Chapter 27

A DIFFERENCE WITH THE DUCHY

Newtake Farm, by reason of Will's recent occupancy, could offer no very considerable return during his first year as tenant; but that he understood and accepted, and the tribulation which now fell upon him was of his own making. To begin with, Sam Bonus vanished from the scene. On learning, soon after the event, that Bonus had discussed Hicks and himself at Chagford, and detailed his private conversation with Martin Grimbal, Blanchard, in a fury, swept off to the loft where his man slept, roused him from rest, threw down the balance of his wages, and dismissed him on the spot. He would hear no word in explanation, and having administered a passionate rebuke, departed as he had come, like a whirlwind. Sam, smarting under this injustice, found the devil wake in him through that sleepless night, and had there stood rick or stack within reach of revenge, he might have dealt his master a return blow before morning. As usual, after the lapse of hours, Will cooled down, modified his first fiery indignation, and determined, yet without changing his mind, to give Bonus an opportunity of explaining the thing he had done. Chris had brought the news from Clement himself, and Will, knowing that his personal relations with Clement were already strained, felt that in justice to his servant he must be heard upon the question. But, when he sought Sam Bonus, though still the dawn was only grey, he found the world fuller for him by another enemy, for the man had taken him at his word and departed. During that day and the next Will made some effort to see Bonus, but nothing came of it, so, dismissing the matter from his mind, he hired a new labourer--one Teddy Chown, son of Abraham Chown, the Inspector of Police--and pursued his way.

Then his unbounded energy led him into difficulties of a graver sort. Will had long cast covetous eyes on a tract of moorland immediately adjoining Newtake, and there being little to do at the moment, he conceived the adventurous design of reclaiming it. The patch was an acre and a half in extent--a beggarly, barren region, where the heather thinned away and the black earth shone with water and disintegrated granite. Quartz particles glimmered over it; at the centre black pools of stagnant water marked an abandoned peat cutting; any spot less calculated to attract an agricultural eye would have been hard to imagine; but Blanchard set to work, began to fill the greedy quag in the midst with tons of soil, and soon caused the place to look business-like--at least in his own estimation. As for the Duchy, he did not trouble himself. The Duchy itself was always reclaiming land without considering the rights and wrongs of the discontented Venville tenants, and Will knew of many a "newtake" besides this he contemplated. Indeed, had not the whole farm, of which he was now master, been rescued from the Moor in time past? He worked hard, therefore, and his new assistant, though not a Bonus, proved stout and active. Chris, who still dwelt with her brother, was sworn to secrecy respecting Will's venture; and so lonely a region did the farm occupy that not until he had put a good month of work into the adjacent waste were any of those in authority aware of the young farmer's performance.

A day came when the new land was cleaned, partly ploughed, and wholly surrounded by a fence of split stumps, presently to be connected by wires. At these Chown was working, while Will had just arrived with a load of earth to add to the many tons already poured upon that hungry central patch. He held the tailboard of the cart in his hand and was about to remove it; when, looking up, his heart fluttered a moment despite his sturdy consciousness of right. On the moor above him rode grey old Vogwell, the Duchy's man. His long beard fluttered in the wind, and Will heard the thud of his horse's hoofs as he cantered quickly to the scene, passed between two of the stakes, and drew up alongside Blanchard.

"Marnin', Mr. Vogwell! Fine weather, to be sure, an' gude for the peat next month; but bad for roots, an' no mistake. Will 'e have a drink?"

Mr. Vogwell gazed sternly about him, then fixed his little bright eyes on the culprit.

"What do this mean, Will Blanchard?"

"Well, why not? Duchy steals all the gude land from Venwell men; why for shouldn't us taake a little of the bad? This here weern't no gude to man or mouse. Ban't 'nough green stuff for a rabbit 'pon it. So I just thought I'd give it a lick an' a promise o' more later on."

"'A lick an' a promise'! You've wasted a month's work on it, to the least."

"Well, p'raps I have--though ban't wasted. Do 'e think, Mr. Vogwell, as the Duchy might be disposed to give me a hand?"

