Part 63 (1/2)
”Doan't go against a word in season, my dear sawl. 'Tis our duty to set each other right. That's what we'm put here for, I doubt. Many's the time you've given me gude advice, an' I've thanked 'e an' took it.”
Then he went for the spirits and mixed Mr. Blee a dose of more than usual strength.
”You'm the most biting user of language in Chagford, when you mind to speak sour,” declared Billy. ”If I thought you meant all you said, I'd go an' hang myself in the barn this instant moment. But you doan't.”
He snuffled and dried his scanty tears on a red handkerchief, then cheered up and drank his liquor.
”It do take all sorts to make a world, an' a man must act accordin' as he'm built,” continued Mr. Lyddon. ”Ban't no more use bein' angered wi'
a chap given to women than 'tis bein' angered wi' a fule, because he's a fule. What do 'e expect from a fule but folly, or a crab tree but useless fruit, or hot blood but the ways of it? This ban't to speak of Will Blanchard, though. 'Pon him we'll say no more till he've heard what's on folks' tongues. A maddening bwoy--I'll allow you that--an'
he've took a year or two off my life wan time an' another. 'Pears I ban't never to graw to love un as I would; an' yet I caan't quite help it when I sees his whole-hearted ferment to put money into my pocket; or when I hears him talk of nitrates an' the ways o' the world; or watches un playin' make-believe wi' the childer--himself the biggest cheel as ever laughed at fulishness or wanted spankin' an' putting in the corner.”
CHAPTER VIII
FLIGHT
On the following morning Miller Lyddon arose late, looked from his window and immediately observed the twain with whom his night thoughts had been concerned. Will stood at the gate smoking; small Timothy, and another lad, of slightly riper years, appeared close by. The children were fighting tooth and nail upon the owners.h.i.+p of a frog, and this reptile itself, fastened by the leg to a stick, listlessly watched the progress of the battle. Will likewise surveyed the scene with genial attention, and encouraged the particular little angry animal who had most claim upon his interest. Timothy kicked and struck out pretty straight, but fought in silence; the bigger boy screamed and howled and scratched.
”Vang into un, man, an' knock his ugly head off!” said Will encouragingly, and the babe to whom he spoke made renewed efforts as both combatants tumbled into the road, the devil in their little bright eyes, each puny muscle straining. Tim had his foe by the hair, and the elder was trying to bite his enemy's leg, when Martin Grimbal and Chris Blanchard approached from Rushford Bridge. They had met by chance, and Chris was coming to the farm while the antiquary had business elsewhere.
Now a scuffle in a cloud of dust arrested them and the woman, uninfluenced by considerations of sportsmans.h.i.+p, pounced upon Timothy, dragged him from his operations, and, turning to Will, spoke as Martin Grimbal had never heard her speak before.
”You, a grawed man, to stand theer an' see that gert wild beast of a bwoy tear this li'l wan like a savage tiger! Look at his sclowed faace all streaming wi' blood! 'S truth! I'd like to sarve you the same, an' I would for two pins! I'm ashamed of 'e!”
”He hit wi' his fistes like a gude un,” said Will, grinning; ”an' he'm made o' the right stuff, I'll swear. Couldn't have done better if he was my awn son. I be gwaine to give un a braave toy bimebye. You see t'other kid's faace come to-morrow!”
Martin Grimbal watched Chris fondle the gasping Timothy, clean his wounds, calm his panting heart; then, as though a superhuman voice whispered in his ear, her secret stood solved, and the truth of Timothy's parentage confronted him in a lightning flash of the soul. He looked at Chris as a man might gaze upon a spectre; he stared at her and through her into her past; he pieced each part of the puzzle to its kindred parts until all stood complete; he read ”mother” in her voice, in her caressing hands and gleaming eyes as surely as man reads morning in the first light of dawn; and he marvelled that a thing so clear and naked had been left to his discovery. The revelation shook him not a little, for he was familiar with the rumours concerning Tim's paternity, and had been disposed to believe them; but from the moment of the new thought's inception it gripped him, for he felt that the thing was true.
