"Cheat-the-boys"

Contents

- CHAP. PAGE fo TRYST: : , ; ; ; ; 1

II. AT THE WINDMILL . ‘ ; : . 9 III. THE ‘CHURCH HOUSE’ . : ; a So IV. ORCHARD LANDS. .. 8 V. GILYAN ENJOYS HERSELF ‘ : : 39 VI. COMMENTS ‘ : : : : ‘ 49 VII. THE TOBACCONIST . : : : ‘ 65 VIII. CRISIS . ; ; ‘ ‘ f ‘ “e IX. THE APPEAL TO JAMES . A ; : 87 X. THE MIND OF GILYAN . : : : 94 XI. THE PLAY-ACTORS . ; ; : . 104 XII. ALL FRIENDS . ; : ‘ : aaa) MW § XIII. PROMISE : : ; : : roan by r4 XIV. MR. WOODLEY’S FUTURE. : ; . 186 XV. THE DOG-FANCIER . ; : ; . 142 XVI. APPEALS Rae Be : ‘ F ALA: XVII. COUNCIL : ‘ : : ‘ . 166 XVIII. AT ‘CHURCH HOUSE’ ‘ ; 4 Des Gf

XIX. IN THE ORCHARDS . ; 3 : . Seas Vv

Chapter I Tryst

TuHE lane forked right and left under a great hill, and while the eastern branch ascended presently, climbed upward and disappeared between banks of red loam, the left hand way stretched north into wide, green watermeadows, where ran a stream and there opened withy-beds and a reed rond. Gentle hills ascended on every side of these glimmering flats and a winter sun illuminated them.

It was afternoon, and a man waited at the fork of the lane while, half a mile distant, a woman made preparations to meet him.

The man walked up and down with his face turned to the ground. From time to time he glanced down the road whence the woman would come, then his neck bent again as though the weight of matters in his brain pressed upon it. He was tall and broad in the shoulders, with a fine chest, but below the belt he fell away and his legs knocked a little at the knees. He had a fair and kindly face with clear, slate-coloured eyes, a straight, well-shaped nose, low forehead and large, amber moustache, which was not curled away from his gentle mouth, but hung in a curtain over it. As his body, so his face fell away beneath. It ended with a feeble chin deeply cloven in the midst. His expression in repose indicated extreme amiability; but at this moment, before an approaching ordeal of the utmost importance to him, the man looked anxious and his eyes roamed nervously. He was dressed in a grey, Norfolk jacket, with trousers turned up to keep them out of the mud. He also wore yellow boots and a blue tie beneath a soft collar fastened with a little silver hunting-horn. On his head was a black bowler hat. He carried no stick and

B his hands were in his pockets as he strode up and down. He looked at his watch from time to time and sighed, for the woman was half an hour late; still empty lay the valley road by which she must arrive. Presently he walked in the direction of his thoughts and followed the way until a white-faced dwelling appeared, where the vale narrowed northward and the solitary building marked its end.

There stood Withy Lease, a little homestead with which went the withies and the reeds, the grazing-grounds, the stream and the beds of water-cress. It was a freehold property of some twenty acres, and a widow farmed it and owned it, making shift to win a livelihood therefrom. She was seventy-three, but of a thin and active habit—quick and agile as the water-voles that lived upon the banks of her stream.

Now, on this Sunday afternoon, she sat and watched the woman who was setting out to meet the man; and in her brown eyes and mobile, withered face homed anxiety and doubt as great as his. Life had left the widow little. Her husband was dead, her two sons were dead, her two daughters were dead; but the last had found time to wed and become a mother. Jane Neck’s only child, a girl, was now an orphan and lived with her grandmother, the last of a local clan whose record, on gravestones at Higher Marldon, dated back two hundred years. With the old woman the family name would disappear. _

Now Jennifer Purchase sat on the bed in an upper chamber of Withy Lease and watched young Gilyan Neck make ready to meet the man.

