Part 41 (1/2)
”Fifty wouldn't hardly do, p'r'aps?”
”Hardly. I like to carry a job through clean an' vitty while I'm on it.”
”You've got such a big spirit.”
”As to that, money so spent ban't lost--'tis all in the fam'ly.”
”Of course 'tis a gude advertis.e.m.e.nt for you. Folk'll think you'm prosperin' an' look up to you more.”
”Well, some might, though I doan't 'zactly mean it like that. Yet the putting out o' three figures o' money must make neighbours ope their eyes. Not that I want anybody to knaw either.”
So, against her judgment, Phoebe was won over, and presently she and her husband made merry at prospect of the great thing contemplated. Will imitated Clement's short, glum, and graceless manner before the gift; Phoebe began to spend the money and plan the bee-keeper's cottage when Chris should enter it as a bride; and thus, having enjoyed an hour of delight the most pure and perfect that can fall to human lot, the young couple retired.
Elsewhere defeat and desolation marked the efforts of the luckless poet to improve his position. All thoughts drifted towards the Red House, and when, struggling from this dark temptation, he turned to Martin Grimbal rather than his brother, Fate crushed this hope also. The antiquary was not in Chagford, and Clement recollected that Martin had told him he designed some visits to the doom rings of Iceland, and other contemporary remains of primeval man in Brittany and in Ireland. To find him at present was impossible, for he had left no address, and his housekeeper only knew that he would be out of England until the autumn.
Now the necessity for action gained gigantically upon Hicks, and spun a net of subtle sophistry that soon had the poor wretch enmeshed beyond possibility of escape. He a.s.sured himself that the problem was reduced to a mere question of justice to a woman. A sacrifice must be made between one whom he loved better than anything in the world, and one for whom he cared not at all. That these two persons chanced to be brother and sister was an unfortunate accident, but could not be held a circ.u.mstance strong enough to modify his determination. He had, indeed, solemnly sworn to Will to keep his secret, but what mattered that before this more crus.h.i.+ng, urgent duty to Chris? His manhood cried out to him to protect her. Nothing else signified in the least; the future--the best that he could hope for--might be ashy and hopeless now; but it was with the immediate present and his duty that he found himself concerned.
There remained but one grim way; and, through such overwhelming, shattering storm and stress as falls to the lot of few, he finally took it. To marry at any cost and starve afterwards if necessary, had been the more simple plan; and that course of action must first have occurred to any other man but this; to him, however, it did not occur. The crying, shrieking need for money was the thing that stunned him and petrified him. Shattered and tossed to the brink of aberration, stretched at frightful mental tension for a fortnight, he finally succ.u.mbed, and told himself that his defeat was victory.
He wrote to John Grimbal, explained that he desired to see him on the morrow, and the master of the Red House, familiar with recent affairs, rightly guessed that Hicks had changed his mind. Excited beyond measure, the victor fixed a place for their conversation, and it was a strange one.
”Meet me at Oke Tor,” he wrote. ”By an accident I shall be in the Taw Marshes to-morrow, and will ride to you some time in the afternoon.--J.G.”
Thus, upon a day when Will Blanchard called at Mrs. Hicks's cottage, Clement had already started for his remote destination on the Moor. With some unconscious patronage Will saluted Mrs. Hicks and called for Clement. Then he slapped down a flat envelope under the widow's eyes.
”Us have thought a lot about this trouble, mother, an' Phoebe's. .h.i.t on as braave a notion as need be. You see, Clem's my close friend again now, an' Chris be my sister; so what's more fittin' than that I should set up the young people? An' so I shall, an' here's a matter of Bank of England notes as will repay the countin'. Give 'em to Clem wi' my respects.”
Then Will suffered a surprise. The little woman before him swelled and expanded, her narrow bosom rose, her thin lips tightened, and into her dim eyes there came pride and brightness. It was her hour of triumph, and she felt a giantess as she stood regarding the envelope and Will.
Him she had never liked since his difference with her son concerning Martin Grimbal, and now, richer for certain news of that morning, she gloried to throw the gift back.
