Presently they separated, and Sally, full of her secret, walked upon air through a golden world, with her hot heart's core aglow, while Mr. Libby bit his hare-lip, employed many coarse words for the benefit of the hedge he hacked at, and put a spite and spleen into each stroke that soon blunted his bill-hook. He was now faced with a problem calling for some ingenuity. He yearned to know how he might retrieve his error, and get well free of Sally before approaching her sister upon the same errand. Where to turn for succour and counsel he knew not. "If mother was awnly alive for ten minutes!" he thought. As for another ancient dame, Charity Grepe, she—publicly exposed as a fraud and delusion by Jonah Cramphorn—had found her occupation gone in earnest, and now reposed at Chagford poor-house. There was none to help the unhappy orphan in his trouble. The matter looked too delicate for masculine handling; and even Gregory had sense to perceive that it would be easy for others to take a wrong attitude before his dilemma and judge him harshly. Then came an inspiration to this lack-lustre son of the soil.
"No pusson else but she heard me tell her," he reflected. "Theer's awnly her word for it, an' I'll up an' say 'tis a strammin' gert lie, an' that she was mazed or dreamin', an' that I wouldn't marry her for a hunderd sovereigns! I'll braave her to her faace, if it comes to that. Folks'll sooner believe a man than a woman most times; an' if I ban't spry enough to awver-reach a fule of a outdoor farm-gal on such a matter, 'tis pity."
CHAPTER VII.
LAPSES
During early spring a new experience came to Myles Stapledon. Physically perfect, he had known no ache or ill until now; but chance for once found him vulnerable. From a heavy downpour upon the land he returned home, found matters to occupy him immediately, and so forgot to doff wet clothes at the earliest opportunity. A chill rewarded his carelessness, and a slight attack of pneumonia followed upon it. For the first time within his recollection the man had to stop in bed, but during the greater part of his illness Myles proved patient enough. Honor ministered to him untiringly; Mr. Endicott was much in the sick-room also; and from time to time, when the master was returning towards convalescence, Cramphorn or Churdles Ash would enter to see him with information concerning affairs.
Then, during one of the last wearisome days in his bed-chamber, at a season when the invalid was somewhat worn with private thoughts and heartily sick of such enforced idleness, an unfortunate misunderstanding threw him off his mental balance and precipitated such a catastrophe as those who knew Stapledon best had been the least likely to foresee. He was in fact forgotten for many hours, owing to a common error of his wife and uncle. Each thought the other would tend the sick man, so Honor departed to Newton Abbot with Christopher Yeoland, and Mark, quite ignorant of his niece's plans, was driven by Tommy Bates to Okehampton. The pitiful mistake had not dwelt an hour in Stapledon's memory under ordinary circumstances, but now, fretted by suffering and as ill able to bear physical trouble as any other man wholly unfamiliar with it, his lonely hours swelled and massed into a mountain of bitter grievance. He brooded and sank into dark ways of thought. Temptations got hold upon him; the ever-present thorn turned in his flesh and jealousy played with his weakness, like a cat with a mouse. Upon Honor's return the man afforded his wife, a new sensation and one of the greatest surprises that experience had ever brought to her.
Unaware of his lonely vigil, she returned home in high good humour, kissed him, complimented him on the fact that this was to be his last day in bed, and remarked upon the splendour of the sunset.
"'At eventide it shall be light,'" she said; "and Christo was so rapt in all the glory of gold and purple over Cosdon, as we drove home from Moreton, that he nearly upset me and his dog-cart and himself. Yet I wish you could see the sky. It would soothe you."
"As winter sunshine soothes icicles—by making their points sharper. Nature's softest moods are cruellest if your mind happens to be in torment."
"My dear! Whatever is the matter? And your fire out—oh, Myles, how wrong!"