Chapter II: Falcon Farm

Beneath the Beacon, across the great slope that fell from its summit to the river valley, a road ran into the woods that hid Buckland village, and upon the right hand of this highway, perched among open fields, that quilted the southern slope of the heights, there stood a stone house. Here was Falcon Farm, and over it the hawks that had given it name would often poise and soar and utter their complaining cries. The cluster of buildings perched on the hillside consisted of a slate-roofed dwelling house, with cartsheds, a cowhouse, and stable and a fine barn assembled round the farm yard. About them stretched square fields, off some of which a harvest of oats had just been shorn; while others were grass green with the sprawling foliage of turnip. Beneath, between the farmhouse and the wooded road, extended meadows into which fern and heath were intruding ominously. A little wedge of kitchen garden was scooped out of the hill beside the yard and a dry-built wall fell from the shoulder of the Beacon above, broke at Falcon Farm, and with diverging arms separated its field and fallow from the surrounding wild.

The door of the dwelling faced west, and here stood a man talking to a woman.

He was of sturdy build with a clean shaved, fresh-coloured face and head growing bald. But he had plenty of grey hair still and his countenance was plump and little wrinkled. His eyes were grey and, having long learned the value of direct vision in affairs, he fixed them upon people when he talked. Mr. Joseph Stockman declared himself to be in sight of seventy; but he did not appear so much and his neighbours believed this assertion of age no more than an excuse for his manner of life.

Indeed, at this moment, his companion was uttering a pleasantry at the farmer's expense. She had come on an errand from Buckland village, a mile away, and loitered because she esteemed the humorous qualities of Mr. Stockman and herself found laughter a source to existence. She needed this addition. Her lot had not been one of great emotions, or pleasures, for Melinda Honeysett was a widow after three uneven years of marriage. They passed before she was five and twenty, when a drunken husband, riding a horse that would not "carry beer," was pitched off in the night on Dunstone Down and broke his neck. She had no children and now lived with a bed-ridden father and ministered to him in the village. This had been her life for nearly twenty years. She was a connection of Joseph Stockman through her marriage, for the Bamseys and the Stockmans and the Honeysetts were related, though neither family exactly knew how.

"A day of great events," said the farmer. "My two new hands both coming and, as my manner is, I hope the best, but fear the worst."

"A horseman and a cowman, so Susan said."

"Yes. But that means more than the words on a little place like this, as I made clear. In fact, they've got to do pretty much everything--with such help as I can give and Neddy Tutt."

"Hope they'll be all right. But they mustn't count on a poor, weak, old man like you, of course."

Mr. Stockman looked into Melinda's face. She was a chubby, red-haired woman built on massive lines with a bosom that threatened to burst its lavender print, and a broad, beamy body beneath. She had a pair of pale blue eyes and a finely modelled mouth, not devoid of character. Her teeth were neglected. She wore a white sunbonnet, which threw a cool shadow over her face, and carried a basket, now full of small carrots and large lettuces.

"You poke your fun at me, forgetting I've done ten men's work in my time and must slack off," he said. "Because, thanks to plain living and moderation in all things, and the widowed state with all its restfulness, I don't look my age, that's not to say I don't feel it, I can assure you. There's certain rights I owe to myself--the only person as ever I did owe anything to in my life--and even if I was fool enough to want to make a martyr of myself, which I'm not--even so Soosie-Toosie would never let me."

"I'm sure she wouldn't."

"My daughter knows where the shoe pinches; and that's in my breathing parts. Often I'll stand to work like a young man, knowing all the time I shall have to pay for it with a long rest after."

"Poor chap!"

He shook his head.

"You be among the unbelievers I see--that's your father's bad work. But since he don't believe in nothing, I can't hope he'll ever believe in me."

"But the new men. Tell me about them. What are they like?"

"Ah, you females! It's always the outside of a man as interests you. For my part it was what their papers and characters were like that I had to think about; and even so I've took one largely on trust."

"You're such a trustful creature, Joe."

"I like to trust. I like to do unto others as they should do unto me. But it's a disappointing rule of life. To be above the staple of your fellow creatures is to get a lot of shocks, Melinda; but you can only set a good example; you can't make people follow it. One man I have seen, t'other I have not. Thomas Palk, the horseman--so to call him--is in sight of middle-age and a towser for work. He's leaving Haccombe, down Newton Abbot way, because his master's son is taking up his job. A very good man by all accounts, and he understands the position and knows what lies before him. A faithful-looking man and I hope he'll prove so. Plain as a bit of moor-stone--in fact a mighty ugly man; but an honest face if I know anything."

"Sounds all right."

"T'other I haven't seen. He comes from up country and answered my advertisement. Can't give no character direct, because his master's died sudden. But he's been along with him for nearly five years, and it was a bigger place than this, and he writes a very good letter. In fact an educated man seemingly, and nobody's the worse for that if it don't come between them and work. Though I grant it be doing so."

"So father says."

"Lawrence Maynard he's called. I've engaged him and hope for the best. Both free men--no encumbrances. I hope, with my gift of making the darkness light where farming is concerned, they'll soon be pulling their weight and getting things all ship-shape."

"Father says nobody knows better than you what work means; but somebody else has always got to do it."

"A wonderful man your father; yet I'm very much afraid he'll go to hell when the end comes, Melinda."

"He's not."

A ginger-coloured lurcher appeared. It was a gaunt and hideous dog with a white muzzle. Behind it came a black spaniel and a white, wire-haired fox-terrier.

