anthony maybridge arrived at cross ways, and amongst the various items of his luggage he was only concerned for his gun-case. mrs. daccombe greeted the youth with old-time courtesy, and her husband soon perceived that the newcomer would be a pupil in little more than name. anthony, indeed, made an energetic start, and for the space of a full week resolutely dogged the farmer’s footsteps; but his enterprise sprang from a whim rather than a fixed enthusiasm. on the spur of the moment, before various alternatives, he had decided upon farming; but the impulse toward that life waned, and in a month the lad found richard daccombe’s society much more congenial than that of his taciturn parent. good store of snipe and plover were now upon the moor, and they drew young maybridge more surely than the business of manuring hay lands or getting in the mangel-wurzel crop. with dick, indeed, he struck into close fellowship, founded on the basis of the gun; and with jane stanberry he also became more friendly than anybody but herself was aware. socially, maybridge stood separated from his host by the accident of success alone. p. 223daccombe and anthony’s father were old acquaintances, and the latter, a prosperous nurseryman at tavistock, sometimes fell in with his friend when the hounds met at the powder-mills.
the boy found jane sympathetic, and being possessed of a warm heart but little sense, he soon revealed to her the true cause of his present life and temporary banishment from home.
“if you can believe it,” he said, when she met him returning from a day with the snipe in the bogs,—“if you can believe it, i shall be surprised. i always thought a man ought to look up to women as the soul of truth and all that. i was engaged—secretly; and there was another chap i hardly knew by sight even; and that girl was playing with me—like you play with a hooked fish; the only difference being she didn’t want to land me. in fact, i was the bait, if you understand such a blackguard thing, and she fished with me and caught the other chap. i could mention names, but what’s the use?”
“how horrid!” said jane. “i’m sure i’d very much rather not know who ’twas.”
“well, anyway, the other chap took the bait. and the moment she got him she threw me over. after we were engaged, mind you! and the rum thing is, looking at it from a mere worldly point of view, that i shall be worth tons more money than that chap ever will be.”
p. 224“she didn’t really care about you, then?”
“i suppose not, though i would have taken my dying oath she did. and after the frightful blow of being chucked, i tried to hide the effect, but couldn’t, owing to going right off my feed—especially breakfasts. my mother spotted that, and taxed me with being ill—a thing i never have been in my life. so i had to confess to her what a frightful trial i’d been through, and she told the governor.”
“i’m sure they must have been very sad about it, for your sake.”
“not half as much as you would have thought; though many chaps have been utterly smashed up body and soul and gone into a consumption of the lungs for less. but it came as a bit of a shock to my people, because, you see, i’d never mentioned it, and—well, the girl was in a tobacconist’s shop, and my governor hates tobacco; which made it worse, though very unfair it should. anyway, it shows what girls are.”
“and shows what fathers are, seemingly.”
“yes; though how my governor, whose grandfather himself went out working in other people’s gardens, could object to a girl who had pluck enough to earn her own living, i don’t know. i had a furious row about it, until he pointed out that, as she had chucked me, it was not much good quarrelling with him about her. which was true. nobody p. 225but you has really understood what a knock-down thing it was. i’m an atheist now—simply owing to that woman; i don’t believe in a single thing. i said all girls were the same till i met you. still, i feel as bitter as a lemon when i think much about it. but you’re different, i can see that.”
“you’ll feel happier come presently.”
“i am happier already—in a way, because i find all women are not like that. you and mrs. daccombe have done me a lot of good, especially you.”
“sure i be gay and proud to think so,” said jane.
“to promise and then change! why, it’s contrary to human nature, i should think,” declared the ingenuous anthony. but jane stanberry did not reply; she had reached a point in her own experience of life that indicated the possibility of such a circumstance.
young maybridge was pleasant to see, and, as cynical chance would have it, his gifts, both physical and mental, were of a sort to shine conspicuous from the only contrast at hand. dick daccombe had a face of true celtic cast, that might have been handsome, but was spoiled by an expression generally surly and always mean. his character became more distrustful and aggressive as he grew older, and the suspicious nature of him looked specially ill before anthony’s frankness and simplicity. the latter was fair, with open, saxon type of p. 226countenance. his good temper overcame all richard’s jealousy from the first, but the keeper envied anthony’s extra inch and a half of height and greater weight of shoulder, though he himself was the closer knit of the two.
for a period of weeks all went well between the young men, and their increasing intimacy argued ill for anthony’s progress toward practical knowledge in agriculture. this jonathan daccombe understood, but held it no concern of his. it happened that the farmer came home one day just in time to see his son and his pupil departing from cross ways together. an expression of contempt touched with slight amusement lighted his grey face, and he turned to jane stanberry, who stood at the door.
