Chapter VII: At Green Hayes

To Dinah Waycott there came an experience familiar enough, yet fraught with shock and grief to any man and woman of good will who is forced to suffer it. By gradual stages the truth had overtaken her, and now she knew that what in all honesty she believed was love--the emotion that had made her accept John Bamsey and promise to marry him--was nothing more than such affection and regard as a sister might feel for a favourite brother. Their relations had in fact been upon that basis all their lives. She remembered Johnny as long as she remembered anything, for she had been but two years old when he was born, and they had grown up together. And now, being possessed of a mind that faced life pretty fearlessly, and blessed with clear reasoning powers, Orphan Dinah knew the truth.

First she considered how such an unhappy thing could have happened. She was young and without experience. She had never heard of a similar case. And what most puzzled her was why the light had been thrown at all, and what had happened to convince her that she had erred. When she accepted her lover, most fully and firmly she believed that her heart prompted. It did not beat quicker at his proposition, and for a time she could not feel sure; but before she accepted him she did feel sure and emphatically believed it was love that inspired her promise. But now she knew that it was not love; and yet she could not tell why she knew it.

For the usual experience in such cases had not proved the touchstone. There was none else who had come into her life, awakened passion and thus revealed the nature of her error with respect to John. No blinding light of this sort had shone upon the situation. But gradually, remorselessly, the truth crept into Dinah's brain, and she saw now that what she had taken for love was really an emotion inspired by various circumstances. Her step-father had desired the match and expressed his delight at the thought; and since he was by far the most real and precious thing in the girl's life, his opinion unconsciously influenced her. Then, for private reasons, she desired to be away from Benjamin Bamsey's home--that also for love of him. The situation was complicated for Dinah by the fact that Jane Bamsey, John's sister, did not like her and suffered jealousy under her father's affection for his foster-daughter. Dinah was some years older than Jane and far more attractive to Mr. Bamsey, by virtue of her spirit and disposition, than Jane could ever be. Ben himself hardly knew this, but his wife very clearly perceived it. She was a fair woman and never agitated on the subject, though often tempted to do so. But she was human, and that her husband should set so much greater store upon Dinah than Jane caused her to feel resentment, though little surprise. Astonishment she could not feel, for, though the mother of Jane, she admitted that the elder girl displayed higher qualities, a mind more loyal, a heart more generous. But Jane was beautiful, and she could be very attractive when life ran to her own pattern. Jane was not a bad daughter. She loved her mother and worshipped her brother. She might have tolerated Dinah too, but for the ever present fact that her father put Dinah first. This had been a baneful circumstance for the younger's character; and it had served to lessen her affection for her father. The fact he recognised, without perceiving the reason. On the contrary, he held Dinah a very precious influence for Jane, and wished his own child more like the other. Friction from this situation was inevitable; and now Dinah, considering the various causes that had landed her in her present plight, perceived that not the least had been a subconscious impulse that urged her, for everybody's sake, to leave Lower Town and the home of her childhood. Thus she had deluded herself as well as others, and declared herself in love with a man, while yet her heart was innocent of love. For a long time she had been conscious of something wrong. She had surprised herself painfully three months after her engagement by discovering that her forthright mind was seeing things in Johnny that she wished were different. This startled her, and instinct told her that she ought not to be so aware of these defects. Before they were engaged such things never clouded her affection; but in the light of altered relations they did. She grew to hate the lover's kiss, while the brother's kiss of old had been agreeable to her. Her kiss had not changed; but his had. She detected all manner of trifles, vanities, complacencies, tendencies to judge neighbours too hardly. These things did not make Dinah miserable, because her nature was proof against misery, and the emotion excited in her by ill fortune could never be so described. Indeed, under no circumstances did she display the phenomena of misery. But she was deeply perturbed and she knew, far better than Johnny could tell her, that serious reasons existed for her present evasion and procrastination. She also knew, as he did, that she was taking a line foreign to her character; but he did not guess the tremendous discovery that, for the moment, caused his sweetheart to falter and delay action.