Will generally tackled difficulties in this audacious fashion, and a laugh already began to brighten his eye; but the other quenched it.

"You fool! You knawed you was doin' wrong better'n I can tell you--an' such a plaace! A babe could see you 'm workin' awver living springs. You caan't fill un even now in the drouth, an' come autumn an' rain 't will all be bog again."

"Nothing of the sort," flamed out Will, quite forgetting his recent assertion as to the poverty of the place. "Do 'e think, you, as awnly rides awver the Moor, knaws more about soil than I as works on it? 'Twill be gude proofy land bimebye--so good as any Princetown way, wheer the prison men reclaim, an' wheer theer's grass this minute as carries a bullock to the acre. First I'll plant rye, then swedes, then maybe more swedes, then barley; an', with the barley, I'll sow the permanent grass to follow. That's gude rotation of crops for Dartymoor, as I knaw an' you doan't; an' if the Duchy encloses the best to rob our things[11], why for shouldn't we--"

[11] _Things_ = beasts; sheep and cattle.

"That'll do. I caan't bide here listenin' to your child's-talk all the marnin'. What Duchy does an' doan't do is for higher 'n you or me to decide. If this was any man's work but yours I'd tell Duchy this night; but bein' you, I'll keep mute. Awnly mind, when I comes this way a fortnight hence, let me see these postes gone an' your plough an' cart t' other side that wall. An' you'll thank me, when you've come to more sense, for stoppin' this wild-goose chase. Now I'll have a drop o' cider, if it's all the same to you."

Will opened a stone jar which lay under his coat at hand, and answered as he poured cider into a horn mug for Mr. Vogwell--

"Here's your drink; but I won't take your orders, so I tell 'e. Damn the Duchy, as steals moor an' common wheer it pleases an' then grudges a man his toil."

"That's the spirit as'll land 'e in the poorhouse, Will Blanchard," said Mr. Vogwell calmly; "and that's such a job as might send 'e to the County Asylum," he added, pointing to the operations around him. "As to damning Duchy," he continued, "you might as well damn the sun or moon. They'd care as little. Theer 'm some varmints so small that, though they bite 'e with all their might, you never knaw it; an' so 't is wi' you an' Duchy. Mind now, a fortnight. Thank 'e--so gude cider as ever I tasted; an' doan't 'e tear an' rage, my son. What's the use?"

"'Twould be use, though, if us all raged together."

"But you won't get none to follow. 'Tis all talk. Duchy haven't got no bones to break or sawl to lose; an' moormen haven't got brains enough to do aught in the matter but jaw."

"An' all for a royal prince, as doan't knaw difference between yether an' fuzz, I lay," growled Will. "Small blame to moormen for being radical-minded these days. Who wouldn't, treated same as us?"

"Best not talk on such high subjects, Will Blanchard, or you might get in trouble. A fortnight, mind. Gude marnin' to 'e."

The Duchy's man rode off and Will stood angry and irresolute. Then, seeing Mr. Vogwell was still observing him, he ostentatiously turned to the cart and tipped up his load of earth. But when the representative of power had disappeared--his horse and himself apparently sinking into rather than behind a heather ridge--Will's energy died and his mood changed. He had fooled himself about this enterprise until the present, but he could no longer do so. Now he sat down on the earth he had brought, let his horse drag the cart after it, as it wandered in search of some green thing, and suffered a storm of futile indignation to darken his spirit.

