"There!" He took his lips away, and she sank back gasping. "You've 'ad yer way wi' me;" and he heaved a sigh that was as loud as a groan.

"Oh, Mav, my girl, gi' me yer kisses--kiss me all night and all day--if on'y you make me forget."

Her hat had tumbled off in the struggle, a mesh of brown hair was dangling over her shoulder, and she was still too much out of breath to speak. The wagon rolled heavily forward along the flat road, and the carter cracked his whip continuously to tell the horses they were nearly home. Presently Mavis got up, perched herself beside her husband, and whispered to him jerkily.

"You've nothing to forget, dear. No looking back. But, oh, my darling, I'm going to be more than I ever was to you. I feel it. I _know_ it--an' we'll be happy, happy, happy, so long as we live."

She pressed her face against the sleeve of his jacket, and stroked his knee with as much luxurious pleasure as if the rough cord breeches had been made of the softest satin velvet.

"See. Look straight ahead," and she raised her hand and pointed.

Vine-Pits Farm was in sight. The stone house, the barns, the straw ricks, and the fruit trees all seeming to have cl.u.s.tered close together, to form a compact little kingdom of hope and joy.

"Look, dear. How pretty--see the sunlight on the roofs and on the ricks. That's luck. All the straw is changing into gold. My old Will is going to make heaps of golden sovereigns as big as any rick."

"Woo then. A-oo then." The carter stopped the horses outside the garden entrance. "Will the missis get down here at th' front door, or be us to go on into yaard?"

Mrs. Dale got down here, took the cat-basket from her husband, and went gaily up the path to the open front door.

"Don't let th' cat loose," Dale called after her warningly, "or she'll be back to Rodchurch like a streak o' greased lightning. She'll need acclim'tyzing all to-morrow."

Mavis ran through the house to the kitchen, where Mary and a courtesying old woman received her. Then she scampered from room to room, uttering little cries of contentment. Often as she had seen and admired the house during the last few weeks, it had never seemed so perfectly delightful as it did to-day: with its low-ceiled cozy little rooms at the back, its high and imposing rooms in front, its broad staircase and square landing, it would be quite a little palace when all had been set to rights.

Coming hurrying back to the hall, she saw her husband in the porch, a splendid dark figure with the last rays of yellow sunlight behind him.

He paused bare-headed on the threshold, obviously not aware of her presence, and she was about to speak to him when he startled her by dropping on his knees and praying aloud.

"O merciful Powers, give me grace and strength to lead a healthy fearless life in this house."

XIII

The Dales were beginning to prosper now, but their first winter had been an anxious, difficult time.

Dale had made a common mistake in his calculations, and experience soon taught him that what is known as good-will, the most delicate and sensitive of all trade-values, can not by a mere stroke of the pen be transferred from one person to another. Solid customers turned truant; the business went down with terrifying velocity; and old Bates, who loyally came day after day to advise and a.s.sist, spoke with sincere regret. "William, I never foretold this. I must see what can be done.

I'll leave no stone unturned." And he trotted about, touting for his successor, tramping long miles to beg for a continuance of favors that had unexpectedly ceased, but usually returning sadly to confess that his efforts had again been fruitless. They were gloomy evening hours, when the old and the young man sat together in the office by the roadway; and at night Mavis used to hear her sleeping husband moan and groan so piteously that she sometimes felt compelled to wake him.

"What is it?" Awakened thus, he would spring up with a hoa.r.s.e cry, and be almost out of the bed before she was able to restrain him.

"It's nothing, dear. Only you were in one of your bad dreams, and I simply couldn't let you go on being tormented."

"That's right," he used to mutter sleepily. "I don't want to dream.

I've enough that's real."

"Don't you worry, dear old boy. You're going to pull through grand--in the end. I _know you are_. Besides, if not--then we'll try something else."

She always murmured such consolatory phrases until he fell asleep once more.

The fact was that Bates had been respected by the well-to-do and loved by the humble; and Dale, out here, remained an unknown quant.i.ty.

Anything of his fame as postmaster that had traveled along these two miles from Rodchurch did not help him. He was not liked. He felt it in the air, a dull inactive hostility, when talking to gentlefolks'

coachmen or giving orders to his own servants. The coachmen could take no pleasure in patronizing him, nor the men in working for him. Mr.

Bates advised him once or twice to cultivate a gentler and more ingratiating method of dealing with the people in his employ.

"Perhaps, William, I'm to blame for having spoilt 'em a bit;--but it'd be good policy for you to take them as you find them, and get them bound to you before you begin drilling 'em. A soft word now and then, William--you don't know how far it goes sometimes."

"What I complain of is this," said Dale; "they don't show any spirit.

Every stroke o' bad luck I've had--every chance where they might step in with common sense, or extra care, or a spark of invention to save a situation for me--it's just as if they were a row o' turnips."

And the strokes of bad luck were so many and so heavy. The elements seemed to be making war against him--such wet days as made it impossible to deliver hay without damage to it, and an accusation from somebody's stables that the last lot was poisoned; then frost, and two horses seriously injured on the ice-clothed roads; then February gales, wrecking the barn roofs, entailing costly repairs; then floods; and last of all _rats_. The unusual amount of land water had driven them to new haunts, and Dale's granaries were suddenly invaded. "Oh, William," said Mr. Bates, horror-stricken, "beware of rats. They are the worst foe. _One_ rat will mess up a mountain of grain."

