She was acting now as instinctively as any wild animal of the woods. What had started in the zone of voluntary impulse had now passed into the ruling power of reflexes; every nerve of her body seemed to be thinking for itself, guiding her, and compelling her to struggle for the desired end. All this nonsense of high-falutin' morality must be swept aside; if he loved her still, he must admit that he loved her; it must be love or hate, but no more sham and pretense, no more of these half measures that made her a wife when people were looking, and an enemy, a culprit in disgrace, or a sexless business associate, when they two were alone behind drawn blinds.
"Mav, you're shaming me. 'A' done. 'Aarve you tekken leave o' yer senses?"
She felt him shiver as he resisted her; then in another moment he gripped her round the waist as brutally and violently as if he intended to pitch her out of the wagon, held her to him so fiercely that he crushed all the breath from her lungs, and gave her a long passionate mouth-to-mouth kiss. And it seemed to her that the strength and brutality of the embrace formed the one supreme gratification that she had been burning to obtain; she wanted to give herself to him as she had never done before, and if he crushed her and broke her and killed her in their joint rapture, she would drink death greedily as something inevitable to all those who empty the deep goblet of love.
"There!" He took his lips away, and she sank back gasping. "You've 'ad yer way wi' me;" and he heaved a sigh that was as loud as a groan. "Oh, Mav, my girl, gi' me yer kisses—kiss me all night and all day—if on'y you make me forget."
Her hat had tumbled off in the struggle, a mesh of brown hair was dangling over her shoulder, and she was still too much out of breath to speak. The wagon rolled heavily forward along the flat road, and the carter cracked his whip continuously to tell the horses they were nearly home. Presently Mavis got up, perched herself beside her husband, and whispered to him jerkily.
"You've nothing to forget, dear. No looking back. But, oh, my darling, I'm going to be more than I ever was to you. I feel it. I know it—an' we'll be happy, happy, happy, so long as we live."
She pressed her face against the sleeve of his jacket, and stroked his knee with as much luxurious pleasure as if the rough cord breeches had been made of the softest satin velvet.
"See. Look straight ahead," and she raised her hand and pointed.
Vine-Pits Farm was in sight. The stone house, the barns, the straw ricks, and the fruit trees all seeming to have clustered close together, to form a compact little kingdom of hope and joy.
"Look, dear. How pretty—see the sunlight on the roofs and on the ricks. That's luck. All the straw is changing into gold. My old Will is going to make heaps of golden sovereigns as big as any rick."
"Woo then. A-oo then." The carter stopped the horses outside the garden entrance. "Will the missis get down here at th' front door, or be us to go on into yaard?"
Mrs. Dale got down here, took the cat-basket from her husband, and went gaily up the path to the open front door.
"Don't let th' cat loose," Dale called after her warningly, "or she'll be back to Rodchurch like a streak o' greased lightning. She'll need acclim'tyzing all to-morrow."
Mavis ran through the house to the kitchen, where Mary and a courtesying old woman received her. Then she scampered from room to room, uttering little cries of contentment. Often as she had seen and admired the house during the last few weeks, it had never seemed so perfectly delightful as it did to-day: with its low-ceiled cozy little rooms at the back, its high and imposing rooms in front, its broad staircase and square landing, it would be quite a little palace when all had been set to rights.
Coming hurrying back to the hall, she saw her husband in the porch, a splendid dark figure with the last rays of yellow sunlight behind him. He paused bare-headed on the threshold, obviously not aware of her presence, and she was about to speak to him when he startled her by dropping on his knees and praying aloud.
"O merciful Powers, give me grace and strength to lead a healthy fearless life in this house."
XIII
The Dales were beginning to prosper now, but their first winter had been an anxious, difficult time.
Dale had made a common mistake in his calculations, and experience soon taught him that what is known as good-will, the most delicate and sensitive of all trade-values, can not by a mere stroke of the pen be transferred from one person to another. Solid customers turned truant; the business went down with terrifying velocity; and old Bates, who loyally came day after day to advise and assist, spoke with sincere regret. "William, I never foretold this. I must see what can be done. I'll leave no stone unturned." And he trotted about, touting for his successor, tramping long miles to beg for a continuance of favors that had unexpectedly ceased, but usually returning sadly to confess that his efforts had again been fruitless. They were gloomy evening hours, when the old and the young man sat together in the office by the roadway; and at night Mavis used to hear her sleeping husband moan and groan so piteously that she sometimes felt compelled to wake him.
"What is it?" Awakened thus, he would spring up with a hoarse cry, and be almost out of the bed before she was able to restrain him.
"It's nothing, dear. Only you were in one of your bad dreams, and I simply couldn't let you go on being tormented."
"That's right," he used to mutter sleepily. "I don't want to dream. I've enough that's real."
"Don't you worry, dear old boy. You're going to pull through grand—in the end. I know you are. Besides, if not—then we'll try something else."
She always murmured such consolatory phrases until he fell asleep once more.
The fact was that Bates had been respected by the well-to-do and loved by the humble; and Dale, out here, remained an unknown quantity. Anything of his fame as postmaster that had traveled along these two miles from Rodchurch did not help him. He was not liked. He felt it in the air, a dull inactive hostility, when talking to gentlefolks' coachmen or giving orders to his own servants. The coachmen could take no pleasure in patronizing him, nor the men in working for him. Mr. Bates advised him once or twice to cultivate a gentler and more ingratiating method of dealing with the people in his employ.
"Perhaps, William, I'm to blame for having spoilt 'em a bit;—but it'd be good policy for you to take them as you find them, and get them bound to you before you begin drilling 'em. A soft word now and then, William—you don't know how far it goes sometimes."
"What I complain of is this," said Dale; "they don't show any spirit. Every stroke o' bad luck I've had—every chance where they might step in with common sense, or extra care, or a spark of invention to save a situation for me—it's just as if they were a row o' turnips."
And the strokes of bad luck were so many and so heavy. The elements seemed to be making war against him—such wet days as made it impossible to deliver hay without damage to it, and an accusation from somebody's stables that the last lot was poisoned; then frost, and two horses seriously injured on the ice-clothed roads; then February gales, wrecking the barn roofs, entailing costly repairs; then floods; and last of all rats. The unusual amount of land water had driven them to new haunts, and Dale's granaries were suddenly invaded. "Oh, William," said Mr. Bates, horror-stricken, "beware of rats. They are the worst foe. One rat will mess up a mountain of grain."
About the time of the vernal equinox there came a tempest in comparison with which all previous wind and rain were but a whispering and a sprinkling. Every door was being rattled as if by giant hands, the glass sang in the latticed windows, and the whole house seemed swaying, when Mary told her mistress that something had gone wrong with the big straw stack and that the master was attempting to climb to the top of it on the long ladder.
Mavis instantly pulled up her skirt in true country fashion to make a cloak, and told Mary to help her open the kitchen door.
"You bide where you be, Mrs. Dale," said the old charwoman. "You ben't goin' to be no use of any kind out there, and you may bring yourself to a misfortune."
