Chapter 28

CONNECTING LINKS

Spaces of time extending over rather more than a year may now be dismissed in a chapter.

Chris Blanchard, distracted between Will and her lover, stayed on at Newtake after the estrangement, with a hope that she might succeed in healing the breach between them; but her importunity failed of its good object, and there came an August night when she found her own position at her brother's farm grow no longer tenable.

The blinds were up, and rays from the lamp shot a broad band of light into the farmyard, while now and again great white moths struck soft blows against the closed window, then vanished again into the night. Will smoked and Chris pleaded until a point, beyond which her brother's patience could not go, was reached. Irritation grew and grew before her ceaseless entreaty on Clement's behalf; for the thousandth time she begged him to write a letter of apology and explanation of the trouble bred by Sam Bonus; and he, suddenly rising, smashed down his clay pipe and swore by all his gods he would hear the name of Hicks mentioned in his house no more. Thus challenged to choose between her lover and her brother, the girl did not hesitate. Something of Will's own spirit informed her; she took him at his word and returned home next morning, leaving him to manage his own household affairs henceforth as best he might.

Upon the way to Chagford Chris chanced to meet with Martin Grimbal, and, having long since accepted his offer of friendship, she did not hesitate to tell him of her present sorrow and invite his sympathy. From ignorance rather than selfishness did Chris take Martin literally when he had hoped in the past they might remain friends, and their intercourse was always maintained by her when chance put one in the other's way--at a cost to the man beyond her power to guess.

Now he walked beside her, and she explained how only a word was wanting between Will and Clement which neither would speak. Hicks had forgiven Will, but he refused to visit Newtake until he received an apology from the master of it; and Blanchard bore no ill-will to Clement, but declined to apologise for the past. These facts Martin listened to, while the blood beat like a tide within his temples, and a mist dimmed his eyes as the girl laid her brown hand upon his arm now and again, to accentuate a point. At such moments the truth tightened upon his soul and much distressed him.

The antiquary had abandoned any attempt to forget Chris, or cease from worshipping her with all his heart and soul; but the emotion now muzzled and chained out of sight he held of nobler composition than that earlier love which yearned for possession. Those dreary months that dragged between the present and his first disappointment had served as foundations for new developments of character in the man. He existed through a period of unutterable despair and loneliness; then the fruits of bygone battles fought and won came to his aid, and long-past years of self-denial and self-control fortified his spirit. The reasonableness of Martin Grimbal lifted him slowly but steadily from the ashes of disappointment; even his natural humility helped him, and he told himself he had no more than his desert. Presently, with efforts the very vigour of which served as tonic to character, he began to wrestle at the granite again and resume his archaeologic studies. Speaking in general terms, his mind was notably sweetened and widened by his experience; and, resulting from his own failure to reach happiness, there awoke in him a charity and sympathy for others, a fellow-feeling with humanity, remarkable in one whose enthusiasm for human nature was not large, whose ruling passion, until the circumstance of love tinctured it, had led him by ways which the bulk of men had pronounced arid and unsatisfying. Now this larger insight was making a finer character of him and planting, even at the core of his professional pursuits, something deeper than is generally to be found there. His experience, in fact, was telling upon his work, and he began slowly to combine with the labour of the yard-measure and the pencil, the spade and the camera, just thoughts on the subject of those human generations who ruled the Moor aforetime, who lived and loved and laboured there full many a day before Saxon keel first grated on British shingle.

To Chris did Martin listen attentively. Until the present time he had taken Will's advice and made no offer of work to Clement; but now he determined to do so, although he knew this action must mean speedy marriage for Chris. Love, that often enough can shake a lifetime of morality, that can set ethics and right conduct and duty playing a devil's dance in the victim's soul, that can change the practised customs of a man's life and send cherished opinions, accepted beliefs, and approved dogmas spinning into chaos before its fiery onslaught--love did not thus overpower Martin Grimbal. His old-fashioned mind was no armour against it, and in that the passion proved true; religion appeared similarly powerless to influence him; yet now his extreme humility, his natural sense of justice and the dimensions of his passion itself combined to lead him by a lofty road. Chris desired another man, and Martin Grimbal, loving her to that point where her perfect happiness dominated and, indeed, became his own, determined that his love should bear fruit worthy of its object.

This kindly design was frustrated, however, and the antiquary himself denied power to achieve the good action that he proposed, for on visiting Clement in person and inviting his aid in the clerical portions of a considerable work on moorland antiquities, the poet refused to assist.

