CHAPTER VI
The setting sun burnt upon Dewerstone's shoulder and beat in a sea of light against the western face of North Wood, until the wind-worn forest edge, taking colour on trunk and bough, glowed heartily.
Already the first summer splendour was dimmed, for these lofty domains suffered full fret of storm and asperity of season. A proleptic instinct, stamped by the centuries, inspired this wood; it anticipated more sheltered neighbours in autumn, though it lagged behind them in spring. Upon its boughs the last vernal splendour fluttered into being, and the first autumnal stain was always visible. Now beech and larch revealed a shadow in their texture of leaf and needle though August had not passed, for their foliage was born into elemental strife. Here homed the west wind, and the salt south storms emptied their vials; here the last snows lingered, and May frost pinched the young green things.
Now roseal and gracious light penetrated the heart of the wood, warmed its recesses, and dwelt upon a grass-grown track that wound through the midst. Toward this path by convergent ways there came a man and woman. As yet half a mile separated them, for they had entered the wood at opposite places; but one desire actuated both, and they moved slowly nearer until they met at a tryst in the deep heart of the trees. Undergrowth rose about them, and their resort was carefully chosen and perfectly concealed. Here oak closely clad the hill, and granite boulders offered an inner rampart against observation. The man and woman were elderly, yet she was still personable, and he retained a measure of unusual good looks. They came to perform a little rite, sacred and secret, an event celebrated these many years, and unknown to any other human beings but themselves.
Nathan Baskerville put his arms round Priscilla Lintern and drew her beside him and kissed her.
"We shall never find it this year, I'm much afraid," he said. "The time is past. 'Tis always later far than other lilies in the garden, but not so late as this. However, I'll do my best."
"No matter for the flower," she answered, "so long as we keep up our custom."
A slant flame from the sunset stole deliciously through the dusky hiding-places of the wood, and played on the deep mosses and fern-crowns and the tawny motley of the earth, spread like a coverlet beneath. Here dead litter of leaf and twig made the covering of the ground, and through it sprang various seedling things, presently to bear their part in the commonwealth and succeed their forefathers. The ground was amber-bright where the sunshine won to it, and everywhere stretched ivy and bramble, gleamed the lemon light of malempyre, sparkled green sorrel, and rose dim woodbine that wound its arms around the sapling oaks. Wood-rush and wood-sage prospered together, and where water spouted out of the hill there spread green and ruddy mosses, embroidered with foliage of marsh violet and crowned by pallid umbels of angelica. The silver of birches flashed hard by, and the rowan's berries already warmed to scarlet.
Hither after their meeting came the man and woman, and then Nathan, searching sharply, uttered a cry of triumph, and pointed where, at their feet, grew certain dark green twayblade leaves that sprouted from the grass. Here dwelt lilies-of-the-valley—their only wild haunt in Devon—and the man now made haste to find a blossom and present it to his mistress. But he failed to do so. Only a dead spike or two appeared, and presently he gave up the search with some disappointment.
"They must have bloomed just when I was ill and couldn't come," he said.
"'Tis no matter at all," she answered. "The thought and the meeting here are the good thing. We'll go back into the wood now, further from the path. To me 'tis marvellous, Nat, to think the crafty world has never guessed."
"It is," he admitted. "And sometimes in my dark moments—however, we can leave that to-day. We're near at the end of our labours, so far as the children are concerned. Cora was always the most difficult. But the future's bright, save for the cash side. I hope to God 'twill come right afore the wedding; but——"
"Go on," she said. "We can't pretend to be so happy as usual this year. Let's face it. I know you're worried to death. But money's nought alongside your health. You're better again; you've shown me that clear enough. And nothing else matters to us."
"Yes, I'm all right, I hope. But I'm a bit under the weather. Things have gone curiously crooked ever since Vivian died. I was a fool. I won't disguise that; but somehow my luck seemed so good that a few little troubles never looked worth considering. Then, just before he went, I got into a regular thunderstorm. It blew up against the steady wind of my good fortune, as thunderstorms will. Vivian did me a good turn by dying just when he did—I can't deny it; and everything is all right now—for all practical purposes. The silver mine will be a wonder of the world by all accounts. Still, I've had a good deal to trouble me, and things look worse when a man's sick."
"Shall you be giving Polly Bassett her money soon? Heathman tells me her husband's grumbling a bit."
"All in good time. When our Cora is married I shall try and fork out a good slice of Vivian's estate. Ned must have the capital he wants, and I've got to find a hundred for Cora's wedding gift."
"Why do that yet?"
"I'll do it if I have to sell myself up," he said fiercely. "Isn't she my first favourite of our three? Don't I worship the ground she goes on, and love her better than anything in the world after you yourself?"