But Mavis insisted on struggling through the doorway, into the rude embrace of the weather. Great branches of the walnut tree were waving wildly, while little twigs and buds flew from apple trees like dust; the rain, not in drops but as it seemed in solid packets, struck her face and shoulders with such force that she could scarcely stand against it; a shallow wooden tub came bounding to her along the flagged path and passed like a sheet of brown paper; and just as she got to the corner of the buildings from which she could obtain a view of the rick-yard, thirty feet of pale fencing lay down upon the beehives and the rhubarb bed without a sound that was even faintly audible above the racket of the storm.
But she had no eyes for anything except her husband, and no other thought than of the horrible peril in which he was placing himself. Four men clung to the bottom of the ladder, and yet, with Dale's weight half-way up to help them, could not for a moment keep it steady. On top of the rick one of the tarpaulin sheets had broken loose; the cruel wind was tearing beneath it, wrenching out pegs and cordage, snatching at thatch-hackle, and making the stout ropes that should have held the sheet hiss and dart like serpents.
It seemed to her that the rick was as high as Mont Blanc, and that even on a placid summer day no one but a lunatic would want to scale it. Then she screamed, and went rushing forward.
Dale, in the act of clambering from the top rung of the ladder, had been blown off, and was hanging to a rope over the edge of the stack. With extreme difficulty the men moved the ladder, and he succeeded in getting on it again.
"Gi't up, sir. 'Tis mortally impossible." As well as Mavis, every one of them shouted an entreaty that he would come down.
Probably he did not hear them, and certainly he did not obey them. He went up, not down. Then for half an hour he fought like a madman with the flapping sheet, and finally conquered it.
Mavis, as she stared upward, saw the gray clouds driving so fast over the crest of the stack that they made it seem as if the whole yard was drifting away in the opposite direction; while her man, a poor little black insect painfully crawling here and there, desperately writhed as new billows surged up beneath him, labored at the rope, seemed to use feet, hands, and teeth in his frantic efforts against the overwhelming power that was opposed to him. She felt dazed and giddy, sick with fear, and yet glowing with admiration in the midst of her agonized anxiety.
To the men it was a wonderful and exciting sight that had altogether stirred them from their usual turnip-like lethargy. When the master came down, all shaking and bleeding, they bellowed hearty compliments in his ear.
"Now," said the old charwoman, when Mr. and Mrs. Dale returned to the kitchen, "you've a 'aad a nice skimmle-skammle of it, sir, an' you best back me up to send the missis to her bed, and bide there warm, and never budge. I means it," she added, with authority. "You ben't to put yourself in a caddle, Mrs. Dale, an' I know what I be talkin' of."
After this the men appeared to work better for Dale; perhaps still somewhat sulkily whenever he pressed them, continuing to be more or less afraid of him, but not so keenly regretting the loss of their white-haired old master.
The storm had brought back the floods, and they were now worse than anything that anybody remembered having ever seen. The feeding sources of the Rod River had broken all bounds; the lower parts of Hadleigh Wood had become a quagmire; and the volume of water passing under the road bridge was so great that many people thought this ancient structure to be in danger of collapsing. Over at Otterford Mill, the stream swept like a torrent through a chain of wide lakes; Mr. Bates' cottage was cut off from the highroad, and the meadows behind the neighboring Foxhound Kennels were deep under water.
In these days Dale took to riding as the easiest means of getting about; and one afternoon when he had gone splashing across to see Mr. Bates, thence to pay a visit of polite canvass at the Kennels, and was now returning homeward by the lanes, he heard a dismal chorus of cries in the Mill meads.
Forcing his clumsy horse through a gap in the hedge, he galloped along the sodden field tracks to the shifting scene of commotion. Three or four idle louts, a couple of children, and a farm-laborer were running by the swollen margin of the mill-stream, yelling forlornly, pointing at an object that showed itself now and again in the swirling center of the current. Plainly, somebody had chosen this most unpropitious season for an accidental bath, and his companions were sympathetically watching him drown, while not daring, not dreaming of, any foolhardy attempt at a rescue.
"'Tis Veale, sir. A'bram Veale, sir. Theer!" And all the cries came loud and hearty. "Theer he goes ag'in. I see 'un come up and go under. Oo, oo! Ain't 'un trav'lin'!"
"Catch th' 'orse!" shouted Dale; and next moment it was a double entertainment that offered itself to hurrying spectators.
The water, charged with sediment from all the rich earth it had scoured over, was thick as soup; its brown wavelets broke in slimy froth, and its deepest swiftest course had a color of darkly shining lead beneath the pale gleams of March sunshine. In this leaden glitter the two men were swept away, seeming to be locked in each other's arms, their heads very rarely out of the water, their backs visible frequently; until at a boundary fence they vanished from the sight of attentive pursuers who could pursue no further; and seemed in the final glimpse as small and black as two otters fiercely fighting.
"Laard's sake," said one of the louts, "I'd 'a' liked to 'a' seen 'em go over the weir and into the wheel—for 'tis to be, and there's nought can stop it now."
The event, however, proved otherwise. Before the submerged weir was reached a kindly branch among the willows, stretching gnarled hands just above the flood level, gave the ready aid that no louts could offer. Here Dale contrived to hang until people came from the mill and fished him and his now unconscious burden out of their hazardous predicament.
This little incident so stimulated Dale's servants that they began to work for him quite enthusiastically. It occurred to them that he was not only a good plucked 'un, but that, however hard his manner, his heart must possess a big soft spot in it, or he could never have so "put himself about for a rammucky pot-swilling feller like Abe Veale."
Veale was truly a feckless, good-for-little creature. By trade a hurdle-maker, he lived in one of the few remaining mud cottages on the skirts of Hadleigh Upper Wood, and in his hovel he had bred an immense family. His wife had long since died; her mother, a toothless old crone, kept house for him and was supposed to look after the younger children; but generally the Veales and their domestic arrangements were considered as a survival of a barbaric state of society and a disgrace in these highly polished modern times. People said that Veale was half a gipsy, that his boys were growing up as hardy young poachers, and that every time he got drunk at the Barradine Arms he would himself produce wire nooses from his pocket, and offer to go out and snare a pheasant before the morning if anybody would pay for it in advance by another quart of ale.
Drunk or sober now, he widely advertised a sincere sense of obligation to his preserver. He bothered Dale with too profuse acknowledgments; he came to the Vine-Pits kitchen door at all hours; and he would even stop the red-coated young gentlemen as they rode home from hunting, in order to supply them with unimpeachable details of all that had happened. He told the tale with the greatest gusto, and invariably began and ended in the same manner.
"You sin it in th' paper, I make no doubt, but yer can 'aave it from me to its proper purpus. Mr. Dale he plunged without so much as tekking off of his getters and spurs." And then he described how, stupefied by his mortal danger, he treated Dale more like an enemy than a savior. "I gripped 'un, sir, tighter than a lad in his senses 'd clip his sweetheart;" and he would pause and laugh. "Yes, I'd 'a' drowned 'un as well as myself if he'd 'a' let me. I fair tried to scrag 'un. But Mr. Dale he druv at me wi' 's fist, and kep' a bunching me off wi' 's knees, and then when all the wind and the wickedness was gone out o' me, he tuk me behind th' scruff a' the neck and just paddled me along like a dummy."
