Chapter VI: Huntingdon Warren

That winter passed without event and life at Red House offered no incident of apparent significance whence to date--no upraised point from which the past might be measured, or the future explored. The days repeated themselves until spring, returning, accelerated all pulses and unconsciously increased vitality and will to live and enjoy.

Bullstone's lads neared the end of their studies, and when summer came again, John Henry, in sight of seventeen, prepared for apprenticeship to the business of his choice.

To-day he was riding over the Moor, with his father and a farmer, to see sheep, while Margery and the others made pilgrimage for Huntingdon Warren. They carried their lunch and baskets for the whortleberrries, now growing ripe again; while more than their own food they took, for there had come a baby at Huntingdon and Margery conveyed certain delicacies for the wife of Benny Veale. Old Frederick Veale was dead; but Benny still worked the warrens; though rumour announced that he had nearly done with them and, at his wife's entreaty, intended soon to desert the waste and return into civilisation.

Peter and Auna ran this way and that as they climbed slowly aloft. They met the goats browsing together presently and played with them a while, then hastened after the retreating figures of their mother and sister. And then they played a new game, at the inspiration of Auna, and dyed their faces and hands with whortleberry juice. They were now Indians and, sticking a few feathers from a dead carrion crow into their hair, and brandishing spears, represented by Peter's fishing-rod, they rushed screaming upon Margery and Avis and demanded food at the point of their weapons.

Presently they returned to the river beyond Zeal Plains, where Auna and her brother washed the berry juice from their faces. Then Peter fished and caught some small trout with a worm. An hour later they tramped forward to Huntingdon Cross, ate their pasties and cake beside it and so proceeded to the Warren House.

Red Benny saw them from afar and came to meet Margery. He was now a stalwart man of forty, and claimed to get more out of the rabbits than any warrener before him; but that, he vowed, was because he worked harder than his predecessors. He was lean and immensely strong, and his wife seemed cut in his own pattern. The unexpected arrival of visitors excited them, for few ever called at their home. Tourists saw it afar, like a white eye under the tumulus on the hill behind it; but it seldom happened that anything but the wild Scotch cattle, or a moorman on a pony, came near the spot.

Sally Veale's second child was six weeks old, and Sally was by no means an invalid. She laughed at the nice things Margery had brought and displayed her baby.

"Red--red," she said. "The daps of Benny."

While Auna and Avis gazed fearfully upon the remains of a dead horse, and Peter played with Mr. Veale's lean lurchers, despising them in secret, Sally prattled to her visitor and declared her hatred of the Warren.

"No place for a woman and two babies," she declared; "and my husband's of my mind. He's pretty well fed up. I want to go to the in-country and for Benny to be a gamekeeper; and Mr. Blake, to Beggar's Bush, would take him on next fall, when his head man stops; but Benny's all for foreign parts and more trapping. He says that in the far north of Canada, a man like him could face the winters and catch creatures whose fur be worth their weight in gold. But if he does that, it will be out of the frying-pan into the fire for me I reckon."

"Work on him to go to Beggar's Bush," advised Margery. "Then you'll come down to Brent and have your neighbours about you. It's cruel and unnatural for us women to be shut off from the world."

"That's what I say. But he's all for the wilds again."

Margery talked of the past. Huntingdon had been a spot on her great holiday pilgrimage with Jacob, before they were wed, and every feature of that long day's ramble her mind held precious still. The old radiance of the image was long departed, yet force of a habit, that had extended through years, still woke an afterglow of interest in certain scenes when she came among them.

She talked of Benny's father, whom Sally had not known.

Tea was prepared and, while they were eating it, Bullstone and his son arrived on horseback. They joined the meal and presently, when the young people were off again, Benny repeated his determination to depart.

Jacob heard the alternative courses and advised him to stop in England, for the sake of his family. Then he said a thing that surprised Margery.

