CHAPTER III
Cora Lintern waited for Ned Baskerville at the fork of the road above Shaugh. Here, in the vicarage wall, the stump of a village cross had been planted. Round about stitchwort flashed its spring stars, and foxgloves made ready, while to the shattered symbol clung ivy tighter than ever lost sinner seeking sanctuary.
Upon a stone beneath sat the woman in Sunday finery, and she was beautiful despite her garments. They spoke of untutored taste and a mind ignorantly attracted by the garish and the crude. But her face was fair until examined at near range. Then upon the obvious beauty, like beginning of rust in the leaf, there appeared delicate signs of the spirit within. Her eyes spoke unrest and her mouth asperity. The shadow of a permanent line connected her eyebrows and promised a network too soon to stretch its web, woven by the spiders of discontent, upon her forehead.
Cora built always upon to-morrow, and she suffered the fate of those that do so. She was ambitious and vain, and she harboured a false perspective in every matter touching her own welfare, her own desert, and her own position in the world. She largely overrated her beauty and her talents. She was satisfied with Ned Baskerville, but had ceased to be enthusiastic about him. A year of his society revealed definite limitations, and she understood that though her husband was well-to-do, he would never be capable. The power to earn money did not belong to him, and she rated his windy optimisms and promises at their just value. She perceived that the will and intellect were hers, and she knew that, once married, he would follow and not lead. The advantage of this position outweighed the disadvantages. She desired to live in a town, and rather favoured the idea of setting up a shop, to be patronised by the local leaders of rank and fashion. She loved dress, and believed herself possessed of much natural genius in matters sartorial.
At present Ned absolutely refused any suggestion of a shop; but she doubted not that power rested with her presently to insist, if she pleased to do so. He was a generous and fairly devout lover. He more than satisfied her requirements in that direction. She had, indeed, cooled his ardour a little, and she supposed that her common-sense was gradually modifying his amorous disposition. But another's common-sense is a weak weapon against lust, and Ned's sensual energies, dammed by Cora, found secret outlet elsewhere.
So it came about that he endured the ordeal of the lengthy engagement without difficulty, and the girl wore his fancied sobriety and self-control as a feather in her cap. When she related her achievement to Ned and explained to him how much his character already owed to her chastening influence, he admitted it without a blush, and solemnly assured her that she had changed his whole attitude to the sex.
Now the man arrived, and they walked together by Beatland Corner, southerly of Shaugh, upon the moor-edge.
Their talk was of the autumn wedding and the necessity for some active efforts to decide their domicile. Cora was for a suburb of Plymouth, but Ned wanted to live in the country outside. The shop she did not mention after his recent strong expressions of aversion from it; but she desired the first step to be such that transition to town might easily follow, when marriage was accomplished and her power became paramount.
They decided, at length, to visit certain places that stood between town and country above Plymouth. There were Stoke and Mannamead to see. A villa was Cora's ambition—a villa and two servants. Ned's instincts, on the other hand, led to a small house and a large stable. He owned some horses and took great part of his pleasure upon them. Since possession of her own steed, however, Cora's regard for riding had diminished. It was her way to be quickly satisfied with a new toy. Now she spoke of a 'victoria,' so that when she was married she might drive daily upon her shopping and her visiting.
"The thing is to begin well," she said. "People call according to your house, and often the difference between nice blinds and common blinds will decide women whether they'll visit a newcomer or not. With my taste you can trust the outside of your home to look all right, Ned. At Mannamead I saw the very sort of house I'd like for us to have. Such a style, and I couldn't think what 'twas about it till I saw the short blinds was all hung in bright shining brass rods across the windows, and the window-boxes was all painted peacock-blue. 'I'll have my house just like that!' I thought."
"So you shall—or any colour you please. And I'll have my stable smart too, I promise you. White tiles all through. I shall have to do a bit myself, you know—looking after the horses, I mean—but nobody will know it."
"You'll keep a man, of course?"'
"A cheap one. Uncle Nathan went into figures with me last week. He was a bit vague, and I was a bit impatient and soon had enough of it. 'All I want to know,' I told him, 'is just exactly what income I can count upon,' and he said five hundred a year was the outside figure. Then, against that, you must set that he's getting a bit old and, of course, being another person's money, he's extra cautious. He admitted that if I sold out some shares and bought others, I could get pretty near another one hundred a year by it. But, of course, we've got to take a bite out of the money for furnishing and all the rest of it. My idea, as you know, is to invest a bit in a sleeping partnership, but he hasn't found anything of the sort yet, apparently. He's not the man he was at finding a bargain."
