Chapter 10

AN UNHAPPY POET

That a man of many nerves, uncertain in temper and with no physical or temporal qualifications, should have won for himself the handsomest girl in Chagford caused the unreflective to marvel whenever they considered the point. But a better knowledge of Chris Blauchard had served in some measure to explain the wonder. Of all women, she was the least likely to do the thing predicted by experience. She had tremendous force of character for one scarce twenty years of age; indeed, she lived a superlative life, and the man, woman, child, or dog that came within radius of her existence presently formed a definite part of it, and was loved or detested according to circumstances. Neutrality she could not understand. If her interests were wide, her prejudices were strong. A certain unconscious high-handedness of manner made the circle of her friends small, but those who did love her were enthusiastic. Upon the whole, the number of those who liked her increased with years, and avowed enemies had no very definite reasons for aversion. Of her physical perfections none pretended two opinions; but the boys had always gone rather in fear of Chris, and the few men who had courted her during the past few years were all considerably her seniors. No real romance entered into this young woman's practical and bustling life until the advent of Clement Hicks, though she herself was the flame of hearts not a few before his coming.

Neurotic, sensual, as was Chris herself in a healthy fashion, a man of varying moods, and perhaps the richer for faint glimmerings of the real fire, Hicks yet found himself no better than an aimless, helpless child before the demands of reality. Since boyhood he had lived out of touch with his environment. As bee-keeper and sign-writer he made a naked living for himself and his mother, and achieved success sufficient to keep a cottage roof over their heads, but that was all. Books were his only friends; the old stones of the Moor, the lonely wastes, the plaintive music of a solitary bird were the companions of his happiest days. He had wit enough to torture half his waking hours with self-analysis, and to grit his teeth at his own impotence. But there was no strength, no virile grip to take his fate in his own hands and mould it like a man. He only mourned his disadvantages, and sometimes blamed destiny, sometimes a congenital infirmity of purpose, for the dreary course of his life. Nature alone could charm his sullen moods, and that not always. Now and again she spread over the face of his existence a transitory contentment and a larger hope; but the first contact with facts swept it away again. His higher aspirations were neither deep nor enduring, and yet the man's love of nature was lofty and just, and represented all the religion he had. No moral principles guided him, conscience never pricked. Nevertheless, thus far he had been a clean liver and an honest man. Vice, because it affronted his sense of the beautiful and usually led towards death, did not attract him. He lived too deep in the lap of Nature to be deceived by the pseudo-realism then making its appearance in literature, and he laughed without mirth at these pictures from city-bred pens at that time paraded as the whole truth of the countryman's life. The later school was not then above the horizon; the brief and filthy spectacle of those who dragged their necrosis, marasmus, and gangrene of body and mind across the stage of art and literature, and shrieked Decay, had not as yet appeared to make men sicken; the plague-spot, now near healed, had scarce showed the faintest angry symptom of coming ill. Hicks might under no circumstances have been drawn in that direction, for his morbidity was of a different description. Art to this man appeared only in what was wholesome; it even embraced a guide to conduct, for it led him directly to Nature, and Nature emphatically taught him the value of obedience, the punishment of weakness, the reward for excess and every form of self-indulgence. But a softness in him shrank from these aspects of the Mother. He tried vainly and feebly to dig some rule of life from her smiles alone, to read a sermon into her happy hours of high summer sunshine. Beauty was his dream; he possessed natural taste, and had cultivated the same without judgment. His intricate disposition and extreme sensitiveness frightened him away from much effort at self-expression; yet not a few trifling scraps and shreds of lyric poetry had fallen from his pen in high moments. These, when the mood changed, he read again, and found dead, and usually destroyed. He was more easily discouraged than a child who sets out to tell its parent a story, and is all silence and shamefaced blushes at the first whisper of laughter or semblance of a smile. The works of poets dazed him, disheartened him, and secret ambitions toward performance grew dimmer with every book he laid his hands on. Ambition to create began to die; the dream scenery of his ill-controlled mental life more and more seldom took shape of words on paper; and there came a time when thought grew wholly wordless for him; a mere personal pleasure, selfish, useless, unsubstantial as the glimmer of mirage over desert sands.