He was in love, heart and soul, and Dinah understood that well enough. No hope of any revelation existed for him. He poured all his energy and quality into his plans for her future happiness. If he could be unselfish, it was with her; if he could be modest, it was with her. She awoke the best of him and influenced him as no other power on earth was able to do. He saw her pleasant face beautiful; he heard her pleasant voice as music; he held her laugh sweeter than a blackbird's song. She knew his adoration and it increased the threatening difficulties. But he was changing now, and the recent evidence of his irritation on Hazel Tor, Dinah recognised as perfectly natural and reasonable.

Still she hesitated before the melancholy conviction that she could not marry John, and the vision of the family when they heard it. She was waiting now in rare indecision; but she knew that such inaction could only be a matter of a very short time. The problem touched many, and she was aware that her change of mind would bring hard words to her ears from various quarters. She began to be sorry, but not for herself. She was concerned, first for John, and then for her foster-father. She was also in a lesser degree regretful for Mrs. Bamsey, and even for Jane; but she judged that their tribulation would be allayed by two things: first, in the conviction that John was well out of it; secondly, at the knowledge that Dinah herself would leave Green Hayes, Ben Bamsey's farm. She could not stop after the events now foreshadowed, and she felt tolerably certain that none would desire her to do so. Thus she hung on the verge, but had not taken the inevitable step upon a Sunday when Lawrence Maynard visited Lower Town according to his promise and came to tea.

Green Hayes was "a welcoming sort of place," as the owner always declared, though at first glance it did not seem so. The farmhouse was built of granite and faced with slate, which caused it to look sulky, but made it snug. A wide farmyard extended before the face of the dwelling, and pigeons and poultry lent liveliness and movement to it. A great barn, with a weathered roof of slate, extended on one side of the yard, and orchards and large kitchen gardens arose behind it; for fruit and vegetables were a feature of Mr. Bamsey's production. He better loved planting trees than rearing stock. Indeed, his neighbours denied him title to be farmer at all. But he did great things with pigs and poultry, and he grew plenty of corn in Dart Vale a mile below his home.

Maynard was welcomed and found that Dinah had made more of his past succour than seemed necessary. He discovered also whence the young woman had derived her directness of speech and clear vision, for Mr. Bamsey displayed these qualities, though in a measure tempered by age and experience. On the subject of himself he could be specially clear. He did not mind who knew his failings.

He was a man of moderate height, grey bearded and grey headed. His nose had been flattened by an accident in youth, but his face was genial and his eyes, behind spectacles, of a pleasant expression. He enjoyed humour, and a joke against himself always won his heartiest laugh. His wife was larger than himself--a ponderous woman, credited with the gift of second sight. She had been beautiful and was still handsome, with regular features, a clear skin, and large, cow-like eyes. Jane Bamsey, her daughter, a girl of eighteen, rejoiced in more than the beauty of youth. She was lovely, but she had a disposition that already made her beautiful mouth pout oftener than it laughed. She was jealous of Dinah, though the elder girl entertained no unfriendly emotion towards Jane. She admired her exceedingly and loved to look at her for the satisfaction of her fine curves, round, black eyebrows, lustrous, misty blue eyes and delicate, dainty nose. It was not her fault that she pleased Benjamin Bamsey better than his own child. Jane was spiteful, and Dinah's direct methods, which often defeated the younger in argument, never convinced her, but increased a general, vague feeling of resentment, the more painful to Jane, because she was no fool, and knew, at the bottom of her heart, that honest grounds of complaint against Dinah did not exist. The real grievance lay in the fact of her father's preference; but when, in a moment of passion, she had flung this truth at Dinah, the elder disarmed her by admitting it and also explaining it.

"If you thought for foster-father like I do, and loved him half as well as what I do, you'd have nothing to grumble about, and he'd love you so well as he loves me," said Dinah; "but you don't."

"I'd do all you do for him, and more, if you wasn't here," declared Jane, and met an uncompromising answer.

"No, you wouldn't, or anything like what I do; and well you know it, you pretty dear."

Mr. Bamsey thanked Lawrence heartily for his good offices in the past on Dinah's behalf, and Faith Bamsey, his wife, echoed him.

"The blessing is she ain't marked," said Ben. "I much feared she would be, for 'twas an evil cut, but such is the health of her blood that she healed instanter, and now, you see nought but a red mark that grows fainter every day."

