Part 53 (2/2)
Two days later a rick began to rise majestically at the corner of Blanchard's largest field, while round about it was gathered the human life of the farm. Phoebe, with her baby, sat on an old sheepskin rug in the shadow of the growing pile; little Tim rollicked unheeded with s.h.i.+p in the sweet gra.s.s, and clamoured from time to time for milk from a gla.s.s bottle; Will stood up aloft and received the hay from Chown's fork, while Mrs. Blanchard, busy with the ”skeiner” stuck into the side of the rick, wound stout ropes of rushes for the thatching.
Then it was that Will, glancing out upon the Moor, observed a string of gypsy folk making slow progress towards Chagford. Among the various Romany cavalcades which thus pa.s.sed Newtake in summer time this appeared not the least strange. Two ordinary caravans headed the procession. A man conducted each, a naked-footed child or two trotted beside them, and an elder boy led along three goats. The travelling homes were enc.u.mbered with osier-and cane-work, and following them came a little broken-down, open vehicle. This was drawn by two donkeys, harnessed tandem-fas.h.i.+on, and the chariot had been painted bright blue. A woman drove the concern, and in it appeared a knife-grinding machine and a basket of cackling poultry, while some tent-poles stuck out behind. Will laughed at this spectacle, and called his wife's attention to it, whereon Phoebe and Damaris went as far as the gate of the hayfield to win a nearer view.
The gypsies, however, had already pa.s.sed, but Mrs. Blanchard found time to observe the sky-blue carriage and shake her head at it.
”What gwaines-on! Theer's no master minds 'mongst them people nowadays,”
she said. ”Your faither wouldn't have let his folk make a show of themselves like that.”
”They 'm mostly chicken stealers nowadays,” declared Will; ”an' so surly as dogs if you tell 'em to go 'bout theer business.”
”Not to none o' your name--never,” declared his mother. ”No gypsy's gwaine to forget my husband in his son's time. Many gude qualities have they got, chiefly along o' living so much in the awpen air.”
”An' gude appet.i.tes for the same cause! Go after Tim, wan of 'e. He've trotted down the road half a mile, an' be runnin' arter that blue concern as if't was a circus. Theer! Blamed if that d.a.m.ned gal in the thing ban't stoppin' to let un catch up! Now he'm feared, an' have turned tail an' be coming back. 'Tis all right; s.h.i.+p be wi' un.”
Presently the greater of Will's two ricks approached completion, and all the business of thatch and spar gads and rush ropes began. At his mother's desire he wasted no time, and toiled on, long after his party had returned to Newtake; but with the dusk he made an end for that day, stood up, rested his back, and scanned the darkening scene before descending.
At eveningtide there had spread over the jagged western outlines of the Moor an orange-tawny sunset, whereon the solid ma.s.ses of the hills burnt into hazy gold, all fairy-bright, unreal, unsubstantial as a cloud-island above them, whose solitary and striated sh.o.r.e shone purple through molten fire.
Detail vanished from the Moor; dim and dimensionless it spread to the transparent splendour of the horizon, and its eternal attributes of great vastness, great loneliness, great silence reigned together unfretted by particulars. Gathering gloom diminished the wide glory of the sky, and slowly robbed the pageant of its colour. Then rose each hill and undulation in a different shade of night, and every alt.i.tude mingled into the outlines of its neighbour. Nocturnal mists, taking grey substance against the darkness of the lower lands, wound along the rivers, and defined the depths and ridges of the valleys. Moving waters, laden with a last waning gleam, glided from beneath these vapoury exhalations, and even trifling rivulets, now invisible save for chance splashes of light, lacked not mystery as they moved from darkness into darkness with a song. Stars twinkled above the dewy sleep of the earth, and there brooded over all things a prodigious peace, broken only by batrachian croakings from afar.
These phenomena Will Blanchard observed; then yellow candle fires twinkled from the dark ma.s.s of the farmhouse, and he descended in splendid weariness and strode to supper and to bed.
Yet not much sleep awaited the farmer, for soon after midnight a gentle patter of small stones at his window awakened him. Leaping from his bed and looking into the darkness he saw a vague figure that raised its hand and beckoned without words. Fear for the hay was Will's first emotion, but no indication of trouble appeared. Once he spoke, and as he did so the figure beckoned again, then approached the door. Blanchard went down to find a woman waiting for him, and her first whispered word made him start violently and drop the candle and matches that he carried. His ears were opened and he knew Chris without seeing her face.
”I be come back--back home-along, brother Will,” she said, very quietly.
”I looked for mother to home, but found she weern't theer. An' I be sorry to the heart for all the sorrow I've brought 'e both. But it had to be. Strange thoughts an' voices was in me when Clem went, an' I had to hide myself or drown myself--so I went.”
”G.o.d's gudeness! Lucky I be made o' strong stuff, else I might have thought 'e a ghost an' no less. Come in out the night, an' I'll light a candle. But speak soft. Us must break this very gentle to mother.”
”Say you'll forgive me, will 'e? Can 'e do it? If you knawed half you'd say 'yes.' I'm grawed a auld, cold-hearted woman, wi' a grey hair here an' theer a'ready.”
”So've I got wan an' another, tu, along o' worse sorrow than yours.
Leastways as bad as yourn. Forgive 'e? A thousand times, an' thank Heaven you'm livin'! Wheer ever have 'e bided? An' me an' Grimbal searched the South Hams, an' North, tu, inside out for 'e, an' he put notices in the papers--dozens of 'em.”
”Along with the gypsy folk for more 'n three year now. 'Twas the movin'
an' rovin', and the opening my eyes on new things that saved me from gwaine daft. Sometimes us coined through Chagford, an' then I'd shut my eyes tight an' lie in the van, so's not to see the things his eyes had seen--so's not to knaw when us pa.s.sed the cottage he lived in. But now I've got to feel I could come back again.”
”You might have writ to say how you was faring.”
”I didn't dare. You'd bin sure to find me, an' I didn't want 'e to then.
'Tis awver an' done, an' 'twas for the best.”
”You'm a woman, an' can say them silly words, an' think 'em true in your heart, I s'pose. 'For the best!' I caan't see much that happens for the best under my eyes. Will 'e have bite or sup?”
”No, nothin'. You get back to your bed. Us'll talk in the marnin'. I'll bide here. You an' Phoebe be well, an'--an' dear mother?”
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