  Produced by Al Haines. SONS BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS W. J. GAGE & COMPANY LIMITED Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, BY THE SAME AUTHOR CHILDREN OF THE MIST TO WILLIAM MORRIS COLLES A SMALL TRIBUTE OF CONTENTS BOOK I. CHAPTER
BOOK II.
BOOK III.
BOOK IV.
BOOK I. SONS OF THE MORNING CHAPTER I. THE BEECH TREE Above unnumbered sisters she arose, an object noteworthy even amid these aisles, where, spun from the survival of the best endowed, fabrics of ancient forest enveloped the foot-hills of the Moor and belted heather and granite with great woodlands. A dapple of dull silver marked her ascension and glimmered upwards through the masses of her robe. From noble girth of moss-grown trunk she sprang; her high top was full of a silky summer song; while sunbeams played in the meshes of her million leaves and cascades of amber light, born from her ripening harvest, streamed over the dark foliage. She displayed in unusual perfection the special symmetry of her kind, stood higher than her neighbours, and fretted the blue above with pinnacles of feathering arborescence, whose last, subtle expression, at that altitude, escaped the eye. Her midmost boughs tended from the horizontal gradually downward, and the nether branches, rippling to earth like a waterfall, fashioned a bower or music-making dome of translucent green around about the bole. Within this arbour the roots twisted down their dragon shapes into the dark, sweet-scented earth, and fortified the beech against all winds that blew. So she stood, queen of the wold, a creation loved by song-birds, a treasure-house for squirrels, pigeons, and the pheasants that, at autumn-time, strutted gorgeous in the copper lake of her fallen leaves. Beneath her now, cool and moist in twilight of shadows, grew delicate melampyre that brought light into the herbage, stood the wan seed-vessels of bygone bluebells, and trailed grasses, with other soft, etiolate things that had never known direct sunshine. The pale trunk was delicately wrought with paler lichens, splashed and circled upon its bark; while mossy boulders of granite, lying scattered within the circumference of the tree's vastness, completed this modest harmony of grey and silver, lemon and shadowed green. Woodland roads wound at hand, and in a noontide hour of late July these paths were barred and flooded with golden sunlight; were flanked by trunks of gnarled oak and wrinkled ash; were bridged with the far-flung limbs of the former, whereon trailed and intertwined festoons of ivy and wreaths of polypody fern that mingled with tree mosses. Through this spacious temple, seen under avenues of many a pillar, sparkled falling water where the sisters Teign, their separate journeys done, murmured together and blended their crystal at an ancient bridge. Henceforth these two streams sweep under hanging woods of larch and pine, by meadows, orchards, homesteads, through the purple throat of oak and fir-crowned Fingle, and so onwards, by way of open vales, to their sad-coloured, heron-haunted estuary. Hand in hand they run, here moving a mill-wheel, there bringing sweet water to a hamlet, and ever singing their changeful song. The melody of them deepens, from its first baby prattle at springs in Sittaford's stony bosom, to the riotous roar of waterfalls below; lulls, from the music reverberated in stony gorges, to a whisper amid unechoing valleys and most placid pasture lands. Finally salt winds with solemn message from the sea welcome Teign; and mewing of gulls on shining mud-flats; and the race and ripple of the tides, who joyfully bring the little stream to that great Lover of all rivers. Leading from dingles on the eastern bank to interspaces of more open glades beside the great beech tree, a bridge, fashioned of oak saplings, still clothed with bark and ash-coloured lichen, crossed the river; and, at this sunlit moment, a woman stood upon it and a man shook the frail structure from his standpoint on the bank. His purpose was to alarm the maiden if he could; but she only laughed, and hastened across sure-footed. Honor Endicott was two-and-twenty; of tall, slight habit, and a healthy, brown complexion. Her face betrayed some confusion of characteristics. In repose the general effect suggested melancholy; but this expression vanished when her eyes were lighted with laughter or her lips parted in a smile. Then the sad cast of her features wholly disappeared and, as the sky wakes at dawn or sunset, Honor was transfigured. A beholder carried from