Chapter VIII: A Reprimand

Now Nature thundered the hymn of the autumnal equinox; ancient trees waved their last before it; men told of a cloudburst, at midnight, over the central Moor. Every river roared in freshet; the springs overflowed and rolled down the grassy hills, where, in summer, no water was; cherry-coloured torrents, under banks of yellow spume, tumbled into the valleys; storm followed upon storm, and the fall of the year came in no peaceful guise, but like a ruthless army. Not until the epact did peace brood again, and fiery dawns, pallid noons and frosty nights gave the great waste sleeping into the hand of winter.

Daniel Brendon settled to his work, and personal regrets that his position should be so unimportant were thrust to the back of his mind for the present by a greater matter. He was in love with Sarah Jane Friend, and knew it. To him fell the task of drawing peat with horse and cart from Amicombe Hill, and his journeys offered not a few opportunities of meeting with the woman. Once at her home, once in the peat works, he spoke with her. On the latter occasion she had just taken her father's dinner to him, and after Gregory was settled with the contents of a tin can and a little basket, Sarah proposed to Daniel that she should show him certain secret places in this ruin. The peat works had been her playground as a child, and she knew every hole and corner of them; but since silence and failure had made the place a home, Sarah chose rather to shun it. The very buildings scowled, where they huddled together and cringed to Time to spare them. She noted this, and felt that the place was mean and horrible, but with Dan beside her, ancient interests wakened, and she took him to see her haunts.

"I had a dear little cubby hole here," she said, and showed him a great empty drum, from which one side had fallen.

"This used to be filled with peat and be set spinning, so that the stuff should get broke up and dried," she explained; "but now 'tis as you see. I've often crept in there and gone to sleep by the hour. 'Tis full of dried heather. An old man that used to work with father spread it for me five years ago. He's dead, but the heather's there yet."

There was ample room within the huge drum even for Brendon. They sat together for a while, and ever afterwards in his thought the place was consecrated to Sarah Jane. He believed that she liked him, but her fearless attitude and outspoken methods with men and women made him distrustful. So weeks passed, and he gradually grew to know her better. After the Sunday at Lydford he went in fear and trembling, but she said nothing about the matter, and when he asked Mr. Friend behind her back whether indeed his daughter was engaged, the peat-master told him that it was not so.

"As became her father, I axed her," he said, "an' in her usual style she told me all about it. Jarratt Weekes offered to wed, and set out his high prospects in a very gentlemanlike manner; but she said neither 'yea' nor 'nay' to him. I axed her why not, seeing as she've a great gift of making up her mind most times--more like a man than a woman in that respect. But she said for once that she wasn't sure of herself. She'll see him again in a month or so, and then he'll have his answer."

"Thank you, I'm sure; it's very impertinent of me presuming to ask," said Daniel, "but, to be plain with you, Mr. Weekes, I'm terrible interested."

"So am I," answered the father. "She's a lovely piece--even I see that. But it ban't a case where a parent will do any good. She'll take her own line, and want none to help her decide. If she was to go, I don't think I should bide here."

"Would you tear yourself away from the works?"

"Go from the works! Not likely. But I should leave Dunnagoat Cottage and live up there."

"Good powers! You wouldn't do that?"

"Why for not? Ban't no ghosts there?"

Daniel shrugged his shoulders.

"Your darter won't let you do it," he said.

With a full mind, the labourer pursued his days. How to speak and tell her that he loved her was the problem. He tried to fortify himself by reviewing his own prospects, but they lent no brightness at this moment. He had fifty pounds saved, and was getting five-and-twenty shillings a week--unusually good wages--but the authority he desired seemed no nearer. Strange thoughts passed through his brain, and he referred them to the powers in which he trusted.

"What's God up to with me now, I wonder?" he asked himself. The words were flippant, but the spirit in which he conceived them profoundly reverent. The suspense and tension of the time made him rather poor company for Agg, Lethbridge, and the widowed Joe Tapson. Indeed, between himself and the last there had risen a cloud. Brendon was dictatorial in matters of farm procedure, and by force of character won imperceptibly a little of the control he wanted. His love for work assisted him; not seldom he finished another's labour, simply because he enjoyed the task and knew that he could perform it better than his companion. Agg and Lethbridge were easy men, and Daniel's hunger for toil caused them no anxiety. They let him assume an attitude above them, and often asked him for help and advice; but Tapson, on the other hand, developed a very jealous spirit. He was ignorant and exceedingly obstinate. He had always regarded himself as second in command, under Mr. Prout, and to find this modest responsibility swept from him became a source of great annoyance. Twice he ventured to command Daniel, and once the new man obeyed, because he approved Tapson's idea; but on the second occasion he happened to be in a bad temper, and told Joe to mind his own business and not order his betters about. The rebuff rankled in the elder's bosom, and he puzzled long what course to pursue. Agg and Lethbridge were no comfort to him. Indeed, both laughed at the widower's concern.