"Us must get to work," said Mr. Stockman. "Soosie-Toosie wants a brace of rabbits for supper to-night and I'd best to fight for 'em afore the rain comes. It have been offering since morning and will be on us afore nightfall."

The dogs, apparently understanding, sat round with their eye on Joseph.

"If your godless parent was to see these poor creatures to work, I can tell you what he'd say, Melinda. He'd say thicky spaniel was like me--knows her job very well indeed and prefers to see the younger dogs doing it. And why not?"

"No use growing old if you don't grow artful," admitted Melinda.

"Of course it ban't--here's the girl. What's the matter now, Soosie? The rabbits? I be just going after 'em."

But Miss Stockman, Joseph's only child, had not come about the rabbits. She was a woman resembling her father in no respect. Her hair was black, lustreless and rough, her brown face disfigured by a "port wine" stain that descended from her forehead to her cheek. Her expression was anxious and careworn, and though large-boned and powerfully made, she was thin. She had brown, dog-like eyes, a mouth with sad lips and a pleading voice, which seemed to have the same querulous note as the hawks that so often hung in air above her home.

"Mr. Maynard's box have come, father," she said. "Be he to live in the house, or to go in the tallet over the stables? Both rooms are sweet and ready for 'em."

"Trust you for that, Soosie," declared Melinda.

"The horseman goes over the stables, as being the right and proper place for him," said Mr. Stockman. "And if there was a dwelling room over the cows, the cowman would go there. But there is not, so he'll come in the house."

"Right then," answered his daughter. "Mr. Maynard comes in the house; Mr. Palk goes over the hosses."

Susan disappeared and Mrs. Honeysett prepared to depart.

"And you tell your father that so soon as the woodcock be back--not long now--he'll have the first. I don't bear no malice."

"We all know that. And when you shoot it, you come in and have a tell with father. You do him good."

"And you too I hope?"

"Of course you do--such a long-sighted man as you."

She descended down the farm road to the highway beneath, and Joseph, getting his gun, went upwards with his rejoicing dogs into the fern brakes on the side of the Beacon.

Here, in the pursuit of the only exercise he really loved, Joe Stockman forgot his alleged years. He was a wonderfully steady shot, though it suited him to pretend that failing sight interfered very seriously with his sport; but he excelled still in the difficult business of snapping rabbits in fern. Thus engaged, with his dogs to help him, he became oblivious of weather and it was not until the sight of an approaching stranger arrested him that he grew conscious of the rain. Then he turned up his collar over his blue woollen shirt and swore.

The man who had recently surveyed Dart Vale from the summit of the rocks above, was now descending, and seeing the farmer, turned his steps towards him. He was a slight-built but well-knit youth of seven or eight and twenty. He stood an inch under six feet and was somewhat refined in appearance. His face was resolute and cleanly turned, his skin clear and of a natural olive, that his open-air life had tanned. He wore a small, black moustache over a stern mouth, and his eyes were very dark brown and of a restless and inquiring expression. He wore rough, old tweeds, a little darned at the seat, and on his left arm over the elbow was a mourning band. His legs were cased in tawny gaiters; he had a grey cap on his black hair and in his hands he carried an ash sapling with which, unconsciously from habit, he smote his leg as he walked.

"Sorry to spoil sport," he said, in a quick, clear voice somewhat low pitched, "but I'm a stranger in these parts and want Falcon Farm. Be I right for it?"

"Very right indeed," answered Mr. Stockman. "In fact, so right that it's under your nose. There's Falcon Farm, and I'm the farmer, and I guess you're Lawrence Maynard, due to-day."

The other smiled and his habitual solemnity lifted off his face.

"That's right. I walked from Bovey, because I wanted to have a look at the country."

"And what d'you think of it?"

"Fine. After flat Somerset it makes your legs wake up."

"I dare say it would. There's nothing like a hilly country for tightening the muscles. The Shire hosses find that out when they come here. Yes, that's Falcon Farm. And there's the cows--all red Devons."

The newcomer looked down upon a little cluster of kine grazing in a meadow.

"A beautiful spot sure enough. And snug by the look of it."

"Nothing to grumble at for high land. But it calls for work. I've been here five and twenty year and made it what it is; but I'm old for my age, along of hard labour in all weathers, and can't do all I would no more. However, we'll tell about it later when my other new man, Thomas Palk, arrives. Horseman, he is; but, as I explained, you and him are going to be my right and left hand now, and I can see you're the quick sort that will justify yourself from the first."

"I hope so."

"Heave up them rabbits then, and we'll go down along. I can stop a bird or beast still, though getting cruel dim in the eye."

Maynard picked up three heavy rabbits and they went down the hill together.

"We're a small party," explained Joe, "but very friendly, easy people--too busy to waste time on differences. And you and Palk will find yourselves very comfortable I hope. There's only me and my daughter, Miss Stockman, who rules us men, and a young boy, Neddy Tutt, whose making up into a useful hand. At hay harvest and corn harvest I hire. We've just got home our oats. For the roots, we can pull them ourselves. Of the men who have left me, one went for faults, and we can let the past bury the past; t'other found the winter a thought too hard up here and have gone down to the in-country. He's wrong, but that's his business."

The newcomer felt favourably impressed, for Mr. Stockman had great art to win strangers. He promised to be a kindly and easy man, as he declared himself to be.

Lawrence patted the dogs, who sniffed round him with offers of friendship, and presently all returned together.