”Take your money again, bwoy. No Hicks ever wanted charity yet, least of all from a Blanchard. Pick it up; and it's lucky Clement ban't home, for he'd have said some harsh words, I'm thinking. Keep it 'gainst the rainy days up to Newtake. And it may surprise 'e to knaw that my son's worth be getting found out at last. It won't be so long 'fore he takes awver Squire Grimbal's farm to the Red House. What do 'e think o' that? He've gone to see un this very day 'bout it.”
”Well, well! This be news, and no mistake--gude news, tu, I s'pose. Jan Grimbal! An' what Clem doan't knaw 'bout farmin', I'll be mighty pleased to teach un, I'm sure.”
”No call to worry yourself; Clem doan't want no other right arm than his awn.”
”Chris shall have the money, then; an' gude luck to 'em both, say I.”
He departed, with great astonishment the main emotion of his mind.
Nothing could well have happened to surprise him more, and now he felt that he should rejoice, but found it difficult to do so.
”Braave news, no doubt,” he reflected, ”an' yet, come to think on it, I'd so soon the devil had given him a job as Grimbal. Besides, to choose him! What do Clement knaw 'bout farmin'? Just so much as I knaw 'bout verse-writin', an' no more.”
CHAPTER XV
”THE ANGEL OF THE DARKER DRINK”
Patches of mist all full of silver light moved like lonely living things on the face of the high Moor. Here they dispersed and scattered, here they approached and mingled together, here they stretched forth pearly fingers above the s.h.i.+ning granite, and changed their shapes at the whim of every pa.s.sing breeze; but the tendency of each s.h.i.+ning, protean ma.s.s was to rise to the sun, and presently each valley and coomb lay clear, while the cool vapours wound in luminous and downy undulations along the highest points of the land before vanis.h.i.+ng into air.
A solitary figure pa.s.sed over the great waste. He took his way northward and moved across Scorhill, leaving Wattern Tor to the left. Beneath its ragged ridges, in a vast granite amphitheatre, twinkled the cool birth-springs of the little Wallabrook, and the water here looked leaden under shade, here sparkled with silver at the margin of a cloud shadow, here shone golden bright amid the dancing heads of the cotton-gra.s.s under unclouded sunlight. The mist wreaths had wholly departed before noon, and only a few vast mountains of summer gold moved lazily along the upper chambers of the air. A huge and solitary shadow overtook the man and spread itself directly about him, then swept onwards; infinite silence encompa.s.sed him; once from a distant hillside a voice cried to him, where women and children moved like drab specks and gathered the ripe whortleberries that now wove purple patterns into the fabric of the Moor; but he heeded not the cry; and other sound there was none save the occasional and mournful note of some lonely yellowhammer perched upon a whin. Into the prevalent olive-brown of the heath there had now stolen an indication of a magic change at hand, for into the sober monotone crept a gauzy shadow, a tremor of wakening flower-life, half pearl, half palest pink, yet more than either. Upon the immediate foreground it rippled into defined points of blossom, which already twinkled through all the dull foliage; in the middle distance it faded; afar off it trembled as a palpable haze of light under the impalpable reeling of the summer air. A week or less would see the annual miracle peformed again and witness that s.p.a.cious and solemn region in all the amethystine glories of the ling. Fiercely hot grew the day, and the distances, so distinct through mist rifts and wreaths in the clearness of early morning, now retreated--mountain upon mountain, wide waste on waste--as the sun climbed to the zenith. Detail vanished, the Moor stretched s.h.i.+mmering to the horizon; only now and again from some lofty point of his pilgrimage did the traveller discover chance cultivation through a dip in the untamed region he traversed. Then to the far east and north, the map of fertile Devon billowed and rolled in one enormous misty mosaic,--billowed and rolled all opalescent under the dancing atmosphere and July haze, rolled and swept to the sky-line, where, huddled by perspective into the appearance of density, hung long silver tangles of infinitely remote and dazzling cloud against the blue.
From that distant sponge in the central waste, from Cranmere, mother of moorland rivers, the man presently noted wrinkles of pure gold trickling down a hillside two miles off. Here suns.h.i.+ne touched the river Taw, still an infant thing not far advanced on the journey from its fount; but the play of light upon the stream, invisible save for this finger of the sun, indicated to the solitary that he approached his destination.