At this point Veale would pause to laugh, before continuing. "Nor that wasn't all, nether. So soon as Mr. Dale catched his own breath he give me th' artificial respreation—saved my life second time when they'd lugged us on the bank. I was gone for a ghost; but I do hear—as they'll tell 'ee at th' mill—Mr. Dale he knelt acrost me a pump-handling my arms, pulling of my tongue, and bellows-blowing my ribs for a clock hour;" and Veale would laugh again, spit on the ground, and conclude his story. "Quaarts an' quaarts of waater they squeedged out of me afore the wind got back in—an' I don't seem's if I'd ever get free o' the taste o' that waater. Nothing won't settle it, no matter how 'ard I do try."
The gentry who smilingly listened, knowing Veale for a queer rustic character of poor repute, gave him sixpences to assist in his efforts to quench an abnormal thirst. Talking together, they decided that the hero of the tale had done rather a fine thing in a very unostentatious way, and it occurred to several of them that pluck ought to be rewarded. If the chance came they would encourage Dale. The M.F.H. in fact made up his mind to reconsider matters, and see if he could not before long let Dale have an inning at the Kennels.
Throughout this period and well into the hot weather of June Mavis was stanchly toiling, both as clerical assistant in the office and general servant in the house. It was she who did most of the cooking, no light task since meals had to be supplied for the carter and two of the other men. Mary always worked with a will; but old Mrs. Goudie, who came for charring twice a week, used to say that, in spite of being handicapped by the state of her health, the mistress worked harder than the maid.
A swept hearth, a trimmed lamp, and the savory odor of well-cooked food, were what Dale might be sure of finding at the evening hour; and Mavis tried to give him something more. He must have peace at the end of the day, and thus be able to forget the day's disappointments, no matter how cruel they had been. She would not let him talk about the business at night. She said he must just eat, rest, and then sleep; but she allowed him to read, provided that he read real books and magazines, not his ledgers or those horrid trade journals.
So after their supper they used to sit in the pleasant lamplight very quietly, near together and yet scarcely speaking to each other, feeling the restful joy of a companionship that had passed into that deeper zone where silence can be more eloquent than words. He was reading political economy for the purpose of opening his mind, "extending the scope of one's int'lect," as he said himself, and she watched him as he frowned at the page or puckered up his lips with a characteristic doggedly questioning doubtfulness. Certainly no words were needed then to enable her to interpret his thought. "Look here, my lad"—that was how he was mentally addressing a famous author—"I'm ready to go with you a fair distance; but I don't allow you to take me an inch further than my reasoning faculty tells me you are on the right road." When he frowned like this, she smiled and felt much tenderness. He would always be the same obstinate old dear: ready to set himself against the whole weight of immemorial authority, whether in literature or everyday life.
She did not read, but with a large work-basket on a chair by her knees continued busily sewing until bedtime. And the tenderness that she felt as she stitched and stitched was overwhelmingly more than she could feel even for Will. When her work itself made her smile, all the intellectual expression seemed to go out of her face, and it really expressed nothing but a blankly unthinking ecstasy, whereas her smile at her husband just now had shown shrewd understanding, as well as immense kindness. In fact, at such moments, only the outer case of Mavis Dale remained in the snug little room, while the inward best part of her had gone on a very long journey. She could not now see the man with his book, or the walls of the room; the lamp had begun to shine with ineffable radiance; and she was temporarily a sewing-woman in paradise, stitching the ornamental flounces for dreams of glory.
Her baby, a girl, was born at the end of June, exactly three-quarters of a year from the beginning of their new existence. The mother had what is called a bad time, and was slow to recover strength. Nevertheless, she was able to suckle the infant, who did well from its birth and throve rapidly.
It was during the convalescent stage, one evening when he had come up to sit by her bedside, that Dale told her they had at last turned the corner.
"Yes," he said, "orders are dropping in nicely. We're getting back all the good customers that slipped away from me, and some bettermost ones—such as the Hunt stables—that Mr. Bates himself had lost. You may take it as something to rely on that we're fairly round the corner of our long lane."
Then, holding her hand and softly patting it, he praised her for the way in which she had helped him. "You've been better than your word, Mav; you've supported me something grand."
And he added that henceforth he should insist on her doing less work, at any rate less household work. "There's more valuable things than burning your face over the kitchen fire, and roughing your arms with hot water. I'm going to be done with that messing of the men; I'm arranging their meals on another basis; I mean to keep house and yard as two distinct regions. And as to you, old lady, I intend to turn your dairy knowledge to account. Don't see why we shouldn't keep a cow or two—and poultry—and cultivate the bees a bit. Kitchen garden too. And, look here, I've engaged Mrs. Goudie to come every day instead of twice a week—and we shall want a nurse."
But Mavis flatly refused to have any hired person coming between her and the transcendent joy of her life. She had waited long enough for a baby, and she proposed to keep the baby to herself.
"However successful you come to be," she said to her husband, earnestly, "I shouldn't like you to make a fine lady of me. I want to go on feeling I'm useful to you. That's my pleasure—and if good luck took it from me, I'd almost wish the bad luck back again."
"Hush," he said, gravely. "Don't speak of such a wish, even in joke."
"I only meant I'd wish for the time since we came here. I wasn't thinking of anything before then."
"All right;" and he stooped over her, and kissed her. "You've bin talking more'n enough, I dare say. Take care of yourself, and get well as fast as may be. For I can't do without you."
"That's what I wanted to hear."
"You don't take it for granted yet?"
"No. I want you to say it every time I see you."
"Good night—an' happy dreams."
"Will!" Mavis' voice was full of reproach. "Are you going without kissing the baby?"
Then Dale came back from the doorway, stooped again, and making his lips as light as a butterfly's wings, kissed his first-born.
Before September was over Mavis had not only recovered her ordinary health, but had entered into such stores of new energy that nothing could hinder her from getting back into harness. She herself was astonished by her physical sensations. Languors that had seemed an essential part of her temperament ever since girlhood were now only memories; she felt more alive when passive now than during extreme excitement in the past; her whole body, from the surface to the bones, appeared to be larger and yet more compact. Even the muscles of her back and legs, which ought to have been relaxed and feeble after weeks of bed, had the tone and hardness that only exercise is supposed to induce; so that when standing or walking she experienced a curiously stimulating sense of solidity and power, as if her hold upon the ground was heavier and firmer than it had ever been, although she could move about from place to place with incredibly more lightness and ease.
These new sensations were strong in her one morning when, Dale having risen at dawn, she determined to take a ramble or tour of inspection before the day's work began; and with the mere bodily well-being there was a mental vigorousness that made the notion of all future effort, whether casual or persistent, seem equally pleasurable.