Blanchard's unseasoned mind had, in truth, scarcely reached the second milestone upon the road of man's experience. Some arrive early at the mental standpoint where the five senses meet and merge in that sixth or common sense, which may be defined as an integral of the others, and which is manifested by those who possess it in a just application of all the experience won from life. But of common sense Will had none. He could understand laziness and wickedness being made to suffer; he could read Nature's more self-evident lessons blazoned across every meadow, displayed in every living organism--that error is instantly punished, that poor food starves the best seed, that too much water is as bad as too little, that the race is to the strong, and so forth; but he could not understand why hard work should go unrewarded, why good intentions should breed bad results, why the effect of energy, self-denial, right ambitions, and other excellent qualities is governed by chance; why the prizes in the great lottery fall to the wise, not to the well-meaning. He knew himself for a hard worker and a man who accomplished, in all honesty, the best within his power. What his hand found to do he did with his might; and the fact that his head, as often as not, prompted his hand to the wrong thing escaped him. He regarded his life as exemplary, felt that he was doing all that might in reason be demanded, and confidently looked towards Providence to do the rest. To find Providence unwilling to help him brought a wave of riotous indignation through his mind on each occasion of making that discovery. These waves, sweeping at irregular intervals over Will, left the mark of their high tides, and his mind, now swinging like a pendulum before this last buffet dealt by Fate in semblance of the Duchy's man, plunged him into a huge discontent with all things. He was ripe for mischief and would have quarrelled with his shadow; but he did worse--he quarrelled with his mother.

She visited him that afternoon, viewed his shattered scheme, and listened as Will poured the great outrage upon her ear. Coming up at his express invitation to learn the secret, which he had kept from her that her joy might be the greater, Mrs. Blanchard only arrived in time to see his disappointment. She knew the Duchy for a bad enemy, and perhaps at the bottom of her conservative heart felt no particular delight at the spectacle of Newtake enlarging its borders. She therefore held that everything was for the best, and counselled patience; whereupon her son, with a month's wasted toil staring him in the face, rebelled and took her unconcerned demeanour ill. Damaris also brought a letter from Phoebe, and this added fuel to the flame. Will dwelt upon his wife's absence bitterly.

"Job's self never suffered that, for I read 'bout what he went through awnly last night, for somethin' to kill an hour in the evenin'. An' I won't suffer it. It's contrary to nature, an' if Phoebe ban't here come winter I'll go down an' bring her, willy-nilly."

"Time'll pass soon enough, my son. Next summer will be here quick. Then her'll have grawin' corn to look at and fine crops risin', an' more things feedin' on the Moor in sight of her eyes. You see, upland farms do look a little thin to them who have lived all their time in the fatness of the valleys."

"If I was bidin' in one of them stone roundy-poundies, with nothin' but a dog-kennel for a home, she ought to be shoulder to shoulder wi' me. Did you leave my faither cause other people didn't love un?"

"That was differ'nt. Theer s Miller Lyddon. I could much wish you seed more of him an' let un come by a better 'pinion of 'e. 'T s awnly worldly wisdom, true; but--"

"I'm sick to death o' worldly wisdom! What's it done for me? I stand to work nine an' ten hour a day, an' not wi'out my share o' worldly wisdom, neither. Then I'm played with an' left to whistle, I ban't gwaine to think so much, I tell 'e. It awnly hurts a man's head, an' keeps him wakin' o' nights. Life's guess-work, by the looks of it, an' a fule's so like to draw a prize as the wisest."

"That's not the talk as'll make Newtake pay, Will. You 'm worse than poor Blee to Monks Barton. He's gwaine round givin' out theer ban't no God 't all, 'cause Mrs. Coomstock took auld Lezzard 'stead of him."

"You may laugh if you like, mother. 'Tis the fashion to laugh at me seemin'ly. But I doan't care. Awnly you'll be sorry some day, so sure as you sit in thicky chair. Now, as you've nothin' but blame, best to go back home. I'll put your pony in the shafts. 'Twas a pity you corned so far for so little."

He went off, his breast heaving, while the woman followed him with her eyes and smiled when he was out of sight. She knew him so well, and already pictured her repentant son next Sunday. Then Will would be at his mother's cottage, and cut the bit of beef at dinner, and fuss over her comfort according to his custom.

She went into the farmyard and took the pony from him and led it back into the stall. Then she returned to him and put her arm through his and spoke.

"Light your pipe, lovey, an' walk a li'l way along down to the stones on the hill, wheer you was born. Your auld mother wants to talk to 'e."