Gilyan resembled a dead mother, famous for her beauty, but Mrs. Purchase always declared the girl to be far lovelier than her own daughter, Jane, who had married John Neck, brought Gilyan into the world and soon afterwards passed from it herself. She died of the family ailment—tuberculosis—which had also destroyed her father and her brothers. Young Gilyan, however, proved untainted by any parental weakness. She stood five feet nine and was straight, slim, healthy in every particular, and very perfectly proportioned. Her hair was flaxen pale,

TRYST 3 yet quick to reflect sunshine; her eyebrows were darker than her hair and finely arched; her evasive and lovely eyes were of a pale blue. They could be steady and steadfast when she pleased, or when a challenge demanded it; but a disappointed man here and there had learned to hate them. ‘“‘ Look out when her eyes be fixed so firm as a rock on yours,” said Mark Fawden, her grandmother’s right-hand man, “for then she’s lying most.” ‘ Frog’

Fawden spoke quite impartially, for he was proud of the young woman and admitted her beauty and charm. Himself he was an old bachelor, who had never desired to be otherwise, but perhaps he understood Gilyan better than her own generation. Her mouth was the most utterly lovely thing about her. To describe it is impossible save in similes. It was Greek, a little drooping in repose, full in the bow, of a delicious, ripe strawberry freshness. Now she had pouted it, while she set a brooch upon the muslin round her throat and listened to old Jennifer piping in thin and fretful speech.

‘“* You might tell me who the manis, Gilyan. ’Tis right I should know.”

“You'll know soon enough, Gran.”

“ There’s such a lot after you, and’ you treat ’em so bad. You be making enemies by it, and I was terrible put about last week when I met James Woodley, the horseman at Orchard Lands.”

“Whyfor? What could Jimmy say to fluster you? ”’

The girl spoke in a voice of a pleasant, cooing quality, with a note that seemed to give warmth to every word. She did not lisp, yet there was a little croon and catch in her speech that made men wild and women forgiving. But it was a wayward voice.

“He told me the name they’ve given you in the Marldons since—since Nicholas Snow.” :

“ Oh—that? I know. That was Matthew Fawden’s _ little joke—to call me after the cider apple that looks so lovely and turns out so sharp: ‘ Cheat-the-Boys.’ ”’

Gilyan laughed.

“No laughing matter, I do assure you,” declared her grandmother. ‘For a girl to get a name like that be a very cruel, dreadful affair in my opinion, and I'll give Matthew the edge of my tongue next time I meet him.”

“ Jimmy Woodley wants to marry me all the same, and so does Arthur Partridge. Both Orchard Lands men; and old Matthew haven’t frightened them with the new name for me. I wish he had. I hate the pair of ’em.”

Gilyan set her hat on her flaxen locks. It was a dark blue hat, to match her home-made serge gown and jacket, and a pale blue feather crowned it.

“It ban’t Partridge, then, you’re going to meet-—nor yet Woodley ¢ ? For God’s love next time you ~ * yes,’ mean it.’

‘“‘ [ve never said * yes ’ yet—wish I may die if I have,” declared the girl. ‘“‘ When a man’s in love, he’ll only hear what he wants to. Plain English be wasted on ’em.”’

“Why for can’t you let the men alone? ”’

“I like them,” said Gilyan. ‘“ They’re a lot more amusing than women; they know more and there’s more to ’em—fools though they are about courting. But they can’t take me in the same friendly spirit I take them. If you give ’em ‘Good-evening’ they get above themselves. And, anyway, the chap who ever said I was tokened to him is a liar.”

‘“* Men hate a jill-flirt,” warned Mrs. Purchase, you may get left yet, for all your beauty.”

“TI shan’t get left, gran’.”’

“Td much wish to see you married and settled for your own sake. Withy Lease will be yours, of course, such as itis; butit don’t carry the moneyit did. Straw have took the place of reed now-a-days, so Mark says. It’s a poor living for the pair of us these times and like to be poorer.”

Gilyan kissed her grandmother.

‘* So it is then, and I’ll soon take a well-to-do sort of man and let you free, and help you belike, as you’ve helped me. All the same I wish I could have waited a bit longer, and maybe got the chance to fly a bit higher.”

‘“ Don’t think again about this here man to-day if you don’t love him. A thousand times better wait ten years, if need be, for the right one.”

Gilyan did not answer. She pulled on a pair of black ind and

TRYST i.

thread gloves, looked at her hat once more in a little square glass, then turned to go.

~“T could much wish you'd tell me his name, my dear,”’ persisted the ancient.