She came out through the front garden, and pausing a moment thought of all the things that ought to be done at the very first opportunity. This neglected garden was a mere tangle of untrimmed shrub and luxuriant weed, with just a few dahlias and hollyhocks fighting through the ruin of what had been pretty flower borders; and she thought how nice it would all look again when sufficient work had been put into it. Some of the broken flagstones of the path wanted replacing by sound ones; the orchard trees were full of dead wood; and the door and casements of the house sadly needed painting. Her thoughts flew about more strenuously than the belated bees that were searching high and low for non-existent pollen. This front of their house would look lovely with its casements and deep eaves painted white instead of gray; and if bright green shutters could at some time or other be added to the windows, one might expect artists to stop and make sketches of the most attractive homestead in Hampshire.
She kissed the tips of her fingers to that rearward portion of the building where Mary guarded the cradle, and then went through the gate and along the highroad.
It was a misty morning—almost a fog—the sun making at first but feeble attempts to pierce through the white veil. There would come a faint glow, a widening circle of yellow light; then almost immediately the circle contracted, changed from gold to silver, and for a moment one saw the sun itself looking like a bright new sixpence, and then it was altogether gone again. Out of the mist on her right hand floated the song of birds in a field. No rain having fallen during this month of September, the ground was dry and hard as iron, but the roadway lay deep in dust, and a continuous rolling cloud followed her firm footsteps. The air was sweet and fresh, although not light to breathe as it is in spring. One felt something of ripeness, maturity, completion—those harvest perfumes that one gets so strong in Switzerland and Northern Italy, together with the heavier touch of sun-dried earth, decaying fruit, turning fern. When the birds fell silent Mavis took up their song, walked faster; and all things on the earth and in the heaven over the earth seemed to be adding themselves together to increase the sum of her happiness.
She loved, and was loved; she lived, and had given life—bud, blossom, and fruit, all nature and she were now in harmony.
Presently the wood that stretched so dark and so grand on her left tempted her from the highroad. This was her first real walk, and she decided to make it a good one. She would aim for the Hadleigh rides, and, going on beyond Kibworth Rocks to the higher ground, get a view of the new buildings. Will had gone across to the far side of Rodchurch and could not be back to breakfast. It would not therefore matter if she were a little late.
She passed rapidly through open glades, to which the great oaks and beeches still made solid walls. The foliage of the beech trees was merely touched with yellow here and there, while the oaks showed no sign of fading color, and beneath all the lower branches there were splendid deep shadows wherever the undergrowth of holly did not fill up the green wall. This was the true wild woodland, remnant of the ancient forest, the place of virgin timber, dense thickets, and natural openings, that tourists always praised beyond anything else. The stream ran babbling through it, with pretty little pools, cascades, and fords, all owning names that spoke of bygone times—such as White Doe's Leap, Knight's Well, and Monk's Crossing. Locally it was not, of course, so highly esteemed. Cottagers said it was "a lonesome, fearsome bit o'country," and, whether because of the ugly memories that hung about it, or in view of extremely modern stories of disagreements between Chase guardians and poachers, considered it an undesirable short cut after dark from anywhere to anywhere.
To-day it seemed to Mavis friendly and pleasant as well as beautiful. The mist slowly rising was now high overhead, so that one could see to a considerable distance. Some fern-cutters in shirt-sleeves and slouch hats were already at work, cutting with rhythmic precision, calling to one another, and whistling tunefully.
One or two of them greeted her as she passed.
By the time she reached the straight rides and the fir trees the sun came bursting forth bravely, the shadows just danced before vanishing, the mist broke into rainbow streamers, and then there was nothing more between one's head and the milky blue sky. She walked within a stone's-throw of Kibworth Rocks, and did not feel a tremor, scarcely even a recollection. People nowadays came here from Rodchurch and Manninglea on Sunday afternoons, making it the goal for wagonette drives, wandering up and down, and gaping at a scene rendered interesting to them merely because it had once been the background of tragedy; and Mavis was thinking more of these Sunday visitors than of the dead man, as she hurried through the sunlight so near the spot where he had lain staring with glassy eyes throughout the darkness of a July night.
She thought of him a little later, when she stood on the higher ground looking at what live men were constructing in fulfilment of his wish, and her mind did not hold the least tinge of bitterness. At present the Barradine Orphanage was simply an eye-sore to miles and miles of the country-side, but no doubt, as she thought, it would be all very fine when finished. The bad weather of the winter had caused progress to be rather slow; the red brickwork was only about ten feet out of the ground, but a shell of scaffolding enabled one to trace the general plan. It would be a central block with two long, low dependencies, apparently, and, as it seemed, there were to be terraces and leveled lawns all about it; a great deal of clearing work as well as building work would, however, be necessary before the whole thing could take shape and explain itself properly. She stood outside one of its new ugly fences, and wondered if Mr. Barradine's trustees had, after all, chosen the site wisely. Poor old gentleman, it would be unkind if his last fancies received scant attention. It was rather nice of him to have this idea of doing good after his death, to plot it all, and put it down on paper with such painstaking care.
Truly she was thinking of him now as though he had been a total stranger, some important person that she had known well by name but never chanced to meet. She listened to the faint clinking of bricklayers' trowels, watched men with hods going slowly up and down ladders, men carrying poles, men unloading half a dozen carts; thought what a quantity of money was being expended, and how grateful in the future the little desolate children would be when their costly home was ready for them; and only as it were by accident did she remember that she too had cost the estate money, and perhaps also ought to be grateful. But she had long since ceased to think about the legacy. What the yokels would call her "small basket fortune" had served a purpose handsomely, and there was an end of it. The man from whom it came had gone as completely as the morning mist went when the sun began to shine.
The harm he had done her was nothing. If she purposely dragged out its memory, it seemed much less strong and actual than half one's dreams. Incredible that little more than a year ago she had been in such dire and dreadful trouble.
She struck the highroad again a little way short of the Abbey Cross Roads, and came swinging homeward with long strides, feeling healthy, hungry, happy. And the nearer she drew to home, the deeper grew the happiness. "Oh, what a lucky woman I am," she said to herself.
And with a quite unconscious selfishness that is an essential attribute of joy, and that makes all very successful and contented people think themselves singled out, watched over, and especially guided by fate, she blessed and applauded the beneficently omniscient Providence which had given just enough worry in her youth to enable her to appreciate comfort in mature years, which had delayed motherhood until she could best bear a hearty child, which had wiped out Mr. Barradine and restored her husband's love, which, last of all, had removed Aunt Petherick from North Ride and sent her to live at the seaside.
A small thing, this, perhaps; and yet a Providential boon, a filling of one's lap with bounties. There would have been great awkwardness in having Aunt so near, but forbidden to darken one's door. Will was very firm there: Auntie was not to be admitted at Vine-Pits on any pretext whatever. But it had all worked out so neatly, without the least friction. The new owner of the Abbey wanted North Ride. He had, however, been very kind about the lease or the absence of a lease, and had paid the tenant for life, as she described herself, to surrender possession. Auntie, one might therefore say, was not at all badly treated.
As the master was away and no kind of state necessary, she breakfasted in the kitchen with Mary and Mrs. Goudie. Her baby was asleep in its cradle, which she gently swung with her foot while eating; and the three women all spoke whisperingly. The pots and pans were shining, the hearthstone was white as snow, and through the open doorway one had a pretty little picture of the back pathway, the end of the barn, and a drooping branch of the walnut trees. From the yard beyond came sounds of industrious activity—the rumble of a wagon being pulled from the pent-house, the thump of sacks being let down on the pulleys, and the intermittent buzz of a chaff-cutting machine.