The visitor regarded Dinah's face and admitted it was so.

"Wonderful," he said. "I never should have thought that ugly gash would have cleared up so well."

"Nature's on the side of the young," replied Benjamin. "She spoils 'em you may say. Not that anything could spoil Dinah."

"You can, and you do," she said.

"Oh, no. 'Tis the other way round. You'd keep me in cotton wool if you could. I'm feared of my life for Johnny that you'll make him soft."

"And tell him he's not to go out and fight the poachers by night, and silly things like that," added Jane.

"More likely offer to go out and help him fight 'em," said Maynard, and Ben applauded.

"That's right! You know her better than Jane do seemingly. Dinah won't stand between John and his duty--that's certain sure."

"No woman will ever come between my son and his duty," said Faith. "There's some young men be born with a sense of duty, and some gets it by their training and some, of course, never do. But John was doing his duty when he was five year old--came natural to him."

"And what's the duty of a five year old, ma'am?" asked Lawrence. He found himself easy and comfortable with the Bamseys.

"To obey his parents and trust in 'em first and last and always," answered Faith. "He was blessed with a very fine nature from his birth, and nothing ever happened to make him depart from it."

"One of the lucky ones, that finds it easier to be good than anything else."

"No, Mr. Maynard; you mustn't say that," answered Johnny's father. "You may be as good as gold, but you can't escape the old Adam. God Almighty don't make us angels, though he gives us the chance to imitate them."

"In fact, nobody can get high virtues by nature," summed up Mrs. Bamsey. "They've got to be worked for. And another thing--you can't win to goodness and then sit down and say, 'I've got the Lord, so now I'm out of the wood and safe for ever more.' That's not life. Nobody's ever out of the wood, and them that think they stand be often most like to fall. Things be sent to try our faith in God, and He sends 'em Himself."

Dinah, with proleptic instinct, looked ahead at her own affairs and wondered. Mrs. Bamsey, from whom moral principles flowed easily at a touch, proceeded awhile and Maynard's spirits began to fall. He was not religious and his own standards of conduct, upon which his past had been directed, had resulted from innate qualities of mind, rather than along the directions of dogma and creed. He perceived that Mrs. Bamsey's ideas ran in fixed channels and felt glad when Benjamin, upon some opinion of his wife, took up the conversation. She had been saying, with regard to her son, that while he owed certain qualities to herself, his father was also apparent in him. Dinah supported her, but Benjamin was not so sure.

"No," he said. "I can't flatter myself that John has to thank me for much. His mother stares out of him you may say, and all the best is hers. But there's a very wicked side of me that John haven't got, I'm glad to say. Leastways if he have, he's never let on about it."

Dinah laughed.

"Now I know what's coming," she said.

"And what might your wicked side be, Mr. Bamsey, if it ain't a secret?" inquired Lawrence.

"No secret at all. I've got no secrets. Hate 'em. It's just a queer bit of human nature."

"He's invented it," said Dinah. "It ain't true. He dreams it."

"It's very true indeed, and shows a weak spot where one didn't ought to be," confessed Ben. "If you'll believe it, Maynard, I often wake up of a night, somewhere about two o'clock, a changed man! Yes, I do; and then the whole face of nature looks different, and I find myself in a proper awful frame of mind against my fellow creatures. I mistrust 'em, and take dark views against 'em, setting out their wrongs and wickedness. At such times I'll even plan to sack a harmless chap, and lash myself up into a proper fury, and think the fearfullest things against man, woman and child. I'll go so far as to cuss the cat, because she haven't caught a mouse for a week! If the folk were to see me at such a moment, I dare say they wouldn't know me."

"What d'you say, ma'am?" asked Maynard.

"I say nothing, because I'm always asleep," answered Mrs. Bamsey.

"Do it pass off pretty quick, master?"

"It do. I slumber again after a bit, and come daylight, you may say butter wouldn't melt in my mouth. I don't write none of they rude letters I've invented, and I don't sack nobody--not even the cat. I wake up calm and patient with the neighbours and quite ready to forgive 'em, as I hope to be forgiven. After such a night I'm mild as old cider and only a bit tired."