her not the impression of her more usual reserve, but the face, with its rather untidy black hair, pale brown eyes and bright lips all smile-lighted. Happily she laughed often, from no vain consciousness of her peculiar charm, but because she possessed the gift of a humorous disposition, in the modern acceptation of that word, and found the world, albeit lonely and not devoid of grey days, yet well stored with matter for laughter. This sense, than which heredity—that godmother, half fairy, half fiend—can bestow no better treasure on man or woman, kept the world sweet for Honor. Her humour was no paltry idiosyncrasy of mere joy in the ridiculous; but rather a quality that helped her to taking of large views, that lent a sense of just proportion in affairs, that tended to tolerance and leavened with charity her outlook on all things. It also served to brighten and better an existence, not indeed unhappy, but unusually lonely for a young woman. She held up a pretty brown hand, and shook her head at the man. "Christopher," she said, "supposing that your bridge had broken, and I had tumbled in?" "I should have saved you, without doubt—a delicious experience." "For you. What a subject for a romance: you, the last of your line; I, the last of mine, being swept to death by old Teign! And my farm would be desolate, and your woods and hills and ancestral hall, all bundled wretchedly into Chancery, or some such horrid place." "On the contrary, I save you; I rescue you at great personal peril, and we join hands and lands, and live happily ever afterwards." "There's a heron! You frightened him with your folly." The great bird ascended from a shallow, trailed his thin legs over the water, then gathered speed, rose clear, steered with heavy and laborious flight amid overhanging boughs, and sought a lonelier hunting-ground elsewhere. "Brutes! I always walk right on top of them when I'm not carrying my gun. I hate to think of the number of young trout they eat." "Plenty left to grow big and be caught all the same," said Honor, as she peeped down to watch grey shadows, that sped up stream at sight of her and set little sandclouds rising under the clear water where they flashed away. "Nothing like a Devon trout in the world, I think," she added. "I caught a half-pounder in the Wallabrook last night, just at the end of the evening rise, with that fly, like a 'woolly bear' caterpillar, you gave me." Christopher Yeoland nodded, well pleased. He was a broad and tall young man of thirty, and he walked through woods and beside waters that had belonged to his family for years without count. Ardent in some things, sanguine in all, and unconquerably lazy, he had entered the world to find it entirely a problem. Succeeding upon several generations of shiftless and unpractical ancestors—men of like metal with himself—he stood the penniless possessor of a corner of Devon wherein Nature had exhausted her loving resources. He clung to the involved home of his fathers, and dreamed of retrieving the desperate position some day. He lived an open-air life, and spun courses of action, quite majestic in their proportions, for the succour and restoration of his property; but the taking of a definite step in any direction seemed beyond his powers. In theory he swept to action and achievement, and, if words could have done it, Godleigh had been freed from all encumbrance thrice in every week; but practically Christopher appeared content to live from hand to mouth at his old manor house, to keep one horse in the huge stables, two dogs in the kennels, a solitary old woman and one man in his echoing and empty house, where, aforetime, more than half a score of folk had bustled away their busy lives. Godleigh, or Godbold's Leigh, as it was first called after its earliest Norman owner, may be identified among the Domesday manors of Devon; but it is almost beyond parallel to find possessions descending through a line of commoners so unbroken as in this case. To Yeoland's ancestors, none of whom had ever been ennobled, this place accrued soon after 1300 A.D., during the reign of the second Edward; but since that period the original estate had been shorn of many acres, and sad subdivisions and relinquishments from century to century were also responsible for its diminution. Now hill and valley immediately around Godleigh, together with those tracts upon which stood the village and church of Little Silver, with sundry outlying farms, were all that survived of the former domain, and even these pined under heavy mortgages held