Chapter 20

NEWTAKE FARM

Clement Hicks told the truth when he said that Mrs. Blanchard fell something short of her usual sound judgment and sagacity in the matter of Will's enterprise. The home of childhood is often apt enough to exercise magic, far-reaching attraction, and even influence a mind for the most part unsentimental. To Damaris the thought of her son winning his living where her father had done so was pleasant and in accordance with eternal fitness. Not without emotion did she accompany Will to Newtake Farm while yet the proposed bargain awaited completion; not without strange awakenings in the dormant recesses of her memory did Will's mother pass and pass again through the scenes of her earliest days. From the three stone steps, or "upping stock," at the farmhouse door, whereat a thousand times she had seen her father mount his horse, to the environment of the farmyard; from the strange, winding staircase of solid granite that connected upper and lower storeys, to each mean chamber in Newtake, did Mrs. Blanchard's eyes roam thoughtfully amid the ghosts of recollections. Her girl's life returned and the occasional bright days gleamed forth again, vivid by contrast with the prevailing grey. So active became thought that to relieve her mind she spoke to Will.

"The li'l chamber over the door was mine," she said; "an' your poor uncle had the next. I can just mind him, allus at his books, to his faither's pride. Then he went away to Newton to join some lawyer body an' larn his business. An' I mind the two small maids as was my elder sisters and comed betwixt me an' Joel. Both died--like candles blawed out roughly by the wind. They wasn't made o' the stuff to stand Dartymoor winters."

She paused for a few moments, then proceeded:

"Theer, to west of the yard, is a croft as had corn in it wan year, though 'tis permanent grass now, seemin'ly. Your faither corned through theer like a snake by night more'n wance; an' oftentimes I crept down house, shivering wi' fear an' love, to meet him under moonlight while the auld folks slept. Tim he'd grawed to a power wi' the gypsy people by that time; but faither was allus hard against un. He hated wanderers in tents or 'pon wheels, or even sea-gwaine sailor-men--he carried it that far. Then comed a peep o' day when Tim's bonny yellow caravan 'peared around the corner of that windin' road what goes all across the Moor. At the first stirring of light, I was ready an' skipped out; an', to this hour, I mind the last thing as touched me kindly was the red tongue of the sheep-dog. He ran a mile after the van, unhappy-like; then Tim ordered un away, an' he stood in the white road an' held up his paw an' axed a question as plain as a human. So Tim hit un hard wi' a gert stone, an' he yelped an' gived me up for lost, an' bolted home wi' his tail between his legs an' his eye thrawed back full of sadness over his shoulder. Ess fay! I can see the dust puffin' up under his pads in the grey dawn so clear as I can see you."

Again she stopped, but only for breath.

"They never answered my writings. Faither wouldn't an' mother didn't dare. But when I was near my time, Timothy, reckoning they'd yield then if ever, arranged to be in Chagford when I should be brought to bed. Yet 'twas ordained differ'nt, an' the roundy-poundy, wheer the caravan was drawed up when the moment corned, be just round theer on Metherill hill, as you knaws. So it happened right under the very walls of Newtake. In the stone circle you comed; an' by night arterwards, sweatin' for terror, your gran'mother, as had heard tell of it, sneaked from Newtake to kiss me an' press you to her body. Faither never knawed till long arter; an' though mother used to say she heard un forgive me on his death-bed, 'twas her awn pious wish echoing in her awn ears I reckon. But that's all awver an' done."

Mrs. Blanchard now sank into silent perambulation of the deserted chambers. In the kitchen the whitewash was grimy, the ceiling and windows unclean. Ashes of a peat fire still lay upon the cracked hearthstone, and a pair of worn-out boots, left by a tramp or the last tenant, stood on the window-sill. Dust and filth were everywhere, but no indication of dampness or decay.

"A proper auld rogue's-roost of dirt 'tis just now," said Will; "but a few pound spent in the right way will do a deal for it."

