CHAPTER XII

THROUGH ONE GREAT DAY

Just within the woods of Teign Valley, at a point not far distant from that where Will Blanchard met John Grimbal for the first time, and wrestled with him beside the river, there rises a tall bank, covered with fern, shadowed by oak trees.  A mossy bridle-path winds below, while beyond it, seen through a screen of wych-elms and hazel, extend the outlying meadows of Monks Barton.

Upon this bank, making “sunshine in a shady place,” reclined Chris, beneath a harmony of many greens, where the single, double, and triple shadows of the manifold leaves above her created a complex play of light and shade all splashed and gemmed with little sun discs.  Drowsy noon-day peace marked the hour; Chris had some work in her hand, but was not engaged upon it; and Clement, who lolled beside her, likewise did nothing.  His eyes were upon a mare and foal in the meadow below.  The matron proceeded slowly, grazing as she went, while her lanky youngster nibbled at this or that inviting tuft, then raced joyously in wide circles and, returning, sought his mother’s milk with the selfish roughness of youth.

“Happy as birds, they be,” said Chris, referring to the young pair at Newtake.  “It do make me long for us to be man an’ wife, Clem, when I see ’em.”

“We’re that now, save for the hocus-pocus of the parsons you set such store by.”

“No, I’ll never believe it makes no difference.”

“A cumbrous, stupid, human contrivance like marriage!  Was ever man and woman happier for being bound that way?  Can free things feel their hearts beat closer because they are chained to one another by an effete dogma?”

“I doan’t onderstand all that talk, sweetheart, an’ you knaw I don’t; but till some wise body invents a better-fashion way of joining man an’ maid than marriage, us must taake it as ’tis.”

“There is a better way—­Nature’s.”

She shook her head.

“If us could dwell in a hole at a tree-root, an’ eat roots an’ berries; but we’m thinking creatures in a Christian land.”

She stretched herself out comfortably and smiled up at him where he sat with his chin in his hands.  Then, looking down, he saw the delicious outline of her and his eyes grew hot.

“God’s love!  How long must it be?” he cried; then, before she could speak, he clipped her passionately to him and hugged her closely.

“Dearie, you’m squeezin’ my breath out o’ me!” cried Chris, well used to these sudden storms and not averse to them.  “We must bide patient an’ hold in our hearts,” she said, lying in his arms with her face close to his. “’Twill be all the more butivul when we’m mated.  Ess fay!  I love ’e allus, but I love ’e better in this fiery mood than on the ice-cold days when you won’t so much as hold my hand.”

“The cold mood’s the better notwithstanding, and colder yet would be better yet, and clay-cold best of all.”