Chapter 48

THE SECRET OUT

NOW many different persons in various places were simultaneously concerned with Will Blanchard and his affairs.

At Newtake, Martin Grimbal was quietly buying a few lots--and those worth the most money. He designed these as a gift for Phoebe; and his object was not wholly disinterested. The antiquary could by no means bring himself to accept his last dismissal from Chris. Seeing the vague nature of those terms in which she had couched her refusal, and remembering her frank admission that she could love him, he still hoped. All his soul was wrapped up in the winning of Chris, and her face came between him and the proof-sheets of his book; the first thoughts of his wakening mind turned to the same problem; the last reflections of a brain sinking to rest were likewise occupied with it. How could he win her? Sometimes his yearning desires clamoured for any possible road to the precious goal, and he remembered his brother's hint that a secret existed in Will's life. At such times he wished that he knew it, and wondered vaguely if the knowledge were of a nature to further his own ambition. Then he blushed and thought ill of himself But this personal accusation was unjust, for it is the property of a strong intellect engaged about affairs of supreme importance, to suggest every possible action and present every possible point of view by the mere mechanical processes of thinking. The larger a brain, the more alternative courses are offered, the more facets gleam with thought, the more numerous the roads submitted to judgment. It is a question of intellect, not ethics. Right actions and crooked are alike remorselessly presented, and the Council of Perfection, which holds that to think amiss is sin, must convict every saint of unnumbered offences. As reasonably might we blame him who dreams murder. Departure from rectitude can only begin where evil thought is converted into evil action, for thought alone of all man's possessions and antecedents is free, and a lifetime of self-control and high thinking will not shut the door against ideas. That Martin--a man of luminous if limited intellect--should have considered every possible line of action which might assist him to come at the highest good life could offer was inevitable; but he missed the reason of certain sinister notions and accused himself of baseness in giving birth to them. Nevertheless, the idea recurred and took shape. He associated John's assertion of a secret with another rumour that had spread much farther afield. This concerned the parentage of little Timothy the foundling, for it was whispered widely of late that the child belonged to Blanchard. Of course many people knew all the facts, were delighted to retail them, and could give the mother's name. Only those most vitally concerned had heard nothing as yet.

These various matters were weighing not lightly on Martin's mind during the hours of the Newtake sale; and meantime Will thundered into his mother's cottage and roared the news. He would hear of no objection to his wish, that one and all should straightway proceed to Monks Barton, and he poured forth the miller's praises, while Phoebe was reduced to tears by perusal of her father's letter to Will.

"Thank Heaven the mystery's read now, an' us can see how Miller had his eyes 'pon 'e both all along an' just waited for the critical stroke," said Mrs. Blanchard. "Sure I've knawed him these many years an' never could onderstand his hard way in this; but now all's clear."

"He might have saved us a world of trouble and a sea o' tears if he'd awnly spoken sooner, whether or no," murmured Chris, but Will would tolerate no unfriendly criticism.

"He'm a gert man, wi' his awn way o' doin' things, like all gert men," he burst out; "an' ban't for any man to call un in question. He knawed the hard stuff I was made of and let me bide accordin'. An' now get your bonnets on, the lot of 'e, for I'm gwaine this instant moment to Monks Barton."

They followed him in a breathless procession, as he hurried across the farmyard.

"Rap to the door quick, dear heart," said Phoebe, "or I'll be cryin' again."

"No more rappin' after thicky butivul letter," answered Will. "Us'll gaw straight in."

"You walk fust, Phoebe--'tis right you should," declared Mrs. Blanchard. "Then Will can follow 'e; an' me an' Chris--us'll walk 'bout for a bit, till you beckons from window."

"Cheer up, Phoebe," cried Will. "Trouble's blawed awver for gude an' all now by the look of it. 'Tis plain sailing hencefarrard, thank God, that is, if a pair o' strong arms, working morning an' night for Miller, can bring it about."

So they went together, where Mr. Lyddon waited nervously within; and Damaris and Chris walked beside the river.

Upon his island sat the anchorite Muscovy duck as of yore. He was getting old. He still lived apart and thought deeply about affairs; but his conclusions he never divulged.