by remote money-lending machines with whom Christopher's father had been much concerned throughout the years of his later life. The present old fifteenth-century house, built on foundations far more ancient, peeped, with grey mullioned windows and twisted chimneys, from forest of pine on a noble hill under the eastern ramparts of Dartmoor. Granite crowned this elevation, and Teign turned about, like a silver ribbon, far beneath it. Here the last of his line passed with Honor Endicott beside the river, and she mourned presently that the sole care of such noble woods rested with the Mother only, and that never a forester came to remove the dead or clear overgrowth of brake and thicket. "Nature's so untidy," said Honor. "She is," Yeoland admitted, "and she takes her own time, which seems long from our point of view. But then there's no pay-day for her, thank God. She doesn't turn up on Saturdays for the pieces of silver and bite them suspiciously, like some of your farm folk you lent to help save my hay last week; and she consumes all her own rubbish, which is a thing beyond human ingenuity." This man and woman had known each other from early youth, and were now left by Chance in positions curiously similar; for Honor Endicott was also an orphan, also came of ancient Devon stock, and also found her patrimony of Bear Down Farm—a large property on the fringe of the Moor and chiefly under grass—somewhat of a problem. It was unencumbered, but hungered for the spending of money. Concerning the Endicotts, who had dwelt there for many generations, it need only be said that they were of yeoman descent, dated from Tudor times, and had of late, like many a kindred family all England over, sunk from their former estate to the capacity of working farmers. Honor, who had enjoyed educational privileges as a result of some self-denial on the part of both of her parents, now reigned mistress at "Endicott's," as Bear Down Farm was commonly called. At first sovereign power proved a source of pleasure; now, blunted by nearly a year of experience, her rule occasioned no particular delight. Presently Christopher led his companion beside the great beech and pointed to a leafy tent beneath it. "Come into my parlour! I found this delicious place yesterday, and I said to myself, 'Mistress Endicott may take pleasure in such a spot as this.' Here will we sit—among the spiders with bodies like peas and legs like hairs; and I'll make you laugh." "It's late, Christopher." "Never too late to laugh. Just half one little hour. What are thirty minutes to two independent people who 'toil not, neither do they spin'—nor even knit, like your uncle? There—isn't it jolly comfortable? Wish the upholstery on some of my old-world furniture was as complete. By the way, you know that sofa thing with dachshund legs and a general convulsed look about it, as though the poor wretch had been stuffed with something that was not suiting it? Well, Doctor Clack says that it's worth fifty pounds! But he's such a sanguine brute. Yet this granite, with its moss cushions, is softer than my own easy chair. There are no such springs as Nature's. Look at heather, or a tree branch in a gale of wind, or a——" "Now don't begin again about Nature, Christo; you've talked of nothing else since we started. Make me laugh if I'm to stop another minute." "Well, I will. I was looking through some musty old odds and ends in our muniment-room last night and reading about my forefathers. And they did put me so much in mind of the old governor. Such muddlers—always procrastinating and postponing and giving way, and looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope." "I've heard my father say that Mr. Yeoland was such a man." "Yes; and money! He never paid anything in his life but the debt of Nature, dear old chap; and if he could have found a way to make Nature take something in the pound, he'd be here pouring his wisdom into my ears yet." "We're all bankrupts to her, I suppose." "He only made one enemy in all his long life; and that was himself." Christopher reflected a moment, then laughed and drew a paper from his pocket. "That reminds me of what I set out on. We are most of us Yeolands much like the governor. As I tell you, I rummaged in the archives to kill an hour, and found some remarkably ancient things, ought to send them to Exeter Museum, or somewhere; only it's such a bother. Couldn't help laughing, though it was a sort of Sardinian chuckle—on the wrong side of my face. We're always yielding up, or ceding, or giving away, or losing something. Here's a scrap I copied from a paper dated 1330. Listen!" He smoothed his screed, looked to see that Honor was attending, then read:— "'Simon de Yeolandde, s. of John Geoffrey de Yeolandde, gives to Bernard Faber and Alice his wife his tenement at Throwle'—that's Throwley, of course 'i.e. my hall and my orchard called Cridland Barton, and my herb garden, and my piece of land south of my hall, and my piece of land north of my hall as far as Cosdonne, and the reversion of the dowry his mother Dyonisia holds.' There—the grammar is rocky, but the meaning clear enough. Here's another—in 1373. 