She sighed.
"How it weighs heavier and heavier after all these years! And I always thought 'twould weigh lighter and lighter. We were fools to have childer. But for them we could have let the world know and been married, and gived back the five thousand to your wife's people. But not now—never now, for the children's sake, I suppose."
"They'll know in good time, and none else. When I come to my end, I'm going to tell 'em I'm their father, according to your wish, and because I've promised you on my oath to do it; but none else must ever know it; and it would be a wiser thing, Priscilla, if you could only see it so, that they didn't either."
"They must know, and they shall."
"Well, it may be sooner than anybody thinks. The position is clear enough: I might have married and still kept the five thousand, because the lawyers said that my dead wife's wish wouldn't hold water in law; but I didn't know that till 'twas too late, and your first child had come. Then we talked it out, and you was content and so was I. Now there are three of them, and though I'd face the music so brave as you and go to my grave spurned by all men, if necessary, what would better it for them? Nothing short of an Act of Parliament would make 'em legitimate now. I kept the condition of my dead wife, because you urged me to do it and weren't feared of the consequences; but now, though I can make you my lawful wife, I can't make them my lawful children, and therefore surely 'tis better they shall never know they are my children at all?"
"'Twas a promise," she said, "and I hold you to it. I'm fixed on it that they shall know."
"Very well, so it shall be, then. Only for God's sake look to it for everybody's sake that it don't get out after, and ruin you all. I shouldn't sleep in my grave if I thought the life-long secret was common knowledge."
"You can trust them to keep it, I should think."
"The girls, yes; but Heathman's so easy and careless."
"Suppose you was to marry me even now, Nat, would that help?"
"I'll do it, as I've always said I'll do it. But that means I should be in honour bound to pay five thousand to my first wife's people. Well, I can't—I can't at this moment—not a penny of it. Just now I'm a good deal driven. In a year or two I might, no doubt; but there's that tells me a year or two——"
He put up his hand to his throat.
"You swore to me on your oath that you were better, last time you came down by night."
"I was; but—it's here, Priscilla—deep down and—— Maybe 'twill lift again, and maybe it won't. But we must be ready. I'd give my eternal soul if things were a little straighter; but time—plenty of time—is wanted for that, and 'tis just time I can't count upon. I'm not so young as I was, and I've not the head for figures I used to have."
"If you don't marry, you've got absolute power to dispose of that five thousand. 'Tis yours, in fact. Yet at best that's a paltry quibble, as you've admitted sometimes."
"Leave it," he said. "Don't let this day be nought but cloud. We're married afore God, but not afore man, because to do that would have lost me five thousand pounds. When I die, I've the right to make over that money to you—at least, what's left of it."
"That's a certainty for me and Heathman and Phyllis?"
"Leave it—leave it," he cried irritably. "You know that what a man can do I shall do. You're more to me than any living thing—much, much more. You're my life, and you've been my life for thirty years—and you will be to the end of my life. I know where I stand and how I stand."
"Don't think I'd care to live a day longer than you do, Nat. Don't think I'm careful for myself after you be gone. 'Tis only for your boy and girl as I care to know anything."
He took her hand.
"I know you well enough—you priceless woman!" he answered. "Let's go a bit further through the forest. Come what may, all's got to be bright and cheerful at Cora's wedding; and after, when they've got their money, I'll have a good go into things with Mr. Popham, my lawyer at Cornwood. He's heard nothing yet, but he shall hear everything. Have no fear of the upshot. I know where I've always trusted, and never in vain."
Like two children they walked hand in hand together. For a long time neither spoke, then she addressed him.
"You've taught me to be brave and put a bright face on life afore the world, and now I'll not be wanting."
"Well I know that. 'Brave!' 'Tis too mild a a word for you. You've come through your life in a way that would maze the people with wonder if they only knew it. So secret, so patient, so clever. Never was heard or known the like. A wonderful wife—a wife in ten thousand."
The sun began to sink where Cornwall, like a purple cloud, rose far off against the sky; yet still the undulations of the land, mingling with glory, melted into each other under the sunset, and still North Wood shone above the shadows. But a deep darkness began to stretch upwards into it, where the Dewerstone's immense shade was projected across the valley. At length only the corner of the forest flashed a final fire; then that, too, vanished, and the benighted trees sighed and shivered and massed themselves into amorphous dimness under the twilight.
The man and woman stopped together a while longer, and after that their converse ended. They caressed and prepared to go back by different ways into the world.
"Come good or evil, fair weather or foul, may we have a few happy returns yet of this day; and may I live to find you the lily-of-the-valley again once or twice before the end," he said.
For answer she kissed him again, but could not trust herself to speak.