Chapter 22

DEFEATED HOPES

Below Newtake Farm the river Teign wound, with many a foaming fall and singing rapid, to confluence with her twin sister in the valley beneath. Here, at a certain spot, above the forest and beneath the farm, stood Martin Grimbal on a bright afternoon in May. Over his head rose a rowan, in a soft cloud of serrated foliage, with clusters of grey-green flower buds already foretelling the crimson to come; about his feet a silver army of uncurling fronds brightened the earth and softened the sharp edges of the boulders scattered down the coomb. Here the lover waited to the music of a cuckoo, and his eyes ever turned towards a stile at the edge of the pine woods, two hundred yards distant from him.

The hour was one of tremendous possibilities, because Fate had been occupied with Martin through many days, and now he stood on the brink of great joy or sorrow. Clement Hicks had never spoken to him. During his quarrel with Chris, which lasted a fortnight, the bee-keeper purposely abstained from doing her bidding, while after their reconciliation every other matter in the world was swallowed up for a time in the delight of renewed love-making. The girl, assuming throughout these long weeks that Martin now knew all, had met him in frank and kindly spirit on those occasions when he planned to enjoy her society, and this open warmth awoke renewed heart for Grimbal, who into her genial friendship read promise and from it recruited hope. His love now dominated his spiritual being and filled his life. Grey granite was grey granite only, and no more. During his long walks by pillar-stone, remote row, and lonely circle, Chris, and Chris alone, occupied his brain. He debated the advisability of approaching Will, then turned rather to the thought of sounding Mrs. Blanchard, and finally nerved himself to right action and determined to address Chris. He felt this present heart-shaking suspense must be laid at rest, for the peace of his soul, and therefore he took his courage in his hands and faced the ordeal.

That day Chris was going up to Newtake. She had not yet settled there, though her brother and Sam Bonus were already upon the ground, but the girl came and went, busying her fingers with a hundred small matters that daily increased the comfort of the little farm. Her way lay usually by the coomb, and Martin, having learned that she was visiting Will on the occasion in question, set out before her and awaited her here, beside the river, in a lonely spot between the moorland above and the forest below. He felt physically nervous, yet hope brightened his mind, though he tried to strangle it. Worn and weary with his long struggle, he paced up and down, now looking to the stile, now casting dissatisfied glances upon his own person. Shaving with more than usual care, he had cut his chin deeply, and, though he knew it not, the wound had bled again since he left home and ruined both his collar and a new tie, put on for the occasion.

Presently he saw her. A sunbonnet bobbed at the stile and Chris appeared, bearing a roll of chintz for Newtake blinds. In her other hand she carried half a dozen bluebells from the woods, and she came with the free gait acquired in keeping stride through long tramps with Will when yet her frocks were short. Martin loved her characteristic speed in walking. So Diana doubtless moved. The spring sunshine had found Chris and the clear, soft brown of her cheek was the most beautiful thing in nature to the antiquary. He knew her face so well now: the dainty poise of her head, the light of her eyes, the dark curls that always clustered in the same places, the little updrawing at the corner of her mouth as she smiled, the sudden gleam of her teeth when she laughed, and the abrupt transitions of her expression from repose to gladness, from gladness back again into repose.

She saw the man before she reached him, and waved her bluebells to show that she had done so. Then he rose from his granite seat and took off his hat and stood with it off, while his heart thundered, his eye watered, and his mouth twitched. But he was outwardly calm by the time Chris reached him.

"What a surprise to find 'e here, Martin! Yet not much, neither, for wheer the auld stones be, theer you 'm to be expected."

"How are you, Chris? But I needn't ask. Yes, I'm fond of the stones."

"Well you may be. They talk to 'e like friends, seemingly. An' even I knaw a sight more 'bout 'em now. You've made me feel so differ'nt to 'em, you caan't think."

"For that matter," he answered, leaping at the chance, "you've made me feel different to them."