Presently somebody appeared on the pathway, and came slowly and shyly toward the door.
"Oh, bother," said Mary. "If it isn't Mr. Druitt again."
"Good mornin', mum," said the visitor, diffidently. "Would you be doing with an egg or so?"
Mr. Druitt had been introduced by Mrs. Goudie as the higgler, or itinerant poulterer and greengrocer, who served the house in Mr. Bates' time. He was a thin middle-aged man, with light watery eyes, a straggling beard, and an astoundingly dilatory manner. He used to pull his pony and cart into the hedge or bank by the roadside, and leave them there an unconscionable time, while he pottered about the back doors of his customers, offering the articles that he had brought with him, or trying to obtain orders for other articles that he would bring next week; and although apparently so shy himself, no bruskness in others ever seemed to rebuff him. His arrival now broke up the breakfast party, and was accepted as a signal that the day's labors must really be attacked. Mrs. Goudie and Mary pushed back their chairs with a horrid scrooping noise, Mavis got up briskly, the baby awoke and began to cry.
"No, thank you, Mr. Druitt. Nothing this morning."
"I've some sweet-hearted cabbages outside."
"No, thank you."
"It's wonderful late to get 'em with any heart to 'em. I'll fetch 'em."
Thus, as was usual, the higgler went backward and forward between the door and his cart; and Mavis, with the baby on her arm, at intervals inspected various commodities. Eventually she purchased a capon for the Sunday dinner, paid for it, and bade Mr. Druitt good-by.
"Good-by, mum—and much obliged."
But then, quite ten minutes afterward, his shadow once more fell across the kitchen floor. He had not really gone yet. Here he was back again at the kitchen door, staring reflectively at his grubby little pocketbook.
"Beg pardon—but did I mention the side o' bacon I've been promised for Tuesday. It's good bacon."
Mavis Dale with courteous finality dismissed him; but Mary, whose ordinarily red cheeks had become a fiery crimson, spoke hotly and angrily.
"Drat the man. I've no patience with him. He ought to know better, going on so."
"But what harm does he do, poor fellow," said Mavis, indulgently, "except muddling away his own time?"
"He's up to no good," said Mary; and she flounced across to the door, and looked out at the now empty path. "Hanging about like that! Why can't he keep away? I don't want him."
Mrs. Goudie, at the sink, screwed up her wrinkled nut-cracker face, and chuckled.
"No, mum, she don't want un. But he wants she."
And, astonishing as it might seem, this was truly the case. The higgler had fallen in love with Mary; and she, apparently without a single explicit word, had understood the nature of the emotion that stirred his breast. He had somehow surrounded her with an atmosphere of admiration—anyhow he had made her understand.
Mavis laughed gaily, and chaffed Mary about her conquest; and henceforth she more or less obliterated herself when this visitor called, and allowed the servant to conduct all transactions with him.
Mary was always very stern, disparaging his goods, and beating down his prices; while he stood sheepishly grinning, and in no wise protesting against her harshness. He now of course stayed longer than ever, indeed only withdrew when Mary indignantly drove him away.
"Be off, can't you?" cried Mary. "I'm ashamed of you."
"Haw, haw," chuckled Mrs. Goudie. "Don't she peck at un fierce."
"Yes, Mary," and Mrs. Dale laughed, much amused. "I do think you're rather cruel to him."
"'Twill be t'other way roundabout one day, Mary, preaps."
Then Mary tossed her head and bustled at her work. "I ain't afeard o' that day, Mrs. Goudie. He isn't going the right way to win me, I can tell him. I hate his sly ways."
Mavis and the old charwoman thought that Mr. Druitt would win the prize in the end, and with a natural tendency toward match-making tacitly aided and abetted his queer courtship. Except for the disparity of years it seemed a desirable match. It was known that he had a tidy place, almost a farm, eight miles away on the edge of the down; and Mrs. Goudie, who confessed that she had merely encountered him higgling, said the tale ran that he was quite a warm man.
And thus Mary's little romance, announcing itself so abruptly and developing itself so slowly, brought still another new interest to Vine-Pits kitchen. It was something vivid and bright and even fantastic in the midst of solidly useful facts, like the strange flower that blooms on a roadside merely because some high-flying strong-winged bird has carelessly happened to drop a seed.
"What," thought Mavis, "can any of us do without love? And where should we be without the odd chances that bring love to us?"
XIV
Fat easy years came now after the hard and lean ones; and the Dales in the dual regions of home and trade were doing really well. Dale had a powerful decently-bred cob to ride; on Wednesdays, when he went into Old Manninglea for the Corn Market, he often wore a silk top-hat and always a black coat; and at all times he looked exactly what he was, an alert, industrious, straight-dealing personage who has risen considerably and who intends to rise still higher in the social scale.
As to Mavis, she had another baby—a boy this time—and she was an infinitely proud mother as well as a very busy woman. She kept cows, poultry and bees; could and did distil a remarkably choice sloe gin, had achieved some reputation for her early peas and late lettuces, and had made the quadrangle in front of the house a sight that even tourists from London talked about. It blazed with color from May to November, and there was one of the Rodhaven drivers who on several occasions stopped his char-à-bancs to let the passengers have a long look at it. Wandering artists, too, fascinated by the stone walls, the flowers, the white paint, and the green shutters, would sometimes ring the bell and ask if Mrs. Dale let lodgings.
Mrs. Dale was rather crushing to masculine intruders of this sort, especially when they adopted an off-handedly gallant air.
In answering their questions she drawled slightly, and smiled in a manner that, although not contemptuous, might permit them to guess that they had made a tactless mistake.
"Oh, no, we do not let lodgings."
"Don't you really? I think you ought to, you know."
"Possibly," said Mavis, drawling and smiling. "But Mr. Dale and I do not think so. Of course if we did, we should put up a board, or notice—and you may observe that there isn't one."
She was, however, always gentle and forbearing with wanderers of her own sex. To two ladies who expressed disappointment at finding no apartments and asked if she did not at least provide afternoon tea, she said at once, "Oh, certainly, I shall be delighted to give you some tea."
They were tired, dusty, not young; and she showed them into the grand front parlor that contained her piano, pictures, well-bound books, and there laid the table and brought the tea with her own hands. Such a tea—the best china, thick cream, three sorts of jam, cakes, and jolly round home-made bannocks! The ladies were so pleased, until they became embarrassed. For of course when they wished to pay, Mavis could not accept payment.
"Oh, indeed no. You're very welcome. I hope that you'll stop and rest as long as you like;" and faintly blushing she shied away from the open purse and hurried out of the room.
"What on earth are we to do?" said one of the ladies.
"I saw a child in the passage," said the other lady. "Let us offer the child a present."
"Ah. That solves the difficulty. But how much? I suppose it must be half-a-crown."
"Nonsense!" said the other lady, tartly. "That is more than the price of the whole meal if she had let us pay for it. A present of a shilling at the outside. No, a shilling is absurd. Sixpence."