"You come too late," he said coldly. "I would not help you now if I could, Martin Grimbal. Don't imagine pride or any such motive keeps me from doing so. The true reason you may guess."

"Indeed! I can do nothing of the sort. What reason is there against your accepting an offer to do remunerative and intellectual work in your leisure hours--work that may last ten years for all I can see to the contrary?"

"The reason is that you invited another man's judgment upon me, instead of taking your own. Better follow Will Blanchard's advice still. Don't think I'm blind. It is Chris who has made you do this."

"You're a very difficult man to deal with, really. Consider my suggestion, Hicks, and all it might mean. I desire nothing but your welfare."

"Which is only to say you are offering me charity."

Martin looked at the other quietly, then took his hat and departed. At the door he said a last word.

"I don't want to think this is final. You would be very useful to me, or I should not have asked you to aid my labour. Let me hear from you within a week."

But Clement was firm in his folly; while, although they met on more than one occasion, and John Grimbal repeated his offer of regular work, the bee-keeper refused that proposal, also. He made some small sums out of the Red House hives, but would not undertake any regular daily labour there. Clement's refusal of Martin resulted from his own weak pride and self-conscious stupidity; but a more subtle tangle of conflicting motives was responsible for his action in respect of the elder Grimbal's invitation. Some loyalty to the man whom he so cordially disliked still inhabited his mind, and with it a very considerable distrust of himself. He partly suspected the reason of John Grimbal's offer of work, and the possibility of sudden temptation provoking from him utterance of words best left unsaid could not be ignored after his former experience at the hiving of the swarm.

So he went his way and told nobody--not even Chris--of these opportunities and his action concerning them. Such reticence made two women sad. Chris, after her conversation with Martin, doubted not but that he would make some effort, and, hearing nothing as time passed, assumed he had changed his mind; while Mrs. Hicks, who had greatly hoped that Clement's visit to the Red House might result in regular employment, felt disappointed when no such thing occurred.

The union of Mr. Lezzard and Mrs. Coomstock was duly accomplished to a chorus of frantic expostulation on the part of those interested in the widow's fortune. Mr. Shorto-Champernowne, having convinced himself that the old woman was in earnest, could find no sufficient reason for doing otherwise than he was asked, and finally united the couple. To Newton Abbot they went for their honeymoon, and tribulation haunted them from the first. Mrs. Lezzard refused her husband permission to inquire any particulars of her affairs from her lawyer--a young man who had succeeded Mr. Joel Ford--while the Gaffer, on his side, parried all his lady's endeavours to learn more of the small fortune concerning which he had spoken not seldom before marriage. Presently they returned to Chagford, and life resolved itself into an unlovely thing for both of them. Time brought no better understanding or mutual confidence; on the contrary, they never ceased from wrangling over money and Mrs. Lezzard's increasing propensity towards drink. The old man suffered most, and as his alleged three hundred pounds did not appear, being, indeed, a mere lover's effort of imagination, his wife bitterly resented marriage under such false pretences, and was never weary of protesting. Of her own affairs she refused to tell her husband anything, but as Mr. Lezzard was found to possess no money at all, it became necessary to provide him with a bare competence for the credit of the family. He did his best to win a little more regard and consideration, in the hope that when his wife passed away the reward of devotion might be reaped; but she never forgave him, expressed the conviction that she would outlive him by many years, and exhausted her ingenuity to make the old man rue his bargain. Only one experience, and that repeated as surely as Mr. Blee met Mr. Lezzard, was more trying to the latter than all the accumulated misfortune of his sorry state--Gaffer's own miseries appeared absolutely trivial by comparison with Mr. Blee's comments upon them.

With another year Blanchard and Hicks became in some sort reconciled, though the former friendship was never renewed. The winter proved a severe one, and Will experienced a steady drain on his capital, but he comforted himself in thoughts of the spring, watched his wheat dapple the dark ground with green, and also foretold exceptional crops of hay when summer should return. The great event of his wife's advent at Newtake occupied most of his reflections; while as for Phoebe herself the matter was never out of her mind. She lived for the day in June that should see her by her husband's side; but Miller Lyddon showed no knowledge of the significance of Phoebe's twenty-first birthday; and when Will brought up the matter, upon an occasion of meeting with his father-in-law, the miller deprecated any haste.

"Time enough--time enough," he said. "You doan't want no wife to Newtake these years to come, while I _do_ want a darter to home."

So Phoebe, albeit the course of operations was fully planned, forbore to tell her father anything, and suffered the day to drift nearer and nearer without expressly indicating the event it was to witness.