"So like as not I'll lease the warrens when you go--if ever you really do go. I'm very much set on Huntingdon. It's the sort of lonely spot that does me good. If I were to take it, I'd employ a couple of men to live here and keep a room for myself--for sake of health and peace."

"Easier to say you'll employ men than to do it," answered Benny, "Took me a month of Sundays to find a boy. The warrens are very near played out in my opinion. There's not the head of rabbits used to run in my father's time. Nobody will ever lease 'em again if you don't."

Jacob discoursed of Benny's two boys and asked their names. Then Margery was shocked.

"Haven't got names yet," confessed Benny. "We can't come to no agreement. Missis wants a grand sort of name, like 'Fortescue' or 'Champernowne,' and I say 'Fred' after father, or 'Thomas' or 'Richard.' No good giving children silly names."

"I lived along with the Champernownes as under housemaid," explained Sally; "and 'tis a valiant name."

"It doesn't go with Veale, however," confessed Jacob.

"But if they're not named, they're not baptized!" exclaimed Margery.

"They are not," admitted their father, "and none the worse so far as I know."

"They're not Christians then--oh, Benny!"

"No more ain't I," answered the warrener. "It's no good pretending nothing. No man can breathe a word against me, but I've not got religion and never felt the want of it. More haven't Sally."

His wife contradicted him, declaring that she had always gone to church in her maiden days; and Margery was too troubled to speak.

"Duty's duty and I do it; and if ever I've got time, I'll go into religion also," explained Benny; "but so far time's lacked."

"You must have them baptized whatever you believe, or don't believe," declared Jacob. "You can't let your sons be nameless and outside the pale. That's wrong, Veale, and I hope you'll mend it."

"Don't think I've got anything against religion," replied the other. "It shall be done, if you reckon it ought, Mr. Bullstone. And I'll name one, and my wife shall have her way with the other."

"Haven't you heard about original sin?" asked Margery.

"No, never," replied Benny. "But there's no pride in me and my wife. We'll hunt up some gossips and put the thing in train."

"I'll be one, and I'll buy a christening cake, and you shall come into Red House on the way home and eat it," said Margery. Even the prospect of this modest entertainment pleased her.

The parents were much gratified, and still more so when Jacob also agreed to be a godfather.

"Duty's all right, Benny; but we must have law and order also," he explained. "This is a Christian land, and though Christians differ a lot and some take their religion sadly, and some cheerfully, and some so lightly that it doesn't amount to anything at all, yet we must bow to custom and it won't do you much good with any master to say you're no Christian; because the Christian habit is to distrust any who don't subscribe."

It was arranged that when Mrs. Bullstone returned from her holiday to Plymouth, the children should be received into the Church.

Sally declared great gratification and Benny promised Jacob not to declare himself a pagan--if merely as a measure of worldly wisdom.

"And I hope you'll go one better presently," added Bullstone, "and find you can honestly call yourself a member."

"I always keep an open mind," answered the warrener. "I don't quarrel with nobody's opinions if their practice stands for 'em."

"It's all summed up in that," admitted Jacob. "But, because we fall short in practice, you godless men mustn't quarrel with our principles. The principles are loftier than our powers to reach--to make us aim high, Benny. I don't hold with a lot I hear and see; but then I allow for the poverty of human nature, finding it in myself. And when you know how poor you are yourself, you make allowance for others."

Benny listened and so did the women.

"All true as Gospel I'm sure," murmured Sally.

"Yes," said Margery, who had been astonished at Jacob, "and you two had best set about finding how true the Gospel is."

Somewhat cast down, the warrener and his wife presently witnessed the departure of the Bullstone family.

Jacob decided to walk back and, to his satisfaction, Peter was allowed to mount his father's horse and proceed with his brother. The boys were soon out of sight and Margery, well pleased, walked beside her husband.

The evening was full of gracious light and the west threw a roseal warmth of colour into the bosom of the Moor. The hour was reflected in Margery's mood and she found herself happy, weary, content. Jacob, too, discoursed amiably and praised his eldest son. Sometimes they came thus closer in spirit and wondered secretly why it was not always so. Yet, even as the sun sank and they entered the deep gorges of the river, where it wended toward their home, something of the twilight entered Margery's mind also, by reason of a thing said.