“No, grandmother. I may be mistook. I’ve kept him half-an-hour over the time anyway. They’re often the tenderer for keeping, though sometimes it don’t pay to keep ’em. But it will with this man.’

“You be hard as a stone wall under your smiles and twinkles,” said Mrs. Purchase. ‘‘I see myself again in you, worse luck, and the sins of the grandchild be visited on the grandmother. Your mother was a very different creature from you or me, Gilyan.”’

Gilyan exhibited some interest.

** You liked the men, then? ”’

“Yes, I did,” answered Jennifer—“ a proper, wicked, little thing I was—till I married.”

** You hateful old woman, Gran! ”’

““Yes—now. I weren’t hateful at your age. I were terrible nice.”’

“It’s more than the young can do to picture what you old ones were like—once,”’ said Gilyan. ‘‘ I suppose lots of you brown, crumpled, withered old folk were beautiful and had your day and a trail of men after you.”’

“The pretty women don’t get the best husbands.”’

“Why not, then ? ”

“ Easily answered. I'll tell you why when you come backalong. For the minute, if you’ve kept a good, honest man that is going to offer to marry you cooling his heels for half an hour, you’d best to get going, or you may find he puts punctuality higher than even you.”

* Wish me luck.”

““T wish you sense not to say ‘ yes’ unless you love him better’n anything else on God’s earth.”

“ T wouldn’t say but what I do, though that’s not to say much either. He’s good and rich.”

“And clever, [ hope. ’*Tis most important for the man that marries you to be clever. I had a clever one—lucky for me—and cleverness makes more happy homes than cash do.”

Gilyan set forth. She walked well, having once observed the difference between an educated gait and the usual scutter of country-women. “I hate to see they go-by-thegrounds pashing along in the mud, or the dust,” she said to a man once, who told her she walked as if the place belonged to her. The fact that she was so late did not hasten her steps, and she picked the clean tracks of the rough road. It wound along past the domains of Withy Lease, where spread emerald bright meadows, blotted with darker passages of bulrush and broken here and there by russet red molehills, bright as jewels in the winter sunshine. The water meadows sloped to a still and placid stream, that wound away among them and then slipped into wider bottoms of sedge and sallow. Beyond, the reed rond extended, now sere and grey, with ghostly plumes of arundo still spiring up out of the tangle. Behind them opened a little mere, where moor-hen and dab-chick dwelt, and lower yet, at the broadest span of Withy Lease, stood the golden willows, now naked of leaves, making warmth against the cool grey of the hills that heaved behind them.

Here water-cress spread, where the stream shelved over sandy shallows, and occasioned ceaseless feud with tramps who refused to regard water-cress as anything but common property. In winter came woodcock and snipe also ; and Mark Fawden shot them for Mrs. Purchase and sent them to market on her account.

Here and there a bridge crossed the stream; in spring time the pussy willows and the gold and lemon of kingcup and iris amid the silver lacing of the waters made the Lease gay; while in summer the marshes shone with orange rag-weed, clouds of meadowsweet and willowherb, purple loosestrife and the velvet, ebony clubs of the great reed mace.

A hundred yards from their tryst the tall young man met Gilyan. He took off his hat, while she was still some distance away, and hastened forward. His speed was very rapid; his movements a little ungainly. She did not increase her own pace, but welcomed him with a very lovely smile. For a moment he held her black thread

TRYST 7 glove in his red dogskin; then he shook her hand very warmly and spoke. His voice was deep, but hesitating. This hesitation was habitual and not due to present nervousness. His voice reflected Warner Lidstone’s character in large degree.

“TI began to think something must be the matter,”’ he said.

‘“‘ Something was the matter. <A lot of duck-chicks got up stream across the road, and our birds are my work. ‘Frog’ wouldn’t move to ’em, so I had to do it; and a proper jakes of a mess I got in—Sunday and all. So lI fell late; and once you begin being late, you’re late all day.”

“So you are then—a very true word. And ‘ Frog’ as they call him is like his brother, my man at Orchard Lands. Matthew Fawden has the same jealous rule— never to lay finger to.a piece of work that ain’t his own.”’

“Silly old fools both of ’em,”’ declared she.

