after his mistress; but Yeoland did not attempt to follow. He watched his lady awhile, and, when she was a quarter of a mile ahead, proceeded homewards.
She had chosen a winding way back to Bear Down, and he must pass the farm before she could return to it.
The man was perfectly calm to outward seeming, but he shook his head once or twice—shook it at his own folly.
"Poor little lass!" he said to himself. "Impatient—impatient—why? Because I was impatient, no doubt. Let me see—our first real quarrel since we were engaged."
As he went down the hill past Honor's home, a sudden fancy held him, and, acting upon it, he dismounted, hitched up his horse, and strolled round to the back of the house in hope that he might win a private word or two with Mark Endicott. Chance favoured him. Tea drinking was done, and the still, lonely hour following on that meal prevailed in the great kitchen. Without, spangled fowls clucked their last remarks for the day, and fluttered, with clumsy effort, to their perches in a great holly tree, where they roosted. At the open door a block, a bill-hook, and a leathern gauntlet lay beside a pile of split wood where Sally Cramphorn had been working; and upon the block a robin sat and sang.
Christopher lifted the latch and walked through a short passage to find Honor's uncle alone in the kitchen and talking to himself by snatches.
"Forgive me, Mr. Endicott," he said, breaking in upon the monologue; "I've no right to upset your reveries in this fashion, but I was passing and wanted a dozen words."
"And welcome, Yeoland. We've missed you at the Sunday supper of late weeks. How is it with you?"
"Oh, all right. Only just now I want to exchange ideas—impressions. You love my Honor better than anybody else in the world but myself. And love makes one jolly quick—sensitive—foolishly so perhaps. I didn't think it was in me to be sensitive; yet I find I am."
"Speak your mind, and I'll go on with my knitting—never blind man's holiday if you are a blind man, you know."
"You're like all the rest in this hive, always busy. I wonder if the drones blush when they're caught stealing honey?"
"Haven't much time for blushing. Yet 'tis certain that never drone stole sweeter honey than you have—if you are a drone."
"I'm coming to that. But the honey first. Frankly now, have you noticed any change in Honor of late days—since—well, within the last month or two."
Mr. Endicott reflected before making any answer, and tapped his needles slowly.
"There is a change," he said at length.
"She's restless," continued Christopher; "won't have her laugh out—stops in the middle, as if she suddenly remembered she was in church or somewhere. How d'you account for it?"
"She's grown a bit more strenuous since her engagement—more alive to the working-day side of things."
"Not lasting, I hope?"
"Please God, yes. She won't be any less happy."
"Of course Myles Stapledon's responsible. Yet how has he done it? You say you're glad to see Honor more serious-minded. Well, that means you would have made her so before now, if you could. You failed to change her in all these years; he has succeeded in clouding her life somehow within the space of two months. How can you explain that?"
"You're asking pithy questions, my son. And, by the voice of you, I'm inclined to reckon you're as likely to know the answers to them as I am. Maybe more likely. You're a man in love, and that quickens the wits of even the dullest clod who ever sat sighing on a gate, eating his turnip and finding it tasteless. I loved a maid once, too; but 'tis so far off."
"Well, there's something not wholly right in this. And they ought to know it."
"Certainly they don't—don't guess it or dream it. But leave that. Now you. You must tackle yourself. The remedy lies with you. This thing has made you think, at any rate."
"Well, yes. Honor isn't so satisfied with me as of old, somehow. Of course that's natural, but——"
"She loves you a thousand times better than you love yourself."
"And still isn't exactly happy in me."
"Are you happy in yourself? She's very well satisfied with you—worships the ground you walk on, as the saying is—but that's not to say she's satisfied with your life. And more am I, or anybody that cares about you. And more are you."
"Well, well; but Myles Stapledon—this dear, good chap. He's a—what? Why, a magnifying glass for people to see me in—upside down."
"He thinks very little about you, I fancy."
"He's succeeded in making me feel a fool, anyhow; and that's unpleasant. Tell me what to do, Mr. Endicott. Where shall I begin?"
"Begin to be a man, Yeoland. That's what a woman wants in her husband—wants it unconsciously before everything. A man—self-contained, resolute—a figure strong enough to lean upon in storm and stress."
"Stapledon is a man."
"He is, emphatically. He knows where he is going, and the road. He gets unity into his life, method into his to-morrows."
"To-morrow's always all right. It's to-day that bothers me so infernally."
"Ah! and yesterday must make you feel sick every time you think of it, if you've any conscience."
"I know there isn't much to show. Yet it seems such a poor compliment to the wonderful world to waste your time in grubbing meanly with your back to her. At best we can only get a few jewelled glimpses through these clay gates that we live behind. Then down comes the night, when no man may work or play. And we shall be an awfully long time dead. And what's the sum of a life's labour after all?"
"Get work," said Mark, "and drop that twaddle. Healthy work's the first law of Nature, no matter what wise men may say or poets sing. Liberty! It's a Jack-o'-lantern. There's no created thing can be free. Doing His will—all, all. Root and branch, berry and bud, feathered and furred creatures—all working to live complete. The lily does toil; and if you could see the double fringe of her roots above the bulb and under it—as I can well mind when I had eyes and loved the garden—you'd know it was so. There's no good thing in all the world got without labour at the back of it. Think what goes to build a flash of lightning—you that love storms. But the lightning's not free neither. And the Almighty's self works harder than all His worlds put together."
"Well, I'll do something definite. I think I'll write a book about birds. Tell me, does Honor speak much of her cousin?"
"She does."
"Yet if she knew—if she only knew. Why, God's light! she'd wither and lose her sap and grow old in two years with Stapledon. I know it, in the very heart of me, and I'd stake my life on it against all the prophets. There's that in close contact with him would freeze and kill such as Honor. Yes, kill her, for it's a vital part of her would suffer. Some fascination has sprung up from the contrast between us; and it has charmed her. She's bewitched. And yet—be frank, Mr. Endicott—do you believe that Stapledon is the husband for Honor? You've thought about it, naturally, because, before she and I were engaged, you told me that you hoped they might make a match for their own sakes and the farm's. Now what do you say? Would you, knowing
