Chapter 21

OVER A RIDING-WHIP

Will completed his survey and already saw, in his mind's eye, a brave masque of autumn gold spreading above the lean lands of Newtake. From this spectacle to that of garnered harvests and great gleaming stacks bursting with fatness the transition was natural and easy. He pictured kine in the farmyard, many sheep upon the hills, and Phoebe with such geese, ducks, and turkeys as should make her quite forget the poultry of Monks Barton. Then, having built castles in the air until his imagination was exhausted, Will shut the outer gate with the touch of possession, turned a moment to see how Newtake looked from the roadway, found only the shadow of it looming through the mist, and so departed, whistling and slapping his gaiters with an ash sapling.

It happened that beside a gate which closed the moorland precincts to prevent cattle from wandering, a horseman stood, and as the pedestrian passed him in the gathering gloaming, he dropped his hunting-stock while making an effort to open the gate without dismounting.

"Bide wheer you be!" said Will; "I'll pick un up an' ope the gate for 'e."

He did so and handed the whip back to its owner. Then each recognised the other, and there was a moment of silence.

"'Tis you, Jan Grimbal, is it?" asked the younger. "I didn't knaw 'e in the dimpsy light."

He hesitated, and his words when they came halted somewhat, but his meaning was evident.

"I'm glad you'm back to home. I'll forget all what's gone, if you will. 'Twas give an' take, I s'pose. I took my awn anyway, an' you comed near killing me for't, so we'm upsides now, eh? We'm men o' the world likewise. So--so shall us shake hands an' let bygones be, Jan Grimbal?"

He half raised his hand, and looked up, with a smile at the corner of his lip ready to jump into life if the rider should accept his friendship. But Grimbal's response was otherwise.

To say little goodness dwelt in this man had been untrue, but recent events and the first shattering reverse that life brought him proved sufficient to sour his very soul and eclipse a sun which aforetime shone with great geniality because unclouded. Fate hits such men particularly hard when her delayed blow falls. Existences long attuned to success and level fortune; lives which have passed through five-and-thirty years of their allotted span without much sorrow, without sharp thorns in the flesh, without those carking, gnawing trials of mind and body which Time stores up for all humanity--such feel disaster when it does reach them with a bitterness unknown by those who have been in misery's school from youth. Poverty does not bite the poor as it bites him who has known riches and afterwards fights destitution; feeble physical circumstances do not crush the congenital invalid, but they often come near to break the heart of a man who, until their black advent, has known nothing but rude health; great reverses in the vital issues of life and fortune fail to obliterate one who knows their faces of old, but the first enemy's cannon on Time's road must ever bring ugly shock to him who has advanced far and happily without meeting any such thing.

Grimbal's existence had been of a rough-and-ready sort shone over by success. Philosophy he lacked, for life had never turned his mind that way; religion was likewise absent from him; and his recent tremendous disappointment thus thundered upon a mind devoid of any machinery to resist it. The possession of Phoebe Lyddon had come to be an accepted and accomplished fact; he chose her for his own, to share the good things Fortune had showered into his lap--to share them and be a crowning glory of them. The overthrow of this scheme at the moment of realisation upset his estimate of life in general and set him adrift and rudderless, in the hurricane of his first great reverse. Of selfish temperament, and doubly so by the accident of consistent success, the wintry wind of this calamity slew and then swept John Grimbal's common sense before it, like a dead leaf. All that was worst in him rose to the top upon his trouble, and since Will's marriage the bad had been winning on the good and thrusting it deeper and deeper out of sight or immediate possibility of recovery. At all times John Grimbal's inferior characteristics were most prominently displayed, and superficial students of character usually rated him lower than others really worse than himself, but who had wit to parade their best traits. Now, however, he rode and strode the country a mere scowling ruffian, with his uppermost emotions still stamped on his face. The calamity also bred an unsuspected sensitiveness in him, and he smarted often under the reflection of what others must be thinking. His capability towards vindictiveness proved very considerable. Formerly his anger against his fellow-men had been as a thunder-storm, tremendous but brief in duration; now, before this bolt of his own forging, a steady, malignant activity germinated and spread through the whole tissue of his mind.

Those distractions open to a man of Grimbal's calibre presently blunted the edge of his loss, and successful developments of business also served to occupy him during the visit he paid to Africa; but no interests as yet had arisen to obscure or dull his hatred of Will Blanchard. The original blaze of rage sank to a steady, abiding fire, less obviously tremendous than that first conflagration, but in reality hotter. In a nature unsubtle, revenge will not flourish as a grand passion for any length of time. It must reach its outlet quickly and attain to its ambition without overmuch delay, else it shrivels and withers to a mere stubborn, perhaps lifelong, enmity--a dwarfish, mulish thing, devoid of any tragic splendour. But up to the point that John Grimbal had reached as yet, his character, though commonplace in most affairs, had unexpectedly quickened to a condition quite profound where his revenge was concerned.

