the warrener. “She’ll bring the flummery and David will bring the pudding. Leave it so. They must do the rest. And as for laughter, why, I can laugh in the right place myself, as well as any man.”
Mrs. Stanbury rose.
“I may tell master, then, that you’m both willing and agreeable?”
“Certainly you may; and when things is forwarder, David will put his prospects afore Bartholomew Stanbury all straight and clear.”
“’Tis a very great match for any daughter of mine, and I hope she’ll rise worthy of it.”
“Don’t be downcast, my dear,” said Sarah. “Margaret’s as good as gold, and lucky the man that gets her, though my own son.”
“You speak too kind, I’m sure—both of ’e,” declared Mrs. Stanbury; then she departed and her neighbours discussed her.
“Never seed the like of that woman for crying ‘stinking fish,’” said Mr. Bowden; and his wife admitted it.
“She do make the worst of herself and her belongings without a doubt; but a good sort and better far than the puffed-up people.”
“Seems to go in fear whether she ought to be alive—eh?”
“Yes, you might say so.”
Elias uttered one of his sudden chuckles.
“What be laughing at?” asked his wife.
“Why, I was thinking when that humble-minded creature comes to die, she’ll tell the angels when they come to fetch her, that she really ban’t anything like good enough for the Upper Place!”