"An' soap an' water more," declared Mrs. Blanchard, escaping from her reverie. "What's to be spent landlord must spend," she continued. "A little whitewash, and some plaster to fill them holes wheer woodwork's poking through the ceiling, an' you'll be vitty again. 'Tis lonesome-like now, along o' being deserted, an' you'll hear the rats galloping an' gallyarding by night, but 'twill soon be all it was again--a dear li'l auld plaace, sure enough!"

She eyed the desolation affectionately.

"Theer's money in it, any way, for what wan man can do another can."

"Aye, I hope so, I b'lieve 'tis so; but you'll have to live hard, an' work hard, an' be hard, if you wants to prosper here. Your gran'faither stood to the work like a giant, an' the sharpest-fashion weather hurt him no worse than if he'd been a granite tor. Steel-built to his heart's core, an' needed to be."

"An' I be a stern, far-seein' man, same as him. 'Tis generally knawn I'm no fule; and my heart's grawed hard, tu of late days, along wi' the troubles life's brought."

She shook her head.

"You'm your faither's son, not your gran'faither's. Tim was flesh an' blood, same as you. T'other was stone. Stone's best, when you've got to fight wi' stone; but if flesh an' blood suffers more, it joys more, tu. I wouldn't have 'e differ'nt--not to them as loves 'e, any way."

"I sha'n't change; an' if I did to all the world else, 'twouldn't be to you, mother. You knaw that, I reckon. I'm hopeful; I'm more; I'm 'bout as certain of fair fortune as a man can be. Venwell rights[6] be mine, and theer's no better moorland grazing than round these paarts. The farm-land looks a bit foul, along o' being let go to rack, but us'll soon have that clean again, an' some gude stuff into it, tu. My awn work'll be staring me in the faace before summer; an' by the time Phoebe do come to be mistress, nobody'll knaw Newtake, I promise 'e."

[6] _Venwell rights_ = Venville rights.

Mrs. Blanchard viewed with some uneasiness the spectacle of valley-born and valley-nurtured Phoebe taking up her abode on the high lands. For herself she loved them well, and the Moor possessed no terrors for her; but she had wit to guess that her daughter-in-law would think and feel differently. Indeed, neither woman nor man might reasonably be blamed for viewing the farm without delight when first brought within the radius of its influence.

Newtake stood, a squat and unlovely erection, under a tar-pitched roof of slate. Its stone walls were coated with a stucco composition, which included tallow as an ingredient and ensured remarkable warmth and dryness. Before its face there stretched a winding road of white flint, that climbed from the village, five miles distant, and soon vanished amid the undulations of the hills; while, opposite, steep heathery slopes and grassy coombs ascended abruptly to masses of weathered granite; and at the rear a hillside, whereon Metherill's scattered hut-circles made incursions even into the fields of the farm, fell to the banks of Southern Teign where she babbled between banks of brake-fern and heather. Swelling and sinking solemnly along the sky, Dartmoor surrounded Newtake. At the entrance of the yard stood a broken five-barred gate between twin masses of granite; then appeared a ragged outbuilding or two, with roofs of lichen-covered slate; and upon one side, in a row, grew three sycamores, bent out of all uprightness by years of western winds, and coated as to their trunks with grey lichen. Behind a cowyard of shattered stone pavement and cracked mud stood the farm itself, and around it extended the fields belonging thereto. They were six or seven in number, and embraced some five-and-fifty acres of land, mostly indifferent meadow.