"You silly old mumphead," said the genial Walter Agg; "what be you grizzling at? Any man's welcome to order me about, so long as he'll do my work for me."

"That's sound sense, an' my view to a hair," he declared. "The chap's got strength for five men--then let him do the work, since he's so blessed fond of it. He's a very fine man, an' my master any day of the week, though he don't get much better money. For my part I think he ought to, and I told him so; an' he was so blessed pleased to hear me say it, that he shifted two tons of muck, which was my job, while I looked on, like a gentleman, till master come into the yard!"

Agg roared with laughter. His laugh echoed against the stone walls of the farm, and Hilary Woodrow liked to hear it.

"Right you are, fatty! Dan's a very good sort, and long may be bide here."

"You be lazy hounds, and not worth a pin, the pair of you," answered the little man with the goat's beard. "But I'll not stand none of his high-handedness. Next time I orders him about and he pretends he don't hear, I'll have him up afore Mr. Woodrow."

"More fool you, Joe," replied Agg.

But Mr. Tapson's intention was not fulfilled, for the matter took a sensational turn, and when he did carry his tribulations to head-quarters, they were of a colour more grave than he expected.

On a day in late November Tapson was leading a cart piled with giant swedes through one of the lowest meadows of the farm. The mighty roots faded from white to purple, and drooping, glaucous foliage hung about their crowns. Following the cart, or straggling behind it to gnaw the turnips as he scattered them, came fifty breeding ewes. There was a crisp sound of fat roots being munched by the sheep. The air hung heavy, and the day was grey and mild. Looking up, the labourer saw Daniel Brendon approaching.

"Now for it!" thought Mr. Tapson, and his lips framed an order. "I'll tell the man to go and fetch me a fork from the byre."

He was about to do so, when Brendon himself shouted from a distance of fifty yards, and, to Tapson's amazement, he found himself commanded.

"Get down out of thic cart an' lend a hand here, Joe. I want 'e!"

Every line of the widower's brown face wrinkled into wrath. His very beard bristled. He growled to himself, and his solitary eye blazed.

"You want me, do 'e?" he shouted. "You'll be ordering up the Queen of England next, I suppose?"

"Don't be a fool, and come here, quick."

Mr. Tapson permitted himself a vulgar gesture. Then, chattering and snorting like an angry monkey, he continued to throw swedes upon the meadow. Brendon hesitated and approached. As he did so the widower remembered his own intention.

"You go and get me a fork from the byre; that's what I tell you to do--so now then!" he said, as Daniel arrived.

It happened that the big man was not in a good temper. Private anxieties fretted him exceedingly. His way was obscure. He had prayed to be shown a right course with respect to Sarah Jane, yet there dawned no definite idea. He loved her furiously, and half suspected that she liked him, but the miserable uncertainty and suspense of the time weighed upon him, so that his neighbours shook their heads behind his back and deplored his harshness.

"Be you going to do my bidding, or ban't you, Joe Tapson?" inquired Daniel.

"Not me, you overbearing peacock! Who be you, I should like to know, to tell me I'm to stir foot? Prout's the only man above me on this farm."

Brendon considered. He was about to express regret that he had hurt Mr. Tapson's feelings, but Joe spoke again, and the listener changed his mind.

"You'm a gert bully, like all you over-growed men. Good God A'mighty! because I had bad luck with my wife, and was very down-trodden in my youth, and lost an eye among other misfortunes, be that any reason why the first bull of Bashan as comes along should order me about as if I was the dirt under his feet? Never was such a thing heard of! You'm here to work, I believe, not to talk an' give yourself silly airs."

"If that's your opinion us had best go to master," said Daniel.

"This instant moment, and the sooner the better!" answered the other.

He took his horse and cart to the gate, hitched the reins there, and walked beside Brendon into the farmyard. Neither spoke until it happened that Hilary Woodrow met them. He was just going out riding, and Agg stood by with a handsome brown mare.

Daniel and Joe both began to speak together. Then the master of Ruddyford silenced them, sent Agg out of earshot, and bade Joe tell his tale.

"'Tis which he should betwixt me and this man here," began the elder. "Be he to order me about, like a lost dog, or be I set in authority over him? That's all I want to know, your honour. Agg and Lethbridge do let him do it, but I won't; I'll defy him to his face--a wise man, up home sixty year old, like me! 'Tis a disgrace to nature as I should go under him--as have forgot more than this here man ever knowed, for all his vainglorious opinions!"

Woodrow nodded.

