"Closing time, souls," said Mr. Shillabeer; and five minutes later the company had separated and the bar was empty. The 'Dumpling' mused on the things that his guests had uttered.
"'Tis summed up in that word 'unexpected' without a doubt," he thought. "Never the expected thing. And if we grant so much, then us never ought to expect the expected thing. They be all of a piece; and because my wife looked like living for ever, I ought to have knowed she'd die. I ought to have known it, and prepared for it, and laid in wait for it. Yet nobody was more surprised than me, and nobody less so than her when it leaked out of the doctor. She knowed it herself well enough; but hadn't the heart to tell me."
CHAPTER X
CRAZYWELL
Nature, passing nigh Cramber Tor, where old-time miners delved for tin, has found a great pit, filled the same with sweet water, and transformed all into a thing of beauty. Like a cup in the waste lies Crazywell; and, at this summer season, a rare pattern of mingled gold and amethyst glorified the goblet. Autumn furze and the splendour of the heath surrounded it; the margins of the tarn were like chased silver, where little sheep-tracks, white under dust of granite, threaded the acclivities round about and disappeared in the gravel beaches beneath. Upon the face of the lake there fell a picture of the bank, and it was brightened, where heather and honey-scented furze shone reversed with their colour-tones subtly changed by the medium that reflected them. But at midmost water these images ceased and fretted away into wind-ripples that frosted and tarnished the depths. And there, when the breeze fell dead for a moment, shone out the blue of the zenith and the sunny warmth of clouds. At water's brink stood three black ponies--a mare and two foals of successive births. The mare's daughter already attained to adult shapeliness; her son was a woolly baby, with a little silly face like a rocking-horse. He still ran to her black udder when thirsty and flew to her side for protection if alarmed.
Peace, here brooding after noon, was suddenly wakened by the stampede of half a dozen bullocks, goaded by gadflies. Down they came from above with thundering hoofs and tails erect. They rushed to cool their smarting flanks, sent ripples glittering out into the lake, and presently stood motionless, knee-deep, with their chestnut coats mirrored in the water.
Upon the side of the pool there sat a woman--as still as a picture in a gold frame. She was clad with such sobriety that one might have thought her a stone; but she moved and her sunbonnet shone as she flung it off and then wiped her hot forehead with the fall of it. For a moment she thought of the legends of Crazywell and cast back in her memory for the evidence of their truth. Here was a haunt of mystery and a water of power. Voices murmured in this hollow once a year, and if none of late had heard them, doubtless that was because none permitted himself or herself to do so. A spirit neither malignant nor benign, but wondrously informed, dwelt here--a sentient thing, a nether gnome, from whom was not hidden the future of men--a being who once a year could cry aloud with human voice and tell the names of those whose race was run. All dreaded the sortilege of the unknown thing that haunted Crazywell; but since its power was restricted to Christmas Eve, little general sense of horror or mystery hung over the pool. For Margaret Bowden, however, it had always possessed a sort of charm not wholly pleasant. She avoided the place of set purpose and was beside it to-day by appointment only. Another had named Crazywell as a tryst, and she lacked sufficient self-assertion to refuse. Now she blinked in the direct sunlight and longed for shade where no shade was.
She envied the kine below, and being in a mood a little morbid, by reason of private concerns, she cast her thought further than the cattle and pictured the peace and silence beneath the heart of the water. A long sleep there seemed not the hardest fate that could fall on human life. There was a man--and Margaret had known him--who drowned himself in Crazywell. By night he ended a troublous life, and joined the spirit of the pool for a season. Then he floated into light of day again, and was found by his fellows. They drew him out and called him mad, and buried him in the earth with Christian burial, that his wife's feelings might be saved a pang. Yet nobody knew better than the coroner's jury that this man was very sane, and had shortened his own life for sound reasons. Margaret remembered that at the time, she had blamed him much, but her mother had not blamed him. And she herself, having been married nearly a year, no longer blamed him. Who was she to judge? If she, a happy wife, could look without horror at Crazywell in this unclouded hour, was it strange that an unhappy man might do more than look, and rest his head there?
"A happy wife--so happy as any woman ever can hope to be, who--who--"
Her thought broke off. She envied the mare at water's edge. The pot-bellied old matron stood still, and only moved her tail backwards and forwards to keep off the flies. The foal galloped around her--playing as children will.