Here opened a good opportunity for her ambitions, and Cora ventured to take it.
"I wish you'd think twice about letting me start a little business. It's quite a ladylike thing, or I wouldn't offer it, but with my natural cleverness about clothes, and with all the time I've given to the fashions and all that—especially with the hats I can make—it seems a pity not to let me do it. You don't want much money to start with, and I should soon draw the custom."
"No," he said. "Time enough if ever we get hard up. I'm not going to have you making money. 'Tis your business to spend it. You'll be a lady, with your own servants and all the rest of it. You'll walk about, and pick the flowers in your garden, and pay visits; and if you do have a little trap, you can drive out to the meets sometimes when I go hunting. Why, damn it all, Cora, I should have thought you was the last girl who would ever want to do such a thing!"
"That's all you know," she said. "People who keep hat shops often get in with much bigger swells than ever we're likely to know at Mannamead, or Stoke either. They come into the shop and they see, of course, I'm a lady, and I explain that I only keep the shop for fun, and then I get to know them. I'd make more swell friends in my hat shop than ever you do on your horse out fox-hunting."
"I know a lot of swells, for that matter."
"Ask 'em to come to tea and then you'll see if you know 'em," she said. "'Tis no use for us to be silly. We're poor people, compared to rich ones, and we always shall be, so far as I can see. We must be content with getting up the ladder a bit—and that's all I ask or expect."
"I know my place all right, if that's what you mean," answered Ned. "I'm not anxious to get in with my betters, for they're not much use to me. I'm easily satisfied. I want for you to have a good time, and I mean for myself to have a good time. You can only live your life once, and a man's a fool to let worry come into his life if he can escape from it. The great thing in the world is to find people who think as you do yourself. That's worth a bit of trouble; and when you've found them, stick to them. A jolly good motto too."
They spilt words to feeble purpose for another half-hour, and then there came an acquaintance. Timothy Waite appeared on his way from Coldstone Farm. He overtook them and walked beside them.
"I suppose you don't want company," he said, "but I'll leave you half a mile further on."
"We do want company, and always shall," declared Cora. "And yours most of all, I'm sure. We're past the silly spooning stage. In fact, we never got into it, did we, Edward?"
"You didn't," said her betrothed, "and as you didn't, I couldn't. Spooning takes two."
Mr. Waite remained a bachelor and no woman had ever been mentioned in connection with him. He was highly eligible and, indeed, a husband much to be desired. He enjoyed prosperity, good looks, and a reputation for sense and industry.
Cora he had always admired, and still did so. At heart he wondered why she had chosen Ned Baskerville, and sometimes, since the marriage hung fire, he suspected that she was not entirely satisfied of her bargain and might yet change her mind.
He would have married her willingly, for there was that in her practical and unsentimental character which appealed to him. He had indeed contemplated proposing when the announcement of young Baskerville's engagement reached him. He met Cora sometimes and always admired her outlook on life. He did so now, yet knowing Ned too, doubted at heart whether the woman had arrested his propensities as completely as she asserted.
"The question on our lips when you came along was where we should set up shop," said Ned.
"A shop is what I really and truly want to set up," declared Cora; "but Edward won't hear of it—more fool him, I say. He can't earn money, but that's no reason why I shouldn't try to."
Mr. Waite entirely agreed with her.
"No reason why you shouldn't. If Cadworthy's to be handed over to Rupert and you're going to live in Plymouth, as I hear," he said, "then why not business? There's nothing against it that I know, and there's nothing like it. If I wasn't a farmer, I'd keep a shop. For that matter a farmer does keep a shop. Only difference that I can see is that he has fields instead of cupboards and loses good money through the middleman between him and his customers. I'm going to take another stall in Plymouth market after Midsummer. There's nought like market work for saving cash."
"And as nearly half our money will come from the rent that Rupert pays for Cadworthy, we shall be living by a shop in a sense whether you pretend to or not," added Cora.
But Ned denied this. He aired his views on political economy, while Waite, who valued money, yet valued making it still more, reduced the other's opinions to their proper fatuity and laughed at him into the bargain.
Timothy's contempt for Baskerville was not concealed. He even permitted himself a sly jest or two at the expense of the other's mental endowments; and these thrusts, while unfelt by the victim, stabbed Cora's breast somewhat keenly. Even Timothy's laughter, she told herself, was more sane and manly than Ned's.