"'Tis a sort of safety-valve I expect," suggested Lawrence.

"That's just what it is; and sometimes I've seen the like happen in daylight with other people. If you can send your neighbours to hell without them knowing it, it don't hurt them and comforts your nerves wonderful sometimes."

"A very shameful thought, Ben," declared his wife, "and you oughtn't to say such things."

"I know it's shameful. But I only tell the man these facts to open his eyes and show him how much better Johnny be than his father."

"May he never have nothing to cuss about," hoped Lawrence.

"I don't see how he ever can, when he's got Dinah."

"Yes--when," said Jane Bamsey. "He's got to wait Dinah's pleasure till the stroke of Doom seemingly."

Maynard had been admiring the younger girl. But he noticed that her beauty was clouded by discontent. There chimed also a note in her voice that carried with it slight, indefinite protest. His own voice embraced the identical note; but he was not aware of that.

"No politics, Jane," said Mrs. Bamsey. "You never did ought to strike into family affairs before a stranger."

"Mr. Maynard's not a stranger," argued Jane. "We're heard tell lots about him from Johnny, and Dinah too."

"That's right," said Lawrence.

Benjamin Bamsey nursed an old Skye terrier and scratched its back with a bunch of keys--a process the animal loved. He talked of dogs and cattle awhile; then they all went to tea. Faith Bamsey asked after Susan.

"She's quite recovered, ma'am. She was in a mind to come over herself to-day, being wishful to see you; but her father wanted her help. He's very busy with his figures this afternoon."

Faith shook her head.

"Just like him--to put off his duty all the week, then do it on the Lord's Day, when he didn't ought."

"He went to worship in the morning, however, as he generally does."

"That's to the good then."

"Soosie-Toosie's one of the best women on this earth," said Dinah, "only she's too much of a doormat. So cruel busy that she's never got time to think what she owes herself."

This struck the visitor as very true, but he had never been greatly interested in Susan. She was very unobtrusive and unchallenging in every way.

"She likes it," said Jane. "She likes being driven about and never getting even with her work."

"If work is prayer, her life is a prayer," said Mr. Bamsey.

"It's a prayer that never gets answered, then," replied Jane. "A dog's life really, only Susan don't see it, more than any other dog would, I suppose."

"Don't talk so free, Jane," urged her mother.

"She'll work herself to the bone and die afore her time I expect," continued Mrs. Bamsey's daughter. "Then very like you'll see her ghost, mother."

This gave Lawrence an opportunity to inquire concerning Faith Bamsey's famous gift.

"Is it true, as they tell, that you be a ghost-seer, ma'am?" he asked.

"I am," she replied placidly. "It runs in my family and I take no credit for it."

"Never afeared?"

"Never. They come and they go. 'Tis just something in my nature that lets my eyes see more than other people. There's animals have the gift also, so it's naught to brag about. I'll see the spectrums any time--just the ghostes of dead folk, that flicker about where they used to live sometimes; and if I be that way by chance when they be there, then I see 'em."

"And do they see you, ma'am?"

"I can't say as to that. I've never had no speech with them and they don't take no notice of me. Sometimes I recognise the creatures as people that lived in my time and memory; sometimes I do not. Only last week I see old Noah Parsons hanging over New Bridge, just as he did in life times without count, looking down over to see if there was any fish moving. An old poacher he was--till he got too feeble to do anything but right."

"And mother seed Lazarus Coomstock in Holne Wood not a month after he was teeled*--didn't you, mother?" asked Jane.

* _Teeled_--buried.

"I did," answered Mrs. Bamsey. "I saw him outside his own house on the day of the sale, with live neighbours at his elbows--for all the world as though he'd come with the rest to bid for the things."

"A terrible queer gift," said Maynard. "Have you handed it on to Miss Jane here, I wonder?"

"No," declared Jane. "I've never seen a ghost ana never want to."

"You be young yet. Perhaps when you get up to years of discretion you'll see 'em."

"When Jane gets up to years of discretion, I'll give a party," laughed Ben; but Jane did not laugh.

"You always think I'm a fool, father; and you'll always be wrong," she snapped. Then she got up and left the room.