About the time of the vernal equinox there came a tempest in comparison with which all previous wind and rain were but a whispering and a sprinkling. Every door was being rattled as if by giant hands, the gla.s.s sang in the latticed windows, and the whole house seemed swaying, when Mary told her mistress that something had gone wrong with the big straw stack and that the master was attempting to climb to the top of it on the long ladder.

Mavis instantly pulled up her skirt in true country fashion to make a cloak, and told Mary to help her open the kitchen door.

"You bide where you be, Mrs. Dale," said the old charwoman. "You ben't goin' to be no use of any kind out there, and you may bring yourself to a misfortune."

But Mavis insisted on struggling through the doorway, into the rude embrace of the weather. Great branches of the walnut tree were waving wildly, while little twigs and buds flew from apple trees like dust; the rain, not in drops but as it seemed in solid packets, struck her face and shoulders with such force that she could scarcely stand against it; a shallow wooden tub came bounding to her along the flagged path and pa.s.sed like a sheet of brown paper; and just as she got to the corner of the buildings from which she could obtain a view of the rick-yard, thirty feet of pale fencing lay down upon the beehives and the rhubarb bed without a sound that was even faintly audible above the racket of the storm.

But she had no eyes for anything except her husband, and no other thought than of the horrible peril in which he was placing himself.

Four men clung to the bottom of the ladder, and yet, with Dale's weight half-way up to help them, could not for a moment keep it steady. On top of the rick one of the tarpaulin sheets had broken loose; the cruel wind was tearing beneath it, wrenching out pegs and cordage, s.n.a.t.c.hing at thatch-hackle, and making the stout ropes that should have held the sheet hiss and dart like serpents.

It seemed to her that the rick was as high as Mont Blanc, and that even on a placid summer day no one but a lunatic would want to scale it. Then she screamed, and went rushing forward.

Dale, in the act of clambering from the top rung of the ladder, had been blown off, and was hanging to a rope over the edge of the stack.

With extreme difficulty the men moved the ladder, and he succeeded in getting on it again.

"Gi't up, sir. 'Tis mortally impossible." As well as Mavis, every one of them shouted an entreaty that he would come down.

Probably he did not hear them, and certainly he did not obey them. He went up, not down. Then for half an hour he fought like a madman with the flapping sheet, and finally conquered it.

Mavis, as she stared upward, saw the gray clouds driving so fast over the crest of the stack that they made it seem as if the whole yard was drifting away in the opposite direction; while her man, a poor little black insect painfully crawling here and there, desperately writhed as new billows surged up beneath him, labored at the rope, seemed to use feet, hands, and teeth in his frantic efforts against the overwhelming power that was opposed to him. She felt dazed and giddy, sick with fear, and yet glowing with admiration in the midst of her agonized anxiety.

To the men it was a wonderful and exciting sight that had altogether stirred them from their usual turnip-like lethargy. When the master came down, all shaking and bleeding, they bellowed hearty compliments in his ear.

"Now," said the old charwoman, when Mr. and Mrs. Dale returned to the kitchen, "you've a 'aad a nice skimmle-skammle of it, sir, an' you best back me up to send the missis to her bed, and bide there warm, and never budge. I means it," she added, with authority. "You ben't to put yourself in a caddle, Mrs. Dale, an' I know what I be talkin' of."

After this the men appeared to work better for Dale; perhaps still somewhat sulkily whenever he pressed them, continuing to be more or less afraid of him, but not so keenly regretting the loss of their white-haired old master.

The storm had brought back the floods, and they were now worse than anything that anybody remembered having ever seen. The feeding sources of the Rod River had broken all bounds; the lower parts of Hadleigh Wood had become a quagmire; and the volume of water pa.s.sing under the road bridge was so great that many people thought this ancient structure to be in danger of collapsing. Over at Otterford Mill, the stream swept like a torrent through a chain of wide lakes; Mr. Bates'

cottage was cut off from the highroad, and the meadows behind the neighboring Foxhound Kennels were deep under water.

In these days Dale took to riding as the easiest means of getting about; and one afternoon when he had gone splashing across to see Mr.

Bates, thence to pay a visit of polite canva.s.s at the Kennels, and was now returning homeward by the lanes, he heard a dismal chorus of cries in the Mill meads.

Forcing his clumsy horse through a gap in the hedge, he galloped along the sodden field tracks to the shifting scene of commotion. Three or four idle louts, a couple of children, and a farm-laborer were running by the swollen margin of the mill-stream, yelling forlornly, pointing at an object that showed itself now and again in the swirling center of the current. Plainly, somebody had chosen this most unpropitious season for an accidental bath, and his companions were sympathetically watching him drown, while not daring, not dreaming of, any foolhardy attempt at a rescue.

"'Tis Veale, sir. A'bram Veale, sir. Theer!" And all the cries came loud and hearty. "Theer he goes ag'in. I see 'un come up and go under.

Oo, oo! Ain't 'un trav'lin'!"