He still cherished the certainty of a crushing retaliation. He was glad he had not done Blanchard any lifelong injury; he was glad the man yet lived for time and him to busy themselves about; he was even glad (and herein appeared the unsuspected subtlety) that Will had prospered and come by a little show of fortune. Half unconsciously he hoped for the boy something of his own experiences, and had determined with himself--in a spirit very melodramatic but perfectly sincere at present--to ruin his enemy if patience and determination could accomplish it.

In this mood, with his wrongs sharpened by return to Chagford and his purposes red-hot, John Grimbal now ran against his dearest foe, received the horsewhip from him, and listened to his offer of peace.

He still kept silence and Will lowered the half-lifted arm and spoke again.

"As you please. I can bide very easy without your gude word."

"That's well, then," said the other, in his big voice, as his hands tightened. "We've met again. I'm glad I didn't break your neck, for your heart's left to break, and by the living God I'll break it! I can wait. I'm older than you, but young enough. Remember, I'll run you down sooner or later. I've hunted most things, and men aren't the cleverest beasts and you're not the cleverest man I've bested in my time. You beat me--I know it--but it would have been better for you if you hadn't been born. There's the truth for your country ears, you damned young hound. I'll fight fair and I'll fight to the finish. Sport--that's what it is. The birds and the beasts and the fish have their close time; but there won't be any close time for you, not while I can think and work against you. So now you know. D' you hear me?"

"Ess," said Will, meeting the other's fierce eyes; "I hear 'e, an' so might the dead in Chagford buryin'-ground. You hollers loud enough. I ban't 'feared of nothing a hatch-mouthed,[7] crooked-minded man, same as you be, can do. An' if I'm a hound, you 'm a dirty red fox, an' everybody knaws who comes out top when they meet. Steal my gal, would 'e? Gaw your ways, an' mend your ways, an' swallow your bile. I doan't care a flicker o' wildfire for 'e!"

[7] _Hatch-mouthed_ = foul mouthed; profane.

John Grimbal heard only the beginning of this speech, for he turned his back on Will and rode away while the younger man still shouted after him. Blanchard was in a rage, and would have liked to make a third trial of strength with his enemy on the spot, but the rider vanished and Will quickly cooled as he went down the hill to Chagford. The remembrance of this interview, for all his scorn, chilled him when he reflected on John Grimbal's threats. He feared nothing indeed, but here was another cloud, and a black one, blown violently back from below the horizon of his life to the very zenith. Malignity of this type was strange to him and differed widely from the petty bickerings, jealousies, and strifes of ordinary country existence. It discouraged him to feel in his hour of universal contentment that a strong, bitter foe would now be at hand, forever watching to bring ruin on him at the first opportunity. As he walked home he asked himself how he should feel and act in Grimbal's shoes, and tried to look at the position from his enemy's standpoint. Of course he told himself that he would have accepted defeat with right philosophy. It was a just fix for a man to find himself in,--a proper punishment for a mean act. Arguing thus, from the right side of the hedge, he forgot what wiser men have forgotten, that there is no disputing about man's affection for woman, there is no transposition of the standpoint, there is no looking through another's eyes upon a girl. Many have loved, and many have rendered vivid pictures of the emotion, touched with insight of genius and universally proclaimed true to nature from general experience; but no two men love alike, and neither you nor another man can better say how a third feels under the yoke, estimate his thrall, or foretell his actions, despite your own experience, than can one sufferer from gout, though it has torn him half a hundred times, gauge the qualities of another's torment under the same disease. Will could not guess what John Grimbal had felt for Phoebe; he knew nothing of the other's disposition, because, young in knowledge of the world and a boy still, despite his age, it was beyond him to appreciate even remotely the mind of a man fifteen years older than himself--a man of very different temper and one whose life had been such as we have just described.

Home went Blanchard, and kept his meeting secret. His mother, returning long before him, was already in some argument with Chris concerning the disposal of certain articles of furniture, the pristine splendour of which had been worn off at Newtake five-and-thirty years before. At Farmer Ford's death these things passed to his son, and he, not requiring them, had made them over to Damaris.

"They was flam-new when first my parents married and comed to Newtake, many a year ago; and now I want 'em to go back theer. They've seed three generations, an' I'd be well pleased that a fourth should kick its li'l boots out against them. They 'm stout enough yet. Sweat went to building of chairs an' tables in them days; now it's steam. Besides, 'twill save Will's pocket a tidy bit."

Chris, however, though she could deny Will nothing, was divided here, for why should her mother part from those trifles which contributed to the ample adornment of her cottage? Certain stout horsehair furniture and a piano were the objects Mrs. Blanchard chiefly desired should go to Newtake. The piano, indeed, had never been there before. It was a present to Damaris from her dead husband, who purchased the instrument second-hand for five pounds at a farm sale. Its wiry jingle spoke of evolution from harpsichord or spinet to the modern instrument; its yellow keys, from which the ivory in some cases was missing, and its high back, stained silk front, and fretted veneer indicated age; while above the keyboard a label, now growing indistinct, set forth that one "William Harper, of Red Lion Street, Maker of piano-fortes to his late Majesty" was responsible for the instrument very early in the century.