Seen from the winding road, or from the bird's-eye elevation of the adjacent tor, Newtake, with its mean ship-pens and sties, outbuildings and little crofts, all huddled together, poverty-stricken, time-fretted, wind-worn, and sad of colour, appeared a mere forlorn fragment of civilisation left derelict upon the savage bosom of an untamable land. It might have represented some forsaken, night-foundered abode of men, torn by earthquake or magic spell from a region wholly different, and dropped and stranded here. It sulked solitary, remote, and forgotten; its black roof frowned over its windows, and green tears, dribbling down its walls in time past, had left their traces, as though even spring sunlight was powerless to eradicate the black memories of winters past, or soften the bitter certainty of others yet to come. The fields, snatched from the Moor in time long past, now showed a desire to return to their wild mother again. The bars of cultivation were broken and the land struggled to escape. Scabious would presently throw a mauve pallor over more than one meadow croft; in another, waters rose and rushes and yellow iris flourished and defied husbandry; elsewhere stubble, left unploughed by the last defeated farmer, gleamed silver-grey through a growth of weeds; while at every point the Moor thrust forward hands laden with briar and heather. They surmounted the low stone walls and fed and flourished upon the clods and peat that crowned them. Nature waved early gold of the greater furze in the van of her oncoming, and sent her wild winds to sprinkle croft and hay-field, ploughed land and potato patch, with thistledown and the seeds of the knapweed and rattle and bracken fern. These heathen things and a thousand others, in all the early vigour of spring, rose triumphant above the meek cultivation. They trampled it, strangled it, choked it, and maddened the agriculturist by their sturdy and stubborn persistence. A forlorn, pathetic blot upon the land of the mist was Newtake, seen even under conditions of sunlight and fair weather; but beheld beneath autumnal rains, observed at seasons of deep snow or in the dead waste of frozen winters, its apparition rendered the most heavy-hearted less sad before the discovery that there existed a human abode more hateful, a human outlook more oppressive, than their own.

To-day heavy moorland vapours wrapped Newtake in ghostly raiment, yet no forlorn emotions clouded the survey of those who now wandered about the lifeless farm. In the mind of one, here retracing the course of her maidenhood, this scene, if sad, was beautiful. The sycamores, whose brown spikes had burst into green on a low bough or two, were the trees she loved best in the world; the naked field on the hillside, wherein a great stone ring shone grey through the silver arms of the mist, represented the theatre of her life's romance. There she had stolen oftentimes to her lover, and in another such, not far distant, had her son been born. Thoughts of little sisters rose in the naked kitchen, with the memory of a flat-breasted, wild-eyed mother, who did man's work; of a father, who spoke seldom and never twice--a father whose heavy foot upon the threshold sent his children scuttling like rabbits to hidden lairs and dens. She remembered the dogs; the bright gun-barrel above the chimney-piece; the steam of clothes hung to dry after many a soaking in "soft" weather; the reek of the peat; the brown eyes and steaming nostrils of the bullocks, that sometimes looked through the kitchen window in icy winter twilights, as though they would willingly change their byres for the warmth within.

Mrs. Blanchard enjoyed the thought that her son should reanimate these scenes of her own childhood; and he, burning with energy and zeal, and not dead to his own significance as a man of money, saw promises of prosperity on either hand. It lay with him, he told his heart, to win smiling fatness from this hungry region. Right well he knew how it came about that those who had preceded him had failed, missed their opportunities, fooled themselves, and flung away their chances. Evidences of their ignorance stared at him from the curtains of the mist, but he knew better; he was a man who had thought a bit in his time and had his head screwed on the right way, thank God. These facts he poured into his mother's ear, and she smiled thoughtfully, noted the changes time had wrought, and indicated to him those things the landlord might reasonably be expected to do before Will should sign and seal.

The survey ended, her son helped Damaris into a little market-cart, which he had bought for her upon coming into his fortune. A staid pony, also his purchase, completed the equipage, and presently Mrs. Blanchard drove comfortably away; while Will, who yet proposed to tramp, for the twentieth time, each acre of Newtake land, watched her depart, then turned to continue his researches. A world of thought rested on his brown face. Arrived at each little field, he licked his pencil, and made notes in a massive new pocketbook. He strode along like a conqueror of kingdoms, frowned and scratched his curly head as problem after problem rose, smiled when he solved them, and entered the solution in his book. For the wide world was full of young green, and this sanguine youth soared lark-high in soul under his happy circumstances. Will breathed out kindness to all mankind just at present, and now before that approaching welfare he saw writ largely in beggarly Newtake, before the rosy dawn which Hope spread over this cemetery of other men's dead aspirations, he felt his heart swell to the world. Two clouds only darkened his horizon then. One was the necessity of beginning the new life without his life's partner; while the other, formerly tremendous enough, had long since shrunk to a shadow on the horizon of the past. His secret still remained, but that circumstance was too remote to shadow the new enterprise. It existed, however, and its recurrence wove occasional gloomy patterns into the web of Will Blanchard's thought.