Chapter 52

BAD NEWS FOR BLANCHARD

On the morning that saw the wedding of Chris and Martin, Phoebe Blanchard found heart and tongue to speak to her husband of the thing she still kept locked within her mind. Since the meeting with John Grimbal she had suffered much in secret, but still kept silence; and now, after a quiet service before breakfast on a morning in mid-December, most of those who had been present as spectators returned to the valley, and Phoebe spoke to Will as they walked apart from the rest. A sight of the enemy it was that loosed her lips, for, much to the surprise of all present, John Grimbal had attended his brother's wedding. As the little gathering streamed away after the ceremony, he had galloped off again with a groom behind him, and the incident now led to greater things.

"Chill-fashion weddin'," said Will, as he walked homewards, "but it 'pears to me all Blanchards be fated to wed coorious. Well, 't is a gude matter out o' hand. I knaw I raged somethin' terrible come I fust heard it, but I think differ'nt now, specially when I mind what Chris must have felt those times she seed me welting her child an' heard un yell, yet set her teeth an' never shawed a sign."

"Did 'e note Jan Grimbal theer?"

"I seed un, an' I catched un wi' his eye on you more 'n wance. He 's grawed to look nowadays as if his mouth allus had a sour plum in it."

"His brain's got sour stuff hid in it if his mouth haven't. Be you ever feared of un?"

"Not me. Why for should I be? He'll be wan of the fam'ly like, now. He caan't keep his passion alive for ever. We 'm likely to meet when Martin do come home again from honeymooning."

"Will, I must tell you something--something gert an' terrible. I should have told 'e 'fore now but I was frightened."

"Not feared to speak to me?"

"Ess, seeing the thing I had to say. I've waited weeks in fear an' tremblin', expecting something to happen, an' all weighed down with fright an' dread. Now, what wi' the cheel that's comin', I caan't carry this any more."

Being already lachrymose, after the manner of women at a wedding, Phoebe now shed a tear or two. Will thereupon spoke words of comfort, and blamed her for hiding any matter from him.

"More trouble?" he said. "Yet I doan't think it,--not now,--just as I be right every way. I guess 't is your state makes you queer an' glumpy."

"I hope 't was vain talk an' not true anyway."

"More talk 'bout me? You'd think Chagford was most tired o' my name, wouldn't 'e? Who was it now?"

"Him--Jan Grimbal. I met him 'mong the mushrooms. He burst out an' said wicked, awful things, but his talk touched the li'l bwoy. He thought Tim was yourn an' he was gwaine to do mischief against you."

"Damn his black mind! I wonder he haven't rotted away wi' his awn bile 'fore now."

"But that weern't all. He talked an' talked, an' threatened if you didn't go an' see him, as he'd tell 'bout you in the past, when you was away that autumn-time 'fore us was married."

"Did he, by God! Doan't he wish he knawed!"

"He does knaw, Will--least he said he did."

"Never dream it, Phoebe. 'T is a lie. For why? 'Cause if he did knaw I shouldn't--but theer, I've never tawld 'e, an' I ban't gwaine to now. Awnly I'll say this,--if Grimbal really knawed he'd have--but he can't knaw, and theer 's an end of it."

"To think I should have been frighted by such a story all these weeks! An' not true. Oh! I wish I'd told 'e when he sent the message. 'T would have saved me so much."

"Ess, never keep nothin' from me, Phoebe. Theer 's troubles that might crush wan heart as comes a light load divided between two. What message?"

"Some silly auld story 'bout a suit of grey clothes. He said I was to tell 'e the things was received by the awner."

Will Blanchard stood still so suddenly that it seemed as though magic had turned him into stone. He stood, and his hands unclasped, and Phoebe's church service which he carried fell with a thud into the road. His wife watched him change colour, and noted in his face an expression she had never before seen there.

"Christ A'mighty!" he whispered, with his eyes reflecting a world of sheer amazement and even terror; "he _does_ knaw!"

"What? Knaw what, Will? For the Lard's sake doan't 'e look at me like that; you'll frighten my heart into my mouth."

"To think he knawed an' watched an' waited all these years! The spider patience o' that man! I see how 't was. He let the world have its way an' thought to see me broken wi'out any trouble from him. Then, when I conquered, an' got to Miller's right hand, an' beat the world at its awn game, he--an' been nursing this against me! The heart of un!"

He spoke to himself aloud, gazing straight before him at nothing.

"Will, tell me what 't is. Caan't your awn true wife help 'e now or never?"

Recalled by her words he came to himself, picked up her book, and walked on. She spoke again and then he answered,--

"No, 't is a coil wheer you caan't do nought--nor nobody. The black power o' waitin'--'t is that I never heard tell of. I thought I knawed what was in men to the core--me, thirty years of age, an' a ripe man if ever theer was wan. But this malice! 'T is enough to make 'e believe in the devil."

