The Three Brothers

From Great Trowlesworthy's crown of rosy granite the world extended to the moor-edge, and thence, by mighty, dim, air-drenched passages of earth and sky, to the horizons of the sea. A clear May noon illuminated the waste, and Dartmoor, soaking her fill of sunshine, ran over with it, so that Devon's self spread little darker of bosom than the grey and silver of high clouds lifted above her, mountainous under the sun.

Hills and plains were still mottled with the winter coat of the heather, and the verdure of the spearing grasses suffered diminution under a far-flung pallor of dead blades above breaking green; but the face of Dartmoor began to glow and the spring gorse leapt like a running flame along it. At water's brink was starry silver of crow-foot, and the heath, still darkling, sheltered sky-blue milk-wort and violet and the budding gold of the tormentil.

One white road ran due north-east and south-west across the desert, and round about it, like the tents of the Anakim, rose huge snowy hillocks and ridges silver-bright in the sun. Here the venerable Archæan granites of Dartmoor, that on Trowlesworthy blush to a ruddy splendour, and elsewhere break beautifully in fair colour and fine grain through the coarser porphyritic stone, suffer a change, and out of their perishing constituents emerges kaolin, or china clay.

A river met this naked road, and at their junction the grey bridge of Cadworthy saddled Plym. Beyond, like the hogged back of a brown bear, Wigford Down rolled above the gorges of Dewerstone, and further yet, retreated fields and forests, great uplifted plains, and sudden elevations that glimmered along their crests with the tender green of distant larch and beech.

The atmosphere was opalescent, milky, sweet, as though earth's sap, leaping to the last tree-tip and bursting bud, exuded upon air the very visible incense and savour of life. Running water and lifting lark made the music of this hour; and at one spot on the desert a girl's voice mingled with them and enlarged the melody, for it was gentle and musical and belonged to the springtime.

She sat high on Trowlesworthy, where the rushes chatter and where, to their eternal treble, the wind strikes deep organ music from the forehead of the tor. From the clefts of the rocks around her, where foxes homed sometimes and the hawk made her nest, there hung now russet tassels and tufts of dead lady-fern; and above this rack of the old year sprang dark green aigrettes of the new.

Stonecrops and pennyworts also flourished amid the uncurling fronds; aloft, the heath and whortle made curls for the great tor's brow; below, to the girl's feet, there sloped up boulders that shone with fabric of golden-brown mosses and dappled lichens, jade-green and grey. The woodsorrel had climbed hither, and its frail bells and sparkling trefoils glittered on the earth.

The sun shone with a thready lustre over the million flattened dead rushes roundabout this place, and its light spread out upon them into a pool of pale gold. Thus a radiance as of water extended here and the wind, fretting all this death, heightened the deception; while the scattered rocks shone brilliantly against so much reflected light and looked like boulders half submerged at the fringe of a glittering sea.

The girl laughed and gazed down at her home. It was a squat grey building half-way between the red tor and the distant bridge. It stood amid bright green crofts, and beside it was a seemly hayrick and an unseemly patch of rufous light that stared--hideous as a bloodshot eye--from the harmonious textures of the waste. There a shippen under an iron roof sank to rusty dissolution.

Here was Trowlesworthy Farm and a great rabbit warren that extended round about it.

Milly Luscombe lived at Trowlesworthy with an uncle and aunt. She was accustomed to work very hard for her living, but for the moment she did not work. She only breathed the breath of spring and talked of love.

Beside her sat a sturdy youth with a red face and a little budding flaxen moustache. His countenance was not cast in a cheerful mould. Indeed, he frowned and gazed gloomily out of large grey eyes at the valley beneath him.

"I axed father in plain words if I might be tokened to you--of course, that was if you said 'yes'--and he answered as plainly that I might not. You see, he was terrible up in years afore he got married himself, and so he thinks a man's a fool to go into it young."

"How old was he then?"

"Forty-five to the day. And he's seventy next month, though he don't feel or look anything like so much. He's full of old, stale sayings about marrying in haste and repenting at leisure: and such like. So there it is, Milly."

The girl nodded. She was a dark maiden with brown eyes and a pretty mouth. She sniffed rather tearfully and wiped her eyes with the corner of her sun-bonnet.

"Belike your father only waited so long because the right one didn't come. When he found your mother, I'm sure he married her quick enough."

"No, he didn't. They was tokened when he was forty, and kept company for five years."

"That ban't loving," she said.

"Of course it ban't! And yet father isn't what you might call a hard man. Far from it, to all but me. A big-hearted, kindly creature and a good father, if he could only understand more. Like a boy in some things. I'm sure I feel a lot older than him sometimes. If 'twas Ned now, he'd be friendly and easy as you please."

"What does Mrs. Baskerville say?"

"She's on our side, and so's my sisters. Polly and May think the world of you. 'Tisn't as if I was like my brother Ned--a lazy chap that hates the sight of work. I stand to work same as father himself, and he knows that; and when there's anything calling to be done, 'tis always, 'Where be Rupert to?" But lazy as Ned is, he'd let him marry to-morrow."

"Mr. Baskerville's frighted of losing you from Cadworthy, Rupert."

The young man looked out where a wood rose south of the bridge, and his father's farm lifted its black chimneys above the trees.

"He tells me I'm his right hand; and yet refuses, though this is the first thing that ever I've asked him," he said.

"Wouldn't he suffer it if you promised him to do as he done, and not marry for five years?"

"I'll promise no such thing. Father seems to think 'tis all moonshine, but I shall have another go at him when he comes home next week. Till then I shan't see you no more, for I've promised myself to get through a mighty pile of work--just to astonish him."

"The harder you work, the more he'll want you to bide at home," she said. "Not that I mind you working. All the best sort work--I know that."

"I must work--no credit to me. I'm like father there. I ban't comfortable if I don't get through a good lump of work in the day."

She looked at him with large admiration.

"Where's Mr. Baskerville gone to?"

"To Bideford for the wrestlin' matches. He always stands stickler when there's a big wrestlin'. Such a famous man he was at it--champion of Devon for nine years. He retired after he was married. But now, just on his seventieth birthday, he's as clever as any of 'em. 'Twas his great trouble, I do believe, that neither me nor Ned ever shaped well at it. But we haven't got his weight. We take after my mother's people and be light built men--compared to father."

"Pity May weren't a boy," said Milly. "She's got weight enough."

"Yes," he admitted. "She's the very daps of father. She'll be a whacker when she grows up. 'Tis a nuisance for a woman being made so terrible beamy. But there 'tis--and a happier creature never had to walk slow up a hill."

Silence fell for a while between them.

"We must wait and hope," she declared at last. "I shan't change, Rupert--you know that."

"Right well I know it, and more shan't I."

"You're just turned twenty-three and I'm eighteen. After all, we've got plenty of time," said Milly.

"I hope so. But that's no reason why for we should waste it. 'Tis all wasted till I get you."

She put her hand out to him, and he caught it and held it.