"It runs in families—like drink and other disasters," said Mr. Huggins. "Did your twin die early or late, schoolmaster?"
"Almost immediately. In fact, my dear parents had to have her christened before she was two days old. Otherwise she would have passed away outside the pale of Christianity. I also seemed likely to perish; and they were so hurried that they had no leisure to think out our names. So they called us after our first parents. Poor Eve died soon after the sacred ceremony had been consummated. And I was spared by the inscrutable intelligence of Heaven. Still it was a case of arcades ambo, as we say."
CHAPTER VIII
THE LOAN
Dartmoor has been chosen by Nature for a theatre of worship and of work—a hypæthral temple, wherein she ministers before the throne of the sun, nurtures life, ripens her harvest, and buries her uncounted dead. Each year springtime breaks the bud joyfully and lifts the little lark into the blue; each year the summer builds and the autumn gleans; each year, when the sun's lamp is lowered, when the curtain of cloud is drawn, sleep and death pass by together along the winter silences. Thus the punctual rite and round are accomplished century after century, and, at each year's end, arise immemorial threnodies of many waters and fierce winds. Rivers roar a requiem; and their inevitable dirge is neither joyful nor mournful, but only glorious. The singers also are mortal; the wind and the wave are creatures, even as the perishing heath, crumbling stone, and falling foliage; they too rise and set, triumph and expire; they too are a part of the only miracle of the universe: the miracle of matter made manifest in pomp and wonder, in beauty and mystery, where Nature rolls her endless frieze along the entablature of Time.
Beneath December sunlight Dartmoor stretched in sleep—a sleep that lay hidden under death. Rack and ruin of many fair things were scattered upon the bosom of the wilderness, and all pursued their appointed way to dissolution. The conventional idea of man's mind was reversed, as usual, by this wide natural process; for death lay exposed league upon league under the operation of air and light, frost, and water; while life was buried and invisibly received back its proper payment for the year's work accomplished. But mortality so exhibited revealed nothing unseemly or sad, for much beauty belonged to it. The land rose stark to its tors, and the shattered summits of the range rolling south-west from Great Links, towered dark against the low slant of the winter sun. Some fleeting mist, like a vapour of silver, swept around the highest turrets and shone very dazzling by contrast with the gloomy northern faces of the hills; while far below, huddled, as it were, beneath the reach of the horizontal light, there hung a leaden and visible heaviness of air. On the shoulders of the Moor drowsed pallid sunshine, but little warmth was yielded thereby. Dartmoor soaked up this illumination like a sponge, and did not waken at its tepid touch. The wilderness slept at noon; and in its sleep it frowned. Over all spread the mighty, mottled patchwork of the hour—the immeasurable, ancient, outworn habit flung down by Nature when she disrobed for sleep. The summer green had vanished, the autumn fire was cold; where heath had wakened into amethyst, swart patches and tracts of darkness now scattered upon the livid pelt of dead grass, like the ebony pattern on the coat of a leopard. But while the ling was sad-coloured and sombre, the heather had taken a cheerful green. Under humid sunshine this huge design was apparent; then the west darkened and the pale gold of the sky became blurred by veils of rain. They swept up slowly and cast gloom over the light. The Moor colours all changed beneath their shadow and ran together. Only within stone's-throw from a man's eyes might detail and distinction still be marked. There persisted the shades and half shades of the dead, grey bloom-bells of the ling; there shone manifold minute, bright vegetation on scattered boulders; and there the wet brake-fern, that scattered these slopes with fallen filigree of deepest auburn, uttered its last expression of beauty.
Caught in the heavy rain, a man who walked upon the side of Great Links ran for the summit, and dived into a familiar cavern, where rocks fell together and made shelter. To his surprise the first wayfarer found a second already taking refuge against this sudden storm; and thus met Jarratt Weekes and Daniel Brendon on a day near Christmas.
This accident inspired the elder man. He had long contemplated certain propositions with regard to Daniel, and now opportunity was thrust upon him and he prepared to take advantage of it.
They tendered friendly welcomes, asked each for the other's good news, and together deplored the weather. There had been a wet, cold summer that denied the prophecy of spring, and many a moorman faced the approaching season with fear.
"Rain—rain—rain—curse the rain!" said Weekes. "Rain driving deep enough to drown the dead in their graves."