"Do you really think so?"
"Yes, sixpence wrapped up in a bit of paper."
"Then you must offer it."
And the other lady did. "Is that your little girl? Oh, what brown eyes—and mamma's pretty complexion. Good afternoon! We are so much obliged. And this is for you, dear—to buy sweeties."
Mavis was not disposed to allow her small princess to take a tip from a stranger's hand; but natural good-breeding forced her to acquiesce.
The ladies looked back at her, waved their hands by the garden gate, and went away talking.
"The child never said 'Thank you.' Badly reared."
"But the mother thanked you. I liked her face. She must have been distinctly good-looking."
The artists thought her distinctly good-looking even now, and perhaps, after being repulsed in their quest for bed and board, drifted off into an idle dream of how they might have met her a few years ago when they were less famous but more magnetically attractive. What a sitter she would have been for them, if she wouldn't be anything else! They admired the extreme delicacy of her nose that seemed so narrow in the well-rounded face, the loose brown hair that showed such a red flash in it beneath her sunbonnet, the perfect modeling of full forearms, firm neck, and ample bosom, the whole poise of her graciously solid figure, at once so reposeful and so free. But it was the eyes principally that set them dreaming of vanished youth, abandoned hopes, and lost opportunities. Nowadays Mavis could meet the unduly interested regard of male investigators with a candid unvacillating outlook; there came no hint of feebleness in resistance, too ready submission, or temperamental proneness to surrender; but her eyes, whether she wished it or not, still served as messengers between all that was feminine in her and all that was masculine outside her; and, with no reason not to tell the truth, they told it boldly, seeming to say, "Yes, once I had much to give, and I gave every single bit of it to one man. I have nothing left now for cadgers, sneak-thieves, and other outsiders."
She was a woman steadily completing her cycle. In fact, with her added weight, broadened contours and settled mental equilibrium, she had so changed from the slim, pallid, childish Mrs. Dale of the post office that any old Rodchurch friends might be forgiven for saying that they could scarcely recognize her.
"Really shouldn't have known you," said one of them frankly. "You have furnished like a colt brought in from grass to corn."
This outspoken old friend was Mr. Allen the saddler, who turned up one winter day when Vine-Pits had been thrown into a great state of excitement and confusion by the passage of the hunt right across the meadows behind the orchard. Just after dinner everybody had heard the horn sounding in the woods, with distant holloas and deep music of hounds, and then the pack came streaming out in full cry, and next moment all the horsemen were galloping over the fields and leaping the hedges. The women ran forth from the back of the house; the men abandoned their work. "Oo, oo! Look an' look." There were shouts of rapture each time the horses jumped. "Oo! Crimany! That were a beauty!"
Then in another minute Dale himself came galloping to the empty yard, rode his horse along the flags into the garden, and yelled to Mavis that she was to fetch trays of bread and cheese and bannocks as quick as life.
"An' bring the white bob full of beer—an' whisky, an' water—an' some o' the sloe gin; an' devel knows how many glasses."
Mrs. Dale and Mary, before one could look round, carried out into the yard all these light refreshments, and with them Dale regaled the large concourse of unexpected visitors that was pouring through the opened gates. His guests were grooms, second-horsemen, one or two farmers, and several dealers—the people who are rarely in a hurry when out hunting; and after them came pedestrians, a sturdy fellow in a red coat with a terrier in his pocket and a terrier under his arm, a keeper, a wood-cutter, Abraham Veale the hurdle-maker, and just riffraff—the very tail of the hunt, and, as the tail of the tail, that stupid trade-neglecting Mr. Allen. For a while the yard was full of animation, the horses pawing and snorting, Dale bustling hospitably, his wife filling the glasses and handing the food, and everybody talking who was not eating or drinking.
Mr. Allen was exhausted, tottering on his skinny legs, but nevertheless burning with ardor for the chase.
"They've changed foxes," he cried breathlessly. "They've lost the hunted fox, and they've only themselves to thank for it. I told them, and they wouldn't listen. I knew."
"Ah, but you always know," said a second-horseman, grinning.
"If Mr. Maltby," said Allen, "had cast back instead of forward last time I holloa'd, he'd have had the mask on his saddle rings by now."
Then he sank down upon one of the upping-stocks, snatched a hunk of bread, munched hastily.
"Mr. Allen, you've no cheese. Here, let me fill your glass again. How's Rodchurch?" Every time that Mavis passed, she asked a question. "Mr. Allen, how's Miss Waddy's sister?"
"Dead," said Allen, with his mouth full.
"Dead. Oh, that's sad!" Then next time it was: "How's Miss Yorke? Not married yet?"
"No, nor likely to be."
The horse-people soon began to move off again—"Thank you, Mr. Dale. Good night, Mr. Dale.... You've done us proper, sir.... Just what I wanted.... Good night, ma'am;"—but the foot-people lingered. The red-coated earth-digger, Veale, and one or two others, had got around Mr. Allen and were chaffing him irreverently.
"There, that'll do," said Dale, joining the group and speaking with firmness. Then he politely offered to have a nag put into the gig and to send Mr. Allen home on wheels.
"Thank you kindly," said Allen. "I'm not going home; but if your man can rattle me a mile or so up towards Beacon Hill, it's a hundred to one I shall drop in with them again. With the wind where it is, hounds are bound to push anything that's in front of them up to the high ground."
As soon as Dale went to order his gig the clumsy facetiousness was renewed.
"'Tes a pity you ben't a hound yersel, Mr. Allen."
"Ah," said Veale, "if the wood pucks cud transform him on to all fours, what a farder he'd mek to th' next litter o' pops at the Kennels."
"By gum," said the earth-digger, slapping his leg, "they pups would have noses. They wuddent never be at fault, would 'em?"
Old Mrs. Goudie, who had a simple taste in raillery, was so convulsed by this jesting that she put down her tray in order to laugh at ease; and chiefly because she was laughing, Mary laughed also.
"An' you know most o' the tricks o' foxes too, don't you, Mr. Allen?"
"Now then," said Dale, returning, "that's enough, my lads. I dropped you the hint by now. You're welcome to as much more of my beer as you can carry, but you won't sauce my friends inside my gates—nor outside, either, if I chance to be there."
"Aw right, sir."
"Take no heed of them," said Allen. "It is only their ignorance;" and he staggered to his feet.
Dale escorted the honored guest to the gig, then wiped his perspiring face, lighted a pipe; and then reproved Mary and Mrs. Goudie for unseemly mirth.
They still had Mary with them, and, although they did not know it, were to enjoy her faithful service for some time to come. Now that Mrs. Dale grew her own vegetables, purchases from Mr. Druitt, the higgler, had become rare; only an occasional bit of bacon, or once in a way a couple of rabbits, a hare, a doubtfully obtained pheasant, could ever be required from him; so that the greater part of his frequent visits were admittedly paid to the servant and not to the mistress. But he proved an unconscionably slow courtier. Mary, for her part, when she was teased about him and asked if he did not yet show anxiety to reach the happy day, always tossed her head and said that she was in no hurry, that she doubted if she could ever tear herself away from Vine-Pits, and so on.