* Not fools.”

They had reached the forking road and Gilyan asked a question, though very well she knew the answer.

“Where are you going to take me for our walk, Mr. Lidstone ? ”’

Her frank eyes were upon his and her voice was tuned to an uninterested inquiry.

Warner Lidstone lifted his arm and pointed where the stump of an ancient windmill dominated the great hill before them. The dismantled and shattered tower could be clearly seen against the sky-line easterly.

“We're going up over, Miss Neck,” he said firmly, and Gilyan showed sudden emotion.

“You don’t mean Fo

“By God I do!” he said. “I mean just that. ’Tis there, or nowhere.”

She stared into his flushed face with apparent astonishment, while he showed excitement and waited tensely for her reply.

Simple sounding words in this connection meant far more than their face value and a mere walk to the ruin.

Gilyan dropped her eyes.

‘“‘ Oh, fancy!’ she murmured, then hesitated while the man breathed hard. After some tremendous moments, she looked at him again.

‘Tt must be as you please, Mr. Lidstone.”

He gave a joyful and guttural gurgle and they set forth together. But soon she bade him go slower.

‘““T can’t travel so fast, please. You forget how long your legs are.”’

‘““T forget everything on earth but where we’re going to,” he said.

There was a new familiarity in her speech that delighted the young man. He begged to be forgiven and considered her steps as he moderated his stride.

“Two paces of mine be just about equal to three of yours,” he said, after watching her feet for a few minutes.

She smiled sedately, but did not answer. Then silence fell between them as the lane grew steeper.

Chapter II At The Windmill

Compton WINDMILL was a classic meeting-place for Higher and Lower Marldon folk under certain emotional conditions. Its ruined stump of red conglomerate stone broke the sky-line of a rounded hill at a spot—lonely, as hill-tops are wont to be. It stood amid fertile lands, now under corn, now roots, now suffered to remain in grass, until presently they are ploughed again. A great, steep field fell westerly, and from its summit the view of arable forest and river valley faded away to Dartmoor’s ramparts, where they hove aloft across the north in winter colours, from Hey Tor to Rippon, from Buckland Beacon to the dim cone of Brent Hill and the ragged granites of Ugborough Beacon beyond it. All was soaked with sad grey and cold purple, for the sun had now departed behind a bank of iron-coloured cloud, and twilight promised to bring more rain.

Over a crop of turnip, already in course of pulling, Warner Lidstone and his companion approached the empty cone of the Windmill; a shell from which the life had long fled. It opened to the sky and might be penetrated by breaches in the wall and the legitimate entrance, from which the door had vanished. ‘There were apertures at the height of a shoulder in the thickness of the stone, where windows once had been, and in the midst of the mud and withered grass upon the floor, reposed an old grindstone, as though to mark the vanished uses of the place. This hypxthral temple, once lifted to Ceres, now dedicated to Love, rose in a ragged tonsure of stone where in summer yellow hawkweeds and blue jasione wove a garland, but now only faded grass hung from the walls. Worshippers came in couples at all times and seasons, for unwritten law had, through a space of near a century, demanded that the local man who would marry a local maid, must hither bring her and put the question within these withered ruins.

Thus a curious state of things was created and offers of marriage were made by implication. Shy men found the Windmill exceedingly convenient: it simplified courting, heartened the anxious male in the one event and helped to cover his face and shorten his sufferings in another. Yor if the desired one refused any invitation to walk Windmillward, that ended the matter where faint hearts were concerned; while an agreement to visit the significant spot was more than halfway to saying “ yes,’’ when the fateful question came.

Hence young Lidstone’s emotions on learning that Gilyan was prepared to accompany him to the hill-top. Now they stood within the magic circle and the man spoke. ’

** You'll find it warmer in here out of this cold wind,” he said.

But the wind was not cold : it blew damp and mild from the west. Warner stood for a moment looking far away to the hills and considering the words to be spoken. They had been orderly in his memory when he started. -For many nights he had rehearsed them until they flowed with due humility and craft. He was prepared to admit his own unworthiness, yet couple with it certain advantages that he had to offer, should Gilyan find herself able to look so low. But now the phrases had fled, and they might as well have been a flock of golden plover on distant Rippon for all the use they promised to Lidstone of Orchard Lands.

