Part 53 (1/2)
”Like him--in a way, but more like you,” she answered; ”more like you than your awn was--terrible straange that--the living daps o' Will!
Ban't it?”
Damaris regarded her son and then the child.
”He be like--very,” she admitted. ”I see him strong. An' to think he found the bwoy 'pon that identical spot wheer he fust drawed breath himself!”
”'Tis a thing of hidden meaning,” declared Will. ”An' he looked at me kindly fust he seed me; 'twas awnly hunger made un shout--not no fear o'
me. My heart warmed to un as I told 'e. An' to come this day!”
Phoebe had taken the child, and was looking over its body in a half-dazed fas.h.i.+on for the baby marks she knew. Silently she completed the survey, but there was neither caress in her fingers nor softness in her eyes. Presently she put the child back on Mrs. Blanchard's lap and spoke, still regarding it with a sort of dull, almost vindictive astonishment.
”Terrible coorious! Ban't no child as ever I seed or heard tell of; an'
nothin' of my dead lamb 'bout it, now I scans closer. But so like to Will! G.o.d! I can see un lookin' out o' its baaby eyes!”
BOOK IV
HIS SECRET
CHAPTER I
A WANDERER RETURNS
Ripe hay swelled in many a silver-russet billow, all brightened by the warm red of sorrel under suns.h.i.+ne. When the wind blew, ripples raced over the bending gra.s.ses, and from their midst shone out mauve scabious and flashed occasional poppies. The hot July air trembled agleam with s.h.i.+ning insects, and drowsily over the hayfield, punctuated by stridulation of innumerable gra.s.shoppers, there throbbed one sustained murmur, like the remote and mellow music of wood and strings. A lark still sang, and the swallows, whose full-fledged young thrust open beaks from the nests under Newtake eaves, skimmed and twittered above the gra.s.s lands, or sometimes dipped a purple wing in the still water where the irises grew.
Blanchard and young Ted Chown had set about their annual labour of saving the hay, and now a rhythmic breathing of two scythes and merry clink of whetstones against steel sounded afar on the sleepy summer air.
The familiar music came to Phoebe's ear where she sat at an open kitchen window of Newtake. Her custom was at times of hay harvest to a.s.sist in the drying of the gra.s.s, and few women handled a fork better; but there had recently reached the farm an infant girl, and the mother had plenty to do without seeking beyond her cradle.
Phoebe made no demur about receiving Will's little foundling of the hut-circle. His heart's desire was usually her amibition also, and though Timothy, as the child had been called, could boast no mother's love, yet Phoebe proved a kind nurse, and only abated her attention upon the arrival of her own daughter. Then, as time softened the little mound in Chagford churchyard with young green, so before another baby did the mother's bereavement soften, sink deeper into memory, revive at longer intervals to conjure tears. Her character, as has been indicated, admitted of no supreme sustained sorrow. Suffer she did, and fiery was her agony; but another child brought occupation and new love; while her husband, after the first sentimental outburst of affection over the infant he had found at Metherill, settled into an enduring regard for him, a.s.sociated him, by some mental process impossible of explanation, with his own lost one, and took an interest, blended of many curious emotions, in the child.
Drying hay soon filled the air with a pleasant savour, and stretched out grey-green ribbons along the emerald of the shorn meadows. Chown snuffled and sweated and sneezed, for the pollen always gave him hay fever; his master daily worked like a giant from dawn till the owl-light, drank gallons of cider, and performed wonders with the scythe. A great hay crop gladdened the moormen, and Will, always intoxicated by a little fair fortune, talked much of his husbandry, already calculated the value of the aftermath, and reckoned what number of beasts he might feed next winter.
”'Most looks as if I'd got a special gift wi' hay,” he said to his mother on one occasion. She had let her cottage to holiday folk, and was spending a month on the Moor.
Mrs. Blanchard surveyed the scene from under her sunbonnet and nodded.
”Spare no trouble, no trouble, an' have it stacked come Sat.u.r.day.
Theer'll be thunder an' gert rains after this heat. Be the rushes ready for thatchin' of it?”
”Not yet; but that's not to say I've forgot.”
”I'll cut some for 'e myself come the cool of the evenin'. An' you can send Ted with the cart to gather 'em up.”
”No, no, mother. I'll make time to-morrow.”
”'Twill be gude to me, an' like auld days, when I was a li'l maid. You sharp the sickle an' fetch the skeiner out, tu, for I was a quick hand at bindin' ropes o' rushes, an' have made many a yard of 'em in my time.”
Then she withdrew from the tremendous suns.h.i.+ne, and Will, now handling a rake, proceeded with his task.