Into this futile life came Chris, like a breath of sweet air from off the deep sea. She lifted him clean out of his subjective existence, awoke a healthy, natural love, built on the ordinary emotions of humanity, galvanised self-respect and ambition into some activity, and presently inspired a pluck strong enough to propose marriage. That was two years ago; and the girl still loved this weakly soul with all her heart, found his language unlike that of any other man she had seen or heard, and even took some slight softening edge of culture into herself from him. Her common sense was absolutely powerless to probe even the crust of Clement's nature; but she was satisfied that his poetry must be a thing as marketable as that in printed books. Indeed, in an elated moment he had assured her that it was so. During the earlier stages of their attachment, she pestered him to write and sell his verses and make money, that their happiness might be hastened; while he, on the first budding of his love, and with the splendid assurance of its return, had promised all manner of things, and indeed undertaken to make poems that should be sent by post to the far-away place where they printed unknown poets, and paid them. Chris believed in Clement as a matter of course. His honey must at least be worth more to the world than that of his bees. Over her future husband she began at once to exercise the control of mistress and mother; and she loved him more dearly after they had been engaged a year than at the beginning of the contract. By that time she knew his disposition, and instead of displaying frantic impatience at it, as might have been predicted, her tolerance was extreme. She bore with Clem because she loved him with the full love proper to such a nature as her own; and, though she presently found herself powerless to modify his character in any practical degree, his gloomy and uneven mind never lessened the sturdy optimism of Chris herself, or her sure confidence that the future would unite them. Through her protracted engagement Mrs. Blanchard's daughter maintained a lively and sanguine cheerfulness. But seldom was it that she lost patience with the dreamer. Then her rare, indignant outbursts of commonplace and common sense, like a thunderstorm, sweetened the stagnant air of Clement's thoughts and awoke new, wholesome currents in his mind.

As a rule, on the occasion of their frequent country walks, Clem and Chris found personal problems and private interests sufficient for all conversation, but it happened that upon a Sunday in mid-December, as they passed through the valley of the Teign, where the two main streams of that river mingle at the foothills of the Moor, the subject of Will and Phoebe for a time at least filled their thoughts. The hour was clear and bright, yet somewhat cheerless. The sun had already set, from the standpoint of all life in the valley, and darkness, hastening out of the east, merged the traceries of a million naked boughs into a thickening network of misty grey. The river beneath these woods churned in winter flood, while clear against its raving one robin sang little tinkling litanies from the branch of an alder.

Chris stood upon Lee Bridge at the waters' meeting and threw scraps of wood into the river; Clem sat upon the parapet, smoked his pipe, and noted with a lingering delight the play of his sweetheart's lips as her fingers strained to snap a tough twig. Then the girl spoke, continuing a conversation already entered upon.

"Phoebe Lyddon's that weak in will. How far's such as her gwaine in life without some person else to lean upon?"

"If the ivy cannot find a tree it creeps along the ground, Chrissy."

"Ess, it do; or else falls headlong awver the first bank it comes to. Phoebe's so helpless a maiden as ever made a picksher. I mind her at school in the days when we was childer together. Purty as them china figures you might buy off Cheap Jack, an' just so tender. She'd come up to dinky gals no bigger 'n herself an' pull out her li'l handkercher an' ax 'em to be so kind as to blaw her nose for her! Now Will's gone, Lard knaws wheer she'll drift to."

"To John Grimbal. Any man could see that. Her father's set on it."

"Why don't Will write to her and keep her heart up and give her a little news? 'Twould be meat an' drink to her. Doan't matter 'bout mother an' me. We'll take your word for it that Will wants to keep his ways secret. But a sweetheart--'tis so differ'nt. I wouldn't stand it!"

"I know right well you wouldn't. Will has his own way. We won't criticise him. But there's a masterful man in the running--a prosperous, loud-voiced, bull-necked bully of a man, and one not accustomed to take 'no' for his answer. I'm afraid of John Grimbal in this matter. I've gone so far as to warn Will, but he writes back that he knows Phoebe."