"You didn't ought to poke fun at her," said Faith. "You know she don't like being thought a child--least of all by you."

"If you make jokes, you must take 'em," said Ben. "Jane's got a very sharp tongue for her age and nobody doubts her wits; but if a father can't make a laugh at the expense of his child--no, no--we mustn't truckle under to Jane. Mayhap a good ghostey will teach her sense some day."

"She's that wishful to please you always," murmured Jane's mother.

"Well, well, she can do most things she sets her mind to. I ban't a man very difficult to please."

Lawrence struck in again. He had ignored these passages, and was still considering Mrs. Bamsey's alleged second sight.

"Would you say that John has got your gift, ma'am?" he asked

"Time will show," replied Faith. "He's a godly, plain-dealer is John, but I've never heard him say he's seen one."

"I hope he won't," said Dinah. "Because, in his business as water-keeper, and looking out against trespassers and such-like, it might confuse him and waste his time a lot, if he was to see shadow people about by the river and think them poaching."

Her foster-father exploded at the absurdity of the idea; but neither Lawrence nor Faith Bamsey saw anything amusing in it. Then Ben grew serious and set down his old dog, which had returned to his lap after tea was ended.

"There's church bell," he said, "and us be going. Have you worshipped at our church yet, Maynard?"

The thin tinkle of bell music fell from the wooded height above Green Hayes.

"No," said Lawrence. "I have not. I don't go to church."

Ben shrank, and his wife started and tightened her lips.

"Ban't you a Christian then?"

"Couldn't say as to that, ma'am; but I don't find church-going help me, so I don't go."

"Dear, dear--that's bad," said Mr. Bamsey, while his wife put further searching questions.

"Do you say your prayers, or do you not, if I may ask?"

"I say my prayers--yes."

She looked at him very suspiciously.

"We're bid to go," she said; "and you didn't ought to feel any doubt as to whether you're a Christian or not, did he, Ben?"

"Certainly he did not," answered her husband. Then he brightened and made a suggestion.

"You come along of us to-night. Won't hurt you, and you'll very like catch a grain that'll sprout. That's the beauty of church-going: 'tis like rough shooting--you never know what you're going to flush. And our parson's a man that abounds in plain truths. So like as not he'll get one home on you."

"Come, Mr. Maynard," said Dinah.

"Certainly I will if I may," he replied. "I've no feeling for, or against."

"If us can throw a light for your soul, you won't have come to tea in vain," suggested Mrs. Bamsey.

"And have got supper by it in the bargain," added Ben, "for you'll have to bide after."

"No, no--no occasion at all."

"Yes, you must," said Dinah. "They'll have finished at Falcon Farm long afore you can get back."

Therefore Lawrence Maynard joined the party at evensong and sat between Jane and Dinah. Jane was indifferent, but Dinah shared her hymn-book with him. He did not sing, however, though it gave him pleasure to hear her do so. She was devout and attentive; Jane was not. He praised the sermon afterwards and told Mr. Bamsey that it was full of sense. When supper had ended, he thanked them very earnestly for their great kindness to a lonely man, and Benjamin trusted that he would come again. Dinah also pressed him, and Jane, who was now in a very fascinating and gracious mood, ordered him to do so.

"If you don't, we shall think you don't like us," she said.

He was grateful, and left them in an amiable spirit.

They discussed him after he had gone, and Dinah praised him, but Mrs. Bamsey felt dubious.

"He's rather a secret sort of man in my opinion," she said.

"He is," admitted Ben; "but he's secret by accident, not nature, I believe. I took note of him. He's got a grievance against life I reckon; but what it may be, of course, we don't know."

"I'll get it out of him," said Jane.

"No you won't, my dear," answered her father. "Dinah's more like to than you."

"I don't want his secrets," declared Dinah.

"We'm often burdened with secrets we don't want," replied Ben. "It's part of duty sometimes to listen to 'em; though I grant the folk most ready to tell their secrets are often the hardest to help. Silliness is a misfortune that little can be done for."

"He won't be in no hurry to tell his secrets, if he's got any," prophesied Mrs. Bamsey. "He's not that sort."