They had dwelt on the past to their mutual satisfaction and he, she found, remembered their lovers' walk of old, which had brought them home again by the same path that now they trod. Their minds were at peace and no dark thought, for the moment, thrust in upon Jacob; no doubt or dread of the watcher saddened his wife. Then she asked a question and, though it was inspired by concern for him alone, there arose out of his answer a spirit of helplessness in her that was swift to awaken the familiar gloom in him. Thus the tramp that had begun with both in good heart, drifted them finally upon silence before they were home again.

"What did you mean about Huntingdon being good for health and peace, Jacob?" she asked. "I didn't like to say anything before those people. But you don't mean you feel your health frets you? You're all right?"

"Right enough. We breathe the same air in the valley as they do on the hill. I didn't mean health of body. I'm so hearty that I don't know my luck in that respect, or guess what it would mean to be otherwise. Health of mind is what I meant. A man's mind often gets sick."

"Not yours I'm sure."

"Don't say that, because you're not sure. Who should know that my mind often falls sick better than you do? And I've found one healing thing, and that's solitude."

"Surely to God you're solitary enough?"

"You don't know the meaning of solitude," he answered, "because you've never tried it."

"'Never tried it!' What's my life?"

"You imagine your life's lonely and even such loneliness as ours--so to call it--casts you down and makes you miserable. Solitude is no physic for you, and I dare say, if we lived in a town, you'd be a happier woman."

"I'm not lonely really--I know that. Life's a bustling thing--even mine."

"Company is your food and my poison," he answered. "That's how it is. Loneliness--what I call loneliness--is as much beyond my power to get, as company--what you call company--is beyond your power. We've made our bed together and must lie upon it."

"You ought to have thought of that sooner, if you wanted to be a hermit, for ever out of sight of your fellow-creatures."

"We've made our bed," he answered, "and what we've got to do is to keep our eyes on the bright side. Nobody's life pans out perfect. My idea of a good time would be a month at Huntingdon all alone."

"That wasn't your idea of a good time when you married me; and if you say that, it only means I've changed you and made you hunger for what you never wanted before you married."

"You needn't argue it so, Margery. I might as well say that you were happy with me at Red House long ago, and didn't want anybody else but me. Life changes our tastes and appetites; life laughs at us, while it makes us cry sometimes. I want Huntingdon for contrast, because home often comes between me and my best thoughts--because home often fouls my thoughts, if you must know. And you--home makes you hunger for change--change--new ideas--new voices--new faces. Why not? I don't blame you. We are both smitten and must bend to the rod."

"If you see it so bitter clear, perhaps you could alter it," she said.

"No, no. We can't alter it. I can't be different; you can't be different. It would only be pretending to alter, and pretence could bring no content to either of us. But time--time may make us different. We'll grow numb as we grow old."

Margery was indignant. She restrained tears with difficulty.

"I've prayed for a lot of things," she said. "I never thought to pray to grow old."

"Changes are coming," he replied. "The children will go out into the world."

"Then perhaps you'll have a little of the peace you thirst for."

"I'm too selfish ever to get peace," he replied. "That's the crux and curse of loving a woman as I've loved you. Love and peace can't walk together. You don't understand that. No matter. It only means that if half of you is getting what it wants, then the other half cannot. The knot is there. We can't be happy together, and it's still more certain I can't be happy apart. But you could. That's the difference."

"And you think I might be happy, knowing you weren't? Why d'you say that? What have I done to sink below you in love?"

"I don't know--I wish I did," he answered.

"And you spend your whole life trying to find out," she retorted. "And so you waste your life, because there's nothing to find out."

Occasionally, in moments of indignation, she had accused him thus before; and now that happened which had previously happened on such challenges. He said not another word.

At the kennels he stopped and turned away, while she followed her children to the house.