Now Will joined the discussion, but his mother would take no denial.

"These chairs and sofa be yours, and the piano's my present to Phoebe. She'll play to you of a Sunday afternoon belike."

"An' it's here she'll do it; for my Sundays'll be spent along with you, of coourse, 'cept when you comes up to my farm to spend 'em. That's what I hope'll fall out; an' I want to see Miller theer, tu, after he've found I'm right and he'm wrong."

But the event proved that, even in his new capacity as a man of money and a landholder, Will was not to win much ground with Mr. Lyddon. Two circumstances contributed to the continued conflict, and just as Phoebe was congratulating herself and others upon the increasing amity between her father and her husband matters fell out which caused the miller to give up all hope of Will for the hundredth time. First came the occupancy of Newtake at a rent Mr. Lyddon considered excessive; and then followed a circumstance that touched the miller himself, for, by the offer of two shillings more a week than he received at Monks Barton, Will tempted into his service a labourer held in great esteem by his father-in-law.

Sam Bonus appeared the incarnation of red Devon earth, built up on solid beef and mutton. His tanned face was framed in crisp black hair that no razor had ever touched; his eyes were deep-set and bright; his narrow brow was wrinkled, not with thought, but as the ape's. A remarkably tall and powerful frame supported Sam's little head. He laboured like a horse and gave as little trouble, triumphed in feats of brute strength, laughed at a day's work, never knew ache or pain. He had always greatly admired Blanchard, and, faced with the tempting bait of a florin a week more than his present wage, abandoned Monks Barton and readily followed Will to the Moor. His defection was greatly deplored, and though Will told Mr. Blee what he intended beforehand, and made no secret of his design to secure Sam if possible, Billy discredited the information until too late. Then the miller heard of his loss, and, not unnaturally, took the business ill.

"Gormed if it ban't open robbery!" declared Mr. Blee, as he sat and discussed the matter with his master one evening, "an' the thankless, ill-convenient twoad to go to Blanchard, of all men!"

"He'll be out of work again soon enough. And he needn't come back to me when he is. I won't take him on no more."

"'Twould be contrary to human nature if you did."

"Human nature!" snapped the miller, with extreme irritation. "'Twould puzzle Solomon to say what's come over human nature of late days."

"'Tis a nut wi' a maggot in it," mused Billy: "three parts rotten, the rest sweet. An' all owing to fantastic inventions an' new ways of believin' in God wi'out church-gwaine, as parson said Sunday. Such things do certainly Play hell with human nature, in a manner o' speakin'. I reckon the uprising men an' women's wickeder than us, as sucked our mothers in quieter times afore the railroads."

"Bonus is such a fule!" said Mr. Lyddon, harking back to his loss. "Yet I thought he belonged to the gude old-fashioned sort."

"I told un he was out in his reckoning, that he'd be left in the cold bimebye, so sure as Blanchard was Blanchard and Newtake was Newtake; but he awnly girned his gert, ear-wide girn, an' said he knawed better."

"To think of more gude money bein' buried up theer! You've heard my view of all ground wi' granite under it. Such a deal ought to have been done wi' that thousand pound."

"Oughts are noughts, onless they've strokes to 'em," declared Billy. "'Tis a poor lookout, for he'm the sort as buys experience in the hardest market. Then, when it's got, he'll be a pauper man, with what he knaws useless for want o' what's spent gettin' it. Theer's the thought o' Miss Phoebe, tu,--Mrs. Blanchard, I should say. Caan't see her biding up to Newtake nohow, come the hard weather."

"'Wedlock an' winter tames maids an' beastes,'" said Mr. Lyddon bitterly. "A true saw that."

"Ess; an' when 'tis wedlock wi' Blanchard, an' winter on Dartymoor, 'twould tame the daughter of the Dowl, if he had wan."

Billy laughed at this thought. His back rounded as he sat in his chair, his head seemed to rise off his lower jaw, and the yellow frill of hair under his chin stood stiffly out.

"He's my son-in-law; you 'pear to forget that, Blee," said Mr. Lyddon; "I'm sure I wish I could, if 'twas even now an' again."

Thereupon Billy straightened his face and cast both rancour and merriment to the winds.

"Why, so he be; an' grey hairs should allus make allowance for the young youths; though I ain't forgot that spadeful o' muck yet, an' never shall. But theer's poison in bwoy's blood what awnly works out of the brain come forty. I'm sure I wish nothing but well to un. He's got his saving graces, same as all of us, if we could but see 'em; an' come what may, God looks arter His awn chosen fules, so theer's hope even for Blanchard." "Cold consolation," said Mr. Lyddon wearily; "but't is all we've got. Two nights since I dreamt I saw un starvin' on a dunghill. 'T was a parable, I judge, an' meant Newtake Farm."