Then, at last, a shocking discovery was made. Mary, after an afternoon out, came home with her face all red and blubbered, sat in the kitchen sobbing and rocking herself, and told Mavis how she had heard on unimpeachable authority that the higgler was a married man. He had always been married—and poor Mary confessed that she was very fond of him, although so angry with him for his disgraceful treatment of her.
On the next visit of the higgler Dale was lying in wait for him.
"Come inside, please. I'd like a few words with you, Mr. Druitt;" and the higgler was led through the kitchen, and up the three steps into the adjacent room.
Here, as soon as the door had been shut, Mr. and Mrs. Dale both tackled him. Dale was very fine, like a magistrate, so dignified as well as so severe, accusing the culprit of playing fast and loose with a young woman, of arousing feelings in her bosom which he was not in a position to satisfy.
"A girl," said Mavis, "that we consider under our charge, as much as if she was our daughter."
"Who looks to us," said Dale, "for guardianship and protection."
Mr. Druitt, sitting on the edge of his chair, smiling foolishly, nodded his head in the direction of the kitchen door, and gave a queer sort of wink.
"Meaning her?"
"Yes, who else should we mean?"
"I've never said a word of love to her in my life."
"Oh, how," cried Mavis, "can you make such a pretense?"
"Because it's the truth."
"But," said Mavis, indignantly, "you've made her fond of you. You've courted her."
The higgler distinctly preened himself, and smiled archly. "Ah, there's a language of the eyes, which speaks perhaps when the lips are sealed."
Mavis was angry and disgusted. "You, a married man!"
Dale, outraged too, spoke with increasing sternness. "You don't deny you've got a wife?"
The higgler answered very gravely. "Mr. Dale, that's my misfortune, not my fault. But my wife isn't going to last forever, and the day she's gone—that is, the day after I've buried her decently—I shall come here to Mary Parsons and say 'Mary'—mind you, I've never called her Mary yet—I shall say, 'Mary, my lips are unsealed, and I ask you to be my true and lawful second wife.'"
They could make nothing of the higgler.
"It's seven years," he went on, "since Doctor Hollin said to me, 'I have to warn you Mrs. Druitt isn't going to make old bones.' However, we find it a long job. There's a proverb, isn't there? Creaking doors!"
Mavis was inexpressibly shocked. "How can you talk of your wife so? Have you no feelings for her?"
"Mrs. Dale," said the higgler, solemnly, "I married my first wife for money, and I've been punished for my mistake. That's why I made up my mind I'd marry next time for love—in choosing a wholesome maiden and not asking what she'd got sewed in her petticoat or harbored in the bank;" and, nodding, he again gave his curious self-satisfied wink. "Mr. Dale, you tell her to wait patiently. I'll be true to her, if she'll be true to me." Then he rose, and smiling sheepishly, once more addressed Mrs. Dale. "The purpose of my call this morning was to say I shall have some good bacon next week."
Mavis refused the bacon, and Dale said a few words of stern rebuke.
"I can tell you, Mr. Druitt, I take a very poor opinion of your manhood and proper feeling."
Then Mavis interposed to check her husband. The fact was, she felt baffled by the situation and utterly at a loss as to what would be the best way of dealing with it. Whatever one might think of Mr. Druitt one's self, there was Mary to be considered. What would ultimately be best for her? The man was warm; and Mary, who was not growing younger, said she liked him.
"I'll wish you good morning," said the higgler.
Then, when they thought he had been long gone and Mavis was talking to Mary, he put in his head at the kitchen doorway.
"Will this make any difference?" he asked shyly. "Should I call again—or do you forbid me the house?"
The three women, Mavis, Mary and Mrs. Goudie, all looked at one another, quite perplexed.
"Er—no," said Mavis, after a pause. "You can call. I may, just possibly, be wanting bacon next week."
"It's a real beautiful side;" and, without a glance at Mary, he disappeared.
Then Mary instantaneously decided that she would wait for him, and not break with him; and she asked Mrs. Dale to run out and tell him that she would wait.
But that Mavis could not do. It would be too undignified. Mary must restrain her emotions till next week, and tell him herself.
XV
The little girl Rachel at the age of six was able to take interest in everything that happened, and to be a real companion who loved to help her mother at any important task. Thus one winter evening between tea and supper, when Mavis was most importantly engaged, she sat up late by special license and gave her company and aid in the little room behind the kitchen.
"Now, see if you can find the blotting-paper over there on daddy's desk. Quietly, my darling. Very quietly—because we mustn't wake Billy."
Billy, the little boy, was asleep in his cradle, near, but not too near, the cheerful fire; a bluish flicker that reminded one of the frost out of doors showed intermittently among the yellow and red flames; the wick of the lamp on the round table burned clearly; and in the mingling lamplight and firelight the whole room looked delightfully cozy and homelike. Mavis, with a body just pleasantly tired and a mind still comfortably active, paused before starting her labor in order luxuriously to feel the peaceful charm that was being shed forth by all her surroundings.
More and more the very heart of their home life seemed to locate itself in this room, and so every day additional memories and associations wove themselves about the objects it contained. Rachel, young as she was, showed a marked predilection for it, loving it better than all other rooms. From the dawn of intelligence she had been fascinated by the two guns and the brass powder-flasks that hung high over the chimney-place; her first climbings and tumblings had been performed on the three steps that led to the kitchen; and she had addled her tender brains, as well as inflamed the natural greed which is so pardonable in infants, by what was to her a sort of differential calculus before she learned to discriminate nicely among the various jams kept by Mummy in the big cupboard.
Nearly all the furniture, as well as the two guns, had belonged to Mr. Bates. It was solid, and very old—a tall-boy with a drawer that, opening out, made a writing-desk; a bureau with a latticed glass front; three chairs of the Chippendale farmhouse order; and one vast chair, covered with leather and adorned with nails, that had probably been dozed in by the hall-porter of some great mansion more than a century ago. Here and there Mavis had of course dabbed her small prettinesses—blue china and a clock on the mantel-shelf, colored cushions, photographs of the children, views of Rodchurch High Street, the Chase, Rodhaven Pier; and the old and the new, the useful and the ornamental, alike whispered to her of fulfilled desires, gratified fancies, and William Dale.
It was her husband's room. Perhaps that formed the real source of all its charms, the essence or base of attraction that lay deep beneath visual presentations of chairs and fire-gleamings, or associations of ideas, or memories of past happiness. Those were his books, behind the latticed glass—the Elocution Manual, the Elements of Rhetoric, the ten-volumed People's Encyclopedia, that he had read, and still read so assiduously. It was here that he ate, drank, and mused. Here he did all of his work that wasn't real office work. Here he received such visitors as head coachmen, stud-grooms, and the huntsmen.
In the cupboard with the jam-pots, there were two or three boxes of cigars, the famous sloe gin, and other liqueurs, for the entertainment of such highly esteemed visitors; and so long as one of them occupied the colossal armchair, her husband was quite a different Dale. He was then such a much better listener than usual, so quick to see a joke and so easy to be tickled by it, so debonair that he would swallow almost insulting criticism of his favorite politicians. As she thought of these things her eyelids fluttered and her lips parted mirthfully. She never asked any questions as to Dale's more secret methods of dealing with customers' servants. Obviously he got on well with them; and one might be quite certain that he did not offer any material compliments that were either traditionally illegitimate or open in the smallest degree to a suspicion of corrupt purpose.