She fell into her own vice of contrasting the thing she had with the thing she had not, to the detriment of the former. It was an instinct with her to under-value her own possessions; but the instinct stopped at herself—an unusual circumstance.
With herself and her attributes of mind and body, she never quarrelled; it was only her environment that by no possibility compared favourably with that of other people. Her mother, her sister, her brother, her betrothed, and her prospects—none but seemed really unworthy of Cora when dispassionately judged by herself.
Now she weighed Timothy's decision against Ned's doubt, his knowledge against Ned's ignorance, his sense against Ned's nonsense. She felt the farmer's allusions, and she throbbed with discomfort because Ned did not also feel them and retort upon Mr. Waite in like manner. She told herself that the difference between them was the radical difference between a wise man and a fool. Then she fell back in self-defence of her own judgment, and assured herself that, physically, there could be no comparison, and that Ned had a better heart and would make a gentler husband.
Timothy had admired her—she remembered that; but he was caution personified and, while he had considered, Ned had plunged. She strove to see this as a virtue in Ned. Yet Timothy's old attitude to her forbade any slighting of him. She remembered very well how, when he congratulated her on her engagement, he had pointedly praised Ned for one thing alone: his precipitation. A fault at other seasons may be a virtue in the love season.
"I thought him not very clever," said Timothy on that occasion; "but now I see he was cleverer than any of us. Because he was too clever to waste a moment in getting what every other chap wanted. We learn these things too late."
He said that and said it with great significance. It comforted Cora now to remember the circumstance. Whatever else Ned might not know, he knew a good deal about women; and that would surely make him by so much a better husband. Then her wits told her the opposite might be argued from this premise. She was not enjoying herself, and she felt glad when Waite left them. Anon Ned rallied her for lengthened taciturnity and even hinted, as a jest, that he believed she was regretting her choice.
They turned presently and went back over Shaugh Moor to drink tea at the man's home. But upon the threshold Cora changed her mind. She pleaded headache and some anxiety about her health.
"I've got a cold coming—else I wouldn't be so low-spirited," she said. "I'll get back through North Wood and go to bed early."
He instantly expressed utmost solicitation and concern.
"I'll come back with you, then. If you like, I'll put in the pony and drive you," he said. But she would neither of these things.
"I shall be all right. You go in and have your tea, and don't trouble. I'll get back by the wood path, and you'll find I shall be better to-morrow."
"'Tis that flimsy dress that lets the wind through like a net," he said. "The weather's not right for such clothes as you will wear."
But she laughed and told him to mind his own business. Then she kissed him on the cheek and went away.
He stood doubtful. First he felt moved to follow her, and then he changed his mind. He knew Cora better than she thought he did, and he was aware that at the present moment she felt perfectly well but desired to be alone.
He had not missed the significance of Mr. Waite's views on his sweetheart's mind, though he had failed to appreciate Timothy's sly humour at his own expense.
Now, therefore, he let Cora have her will and made no further effort to overtake her. He waited only until she looked back, as he knew she would; then he kissed his hand, turned, and departed.
She passed along through the forest homeward, and, when hidden in a silent place, dusted a stone and sat down to think.
A wild apple tree rose above her, half smothered in a great ivy-tod. But through the darkness of the parasite, infant sprays of bright young foliage sprang and splashed the gloomy evergreen with verdure.
Aloft, crowning this gnarled and elbowed crab, burst out a triumphant wreath of pale pink blossom—dainty, diaphanous, and curled. Full of light and pearly purity it feathered on the bough, and its tender brightness was splashed with crimson beads of the flower-buds that waited their time and turn to open.
Higher still, dominating the tree, thrust forth a crooked, naked bough or two. They towered, black, dead, and grim above the loveliness of the living thing beneath.
From reflections not agreeable, this good sight attracted Cora and turned the tide of her thoughts.
Even here the instinct of business dominated any sentiment that might have wakened in another spirit before such beauty. She gazed at it, then rose and plucked a few sprays of the apple-blossom. Next she took off her hat and began to try the effect of the natural flowers therein. Her efforts pleased her not a little.
"Lord! What a hand I have for it!" she said aloud. Then, refreshened by this evidence of her skill, she rose and proceeded to Shaugh. "I know one thing," she thought, "and that is, man or no man, I shall always be able to make my living single-handed in a town. 'Tisn't for that I want a husband. And be it as 'twill, when master Ned finds a lot more money coming in, he'd very soon give over crying out at a shop."