"Jan Grimbal's a very differ'nt fashion of man to his brother; that I saw in a moment when they bided with us for a week, till the 'Three Crowns' could take 'em in. I hate Jan--hate him cruel; but I like Martin. He puts me in mind o' you, Clem, wi' his nice way of speech and tender quickness for women. But it's Phoebe we'm speaking of. I think you should write stern to Will an' frighten him. It ban't fair fightin', that poor, dear Phoebe 'gainst the will o' two strong men."

"Well, she's had paltry food for a lover since he went away. He's got certain ideas, and she'll hear direct when--but there, I must shut my mouth, for I swore by fantastic oaths to say nothing."

"He ought to write, whether or no. You tell Will that Jan Grimbal be about building a braave plaace up under Whiddon, and is looking for a wife at Monks Barton morning, noon, an' evening. That's like to waken him. An' tell him the miller's on t'other side, and clacking Jan Grimbal into Phoebe's ear steadier than the noise of his awn water-wheel."

"And she will grow weak, mark me. She sees that red-brick place rising out of the bare boughs, higher and higher, and knows that from floor to attics all may be hers if she likes to say the word. She hears great talk of drawing-rooms, and pictures, and pianos, and greenhouses full of rare flowers, and all the rest--why, just think of it!"

"Ban't many gals as could stand 'gainst a piano, I daresay."

"I only know one--mine."

Chris looked at him curiously.

"You 'm right. An' that, for some queer reason, puts me in mind of the other wan, Martin Grimbal. He was very pleasant to me."

"He's too late, thank God!"

"Ess, fay! An' if he'd comed afore 'e, Clem, he'd been tu early. Theer's awnly wan man in the gert world for me."

"My gypsy!"

"But I didn't mean that. He wouldn't look at me, not even if I was a free woman. 'T was of you I thought when I talked to Mr. Grimbal. He'm well-to-do, and be seekin' a house in the higher quarter under Middledown. You an' him have the same fancy for the auld stones. So you might grow into friends--eh, Clem? Couldn't it so fall out? He might serve to help--eh? You 'm two-and-thirty year auld next February, an' it do look as though they silly bees ban't gwaine to put money enough in the bank to spell a weddin' for us this thirty year to come. Theer's awnly your aunt, Widow Coomstock, as you can look to for a penny, and that tu doubtful to count on."

"Don't name her, Chris. Good Lord! poor drunken old thing, with that crowd of hungry relations waiting like vultures round a dying camel! Never think of her. Money she has, but I sha'n't see the colour of it, and I don't want to."

"Well, let that bide. Martin Grimbal's the man in my thought."

"What can I do there?"

"Doan't knaw, 'zactly; but things might fall out if he got to like you, being a bookish sort of man. Anyway, he's very willing to be friends, for that he told me. Doan't bear yourself like Lucifer afore him; but take the first chance to let him knaw your fortune's in need of mendin'."

"You say that! D' you think self-respect is dead in me?" he asked, half angry.

There was no visible life about them, so she put her arms round him.

"I ax for love of 'e, dearie, an' for want of 'e. Do 'e think waitin' 's sweeter for me than for you?"

Then he calmed down again, sighed, returned the caress, touched her, and stroked her breast and shoulder with sudden earthly light in his great eyes.

"It 's hard to wait."

"That's why I say doan't lose chances that may mean a weddin' for us, Clem. Theer 's so much hid in 'e, if awnly the way to bring it out could be found."

"A mine that won't pay working," he said bitterly, the passion fading out of eyes and voice. "I know there 's something hidden; I feel there 's a twist of brain that ought to rise above keeping bees and take me higher than honey-combs. Yet look at hard truth. The clods round me get enough by their sweat to keep wives and feed children. I'm only a penniless, backboneless, hand-to-mouth wretch, living on the work of laborious insects."

"If it ban't your awn fault, then whose be it, Clem?"

"The fault of Chance--to pack my build of brains into the skull of a pauper. This poor, unfinished abortion of a head-piece of mine only dreams dreams that it cannot even set on paper for others to see."

"You've given up trying whether it can or not, seemin'ly. I never hear tell of no verses now."

"What 's the good? But only last night, so it happens, I had a sort of a wild feeling to get something out of myself, and I scribbled for hours and hours and found a little morsel of a rhyme."

"Will 'e read it to me?"