"What have you done?" she cried aloud. "Tell me the worst of it, an' how gert a thing he've got against you."

"Bide quiet," he answered. "I'll tell 'e, but not on the public road. Not but he'll take gude care every ear has it presently. Shut your mouth now an' come up to our chamber arter breakfast an' I'll tell 'e the rights of it. An' that dog knawed an' could keep it close all these years!"

"He's dangerous, an' terrible, an' strong. I see it in your faace, Will."

"So he is, then; ban't no foxin' you 'bout it now. 'T is an awful power of waitin' he've got; an' he haven't bided his time these years an' years for nothin'. A feast to him, I lay. He've licked his damned lips many a score o' times to think of the food he'd fat his vengeance with bimebye."

"Can he taake you from me? If not I'll bear it."

"Ess fay, I'm done for; credit, fortune, all gone. It might have been death if us had been to war at the time."

She clung to him and her head swam.

"Death! God's mercy! you've never killed nobody, Will?"

"Not as I knaws on, but p'r'aps ban't tu late to mend it. It freezes me--it freezes my blood to think what his thoughts have been. No, no, ban't death or anything like that. But 't is prison for sure if--"

He broke off and his face was very dark.

"What, Will? If what? Oh, comfort me, comfort me, Will, for God's sake! An' another li'l wan comin'!"

"Doan't take on," he said. "Ban't my way to squeal till I'm hurt. Let it bide, an' be bright an' cheery come eating, for mother 's down in the mouth at losin' Chris, though she doan't shaw it."

Mrs. Blanchard, with little Timothy, joined the breakfast party at Monks Barton, and a certain gloom hanging over the party, Mr. Blee commented upon it in his usual critical spirit.

"This here givin' in marriage do allus make a looker-on down in the mouth if he 's a sober-minded sort o' man. 'T is the contrast between the courageousness of the two poor sawls jumpin' into the state, an' the solid fact of bein' a man's wife or a woman's husband for all time. The vows they swear! An' that Martin's voice so strong an' cheerful! A teeming cause o' broken oaths the marriage sarvice; yet each new pair comes along like sheep to the slaughter."

"You talk like a bachelor man," said Damaris.

"Not so, Mrs. Blanchard, I assure 'e! Lookers-on see most of the game. Ban't the mite as lives in a cheese what can tell e' 'bout the flavour of un. Look at a married man at a weddin'--all broadcloth an' cheerfulness, like the fox as have lost his tail an' girns to see another chap in the same pickle."

"Yet you tried blamed hard to lose your tail an' get a wife, for all your talk," said Will, who, although his mind was full enough, yet could generally find a sharp word for Mr. Blee.

"Bah to you!" answered the old man angrily. "_That_ for you! 'T is allus your way to bring personal talk into high conversation. I was improvin' the hour with general thoughts; but the vulgar tone you give to a discourse would muzzle the wisdom o' Solomon."

Miller Lyddon here made an effort to re-establish peace and soon afterwards the meal came to an end.

Half an hour later Phoebe heard from her husband the story of his brief military career: of how he had enlisted as a preliminary to going abroad and making his fortune, how he had become servant to one Captain Tremayne, how upon the news of Phoebe's engagement he had deserted, and how his intention to return and make a clean breast of it had been twice changed by the circumstances that followed his marriage. Long he took in detailing every incident and circumstance.

"Coming to think," he said, "of coourse 't is clear as Grimbal must knaw my auld master. I seed his name raised to a Major in the _Western Morning News_ a few year agone, an' he was to Okehampton with a battalion when Hicks come by his death. So that's how't is; an' I ban't gwaine to bide Grimbal's time to be ruined, you may be very sure of that. Now I knaw, I act."

"He may be quite content you should knaw. That's meat an' drink enough for him, to think of you gwaine in fear day an' night."

"Ess, but that's not my way. I ban't wan to wait an enemy's pleasure."

"You won't go to him, Will?"

"Go to un? Ess fay--'fore the day's done, tu."

"That's awnly to hasten the end."

"The sooner the better."

He tramped up and down the bedroom with his eyes on the ground, his hands in his pockets.

"A tremendous thing to tumble up on the surface arter all these years; an' a tremendous time for it to come. 'T was a crime 'gainst the Queen for my awn gude ends. I had to choose 'tween her an' you; I'd do the same to-morrow. The fault weern't theer. It lay in not gwaine back."

"You couldn't; your arm was broke."

"I ought to have gone back arter 't was well. Then time had passed, an' uncle's money corned, an' they never found me. But theer it lies ahead now, sure enough."