"That'll do for you, Joe. Now go about your business. I'll speak to Brendon."

Tapson touched his forehead and withdrew reluctantly. He had hoped to hear his enemy roughly handled; he had trusted to gather from his master's lips a word or two that might be remembered and used with effect on some future occasion. But it was not to be. He returned to the swedes, and only learnt the issue some hours afterwards from Daniel himself.

Unluckily for Brendon, Woodrow also was not in a pleasant mood this morning. He suffered from general debility, for which there was no particular course, and to-day rheumatism had returned, and was giving him some pain in the chest and shoulders. He rode now to see his medical man, and felt in no mood for large sympathy or patience.

"A few words will meet this matter," he said. "When you came here I told you that the sheep-dogs would be expected to obey you, and nobody else."

"Can't we ax each other to----?"

"Be silent till I have spoken. You're too fond of raising your voice and pointing your hand. Do your work with less noise. In this farm Prout's head man, and Tapson comes under him. With sane people there's no question of authority at all. All work together for the good of the place, and all are well paid for their trouble. But, since you seem so anxious to command, let me tell you that I won't have it. You're the last to come, and you're the least among us. You do your work well enough, and I've no personal fault to find; nor yet has Prout; but if you're going to be too big for your shoes, the quicker we part the better for both of us."

Brendon grew hot; then Sarah Jane filled his mind, and he cooled again. He made a mighty effort and controlled his temper. He was not cowed, but spoke civilly and temperately. Woodrow himself had kept perfectly cool, and his example helped the labourer.

"Thank you, sir," said Dan. "I see quite clear now. I should be very sorry indeed to leave you, and I'm very wishful to please you. You shan't have nothing to grumble at again."

"That's a good fellow. Don't think I'm blind, or so wrapt up in my affairs that I don't watch what's doing. You hear Tapson say all sorts of things about me, for he's not very fond of me, though he pretends to be. But trust Prout before the others. He knows me. I'm not a godless man, and all the rest of that rot. Only I mind my own business, and don't wear my heart on my sleeve. I'm ill to-day, or perhaps I should not have spoken so sharply. Still, I take back nothing. Now tell Agg to bring my horse to the uppingstock. Lord knows how I shall mount, for my shoulders are one ache."

"I'll help you, please," said Daniel; and a moment later he assisted Hilary Woodrow into the saddle. The farmer thanked him, groaned, then walked his horse quietly away.

Agg looked after his master.

"Was he short with 'e? Us have to keep our weather eyes lifting when he's sick."

"Not at all," answered Brendon. "He only told me a thing or two I'd forgotten."

"Ban't much you forget, I reckon," answered the red man. Then he went his way, and Brendon returned to his work and his reflections.

He felt no anger at this reprimand. He was surprised with himself to find how placid he remained under it. But he knew the reason. His subordinate position was as nothing weighed against the possibility of leaving Sarah Jane. He quickly came to a conclusion with himself, and determined, at any cost of disappointment, to speak to her and ask her to marry him. If she refused, he would quit Ruddyford; if she accepted him, he would stay there--for the present. His mind became much quieted upon this decision, and he found leisure to reflect concerning his master. Woodrow had been curiously communicative at the recent interview, and his confession concerning himself interested his man. From Daniel's point of view the farmer's life was godless, for he never obeyed any outward regulations, and openly declared himself of no Christian persuasion. Yet his days were well ordered, and he neither openly erred nor offended anybody. Brendon wondered upon what foundation Mr. Woodrow based his scheme of conduct, and whither he looked for help and counsel. That man can trust reason to sustain his footsteps he knew not; and, indeed, at that date, to find one of Woodrow's education and breeding strongly sceptical of mind was a phenomenon. Such, however, had been his bent, and, like many others who turn strongly by instinct from all dogmas, the farmer yet found ethics an attractive subject, and sharpened his intellect daily with such books as upheld reason against faith. He was self-conscious concerning his unorthodox opinions, but secretly felt proud of them. Fifty years ago, to be agnostic was to be without the pale. None trusted Woodrow, and religious-minded folk resented his existence. The local clergymen would not know him. Perhaps only one man, John Prout, stood stoutly for him in the face of all people, and declared that he could do no wrong.

That night Brendon smoked his pipe in a cart-shed and spoke to Mr. Tapson.

"I'm sorry I ordered you to come to me, Joe," he said, "and I'm sorrier still that I didn't get the fork when you told me to do it. Master's made all clear to me. Prout's head man and you're second--so there it stands; and you shan't have no call to find fault again."

"Enough said," answered the other. "Us must all stand up for ourselves in this world, Brendon, because there's nobody else to do it. Therefore I up and spoke. But I'm very desirous to be friends, and I know your good parts."

"So be it then," answered Daniel.