Meanwhile the maiden, who was not paying her first visit to the Windmill, amused herself with the evidences of votaries. Upon the old plaster, as high as a man could reach, were scratched, or written in pencil, the initials of generations, set close together in pairs. Occasionally a scroll surrounded them and a flourish of art awakened by some lad’s triumph; but for the most part lovers obeyed

AT THE WINDMILL il old custom baldly and the combined letters—the man’s above, the girl’s beneath—did no more than record the beginning of a united adventure. Business-like men added the date; once a bruised spirit had been at the trouble to climb again—alone—and erase the record with harsh, cross cuts of his knife.

Gilyan, however, could survey the inscriptions with a good conscience, for no man had ever won the right to set her initial letters with his own upon these storied walls. She exclaimed presently, while Warner still looked out over the earth and considered his speech. Her sharp eyes had found a new chronicle.

“Look here! ‘J. B. and C. T.’ Do you know what that means, Mr. Lidstone ? ”’

He turned, seeing an opening and desiring to waste no more time.

‘““It means some lucky chap has had ‘yes’ for an answer.”

‘““ How d’you know he was lucky? But I believe he was this time. Johnny Bulley’s the nephew of Weston Bulley—potman at my uncle’s public-house; and he’s a very nice man, and last time I was at Higher Marldon he told me he was going to offer. And ‘C. T.’—you know who that is?”

‘No, I don’t.”

“Oh, yes, you do—very well, too—better than you know me, I expect. Seen her oftener, anyway.”’

He considered and remembered.

“Clara Toms, of course. Yes, we heard about it last week. Clara’s our cook, and Mother’s very glad she’s got such a good chap and terrible sorry she’s going to leave Orchard Lands.”’

‘“‘There they are,’ said Gilyan, and pointed to the initials in a formal, black square. “‘Now I'd have thought Johnny would have drawn a heart round ’em.”

Lidstone looked at the scribbled walls.

‘‘ There won’t be much room soon,”’ he said.

“‘ People will have to be more thoughtful for others and not write so large,’ she answered.

And then the man asked her to wed him, and she listened and added the recollection of another offer of marriage to those that had gone before. Even as he spoke, in loud and steady tones, she reflected that this was the last time she would ever hear such words, or any like them, for she had long ago determined to accept the speaker. And Warner, by a strange coincidence, voiced the identical idea in his proposal.

“It’s not the first time you’ve heard what I want to say,’ he began, “‘ but I much hope it will be the last, — Gilyan. For ‘Gilyan’ I must call you.”

““So long as you don’t call me ‘Cheat-the-Boys,’ Mr. Lidstone.”’

‘““* Warner’ to you, please; and more than that. I want to be everything to you—everything in the world. For why? Because you’re everything to me. Yes, faith, I’ve been slow coming to it—for your sake more than my own. I’ve waited, though my inner voice shouted for me to be up and about it before I lost you; but I waited to ask myself if ever a sober-sided sort of man like me could make you right down happy. And I’ve looked on, and now Ido think I know you. And if love sharpens the wits, then I ought to know all about you. I love you with all my soul, and if you’ll marry me, you'll have a man to worship you faithfully and come between you and the rough edge of life for evermore. What d’you say? Have you ever thought what I was after? No doubt you have.”

She nodded, then she offered her hand to him and he caught it between his own and waited for her to speak.

‘““I knew you had got to care for me; but I kept it terrible quiet, because it seemed like as if it was too good to be true, Mr. Lidstone. And I knew it, because I’d got to care for you. I love you and I’m properly proud you really love me.”’

““My God!” said Warner. ‘‘ And don’t even want to keep me waiting while you think about it!”

“T have thought about it. I’m not clever, but——’

** There—there—you darling, blessed dear—no ‘ buts.’ You love me—you said the words! ’Tis almost too big a thought for my wits. ‘Clever?’ Don’t everybody know

AT THE WINDMILL 13 you’re so clever as you're lovely? But I’m clever too! My stars, I must be a damned sight cleverer than I thought, or my mother thought, or anybody, to have got the top flower of the bunch like you! Thank God for His goodness, I’m sure.”