'Aylmer Yeolande'—we'd given away one of our 'd's' by that time, you see—'Aylmer Yeolande releases to William Corndone 4*d.* (four pence) of annual rent, and to Johanna Wordel all his right in the hundred of Exemynster.' And here's just one more; then I'll shut up. In 1500 I find this: 'Suit between Dennys Yeolandde'—we'd got our 'd' back again for a while—'Gentleman, of Godbold's Leigh, and Jno. Prouze, Knight, of Chaggeforde, as to right of lands in Waye and Aller—excepting only 12*s.* (twelve shillings) of chief rent, which Dennys Yeolandde hath; and the right of comyn of pasture.' Of course my kinsman went to the wall, for the next entry shows him climbing down and yielding at every point to the redoubtable Sir John. We're always fighting the Prouzes, and generally getting the worst of it. Then their marriage settlements! Poor love-stricken souls, they would have given their silly heads away, like everything else, if they could have unscrewed them!" "So would you," said Honor Endicott. "You laugh at them; but you're a Yeoland to the marrow in your bones—one of the old, stupid sort." "I believe I must be. The sixteenth and seventeenth century chaps were made of harder stuff, and went to the wars and got back much that their fathers had lost. They built us into a firm folk again from being a feeble; but of late we're thrown back to the old slack-twisted stock, I fear." "That's atavism," declared Honor learnedly. "Whew! What a word for a pretty mouth!" "I was taught science of a milk-and-water sort at school." "Smother science! Look at me, Honor, and tell me when you're going to answer my question. 'By our native fountains and our kindred gods'; by all we love in common, it's time you did. A thousand years at least I've waited, and you such a good sportswoman where other things are concerned. How can you treat a Christian man worse than you'd treat a fish?" She looked at his handsome, fair face, and lost sight of the small chin and mouth before a broad, sun-tanned forehead, curly hair, and blue eyes. "You knew the answer, Christo, or you'd never have been so patient." "On the contrary, how can I know? I hang on in a storm of agony." "You look a miserable wretch enough—such a furrowed cheek—such a haggard gleam in your eyes." "I say, now! Of course I don't wear my heart on my sleeve, or my awful suspense upon my face. No, I hide my sufferings, go on shaving and putting on my best clothes every Sunday, and worshipping in church and carrying the plate, and all the rest of the dreary round. Only the sunrises know of all I endure. But once refuse, and you'll see what despair can drive a man to; say 'No' and I fling everything up and go off to Australia, where lives the last relation I've got in the world—an old gentleman in the 'back blocks,' or some such dismal place." "You must not dream of that. Men have to work there." "Then you'll do the only thing to stop me from such an awful fate? You'll take me for better for worse? You'll join your fat lands to my lean ones? You'll——" "Don't," she said, rather bitterly, "don't laugh at me and mine in the midst of a proposal of marriage. Somehow it makes my blood run cold, though I'm not sentimental. Yet marriage—even with you—has a serious side. I want to think how serious. We can't go on laughing for ever." "Why not? You know the summing-up of a very wise man after he'd devoted his life to philosophy? Nothing is new, and nothing is true, and nothing matters. God bless my own—very own little brown mouse of an Honor! Somehow I had a sneaking hope all along that you would say 'Yes'!" "I haven't yet." "Kiss me, and don't quibble at a moment like this. You haven't kissed me since you were fifteen." But Honor's humour for once deserted her. She tried to conjure thoughts proper to the moment and magnify its solemnity; she made an effort, in some measure pathetic, to feel more than she really felt. "You'll be wise, clearest Christo; you'll think