“That’s true, lad! and you couldn’t bring us to a better place.” There was a half-humorous sternness in Maniwel’s voice now. “You and Baldwin have brought me to my knees long sin’, and I shall get there again, I warrant. More’n that neither you nor your master can do! But I’m sorry if I’ve done harm where I meant good, and I leave it wi’ you.”
Inman went straight to the office where Baldwin was seated with his glass before him, and helped himself liberally.
“The devil take all hypocrites!” he said.
Baldwin’s brow twisted into a note of sullen interrogation.
“Maniwel Drake wants me to get you to kneel at the penitent form,” he explained. “I’ve just sent him home with a flea in his ear.”
Baldwin’s voice was thick, but he was understood to consign Maniwel and all his house to a place where fleas would lose their power to torment, and he asked no further questions.
October passed and with the garnering of the bracken harvest the last of the summer feathered visitors took their leave of the moors and winter residents arrived daily. A Saint Luke’s summer had brought a succession of warm sunny days, which splashed the bramble leaves with wonderful colourings of crimson and orange, and stained the leaves of Herb Robert with the blood of the dying year.
Nancy, pacing painfully her bedroom floor for a short time each day, looked out upon the hills that were scorched to varied tints of copper and gold, and drank in courage from the sight. Every evening a robin came and sang for her before it turned in for the night. Once or twice she had seen a woodcock frolicking in the dim light of early dawn and had known by that sign that autumn had come. She would have given much to be as free; but for her freedom was far behind, a mere dream, a memory. She stretched out her arm and touched the sleeping infant—the only link of the fetter she did not hate to contemplate—and wondered what of solace or misery was wrapped up for her in that little bundle of life. He had his father’s features; there was no mistaking the nose and jaw; yet he was hers, and to bring him into the world she had almost given her life. For his sake, she sometimes told herself, she had paid an even bigger price, for she had fought against death.
Inman hated her. How she knew it she could not have explained, for until the boy came he had been always endurable though he spared her the pretence of affection. The first time her eyes fell upon him after the severity of the crisis was over, she knew that he hated her and that he wished her to know it. Lazily, she had wondered what had happened to effect the change when she had given him a son; but no disappointment mixed with the curiosity, for her feeling towards him was colder and more colourless than hatred, being just elementary indifference and there was no fear, for the indifference extended to her own safety.
It interested her to note that none of the women who visited her spoke ill of her husband, though they referred to Baldwin’s downward course with many a gloomy anticipation of quick disaster. Even Keturah appeared to find him tolerable, and shared the general opinion that it was he who kept the ship afloat, and would save it if salvation was still possible. Nancy smiled and said nothing, waiting the development of events with a strange incuriosity that was the result of her slack hold on life.