"Why, how could I, Martin?"

"I'll tell you. Would you mind sitting down here, just for a moment? I won't keep you. I've no right to ask for a minute of your time; but there's dry moss upon it--I mean the stone; and I was waiting on purpose, if you'll forgive me for waylaying you like this. There's a little thing--a big thing, I mean--the biggest--too big for words almost, yet it wants words--and yet sometimes it doesn't--at least--I--would you sit here?"

He was breathing rather hard, and his words were tripping. Managing his voice ill, the tones of it ran away from bass to shrill treble. She saw it all at a glance, and realised that Martin had been blundering on, in pure ignorance and pure love, all these weary weeks. She sat down silently and her mind moved like light along the wide gamut of fifty emotions in a second. Anger and sorrow strove together,--anger with Clem and his callous, cynic silence, sorrow for the panting wretch before her. Chris opened her mouth to speak, then realised where her flying thoughts had taken her and that, as yet, Martin Grimbal had said nothing. Her unmaidenly attitude and the sudden reflection that she was about to refuse one before he had asked her, awoke a hysteric inclination to laugh, then a longing to cry. But all the anxious-visaged man before her noted was a blush that waved like auroral light from the girl's neck to her cheek, from her cheek to her forehead. That he saw, and thought it was love, and thanked the Lord in his clumsy fashion aloud.

"God be praised! I do think you guess--I do think you guess! But oh, my dear, my dear, you don't know what 's in my heart for you. My little pearl of a Chris, can you care for such a bear of a man? Can you let me labour all my life long to make your days good to you? I love you so--I do. I never thought when the moment came I should find tongue to speak it, but I have; and now I could say it fifty thousand times. I'd just be proud to tie your shoe-string, Chris, my dear, and be your old slave and--Chris! my Chris! I've hurt you; I've made you cry! Was I--was I all wrong? Don't, don't--I'll go--Oh, my darling one, God knows I wouldn't--"

He broke off blankly and stood half sorrowful, half joyous. He knew he had no right as yet to go to the comfort of the girl now sobbing beside him, but hope was not dead. And Chris, overcome by this outpouring of love, now suffered very deep sorrow, while she turned away from him and hid her face and wept. The poor distracted fool still failed to guess the truth, for he knew tint tears are the outcome of happiness as well as misery. He waited, open-mouthed, he murmured something--God knows what--then he went close and thought to touch her waist, but feared and laid his hand gently on her shoulder.

"Don't 'e!" she said; and he began to understand and to struggle with himself to lessen her difficulty.

"Forgive me--forgive me if you can, Chris. Was I all wrong? Then I ought to have known better--but even an old stick like me--before you, Chris. Somehow I--but don't cry. I wouldn't have brought the tears to your eyes for all the world--dense idiot I am--"

"No, no, no; no such thing 't all, Martin. 'Tis I was cruel not to see you didn't knaw. You've been treated ill, an' I'm cryin' that such a gude--gude, braave, big-hearted man as you, should be brought to this for a fule of a gal like me. I ban't worthy a handshake from 'e, or a kind word. An'--an'--Clem Hicks--Clem be tokened to me these two year an' more. He'm the best man in the world; an' I hate un for not tellin' 'e--an'--an'--"

Chris sobbed herself to the end of her tears; and the man took his trial--like a man. His only thought was the sadness his blunder had brought with it for her. To misread her blush seemed in his humility a crime. His consistent unselfishness blinded him, for an instant at least, to his own grief. He blamed himself and asked pardon and prepared to get away out of her sight as soon as possible.

"Forgive me, Chris--I needn't ask you twice, I know--such a stupid thing--I didn't understand--I never observed: but more shame to me. I ought to have seen, of course. Anybody else would--any man of proper feeling."

"How could 'e see it with a secret chap like him? He ought to have told 'e; I bid un speak months since; an' I thought he had; an' I hate un for not doing it!"

