"Well, at least you can't see what would be easier and pleasanter, and answer the purpose just as well under our present civilisation. Consider. How stands the problem if Yeoland married somebody else? You'll find that meets the case at every point. I'm not belittling Yeoland. Who knows what chances of greatness there may have been hidden and lost in him? Life only calls into play a thousandth part of any man's powers during his brief tale of days, and most of us die full of possibilities unguessed even by ourselves, because the hazard never rose; but Yeoland's greatness, if greatness he had, would not have led him off the stage by that road. He didn't die willingly, I promise you. Come back he might have upon your message, if he had lived; or married he might have, even out of consideration for Honor's future. We'll allow him all the credit belonging to possibilities. Meantime, the only thing that we know beyond his death is a last wish expressed to Clack—a wish quite in keeping with his character."
"To be brought home again."
"Yes, the desire to rest his bones in Little Silver. Struck for death, the thought in his mind was not death, nor Honor, nor you. His love for the grass and the trees and the earth of his mother-land woke in him; dying, his heart turned to Godleigh and his own old roof-tree. The picture of the place was the last on his brain when all things were fading away."
The other bowed his head; then he asked concerning Honor.
"It's hit her hard," answered Mark Endicott. "This sudden end of him has been a burnish on the glass of memory—polished it very bright. She has lived through the summer weather with him and talked fitfully of woodland walks by him, and chatter of birds, and shining of Teign, and cutting of letters on tree trunks. The glow and glory of love slowly growing in them—sad enough to look back on for those that love her."
"Sad enough. And my share of the pain's all too light."
"Who knows how much or how little you deserve? You were sent to play your part in her life. Just a bit of the machine. Change—change—change—that's the eternal law that twists the wheel and opens the womb; digs the grave and frets the name off the tombstone; gnaws away the stars; cools the sun in heaven and the first love of a young maid's heart. You brought something new into her life—for better or for worse. Something new and something true, as I think; but maybe truth's not always the right medicine at all hours. Anyhow change will work its own way with time and space and the things that belong to them. She was torn in half between you, and brave enough to make naked confession of it. That proclaimed her either a greater character than we thought once, or a poorer thing every way—according to the mind that views the case."
"I didn't know such a tangle could happen."
"Every sort of tangle can happen where men and women are concerned. Not that she's not a puzzle to me, too, every hour. She has gone now for a while to Exeter. I advised that she should bide there until after the funeral, but she scorned the thought. 'I'm chief mourner in truth, if not in name,' she said; and so she will be. Time must do the rest."
"The last resource of the wretched."