of me and love me always and——" "Anything—anything but work for you, sweet," he said, hugging her to himself, and kissing her with a boy's rapture. "Oh, Christopher, don't say that!" "Then I won't; I'll even work, if you can steel yourself to the thought of such a spectacle as Christo labouring with a sense of duty—like an ant with a grain of corn. God bless and bless and bless your dear little warm heart and body, and soft hair and eyes and everything! Work for you! You wait and see." "I knew this was coming," she said a little drearily. "Ever so long ago I saw it coming and heard it coming. And I rehearsed my part over and over. Yet the thing itself is an anti-climax, Christo. I should have said 'Yes' the second time you asked me." "The first time, my pearl." "Perhaps so. It's like flat cider now." "Don't say that. We've been courting continuously, if you look back, ever since we were children. Then you had dear little tails down your back—two of them—and I used to get you birds' eggs and other useful things. When will you marry me, sweetheart?" "Oh, I don't know," said Honor. "When I can afford a cake." But there was a tear in her eye that he did not see. "There speaks again my own brave, heroic Honor! We will have a cake; but why should you pay for it?" "I must—there's nobody else to do so. You can't. Come, it is time, and more than time, that I went home." "Wait," he said; "on a great, historic occasion like the present one marks the day with a white stone. This spot is henceforward sacred to every subsequent Yeoland or Endicott. It may become the shrine of family pilgrimages. So I'll set a true lover's knot upon this venerable beech bole, together with the initials H.E.—that's God's feminine masterpiece—and C.A.Y.—that's Christopher Aylmer Yeoland—not a divine inspiration, I grant you; but a worthy, harmless child of Nature, taking him all round. Hark to my best-loved poet:—
He cut and chattered; then, his work completed, bid Honor inspect the conventional bow with their united initials staring white and naked from the bark. "Nature will tone it down and make it pretty later on," he said. "I hope she will make you wise later on." They departed then and wandered upward by a woodland track to Godleigh. His arm was round her; her head rested against his shoulder, and her spirits rose a little. They laughed together, each at the other's slight fancies; and then a vision of death met them. In a glade beside the way, where honeysuckle hung pale lamps about the altar of sacrifice, appeared a fallen cloud of feathers that warmed from grey to golden-green. There a hawk had slain a woodpecker, and nothing remained of the victim save the under-down and plumage, with his upper mandible and a scattered feather or two from his crimson crest. "That's unlucky," said Honor. "Very—for the bird," admitted Christopher. "Poor beggar—I'm sorry. I like the green woodpeckers. They've such a sense of humour, and love a laugh as well as I do myself." CHAPTER II. BEAR DOWN FARM The lovers passed through Godleigh, and then, entering the main road that ran from Little Silver to those high regions above it, pursued their way by Devonshire lanes whose lofty hedge-banks shut out all view of the grass lands extending upon each side. Here and there, however, gates opened into the hayfields, and from one, where two of Honor's ricks were slowly rising, came hum of voices. The scene was set in silver-green wisps of hay; a sweet scent clung to the air; two horses rested on the shady side of the rick; an elm or two whispered into the haze of summer; and, hard by, sat above half a dozen persons taking their midday meal under the hedge. Speech was hushed; the nearest men touched their hats, and a girl dropped a curtsey as Honor walked by at discreet distance from young Yeoland. And then, upon their passing, the haymakers broke into a new subject with ready tongue. A man, smartly attired and apparently not of the working party, winked as Christopher and his lady moved out of sight. "'Tis a case for sartain sure," he said. "Have been this many a day, if you ax me," answered a young woman near him. She wore a sun-bonnet of faded blue, and a brown dress dragged up to her belt on one side over a rusty red petticoat. "They've been tinkering arter each other ever since I can mind, an' I be nineteen," she added. Another spoke. He was a tall labourer, clad in earth-colour, with a big nose, a long neck, large, sun-blistered ears, and black hair. "Might be a happy thing belike," he said; and to him a smaller man replied—a