Yet another had been surprised into unutterable excitement during that afternoon. John Grimbal found the fruit of long desire tumble into his hand at last, as Major Tremayne made his announcement. The officer was spending a fortnight at the Red House, for his previous friendship with John Grimbal had ripened.

"By Jove! Tom Newcombe, by all that's wonderful!" he exclaimed, as Will swung past him down the hill to happiness.

"That's not his name. It's Blanchard. He's a young fool of a farmer, and Lord knows what he's got to be so cock-a-hoop about. Up the hill they're selling every stick he's got at auction. He's ruined."

"He might be ruined, indeed, if I liked. 'Tom Newcombe' he called himself when he was with us."

"A soldier!"

"He certainly was, and my servant; about the most decent, straightforward, childlike chap that ever I saw."

"God!"

"You're surprised. But it's a fact. That's Newcombe all right. You couldn't forget a face and a laugh like his. The handsomest man I've ever seen, bar none. He borrowed a suit of my clothes, the beggar, when he vanished. But a week later I had the things back with a letter. He trusted me that far. I tried to trace him, of course, but was not sorry I failed."

"A letter!"

"Yes, giving a reason for his desertion. Some chap was running after his girl and had got her in a corner and bullied her into saying 'Yes,' though she hated the sight of him. I'd have done anything for Tom. But he took the law into his own hands. He disappeared--we were at Shorncliffe then if I remember rightly. The chap had joined to get abroad, and he told me all his harum-scarum ambitions once. I hope the poor devil was in time to rescue his sweetheart, anyway."

"Yes, he was in time for that."

"I'm glad."

"Should you see him again, Tremayne, I would advise your pretending not to know him. Unless, of course, you consider it your duty to proclaim him."

"Bless your life, I don't know him from Adam," declared the Major. "I'm not going to move after all these years. I wish he'd come back to me again, all the same. A good servant."

"Poor brute! What's the procedure with a deserter? Do you send soldiers for him or the police?"

"A pair of handcuffs and the local bobby, that's all. Then the man's handed over to the military authorities and court-martialled."

"What would he get?"

"Depends on circumstances and character. Tom might probably have six months, as he didn't give himself up. I should have thought, knowing the manner of man, that he would have done his business, married the girl, then come back and surrendered. In that case, being peace time, he would only have forfeited his service, which didn't amount to much."

So John Grimbal learned the secret of his enemy at last; but, to pursue a former simile, the fruit had remained so long out of reach that now it was not only overripe, but rotten. There began a painful resuscitation of desires towards revenge--desires long moribund. To flog into life a passion near dead of inanition was Grimbal's disgusting task. For days and nights the thing was as Frankenstein's creation of grisly shreds and patches; then it moved spasmodically,--or he fancied that it moved.

He fooled himself with reiterated assurances that he was glorying in the discovery; he told himself that he was not made of the human stuff that can forgive bitter wrongs or forget them until cancelled. He painted in lurid colours his past griefs; through a ghastly morass of revenge grown stale, of memories deadened by time, he tried to struggle back to his original starting-point in vanished years, and feel as he felt when he flung Will Blanchard over Rushford Bridge.

Once he wished to God the truth had never reached him; then he urged himself to use it instantly and plague his mind no more. A mental exhaustion and nausea overtook him. Upon the night of his discovery he retired to sleep wishing that Blanchard would be as good as his rumoured word and get out of England. But this thought took a shape of reality in the tattered medley of dreams, and Grimbal, waking, leapt on to the floor in frantic fear that his enemy had escaped him.

As yet he knew nothing of Will's good fortune, and when it came to his ears it unexpectedly failed to reawaken resentment or strengthen his animosity. For, as he retraced the story of the past years, it was with him as with a man reading the narrative of another's wrongs. He could not yet absorb himself anew in the strife; he could not revive the personal element.

Sometimes he looked at himself in the glass as he shaved; and the sight of the grey hair thickening on the sides of his head, the spectacle of the deep lines upon his forehead and the stamp of many a shadowy crow's-foot about his blue eyes--these indications served more than all his thoughts to sting him into deeds and to rekindle an active malignancy.