"Perhaps for sheer shame he'll bide quiet 'bout it. A man caan't hate another man for ever."

"I thought not, same as you, but Grimbal shaws we 'm wrong."

"Let us go, then; let us do what you thought to do 'fore faither comed forward so kind. Let us go away to furrin paarts, even now."

"I doubt if he'd let me go. 'T is mouse an' cat for the minute. Leastways so he's thought since he talked to 'e. But he'll knaw differ'nt 'fore he lies in his bed to-night. Must be cut an' dried an' settled."

"Be slow to act, Will, an'--"

"Theer! theer!" he said, "doan't 'e offer me no advice, theer's a gude gal, 'cause I couldn't stand it even from you, just this minute. God knaws I'm not above takin' it in a general way, for the best tried man can larn from babes an' sucklings sometimes; but this is a thing calling for nothin' but shut lips. 'T is my job an' I've got to see it through my own way."

"You'll be patient, Will? 'T isn't like other times when you was right an' him wrong. He's got the whip-hand of 'e, so you mustn't dictate."

"Not me. I can be reasonable an' just as any man. I never hid from myself I was doin' wrong at the time. But, when all's said, this auld history's got two sides to it--'specially if you remember that 't was through John Grimbal's awn act I had to do wan wrong thing to save you doin' a worse wan. He'll have to be reasonable likewise. 'T is man to man."

Will's conversation lasted another hour, but Phoebe could not shake his determination, and after dinner Blanchard departed to the Red House, his destination being known to his wife only.

But while Will marched upon this errand, the man he desired to see had just left his own front door, struck through leafless coppices of larch and silver beech that approached the house, and then proceeded to where bigger timber stood about a little plateau of marshy land, surrounded by tall flags. The woodlands had paid their debt to Nature in good gold, and all the trees were naked. An east wind lent a hard, clean clearness to the country. In the foreground two little lakes spread their waters steel-grey in a cup of lead; the distance was clear and cold and compact of all sober colours save only where, through a grey and interlacing nakedness of many boughs, the roof of the Red House rose.

John Grimbal sat upon a felled tree beside the pools, and while he remained motionless, his pipe unlighted, his gun beside him, a spaniel worked below in the sere sedges at the water's margin. Presently the dog barked, a moor-hen splashed, half flying, half swimming, across the larger lake, and a snipe got up and jerked crookedly away on the wind. The dog stood with one fore-paw lifted and the water dripping along his belly. He waited for a crack and puff of smoke and the thud of a bird falling into the water or the underwood. But his master did not fire; he did not even see the flushing of the snipe; so the dog came up and remonstrated with his eyes. Grimbal patted the beast's head, then rose from his seat on the felled tree, stretched his arms, sat down again and lighted his pipe.

The event of the morning had turned his thoughts in the old direction, and now they were wholly occupied with Will Blanchard. Since his fit of futile spleen and fury after the meeting with Phoebe, John had slowly sunk back into the former nerveless attitude. From this an occasional wonder roused him--a wonder as to whether the woman had ever given her husband his message at all. His recent active hatred seemed a little softened, though why it should be so he could not have explained. Now he sometimes assured himself that he should not proceed to extremities, but hang his sword over Will's head a while and possibly end by pardoning him altogether.

Thus he paltered with his better part and presented a spectacle of one mentally sick unto death by reason of shattered purpose. His unity of design was gone. He had believed the last conversation with Phoebe in itself sufficient to waken his pristine passion, but anger against himself had been a great factor of that storm, apart from which circumstance he made the mistake of supposing that his passion slept, whereas in reality it was dead. Now, if Grimbal was to be stung into activity, it must be along another line and upon a fresh count.

Then, as he reflected by the little tarns, there approached Will Blanchard himself; and Grimbal, looking up, saw him standing among white tussocks of dead grass by the water-side and rubbing the mud off his boots upon them. For a moment his breath quickened, but he was not surprised; and yet, before Will reached him, he had time to wonder at himself that he was not.

Blanchard, calling at the Red House ten minutes after the master's departure, had been informed by old Lawrence Vallack, John's factotum, that he had come too late. It transpired, however, that Grimbal had taken his gun and a dog, so Will, knowing the estate, made a guess at the sportsman's destination, and was helped on his way when he came within earshot of the barking spaniel.

Now that animal resented his intrusion, and for a moment it appeared that the brute's master did also. Will had already seen Grimbal where he sat, and came swiftly towards him.

"What are you doing here, William Blanchard? You're trespassing and you know it," said the landowner loudly. "You can have no business here."

"Haven't I? Then why for do'e send me messages?"

