The Devil's Garden Part 28

Did he in sleep go back to that old storm of anger, jealousy, and grief about which he never thought during his waking hours?

And again Mavis was actuated all unconsciously by the elemental selfishness that mingles with our joy. When we are happy we want others to be happy too, we can not brook their not being so; even transient darkness in those we love seems inimical to the light that is burning so cheerfully in ourselves. Mavis ceased to trouble herself with questions, and forgot that they remained unanswered.

When Dale came in she was, however, more than ordinarily sweet to him, waiting on him, bringing the supper dishes, not sitting down until he was served, and watching him while he ate. She told him that she had been reading about the dog on the railway line, and that he was not to do such things. If he ever again felt such a wild impulse, he was to stifle it immediately by remembering his wife and bairns.

"D'you understand, Will? We won't have it--and we all three think you ought to be ashamed of yourself for not knowing better. You're not a boy."

"No," he said, "I shall be forty-two next year. Look here," and he pointed to his temples. "Look at my gray hair."

"I can't see it."

"But it's there, my dear, all the same. I am beginning to turn toward the sear and yellow leaf, as Shakespeare puts it."

She admired the easy way in which he quoted Shakespeare, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. Indeed, all through supper she was admiring him. She thought how beautifully he spoke, expressing himself so elegantly, and with tones in his voice that every day seemed to sound a little more cultivated. At first after their arrival at Vine-Pits, being plunged again into the midst of purely rustic talk, he had fallen back in regard to his diction. Instinctively he reverted to the dialect that had been his own, and that was being used by everybody about him; but now one might say that he really had two languages--his rough patter for the yard and the fields, and his carefully-measured phrasing for the home, office, and upper circles.

She understood that his constant reading and his unflagging desire for self-improvement were telling rapidly; and with a touch of sadness she wondered if, pa.s.sing on always, he would finally leave her quite behind.

No, while life lasted, he would hold to her. He would never shake her off now. Even if she were old and ugly, useless to him, a dead-weight upon his ascending progress, he would be true to her now. Even if his love died, the memory of it would keep him still hers. And she thought of the pity in him, as well as the strength. The man who could not resist the appeal of a poor little stray dog would not break faith with the mother of his children; and she thought, "Yes, whatever I say to him, I know really and truly that it was a n.o.bler, better thing to risk all than to allow even a dog to perish. And I love him for not having hesitated then, even when I pray him not to do it again."

Looking at him, she saw the gray hair that she had just now denied; and to her eyes these gray feathers at each side of the forehead not only increased his dignity, but gave him a fresh charm. The gray hair made him somehow more romantic. In her eyes his face was always growing more beautiful, always refining itself, always losing something that had been rather coa.r.s.ely ma.s.sive and gaining something that was new, spiritualized, and subtle.

"What are you examining me like that for, Mav? A penny for your thoughts."

"Shall I tell you truly?" and she laughed. "I was thinking if your looks continue to improve at this rate all the girls will get falling in love with you."

"Go along with you."

XVI

In this manner the full and happy years began to glide past them.

Their prosperity was now firmly established; the business grew; and money came in so nicely that Mrs. Dale's mortgage had been paid off and her two thousand pounds invested in gilt-edged securities, while Dale hoped very shortly to discharge the remainder of his obligation to Mr. Bates. They were, however, as economical as ever in their own way of life, although they permitted themselves some license in the generosity they had begun to practise with regard to their less fortunate neighbors. But they found, as so many have found before them, that in personal charity a little money goes a long way, and that the claims of the very poor, although sometimes noisy, are rarely excessive. Naturally they had to be careful for the sake of their children, the security of whose future must be the first consideration. Dale had promised the baby boy in his cradle "the advantages of a lib'ral education," and he intended to act up to this promise largely.

"It is my wish," he said, "that the two of them shall enjoy all that I was myself deprived of."

New sc.r.a.ps were continually being pasted into the alb.u.m, and it seemed to Mavis that she ought to have bought a bigger one, if indeed any alb.u.ms were made of a size sufficiently big to contain all the evidences of her husband's gratified ambition. Scarce a _Courier_ was published without "a bit" in it that referred to Mr. Dale of Vine-Pits Farm. He was really becoming quite a public character. He had been called to the District Council, on its foundation, as a personage who could not be left out. When the Otterford branch of the Fire Brigade was inst.i.tuted all agreed in inviting Mr. Dale to be its captain; and four of the once sluggish yard-servants had immediately decided that they must follow their master wherever he led, and had enrolled themselves forthwith under his captaincy. He was a prominent figure at the Old Manninglea corn market, known by sight in its streets, and had recently been chosen as a member of its very select tradesmen's club.

This was an affair truly different from that vulgar boozing circle at the Gauntlet Inn which he had denounced so contemptuously in old days.