man whose bristly beard was nearly grey, whose frowning, dark eyes and high, discontented forehead promised little amiability. "'A happy thing'! A happy fiddlestick, Henry Collins! Godleigh's sea-deep in debt, an' so much a land of the Jews as Jerusalem's self, by all accounts. An' missis—better her bide a maid all her days than marry him, I reckon. She's a jewel tu precious for the likes of that gude-for-nothing. An' I've my doubts, but—Sally, give awver, will 'e, an' remember you'm a grawed gal!" This sudden exhortation Mr. Jonah Cramphorn cast at his daughter, the maiden who had first spoken; and necessity for such rebuke appeared in the fact that Sally, a ripe and plump damsel, with red lips, grey eyes and corn-coloured hair, was now pelting the youth beside her with hay, while he returned the compliment as best he could. Gregory Libby, in his well-fitting garments with neat gaiters and cap to match, though formerly a worker, enjoyed holiday to-day for reasons now to appear. He was a mean type of man, with sandy locks, a slight hare-lip, and a low forehead; but to Sally's eyes these defects were not apparent. Mr. Libby could sing charming songs, and within the past week he was richer by a legacy of five hundred pounds. On the previous day he had come back from London to Little Silver, and now, still putting off his return to work, stood among the folk of Bear Down and posed as a person of some consequence. Sally's conduct woke indignation elsewhere than in her father's breast. Mr. Henry Collins glared at the grey figure of Gregory. The big-nosed man was a new hand at Bear Down; but one fortnight in the company of Sally had served to enslave Henry's maiden heart. He was in love with Miss Cramphorn, but thus far had hidden his secret. Beside the rising hayrick, sitting in sunshine with his face to the others, an old, bald labourer ate bread and onions and drank from a little cider barrel. His countenance showed a marvellous network of wrinkles; his scant hair, reduced to tufts above his ears, was very white; his whiskers were also white, and his eyes, blue as the summer sky, wore an expression of boyish frankness. His small, clean-shaved mouth was pursed like a young child's. "'Tis pity," he said, resuming the former topic, "'tis pity as missis can't find a way to mate wi' her cousin, Maister Myles Stapledon, him what be comin' to pay a visit presently. A snug man they say, an' a firm-footed—solid every way in fact. I mind last time he comed here—more'n ten year ago. A wise young youth even then." "Ban't purty Miss Endicott's sort by the sound of un," said Gregory Libby; then, accepting a drink of cider from a horn mug which Sally brought him, he drew forth a cigar from a yellow leather case. This he presently lighted, marched about, and puffed with great show of satisfaction, not oblivious to the attention he attracted. "A strange fashion way to take tobacco," said the ancient, who was called Churdles Ash. "So it is then," assented Mr. Cramphorn; "an' what's more, I ban't gwaine to allow 'tis a fit an' proper way of smokin' for the likes of him. What's five hunderd pound when all's said?" "'Twill blamed soon be five hunderd pence, if the man's gwaine to broadcast it away 'pon fantastic machines like them, as awnly gentlefolks have any business with," said Samuel Pinsent, another labourer, who passed for a great wit, chiefly by reason of a Merry-Andrew power to pull remarkable faces. He was a red man with weak eyes; and his fellows alleged him impervious to all feminine attractions. "For Sundays an' high rejoicings a cigar may pass now an' again," argued Henry Collins. "Not as I'm saying a word for Greg Libby," he added in violent haste, as he caught Sally's eye. "He'm a puny twoad an' always was—brass or no brass. What do the likes of him want wi' stiff collars 'pon week-days? Let un go back to his job, which was hedge-tacking, an' not done tu well neither, most times." "He'm the monkey as have seed the world," said old Ash, lighting a black pipe and crossing his hands over his stomach. Mr. Collins mopped his forehead, and looked up from where he sat. Then he tightened the leather thongs that fastened in his trousers below the knees and answered as he did so— "Seed the world! Him! I knaw what he seed. He seed a cheap tailor in the Edgware Road, Paddington way; an' he seed a wicked back street or two; an' no doubt a theayter——" "That'll do, if you please, Henery," said Mr. Cramphorn. "Me an' Ash, as weern't born essterday, can guess all the rest. I ban't in nature