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