"But you mustn't. Don't cry any more, and forget all about it. I could almost laugh to think how blind I've been. We'll both laugh next time we meet. If you're happy, then I'll laugh always. That's all I care for. Now I know you're happy again, I'm happy, too, Chris--honour bright. And I'll be a friend still--remember that--always--to you--to you and him."

"I hate un, I say."

"Why, he didn't give me credit for being such a bat--such a mole. Now I must be away. We'll meet pretty soon, I expect. Just forget this afternoon as though it had never been, even though it's such a jolly sunny one. And remember me as a friend--a friend still for all my foolishness. Good-by for the present. Good-by."

He nodded, making the parting a slight thing and not missing the ludicrous in his anxiety to spare her pain. He went down the valley, leaving her sitting alone. He assumed a jaunty air and did not look round, but hastened off to the stile. Never in his most light-hearted moments had he walked thus or struck right and left at the leaves and shrubs with such a clumsy affectation of nonchalance. Thus he played the fool until out of sight; then his head came down, and his feet dragged, and his walk and mien grew years older than his age. He stopped presently and stood still, staring upon the silence. Westering sunlight winnowed through the underwood, splashed into its sombre depths and brightened the sobriety of a grey carpet dotted with dead cones. Sweet scents floated downward upon the sad whisper that lives in every pine forest; then came suddenly a crisp rattle of little claws and a tiny barking, where two red squirrels made love, high aloft, amid the grey lichens and emerald haze of a great larch that gleamed like a green lamp through the night of the dark surrounding foliage.

Martin Grimbal dropped his stick and flung down his body in the hushed and hidden dreamland of the wood. Now he knew that his hope had lied to him, that the judgment he prided himself upon, and which had prompted him to this great deed, was at fault. The more than common tact and delicacy of feeling he had sometimes suspected he possessed in rare, exalted moments, were now shown vain ideas born from his own conceit; and the event had proved him no more subtle, clever, or far-seeing than other men. Indeed, he rated himself as an abject blunderer and thought he saw how a great overwhelming fear, at the bottom of his worship of Chris, had been the only true note in all that past war of emotions. But he had refused to listen and pushed forward; and now he stood thus. Looking back in the light of his defeat, his previous temerity amazed him. His own ugliness, awkwardness, and general unfitness to be the husband of Chris were ideas now thrust upward in all honesty to the top of his mind. No mock modesty or simulated delicacy inspired them, for after defeat a man is frank with himself. Whatever he may have pretended before he puts his love to the test, however he may have blinded himself as to his real feelings and beliefs before he offers his heart, after the event has ended unfavourably his real soul stands naked before him and, according to his character, he decides whether himself or the girl is the fool. Grimbal criticised his own audacity with scanty compassion now; and the thought of the tears of Chris made him clench one hand and smash it hard again and again into the palm of the other. No passionate protest rose in his mind against the selfish silence of Clement Hicks; he only saw his own blindness and magnified it into an absolute offence against Chris. Presently, as the sunlight sank lower, and the straight stems of the pines glimmered red-gold against the deepening gloom, Martin retraced the scene that was past and recalled her words and actions, her tears, the trembling of her mouth, and that gesture when the wild flowers dropped from her hand and her fingers went up to cover her eyes. Then a sudden desire mastered him: to possess the purple of her bluebell bouquet. He knew she would not pick it up again when he was gone; so he returned, stood in that theatre of Fate beneath the rowan, saw where her body had pressed the grass, and found the fading flowers.

Then he turned to tramp home, with the truth gnawing his heart at last. The excitement was over, all flutter of hope and fear at rest. Only that bitter fact of failure remained, with the knowledge that one, but yesterday so essential and so near, had now vanished like a rainbow beyond his reach.

Martin's eyes were opened in the light of this experience. John came into his mind, and estimating his brother's sufferings by his own, the stricken man found room in his sad heart for pity.