suspicious——" Then in his turn Jonah was interrupted. "Ess fay, you be, my son," declared Mr. Ash. "Anyway," answered the parent, darkly scowling, "I see my darter pulling eyes at the fule an' I won't stand it—wouldn't for twice five hunderd pound." "No need to fright yourself," said Churdles Ash, shaking his head. "Libby's not a marryin' man—tu selfish to marry while his auld mother's alive to slave for him an' kiss the ground he walks on. Besides, there's your other darter—Margery. He'm so set 'pon wan as t'other; but 'tis all philandering, not business." "He'll end by havin' a sore back anyways if I see much more of it. Sally to marry him indeed! Shaw me a purtier gal than Sally this side Exeter an' I'll give 'e a gawlden sovereign!" "An' I'll give 'e another!" declared Mr. Collins. At this moment Jonah's second daughter, together with one Mrs. Loveys, housekeeper at Bear Down, appeared. The latter was an ample, elderly widow. She had a capacious bosom, bare arms, and a most kindly face. Her late husband, Timothy Loveys, after a lifetime of service at Endicott's, passed within a year of his master; and upon his death Mr. Cramphorn had won promotion and was now head man. As for Margery, a thin, long-faced girl, cast in mould more fragile than her sister, she worked as dairymaid at the farm. She too was personable, but her slimmer contour, reserved manner, and sharp tongue contrasted ill, in masculine opinion, with Sally's physical exuberance and good temper. The women who now came to fetch empty utensils and baskets stayed awhile, and Mrs. Loveys asked a question. "An' what for be you offerin' gawlden sovereigns so free, Henry Collins?" she inquired with a side glance. "To find a purtier maiden than Sally, ma'am." Margery laughed and blushed, with her eyes on Mr. Libby. "What about missis?" she asked. "Missis," answered Jonah, "be a lady. She'm built on a different pattern, though with like material. No disrespect to her, as I'd shed my life's blood for, but the differ'nce betwixt she an' my Sally's the differ'nce betwixt sunlight an' moonlight." "Between a wind-flower an' a butivul, full-blawed cabbage rose," hazarded Mr. Collins. "Yet theer's them as would liefer have the windflower," said Margery, who secretly believed herself very like her mistress, and dressed as near to Honor as she dared. Mrs. Loveys nodded approval of this statement; Mr. Cramphorn stoutly questioned it. "What d'you say, Churdles?" asked Pinsent; "or be you tu auld to call home the maids you felt kind-like towards in last century when you was full o' sap?" "I say 'tis time to go to work," replied Mr. Ash, who never answered a question involving difference of opinion between his friends. "Come, Collins, 'Thirty Acres' to finish 'fore sundown, an' theer's full work 'pon it yet! An' you, Tommy Bates; you fall to sharpenin' the knives for the cutter, this minute!" He rose, walked with spreading feet and bent back across the road, then dipped down into a great field on the other side. There lay a machine-mower at the edge of the shorn hay, to the nakedness of which still rippled a russet ocean of standing grass. Colourless light passed in great waves over it; the lavender of knautias, together with too-frequent gold of yellow rattle, flashed in it; and the great expanse, viewed remotely, glowed with dull fire of seeding sorrels. Above, danced butterflies; within, the grasshoppers maintained a ceaseless stridulation; and soon the silvery knives were again purring at the cool heart of the undergreen, while ripe grassheads, flowers, sweet clovers, tottered and fell together in shining lines, where Churdles Ash, most just embodiment of Father Time, pursued his way, perched aloft behind two old horses. At each corner the jarring ceased a moment, and the old man's thin voice addressed his steeds; then an angle was turned, and he tinkled on again under the dancing heat. Elsewhere Tommy Bates prepared another knife, and sharpened its shark-like teeth with a file; Pinsent brought up a load of hay from a further field; Cramphorn ascended one rick, and took the harvest from the forks; while Sally and Collins turned the drying grasses at hand, and pursued the business of tossing them with dexterity begotten from long practice. Mr. Libby crept about in the near neighbourhood of the girl, but conscious that Jonah, from the high vantage of the rick, kept sharp eyes upon her, adventured no horseplay, and merely complimented her under his breath upon her splendid arms. |
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