Part 60 (1/2)
”No, dear love, not now. Give it to us all arter breakfast in the marnin'.”
”So I will then; an' take it right away to the auctioneer the minute after.”
He put his papers away in the drawer of the kitchen table and retired.
Uneasy sleep presently overtook him and long he tossed and turned, murmuring of his astonishment at his own powers with a pen.
His impetuosity carried the ruined man forward with sufficient speed over the dark bitterness of failure confessed, failure advertised, failure proclaimed in print throughout the confines of his little world.
He suffered much, and the wide-spread sympathy of friends and acquaintance proved no anodyne but rather the reverse. He hated to see eyes grow grave and mouths serious upon his entry; he yearned to turn his back against Chagford and resume the process of living in a new environment. Temporary troubles vexed him more than the supreme disaster of his failure. Mr. Bambridge made considerable alterations in his cherished lucubration; and when the advertis.e.m.e.nt appeared in print, it looked mean and filled but a paltry s.p.a.ce. People came up before the sale to examine the goods, and Phoebe, after two days of whispered colloquies upon her cherished property, could bear it no longer, and left Newtake with her own little daughter and little Timothy. The Rev.
Shorto-Champernowne himself called, stung Will into sheer madness, which he happily restrained, then purchased an old oak coffer for two pounds and ten s.h.i.+llings.
Miller Lyddon made no sign, and hard things were muttered against him and Billy Blee in the village. Virtuous indignation got hold upon the Chagford quidnuncs and with one consent they declared Mr. Lyddon to blame. Where was his Christian charity--that charity which should begin at home and so seldom does? This interest in others' affairs took shape on the night before the Newtake sale. Then certain of the baser sort displayed their anger in a practical form, and Mr. Blee was hustled one dark evening, had his hat knocked off, and suffered from a dead cat thrown by unseen hands. The reason for this outrage also reached him.
Then, chattering with indignation and alarm, he hurried home and acquainted Mr. Lyddon with the wild spirit abroad.
As for Blanchard, he roamed moodily about the scene of his lost battle.
In his pockets were journals setting forth the innumerable advantages of certain foreign regions that other men desired to people for their private ends. But Will was undecided, because all the prospects presented appeared to lead directly to fortune.
The day of the sale dawned fine and at the appointed hour a thin stream of market carts and foot pa.s.sengers wound towards Newtake from the village beneath and from a few outlying farms. Blanchard had gone up the adjacent hill; and lying there, not far distant from the granite cross, he reclined with his dog and watched the people. Him they did not see; but them he counted and found some sixty souls had been attracted by his advertis.e.m.e.nt. Men laughed and joked, and smoked; women shrugged their shoulders, peeped about and disparaged the goods. Here and there a purchaser took up his station beside a coveted lot. Some noticed that none of those most involved were present; others spread a rumour that Miller Lyddon designed to stop the sale at the last moment and buy in everything. But no such incident broke the course of proceedings.
Will, from his hiding-place in the heather, saw Mr. Bambridge drive up, noted the crowd follow him about the farm, like black flies, and felt himself a man at his own funeral. The hour was dark enough. In the ear of his mind he listened to the auctioneer's hammer, like a death-bell, beating away all that he possessed. He had worked and slaved through long years for this,--for the sympathy of Chagford, for the privilege of spending a thousand pounds, for barely enough money to carry himself abroad. A few more figures dotted the white road and turned into the open gate at Newtake. One shape, though too remote to recognise with certainty, put him in mind of Martin Grimbal, another might have been Sam Bonus. He mused upon the two men, so dissimilar, and his mind dwelt chiefly with the former. He found himself thinking how good it would be if Martin proposed to Chris again; that the antiquary had done so was the last idea in his thoughts.
Presently a brown figure crept through Newtake gate, hesitated a while, then began to climb the hill and approach Blanchard. s.h.i.+p recognised it before Will's eyes enabled him to do so, and the dog rose from a long rest, stretched, sniffed the air, then trotted off to the approaching newcomer.
It was Ted Chown; and in five minutes he reached his master with a letter. ”'Tis from Miller Lyddon,” he said. ”It comed by the auctioneer.
I thought you was up here.”
Blanchard took it without thanks, waited until the labourer had departed, then opened the letter with some slight curiosity.
He read a page of scriptural quotations and admonitions, then tore the communication in half with a curse and flung it from him. But presently his anger waned; he rose, picked up his father-in-law's note, and plodded through it to the end.
His first emotion was one of profound thanksgiving that he had done so.
Here, at the very end of the letter, was the practical significance of it.
”Powder fust, jam arter, by G.o.d!” cried Will aloud. Then a burst of riotous delight overwhelmed him. Once again in his darkest hour had Fortune turned the wheel. He shouted, put the letter into his breast pocket, rose up and strode off to Chagford as fast as his legs would carry him. He thought what his mother and wife would feel upon such news. Then he swore heartily--swore down blessings innumerable on Miller Lyddon, whistled to his dog, and so journeyed on.
The master of Monks Barton had reproved Will through long pages, cited Scripture at him, displayed his errors in a grim procession, then praised him for his prompt and manly conduct under the present catastrophe, declared that his character had much developed of recent years, and concluded by offering him five-and-thirty s.h.i.+llings a week at Monks Barton, with the only stipulation that himself, his wife, and the children should dwell at the farm.
Praise, of which he had received little enough for many years, was pure honey to Will. From the extremity of gloom and from a dark and settled enmity towards Mr. Lyddon, he pa.s.sed quicker than thought to an opposite condition of mind.
”'Tis a fairy story--awnly true!” he said to himself as he swept along.
Will came near choking when he thought of the miller. Here was a man that believed in him! Newtake tumbled clean out of his mind before this revelation of Mr. Lyddon's trust and confidence. He was full to the brainpan with Monks Barton. The name rang in his ears. Before he reached Chagford he had planned innumerable schemes for developing the valley farm, for improving, saving, increasing possibilities in a hundred directions. He pictured himself putting money into the miller's pocket.
He determined to bring that about if he had to work four-and-twenty hours a day to do it. He almost wished some profound peril would threaten his father-in-law, that he, at the cost of half his life, if need be, might rescue him and so pay a little of this great debt. s.h.i.+p, taking the cue from his master, as a dog will, leapt and barked before him. In the valley below, Phoebe wept on Mrs. Blanchard's bosom, and Chris said hard things of those in authority at Monks Barton; up aloft at Newtake, s.h.i.+llings rather than pounds changed hands and many a poor lot found no purchaser.
Pa.s.sing by a gate beneath the great hill of Middledown, Will saw two sportsmen with a keeper and a brace of terriers, emerge from the wild land above. They were come from rabbit shooting, as the attendant's heavy bag testified. They faced him as he pa.s.sed, and, recognising John Grimbal, Will did not look at his companion. At rest with the world just then, happy and contented to a degree he had not reached for years, the young farmer was in such amiable mood that he had given the devil ”good day” on slightest provocation. Now he was carried out of himself, and spoke upon a joyous inclination of the moment.
”Marnin' to 'e, Jan Grimbal! Glad to hear tell as your greyhound winned the cup down to Newton coursing.”
The other was surprised into a sort of grunt; then, as Will moved rapidly out of earshot, Grimbal's companion addressed him. It was Major Tremayne; and now the soldier regarded Blanchard's vanis.h.i.+ng figure with evident amazement, then spoke.