The Manninglea Club was solid and respectable, a pleasant meeting-place where he could take his midday meal after market business in company with men of substance and repute. He was on friendly terms with most of the farmers between the down country and Rodhaven Harbor; and last, but not least, the gentry all pa.s.sed the time of day when they met him, and many would stop him on the high-roads for a chat in the most polite and jolly fas.h.i.+on.

He confessed to Mavis that the sweetest thing in his success was the feeling of being no longer disliked.

"Oh, Will, you never were disliked."

"But that's just what I was. And I begin to get a glimmer of the reason why. I was reading an article in _Answers_ last week, and it seemed as if it had been written specially to enlighten me. It was about sympathy. The author, who didn't sign his name, but was ev'dently a man of powerful int'lect, said that without understanding you can't sympathize; and he went on to show that without sympathy the whole world would come to a standstill."

"Ah," said Mavis, "that's the sort of difficult reading that you like.

It's too deep for me."

"It's plain as the nose on one's face, come to think of it. Sympathy is the key-note. It enables you to look at things from both sides--to put yourself in another man's place, and ask yourself the question, What should I be thinking and doing, if I was him?--I should say if I was he. In the old days I was very deficient in that. A fool just made me angry. Now I try to put myself in his place." He paused, and smiled. "Perhaps you'll say I'm there already--a fool myself."

"Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that;" and Mavis smiled too. "Not _quite_ a fool, Will."

He went on a.n.a.lyzing his characteristics, talking with great interest in the subject, and after a didactic style, but not with the heavy egoistic method that he had often employed years ago.

"No, I never remarked that."

"You know," he said presently, "in spite of all my bounce, I was a _shy_ man.

"It's the fact, Mav. And my shyness came between me and others. I couldn't take them sufficiently free. I wanted all the overtures to come from them, and I was too ready to draw in my horns if they didn't seem to accept me straight at what I judged my own value. For a long while now it has been my endeavor to sink what was once described to me as my pers'nal equation. I don't think of myself at all, if I can help it; and the consequence is the shyness gets pushed into the background, my manner becomes more free and open, and people begin to treat me in a more friendly spirit."

And he wound up his discourse by returning to the original cause of satisfaction.

"Yes, I do think there are some now that like me for myself--not many, but just one or two, besides dear old Mr. Bates."

"Everybody does. Why, look at that child, Norah. Only been here a month, and wors.h.i.+ps the ground you tread on."

"Poor little mite. That's her notion of being grateful for what I did for her father. Does she eat just the same?"

"Ravenous."

"Don't stint her," said Dale, impressively. "Feed her _ad lib_. Give her all she'll swallow. It's the leeway she's got to make up;" and he turned his eyes toward the kitchen door. "Is she out there?"

"Yes."

"I spoke loud. You don't think she heard what I said?"

"Oh, no. She's busy with Mrs. Goudie."

"I wouldn't like for her to hear us discussing her victuals as though she was an animal."

"You might have thought she was verily an animal," said Mavis, "if you'd seen her at the first meals we set before her. And even now it brings a lump into my throat to watch her."

"Just so."

"When I told her to undress that night to wash herself, she was a sight to break one's heart. Her poor little ribs were almost sticking through the skin; and, Will, I thought of one of ours ever being treated so."

Dale got up from the table, his face glowing redly, his brows frowning; and he stretched his arms to their full length.

"By Jupiter!" he said thickly, "if only Mrs. Neath had been a man, I'd 'a' given him--well, at the least, I'd 'a' given him a piece of my mind. I'd have told him what I thought of him."

"I promise you," said Mavis, "that I told Mrs. Neath what I thought of _her_."

"An' I'm right glad you did."

This new inmate under their roof was Norah Veale, a twelve-year-old daughter of the Hadleigh Wood hurdle-maker. Mavis, taking a present of tea and sugar to one of the Cross Roads cottages, had found her digging in the garden, and, struck by her pitiful aspect, had questioned her and elicited her history. It was a common enough one in those parts. Not being wanted at home, she had been "lent" to Mrs.

Neath, the cottage woman, in exchange for her keep, and was mercilessly used by the borrower. She rose at dawn, worked as the regular household drudge till within an hour of school-time, then walked into Rodchurch for the day's schooling with a piece of dry bread in her pocket as dinner; and on her return from school worked again till late at night. She admitted that she felt always hungry, always tired, always miserable; that she suffered from cold at night in her wretched little bed; and that Mrs. Neath often beat her. She was a bright, intelligent child, black-haired, olive-complexioned, with lively blue eyes which expressed at once the natural trustfulness of youth, a certain boldness and wildness derived from gipsy ancestors, and a questioning wonder that this pleasant-looking world should be systematically ill-treating her.