So honestly amazed was he that simple wonder seemed to come between him and Gilyan herself at that great moment. Then he came back to her, and his eyes, that had roamed the distant scene while he spoke, settled upon her face. He put his arms round her, still marvelling, and she lifted up her wonderful lips.

He kissed her and took fire and babbled; and she kissed him back.

“TI love you; I love you, Warner,” she said, “‘ and I'll always love you and be proud to make your life happy if I can. There was never anybody else for me when first I dared to think you began to care. I swear t’other men are shadows beside you.”

** And other females—what are they? Ghosts to me, and always were for that matter after I got to know you, Gilyan.”’

“Your mother’s no ghost, nor yet your sister Lucy. What will they think? I’m parlous feared about them, because they'll say a comfortable man like you with a big place, all your own some day, and lots of money, ought to have looked a lot higher than a penniless girl.”

** What’s money ? ”’

“Naught if you’ve got enough—everything if you haven’t.”’

“ They'll very soon love you as well as I do—not that, no—but so well as one woman can love another.”

“T hope so. I love your mother already—because she is your mother. But women don’t like me very much— only my cousin Betsy.”

“ 'They’re jealous, I reckon.”

*“Do your folk know you're courting ? ”’

“They do; because I’m a sort of man that can’t hide himself, and if there’s anything on my mind, other people find it out. But they don’t know who it is, that I'll swear.” ,

Gilyan reflected. Her mind dwelt not on women, but men.

“Then I’ll ask you to keep it a secret for a minute longer. For a reason you shall know. But I'll keep the reason secret too—only for a little. Then you'll hear about it, and have a good laugh, I shouldn’t wonder.”

‘Your word’s law; but I can’t hold it in very long, I promise you. And I can’t go without you very long neither. There’s no good reason why we shouldn’t be married any time.”’

She laughed and looked with very genuine affection into his flushed face.

“You dear, precious man! Oh, I’m so happy, Warner. I’m feared of my life I shall wake up presently and find I’ve been dreaming.”

“This is no dream,” he said, kissing her again and drawing her close to him with both hands. “ It’s life, Gilyan—the beginning of things—what youth and boyhood and the long years past was all leading up to— like the long lane climbs the hill till it gets to the light and air at the top.”

“Why! That’s poetry.”

‘“ Come,”’ he said, ‘“‘ I must walk—I must step out and feel myself strong and alive. Never was I so much alive before.”’

He was going; but she stopped him.

“ We must do what’s vitty,”’ she murmured. ‘‘ Put our letters together here, please—if you can find a place for them.”

He laughed and produced a pencil. |

“Lord !”’ he said, ‘‘ what a shaking creature I was when I stuck that in my pocket two hours agone. Two hours! Surely ’tis a month of Sundays since I left the Lands, my head in a maze of hope and fear.”’

““ More hope than fear, I reckon.”

“Not till I said I was coming here, and waited to see if you’d agree. That was the awfullest moment in my life, and the awfullest that ever will be in it. But when you didn’t order me walk somewhere else—then—then I did buck up, for I very well know you’d not let me

AT THE WINDMILL 15 take you there unless—unless you was prepared to consider it.”

“ That’s the worst of living alongside the Windmill,” said Gilyan. ‘“‘ A girl knows what’s coming afore it comes, and a thrill be lost.”

She was jealous to lose no thrills. Instinct made her avid for all the world had to offer.

They searched for a spot and presently she found one under the sill of the vanished window. ‘There, not without emotion, Warner carefully drew the conventional heart and set within it ‘ W. T. L.’ and ‘G. N.’

‘“‘ What’s the ‘T’ for? ”’ asked Gilyan.

“*Trecarrow.’ That’s my mother’s maiden name. She’s Cornish.”

The girl considered.

“Tm not too sure if I don’t like ‘ Trecarrow’ better than ‘ Warner,’ ”’ she said.

“Too much of a mouthful.”

** But prettier.”

“You don’t want a pretty name for your husband. Nothing pretty about me.”

““ You’re strong, and you’ve got a dear, beautiful face,”’ she declared.

They kissed again and then emerged in the fading dusk and slowly descended the hill. Gilyan once more impressed upon her betrothed that their engagement must continue a secret for a little while. She repeated that her reason was good and that he should presently be informed of it.