He showed reluctance, but presently dragged a scrap of paper out of his, pocket. Not a small source of trouble was his sweetheart's criticism of his verses.

"It was the common sight of a pair of lovers walking tongue-tied, you know. I call it 'A Devon Courting.'"

He read the trifle slowly, with that grand, rolling sea-beat of an accent that Elizabeth once loved to hear on the lips of Raleigh and Drake.

"Birds gived awver singin', Flittermice was wingin', Mists lay on the meadows-- A purty sight to see. Down-long in the dimpsy, the dimpsy, the dimpsy, Down-long in the dimpsy Theer went a maid wi' me.

"Five gude mile o' walkin', Not wan word o' talkin', Then I axed a question And put the same to she. Up-long in the owl-light, the owl-light, the owl-light, Up-long in the owl-light, Theer corned my maid wi' me.

"But I wonder you write the common words, Clem--you who be so much tu clever to use 'em."

"The words are well enough. They were not common once."

"Well, you knaw best. Could 'e sell such a li'l auld funny thing as that for money?"

He shook his head.

"No; it was only the toil of making it seemed good. It is worthless."

"An' to think how long it took 'e! If you'd awnly put the time into big-fashioned verses full of the high words you've got. But you knaw best. Did 'e hear anything of them rhymes 'bout the auld days you sent to Lunnon?"

"They sent them back again. I told you 't was wasting three stamps. It 's not for me, I know it. The world is full of dumb singers. Maybe I haven't got even a pinch of the fire that _must_ break through and show its flame, no matter what mountains the earth tumbles on it. God knows I burn hot enough sometimes with great thoughts and wild longings for love and for sweeter life and for you; but my fires--whether they are soul-fires or body-fires--only burn my heart out."

She sighed and squeezed his hand, understanding little enough of what he said.

"We must be patient. 'T is a solid thing, patience. I'm puttin' by pence; but it 's so plaguy little a gal can earn, best o' times and with the best will."

"If I could only write the things I think! But they vanish before pen and paper and the need of words, as the mists of the night vanish before the hard, searching sun. I am ignorant of how to use words; and those in the world who might help me will never know of me. As for those around about, they reckon me three parts fool, with just a little gift of re-writing names over their dirty shop-fronts."

"Yet it 's money. What did 'e get for that butivul fox wi' the goose in his mouth you painted 'pon Mr. Lamacraft's sign to Sticklepath?"

"Ten shillings."

"That's solid money."

"It isn't now. I bought a book with it--a book of lies."

Chris was going to speak, but changed her mind and sighed instead.

"Well, as our affairs be speeding so poorly, we'd best to do some gude deed an' look after this other coil. You must let Will knaw what 's doin' by letter this very night. 'T is awnly fair, you being set in trust for him."

"Strange, these Grimbal brothers," mused Clement, as the lovers proceeded in the direction of Chagford. "They come home with everything on God's earth that men might desire to win happiness, and, by the look of it, each marks his home-coming by falling in love with one he can't have."

"Shaws the fairness of things, Clem; how the poor may chance to have what the rich caan't buy; so all look to stand equal."

"Fairness, you call it? The damned, cynical irony of this whole passion-driven puppet-show--that's what it shows! The man who is loved cannot marry the woman he loves lest they both starve; the man who can give a woman half the world is loathed for his pains. Not that he 's to be pitied like the pauper, for if you can't buy love you can buy women, and the wise ones know how to manufacture a very lasting substitute for the real thing."

"You talk that black and bitter as though you was deep-read in all the wickedness of the world," said Chris; "yet I knaw no man can say sweeter things than you sometimes."

"Talk! It 's all talk with me--all snarling and railing and whining at hard facts, like a viper wasting its venom on steel. I'm sick of myself--weary of the old, stale round of my thoughts. Where can I wash and be clean? Chrissy, for God's sake, tell me."

"Put your hope in the Spring," she said, "an' be busy for Will."