“like the seed ’pon stony ground,” he said. “comed up wi’ a fine blade an’ full o’ nature, then withered away, ’cause there wasn’t no good holding stuff behind. a farmer! however, there’s no call he should be. he’m here to learn to forget, not to farm.”
“he is forgetting so fast as he can,” declared the girl. “he’s got nought to say nowadays ’bout the wickedness of women and such-like; an’ he went to church wi’ mother an’ me ’essterday to postbridge, an’ singed the psalms an’ hymns wi’ a fine appetite, i’m sure. his voice be so deep as a cow when he uplifts it.”
p. 227“i reckon he’m getting over his trouble too quick for my liking,” answered mr. daccombe. “my bird will be off some fine mornin’ when shooting be over and theer’s nought more for him to kill.”
meantime, while jane spoke with admiration of anthony’s good qualities, and mrs. daccombe heard her indignantly, young maybridge himself was similarly angering another member of the daccombe family. now he stood with dick upon the lofty crown of higher white tor, and watched a flock of golden plover newly come to their winter quarters from some northern home. they flew and cried at a great height above the marshes, wheeled and warped in the clear blue of a december sky; and when simultaneously they turned, there was a flash as of a hundred little stars, where the sunlight touched the plumage of their breasts and under-wings. but they were bound for a region beyond the range of the sportsmen who watched them; soon, indeed, the birds dwindled into dots, that made a great > upon the sky; and as they flew, they constantly renewed that figure.
“pity,” said anthony. “off to the middle of the moor. haven’t got a shot at a golden plover yet. miss jane’s favourite bird, too, so she says.”
“no call for you to trouble about that. if she eats all i’ve shot for her, she’ll do very well.”
“you’re a lucky devil, dick.”
p. 228“that’s as may be.”
“always the way with chaps like you, who never had anything to do but ask and get ‘yes’ for an answer. you don’t know when you’re well off in these parts.”
richard laughed without much merriment.
“there’s so good fish in the sea as ever come out of it,” he said. “i’d not break my heart for any girl.”
“a chap in love to say such a cold-blooded thing!”
“we’re not all froth and splutter, like you.”
“nor yet ice, like you, i should hope. you’re engaged to the prettiest girl i’ve ever seen in my life, and the best; and you take it as if it was your right instead of your frightfully good luck. it’s only because you don’t know the world that you are so infernally complacent about her, richard. if you knew all that i do—”
the other sneered in a tone of levity. “a wonnerful lady’s man you—by all accounts! but don’t think i’m afeared of you. might have been jealous afore you comed—not since.”
anthony grew red as the dead asphodel foliage under his feet in the bogs.
“that’s as much as to say i’m a fool.”
“why so? it’s as much as to say you’re honest—that’s all.”
“that wasn’t what you meant when you spoke. p. 229you were laughing because you know you are sharper than i am. you may be, but you’re not sharp enough to know your luck. you’ve told me pretty plainly what i am; now i’ll tell you what you are—a good shot and a good sportsman all round, but no other good that i can see. you think a jolly sight too much of yourself to make a good husband, anyway. if jane realised—”
“mind your awn business!” thundered out the other, “and keep her name off your tongue henceforward. d’you think i doan’t know her a million times better than you do? d’you think us wants lessons from you after all these years, you—”
“i can make you angry, then, though i am a born fool?”
“yes, you can; an’ you damn soon will if you’m not more careful of your speech. i doan’t want to take law in my own hands an’ give you a thrashing; but that’ll i do if you touch this matter again. who are you, to tell me my duty to my maiden?”
“as to what you’ll do or won’t do,” answered maybridge, growing very rosy again, “there’s two sides to that. i’d have asked you to box weeks ago, only i’m taller and heavier, and i thought you would think it unsportsmanlike. but now—when you please. as for miss jane, i shall speak to her, and see her, and go to church with her just as often p. 230as she’ll let me, without asking leave from you or anybody. so now you know.”
anthony swung off over the moor, and richard, pursuing the way to his hut on the shoulder of the tor, let the other depart unanswered. this sudden and unexpected breach rather pleased the keeper. he had always held anthony to be a fool, and the fact seemed now proved beyond further dispute. it was not until he had lived through the loneliness of a long day and night upon the warren that the young man viewed his situation differently. then three harpies—wrath, resentment and a natural jealousy—sprang full-fledged into being, and drove him home before them.
as for maybridge, smarting under a sense of insult and a worse sense that he deserved it, the young man strove to excuse himself to his conscience. he assured himself many times that richard daccombe was unworthy of jane stanberry in every possible respect. and there came a day when he told her that he thought so.
