CHAPTER IX
At high summer two men and two maids kept public holiday and wove romance under the great crown of Pen Beacon. From this border height the South Hams spread in a mighty vision of rounded hills and plains; whole forests were reduced to squat, green cushions laid upon the broad earth's bosom; and amid them glimmered wedges and squares of ripening corn, shone root crops, smiled water meadows, and spread the emerald faces of shorn hayfields.
It was a day of lowering clouds and illumination breaking through them. Fans of light fell between the piled-up cumuli, and the earth was mottled with immense, alternate patches of shadow and sunshine. Thick and visible strata of air hung heavy between earth and sky at this early hour. They presaged doubt, and comprehended a condition that might presently diffuse and lift into unclouded glory of August light, or darken to thunderstorm. Southerly the nakedness of Hanger Down and the crags of Eastern and Western Beacons towered; while to the east were Quickbeam Hill, Three Barrows, and the featureless expanses of Stall Moor. Northerly towered Penshiel, and the waste spread beyond it in long leagues, whose planes were flattened out by distance and distinguished against each other by sleeping darkness and waking light.
A fuliginous heaviness, that stained air at earth's surface, persisted even on this lofty ground, and the highest passages of aerial radiance were not about the sun, but far beneath it upon the horizon.
Rupert Baskerville trudged doubtfully forward, sniffing the air and watching the sky, while beside him came Milly Luscombe; and a quarter of a mile behind them walked Mark and Cora Lintern. The men had arranged to spend their holiday up aloft, and Milly was well pleased; but Cora held the expedition vain save for what it should accomplish. To dawdle in the Moor when she might have been at a holiday revel was not her idea of pleasure; but as soon as Mark issued his invitation she guessed that he did so with an object, and promised to join him.
As yet the definite word had not passed his lips, though it had hovered there; but to-day Miss Lintern was resolved to return from Pen Beacon betrothed. As for Mark, his hope chimed with her intention. Cora was always gracious and free of her time, while he played the devout lover and sincerely held her above him every way. Only the week before Heathman, obviously inspired to do so, had asked him why he kept off, and declared that it would better become him to speak. And now, feeling that the meal presently to be taken would be of a more joyous character after than before the deed, he stopped Cora while yet a mile remained to trudge before they should reach the top of the tor.
"Rest a bit," he said. "Let Rupert and Milly go forward. They don't want us, and we shall all meet in the old roundy-poundies up over, where we're going to eat our dinner."
"Looks as if 'twas offering for bad weather," she answered, lifting her eyes to the sky. "I'm glad I didn't put on my new muslin."
She sat on a stone and felt that he was now going to ask her to marry him. She was not enthusiastic about him at the bottom of her heart; but she knew that he would be rich and a good match for a girl in her position. She was prone to exaggerate her beauty, and had hoped better things from it than Mark Baskerville; but certain minor romances with more important men had come to nothing. She was practical and made herself see the bright side of the contract. He was humble and she could influence him as she pleased. He worshipped her and would doubtless continue to do so.
Once his wife she proposed to waken in him a better conceit of himself and, when his father died, she would be able to 'blossom out,' as she put it to her sister, and hold her head high in the land. There were prospects. Nathan Baskerville was rich also, and he was childless. He liked Mark well, and on one occasion, when she came into the farm kitchen at Undershaugh suddenly, she overheard Nathan say to her mother, "No objection—none at all—a capital match for her."