In reality, with the approach of Christmas, affairs between Phoebe and the elder Grimbal had reached a point far in advance of that which Clement and Chris were concerned with. For more than three months, and under a steadily increasing weight of opposition, Miller Lyddon's daughter fought without shadow of yielding. Then came a time when the calm but determined iteration of her father's desires and the sledge-hammer love-making of John Grimbal began to leave an impression. Even then her love for Will was bright and strong, but her sense of helplessness fretted her nerves and temper, and her sweetheart's laconic messages, through the medium of another man, were sorry comfort in this hour of tribulation. With some reason she felt slighted. Neither considering Will's peculiarities, nor suspecting that his silence was only, the result of a whim or project, she began to resent it. Then John Grimbal caught her in a dangerous mood. Once she wavered, and he had the wisdom to leave her at the moment of victory. But on the next occasion of their meeting, he took good care to keep the advantage he had gained. Conscious of his own honest and generous intentions, Grimbal went on his way. The subtler manifestations of Phoebe's real attitude towards him escaped his observation; her reluctance he set down as resulting from the dying shadow of affection for Will Blanchard. That she would be very happy and proud and prosperous in the position of his wife, the lover was absolutely assured. He pursued her with the greater determination, in that he believed he was saving her from herself. What were some few months of vague uncertainty and girlish tears compared with a lifetime of prosperity and solid happiness? John Grimbal made Phoebe handsome presents of pretty and costly things after the first great victory. He pushed his advantage with tremendous vigour. His great face seemed reflected in Phoebe's eyes when she slept as when she woke; his voice was never out of her ears. Weary, hopeless, worn out, she prayed sometimes for strength of purpose. But it was a trait denied to her character and not to be bestowed at a breath. Her stability of defence, even as it stood, was remarkable and beyond expectation. Then the sure climax rolled in upon poor Phoebe. Twice she sought Clement Hicks with purpose to send an urgent message; on each occasion accident prevented a meeting; her father was always smiling and droning his desires into her ear; John Grimbal haunted her. His good-nature and kindness were hard to bear; his patience made her frantic. So the investment drew to its conclusion and the barriers crumbled, for the forces besieged were too weak and worn to restore them; while a last circumstance brought victory to the stronger and proclaimed the final overthrow.

This culmination resulted from a visit to the spiritual head of Phoebe's dwelling-place. The Rev. James Shorto-Champernowne, Vicar of Chagford, made an appointment to discuss the position with Mr. Lyddon and his daughter. A sportsman of the old type, and a cleric of rare reputation for good sense and fairness to high and low, was Mr. Shorto-Champernowne, but it happened that his more tender emotions had been buried with a young wife these forty years, and children he had none. Nevertheless, taking the standpoint of parental discipline, he held Phoebe's alleged engagement a vain thing, not to be considered seriously. Moreover, he knew of Will's lapses in the past; and that was fatal.

"My child, have little doubt that both religion and duty point in one direction and with no faltering hands," he said, in his stately way. "Communicate with the young man, inform him that conversation with myself has taken place; then he can hardly maintain an attitude of doubt, either to the exalted convictions that have led to your decision, or to the propriety of it. And, further, do not omit an opportunity of well-doing, but conclude your letter with a word of counsel. Pray him to seek a Guide to his future life, the only Guide able to lead him aright. I mean his Mother Church. No man who turns his back upon her can be either virtuous or happy. I mourned his defection from our choir some years ago. You see I forget nobody. My eyes are everywhere, as they ought to be. Would that he could be whipped back to the House of God--with scorpions, if necessary! There is a cowardice, a lack of sportsmanlike feeling, if I may so express it, in these fallings away from the Church of our fathers. It denotes a failing of intellect amid the centres of human activity. There is a blight of unbelief abroad--a nebulous, pestilential rationalism. Acquaint him with these facts; they may serve to re-establish one whose temperament must be regarded as abnormal in the light of his great eccentricity of action. Now farewell, and God be with you."

The rotund, grey-whiskered clergyman waved his hand; Miller Lyddon and his daughter left the vicarage; while both heard, as it seemed, his studied phrases and sonorous voice rolling after them all the way home. But poor Phoebe felt that the main issues as to conscience were now only too clear; her last anchor was wrenched from its hold, and that night, through a mist of unhappy tears, she succumbed, promised to marry John Grimbal and be queen of the red castle now rising under Cranbrook's distant heights.

That we have dealt too scantily with her tragic experiences may be suspected; but the sequel will serve to show how these circumstances demand no greater elaboration than has been accorded to them.