And she thought admiringly that her man was really a very wonderful man. Though so candid and straight, he could be grandly silent; he told his womankind all that he considered it good for them to know, and the rest he kept to himself; he had that quality of rulership without which manhood always seems deficient.
"Mummy," said Rachel, "I do believe Mary is reading aloud."
"Is she, darling? Yes, I think she is."
Through the kitchen door one could hear a monotonous murmur.
"D'you think she's reading fairy tales?"
"Perhaps. Would you like to listen to her?"
"Oh, no. I'd sooner stay and help you, Mummy."
"Then so you shall, my angel; and I thank you for preferring my company."
Mavis, with the little girl at her knee, got to work. She had purchased a large scrap-album, and was now to begin putting in her scraps. For a long time she had collected interesting extracts from the newspapers, more especially portions of old numbers of the Rodhaven Courier which contained her husband's name.
"Here, Rachel, we'll commence with this;" and she started the book with a long account of the ceremonial opening of the Barradine Orphanage. The report of a speech by "Mr. Dale of Vine-Pits Farm" at a political meeting was the second item, and other gems followed fast.
Rachel assisted from time to time, by twice upsetting the paste pot, tearing a good many cuttings, and finally by tilting the heavy album off Mummy's lap to the floor.
But Mavis thought all these actions rather spirited and charming than maladroit and annoying. They proved that Rachel was trying hard to be of use, and her too rapid and abrupt gestures were a pleasing evidence that the little creature possessed a vivacious and not a sluggish disposition. However, the crash of the album on the floor had awakened Billy, who was now crying lustily; and Rachel's license having long since expired, Mavis decided to send both her treasures to bed. Rachel resisted the edict, and, presently conducted up-stairs by Mary, bellowed more loudly than her brother; indeed for a little while the house was filled with the harsh sound of squalling. Yet this noise, though distressing, was as musical as harps and lutes to the mother's ears; and while old Mrs. Goudie in the kitchen was saying: "They children want a smart popping to learn them on'y to squawk when there's reason for squawking," Mavis was thinking: "Poor darlings, I'd go up and kiss them again, if Mary didn't always quiet them down quicker than I can."
Alone with her newspaper snippets, Mavis did more reading than pasting. "Heroic Rescue at Otterford Mill"—that was the description of how Will saved good-for-nothing Abraham Veale. She knew it almost by heart, but she had to read it again. "Brave Deed at Manninglea Cross Station"—that was something that made her feel faint every time she thought of it, and she trembled now as she read in the snippet of how there had been a frightened dog on the line between the platforms, and how Will had jumped down in front of the approaching train and whisked the dog out of danger just in time.
She folded her hands, puckered her forehead, and passed into a reverie about him. Combining with her intense admiration, there was a great horror of all this reckless courage. He would not have been so foolhardy years ago. It was against the principles that he had once laid down as limiting the risks that a brave man may run. It indicated a change in him, a change that she had never pondered on till now. She thought of him fighting the wind on top of their rick, and of several other incidents unchronicled by the press—of his going with the police at Old Manninglea when there was the bad riot, of his joining the Crown keepers when they went out to catch the poachers, of his wild performance when Mr. Creech's bull got loose. Goring bulls, bludgeoning men, tempest and flood—wherever and whatever the danger, he went straight to it. But it was not fair to her and the babes. His thrice precious life! And she grew cold as she thought that an accident—like a curtain descending when a stage play is over—might some day end all her joy.
Then she thought once more of that dark period of their dual existence; and it was the last time that she was ever capable of thinking of it seriously and with any real concentration. Had that trouble left any permanent mark on him? Her own suffering had left no mark on her. It was gone so entirely that, as well as seeming incredible, it seemed badly invented, silly, preposterous. All that remained to her was just this one firm memory, that, strange or not, there had truly once been a time when his arms were not her shelter, and she dared not look into his face.
But he was different from her; with a vastly more capacious brain, in which there was such ample room that perhaps the present did not even impinge upon the past, much less drive it out altogether. She who in the beginning had tacitly agreed with those who considered her the obvious superior now felt humbly pleased in recognizing that he was of grander, finer, and more delicate stuff than herself. And for the first and last time she was assailed by a disturbing doubt. Was he completely happy even now? He loved her, he loved his children, he loved his successful industry; yet sometimes when she found him alone his face was almost as somber as it had ever been.
And those bad dreams of his still continued. At first, when things were all in jeopardy, it had seemed not unnatural that the troubles of the day should break his rest at night; but why should he dream now, when he was prosperous and without a single anxiety to distress him? Did he in sleep go back to that old storm of anger, jealousy, and grief about which he never thought during his waking hours?
And again Mavis was actuated all unconsciously by the elemental selfishness that mingles with our joy. When we are happy we want others to be happy too, we can not brook their not being so; even transient darkness in those we love seems inimical to the light that is burning so cheerfully in ourselves. Mavis ceased to trouble herself with questions, and forgot that they remained unanswered.
When Dale came in she was, however, more than ordinarily sweet to him, waiting on him, bringing the supper dishes, not sitting down until he was served, and watching him while he ate. She told him that she had been reading about the dog on the railway line, and that he was not to do such things. If he ever again felt such a wild impulse, he was to stifle it immediately by remembering his wife and bairns.
"D'you understand, Will? We won't have it—and we all three think you ought to be ashamed of yourself for not knowing better. You're not a boy."
"No," he said, "I shall be forty-two next year. Look here," and he pointed to his temples. "Look at my gray hair."
"I can't see it."
"But it's there, my dear, all the same. I am beginning to turn toward the sear and yellow leaf, as Shakespeare puts it."
She admired the easy way in which he quoted Shakespeare, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. Indeed, all through supper she was admiring him. She thought how beautifully he spoke, expressing himself so elegantly, and with tones in his voice that every day seemed to sound a little more cultivated. At first after their arrival at Vine-Pits, being plunged again into the midst of purely rustic talk, he had fallen back in regard to his diction. Instinctively he reverted to the dialect that had been his own, and that was being used by everybody about him; but now one might say that he really had two languages—his rough patter for the yard and the fields, and his carefully-measured phrasing for the home, office, and upper circles. She understood that his constant reading and his unflagging desire for self-improvement were telling rapidly; and with a touch of sadness she wondered if, passing on always, he would finally leave her quite behind.
No, while life lasted, he would hold to her. He would never shake her off now. Even if she were old and ugly, useless to him, a dead-weight upon his ascending progress, he would be true to her now. Even if his love died, the memory of it would keep him still hers. And she thought of the pity in him, as well as the strength. The man who could not resist the appeal of a poor little stray dog would not break faith with the mother of his children; and she thought, "Yes, whatever I say to him, I know really and truly that it was a nobler, better thing to risk all than to allow even a dog to perish. And I love him for not having hesitated then, even when I pray him not to do it again."