Will stood straight and stern in front of his foe. His face was more gloomy than the sombre afternoon; his jaw stood out very square; his grey eyes were hard as the glint of the east wind. He might have been accuser, and John Grimbal accused. The sportsman did not move from his seat upon the log. But he felt a flush of blood pulse through him at the other's voice, as though his heart, long stagnant, was being sluiced.

"That? I'd forgotten all about it. You've taken your time in obeying me."

"This marnin', an' not sooner, I heard what you telled her when you catched Phoebe alone."

"Ah! now I understand the delay. Say what you've got to say, please, and then get out of my sight."

"'T is for you to speak, not me. What be you gwaine to do, an' when be you gwaine to do it? I allow you've bested me, God knaws how; but you've got me down. So the sooner you say what your next step is, the better."

The older man laughed.

"'T isn't the beaten party makes the terms as a rule."

"I want no terms; I wouldn't make terms with you for a sure plaace in heaven. Tell me what you be gwaine to do against me. I've a right to knaw."

"I can't tell you."

"You mean as you won't tell me?"

"I mean I can't--not yet. After speaking to your wife I forgot all about it. It doesn't interest me."

"Be you gwaine to give me up?"

"Probably I shall--as a matter of duty. I'm a bit of a soldier myself. It's such a dirty coward's trick to desert. Yes, I think I shall make an example of you."

Will looked at him steadily.

"You want to wake the devil in me--I see that. But you won't. I'm aulder an' wiser now. So you 'm to give me up? I knawed it wi'out axin'."

"And that doesn't wake you?"

"No. Seein' why I deserted an' mindin' your share in drivin' me."

Grimbal did not answer, and Will asked him to name a date.

"I tell you I shall suit myself, not you. When you will like it least, be sure of that. I needn't pretend what I don't feel. I hate the sight of you still, and the closer you come the more I hate you. It rolls years off me to see your damned brown face so near and hear your voice in my ear,--years and years; and I'm glad it does. You've ruined my life, and I'll ruin yours yet."

There was a pause; Blanchard stared cold and hard into Grimbal's eyes; then John continued, and his flicker of passion cooled a little as he did so,--

"At least that's what I said to myself when first I heard this little bit of news--that I'd ruin you; now I'm not sure."

"At least I'll thank you to make up your mind. 'T is turn an' turn about. You be uppermost just this minute. As to ruining me, that's as may be."

"Well, I shall decide presently. I suppose you won't run away. And it 's no great matter if you do, for a fool can't hide himself under his folly."

"I sha'n't run. I want to get through with this and have it behind me."

"You're in a hurry now."

"It 's just an' right. I knaw that. An' ban't no gert odds who 's informer. But I want to have it behind me--an' you in front. Do 'e see? This out o' hand, then it 's my turn again. Keepin' me waitin' 'pon such a point be tu small an' womanish for a fight between men. 'T is your turn to hit, Jan Grimbal, an' theer 's no guard 'gainst the stroke, so if you're a man, hit an' have done with it."

"Ah! you don't like the thought of waiting!"

"No, I do not. I haven't got your snake's patience. Let me have what I've got to have, an' suffer it, an' make an' end of it."

"You're in a hurry for a dish that won't be pleasant eating, I assure you."

"It's just an' right I tell 'e; an' I knaw it is, though all these years cover it. Your paart 's differ'nt. I lay you 'm in a worse hell than me, even now."

"A moralist! How d' you like the thought of a damned good flogging--fifty lashes laid on hot and strong?"

"Doan't you wish you had the job? Thrashing of a man wi' his legs an' hands tied would just suit your sort of courage."

"As to that, they won't flog you really; and I fancy I could thrash you still without any help. Your memory 's short. Never mind. Get you gone now; and never speak to me again as long as you live, or I shall probably hit you across the mouth with my riding-whip. As to giving you up, you're in my hands and must wait my time for that."

"Must I, by God? Hark to a fule talkin'! Why should I wait your pleasure, an' me wi' a tongue in my head? You've jawed long enough. Now you can listen. I'll give _myself_ up, so theer! I'll tell the truth, an' what drove me to desert, an' what you be anyway--as goes ridin' out wi' the yeomanry so braave in black an' silver with your sword drawed! That'll spoil your market for pluck an' valour, anyways. An' when I've done all court-martial gives me, I'll come back!"

He swung away as he spoke; and the other sat on motionless for an hour after Will had departed.

John Grimbal's pipe went out; his dog, weary of waiting, crept to his feet and fell asleep there; live fur and feathers peeped about and scanned his bent figure, immobile as a tree-trunk that supported it; and the gun, lying at hand, drew down a white light from a gathering gloaming.

One great desire was in the sportsman's mind,--he already found himself hungry for another meeting with Blanchard.