Their relations had grown more and more friendly of late. Crocker often came uninvited to 'Meavy Cot,' and David always appeared well pleased to see him. When the younger was not by, her brother often spoke of him, and both he and Margaret endeavoured to make Rhoda share their high opinion. From Madge she had always turned impatiently away; but to David she had listened and not seldom wondered that he and she--who found themselves thinking alike in most questions of life and character--should differ so widely upon the subject of this man. The reason was now easy to discover: she knew the truth and her brother did not. Her judgment was confirmed. Then, upon this appalling conclusion, came doubt and deepest perplexity. Why should such a woman as Dorcas be right? Her evil heart might have invented the whole story with no purpose but to torture and torment. Rhoda had next reluctantly to consider Crocker himself and his bearing when they met.
If he was acting a lie, he was acting it well. He had made it clear half a hundred times, though without offering another formal proposal, that he would be rejoiced and thankful above measure if she threw in her lot with him, and married him, and accompanied him to Canada. She asked herself what would happen if she accepted him. Her thoughts grew more and more difficult. She reached the lowest depth of discomfort that life had shown her.
CHAPTER VIII
UNDER THE TREES
There is a lonely wood where Meavy hides upon her way and whence her waters cry like siren voices from copse and thicket and the darkness under great trees. Hither she passes, amid mossy stones and through secret places curtained by green things. At the feet of Lether Tor there rise forests of oak and beech; and here, by day and night, through all times and seasons, two songs are mingling. The melodies change as the singers do; but they never cease. In summer the shrunken river tinkles to the murmur of the leafy canopy above it, and her voices ascend fitfully to meet the whisper of the leaf and the sigh of the larch; in winter the legions of the branch have vanished and naked woodland and swollen stream make wilder music. Then the trees lend their lyres to the north wind, and the rocks beneath utter strange cries that combine their choral measures with fierce throbbing of the forest harps above. The foliage fallen, Lether Tor's grey castles and jagged slopes are visible, lifted against the west and seen through a lattice of innumerable boughs. Behind this mountain sinks the sun, now in an orange-tawny aureole above the purple, and now wrapped with sullen, lifeless cloud; now upon the clearness of summer twilights, and now through the flaming arms of a red mist.
To-day, in August, this haunt of Meavy was a nest of light and cool shadows dappled together, a tent of leaves--dark overhead, where the sky filled the fretwork of the tree-tops, and alive at the forest edge with a glory of gold, where sunshine poured through loops and ragged, feathered fringes of translucent foliage. The leaves formed a commonwealth of song and gladness and harmonious concessions. Each integral of the arboreal courts advanced the same beauty, lifted to the same zephyr, glittered to the same sun and moon, drank life from the same dew, trembled to the same threat of autumn and of death. Beneath, through rifts in the bosom of the wood, the blue-green brake-fern shone and panted out her fragrance on the hillside. A colour contrast very vivid was thus offered through the frames of the forest; and beyond this region of rock-strewn fern there spread a haze of light and darkness--of indigo and silver blended about the shaggy knees of Lether Tor where it lifted to the sky.
Through the midst of the dingle under shadows, yet with her breast bared to those amber shafts of sunshine that fell upon it, came Meavy, with many a curl and turn and leisurely dawdling in deep pool. Fern fronds, fingered with light, bent over the face of the water; fresh-coloured flowers of agrimony rose above; flash of golden-rod and the seeding spires of foxgloves mingled there; while a ripple of filched fire from the sun-shaft broke the glass of each smooth pool, and heaven's blue was also reflected from many a rift in the veil of the leaves. Bramble and woodrush spanned the stream and nodded, linked together with a spider's trembling web; by broken, subterranean channels the river held her way; light, sobered into half light where moss sponges soaked crystal water and golden sunshine together, penetrated through the heaviest shade; darkness only dwelt in the deepest rifts and crannies and upon the black, submerged vegetation of the rocks. Out of these mysteries arose new songs and whispers, where the stream slid stealthily forth from her secret places and the hidden homes of unseen things that she also blessed and forgot not. Here the sun stars, catching upon her convex ripples, were reflected and thrown upward, to dance and flash unexpected brightness into gloom, or set wonderful radiance upon the under-face of leaves.
Life, in shape of bird and beast and fish, prospered here; and glittering insects--ichneumons, that hung motionless like golden beads in some beam of light; butterflies, that came and went; and long-legged spiders and great ants--likewise justified themselves. The trees were garlanded with ivy, polypody, and many mosses, that hung in festoons and fell even to the dim, moist river-ways, where shy flowers blossomed in shade, and the filmy fern spread its small loveliness upon the stone.
Here, at the hour near summer twilight, when life ranges at full stress and passion before rest, one may see, in the low red light that pierces to each inviolate place, some vision of the shepherd god aglowing; and through the wail of insects, under the melody of ripple and frond, there steals sweet warbling of the syrinx at Pan's own puckered lips. Music full of the unfulfilled he plays--music fraught with world sorrow and world joy. Now it is mellow as the dying day, now tender and triumphant as the dawn; but it is never satisfied; it is never satisfying; because it whispers of precious things felt but not known; it hungers after the ultimate mystery; it thirsts for the secrets behind the sunset.
At one spot in this wood a young beech leapt from a rock, and the earth cushion which supported it hung over the river. A little precipice fell beneath to water's edge, and the whole force of Meavy struck here and leapt on again, crested with light. It was a human haunt and suited well a soul who went between sadness and fitful happiness, who declared herself reconciled and contented, yet knew that it was not so. Hither Margaret often came and found a temple of peace. She brought sorrow and doubt here; and sometimes the glen lifted it; and sometimes she departed again not happier than she came.