As lamps, so ordered that the light of each may fall on the fringe of darkness where its fellow fades, and thus complete a chain of illumination, so the present discovery, duly considered, was but one point of truth revealing others. It made clear much that had not been easy to understand, and the tremendous fact rose in his mind as a link in such a perfect sequence of evidence that doubt actually vanished before he had lost sight of Chris and pa.s.sed dumfounded upon his way.
Her lover's sudden death, her own disappearance, the child's advent at Newtake, and the woman's subsequent return--these main incidents connected a thousand others and explained what little mystery still obscured the position. He pursued his road and marvelled as he went how a tragedy so thinly veiled had thus escaped every eye. Within the story that Chris had told, this other story might be intercalated without convicting her of any spoken falsehood. Now he guessed at the reason why Timothy's mother had refused to marry him on his last proposal; then, thinking of the child, he knew Tim's father.
So he stood before the truth; and it filled his heart with some agony and some light. Examining his love in this revelation, he discovered strange things; and first, that it was love only that had opened his eyes and enabled him to solve the secret at all. n.o.body had made the discovery but himself, and he, of all men the least likely to come at any concern others desired to hide from him, had fathomed this great fact, had won it from the heart of unconscious Chris. His love widened and deepened into profound pity as he thought of all that her secret and the preservation of it must have meant; and tears dimmed his eyes as he pictured her life since her lover's pa.s.sing.
To him the discovery hurt Chris so little that for a time he underrated the effect of it upon other people. His affection rose clean above the unhappy fact, and it was some time before he began to appreciate the spectacle of Chris under the world's eye with the truth no longer hidden. Then a sense of his own helplessness overmastered him; he walked slowly, drew up at a gate and stood motionless, leaning over it. So silent did he stand, and so long, that a stoat hopped across the road within two yards of him.
He realised to the full that he was absolutely powerless. Chris alone must disperse the rumours fastening on her brother if they were to be dispersed. He knew that she would not suffer any great cloud of unjust censure to rest upon Will, and he saw what a bitter problem must be overwhelming her. n.o.body could help her and he, who knew, was as powerless as the rest. Then he asked himself if that last conviction was true. He probed the secret places of his mind to find an idea; he prayed for some chance spark or flash of genius to aid him before this trial; he mourned his own simple brains, so weak to aid him in this vital pa.s.s.
But of all living men the accidental discovery was most safe with him.
His heart went out to the secret mother, and he told himself that he would guard her mystery like gold.
It was strange in a nature so timorous that not once did a suspicion he had erred overtake him, and presently he wondered to observe how ancient this discovery of the motherhood of Chris had grown within his mind. It appeared as venerable as his own love for her. He yearned for power to aid; without conscious direction of his course he proceeded and strode along for hours. Then he ate a meal of bread and cheese at an inn and tramped forward once more upon a winding road towards the village of Zeal.
Through his uncertainty, athwart the deep perplexity of his mind, moved hope and a shadowed joy. Within him arose again the vision of happiness once pictured and prayed for, once revived, never quite banished to the grey limbo of ambitions beyond fulfilment. Now realities saddened the thought of it and brought ambition within a new environment less splendid than the old. But, despite clouds, hope shone fairly forth at last. So a planet, that the eye has followed at twilight and then lost a while, beams anew at dawn after lapse of days, and wheels in wide mazes upon some new background of the unchanging stars.
Elsewhere Mr. Lyddon braced himself to a painful duty, and had private speech with his son-in-law. Like a thunderbolt the circling suspicions fell on Will, and for a moment smothered his customary characteristics under sheer surprise.
The miller spoke nervously, and walked up and down with his eyes averted.
”Ban't no gert matter, I hope, an' I won't keep 'e from your work five minutes. You've awnly got to say 'No,' an' theer's an end of it so far as I'm concerned. 'Tis this: have 'e noticed heads close together now an' again when you pa.s.sed by of late?”