CHAPTER III
CONCERNING THE GATE-POST
So that good store of roots and hay continue for the cattle during those months of early spring while yet the Moor is barren; so that the potato-patch prospers and the oats ripen well; so that neither pony nor bullock is lost in the shaking bogs, and late summer is dry enough to allow of ample peat-storing—when all these conditions prevail, your moorman counts his year a fat one. The upland farmers of Devon are in great measure armed against the bolts of chance by the nature of their lives, the grey character of even their most cheerful experiences and the poverty of their highest ambitions. Their aspirations, becoming speedily cowed by ill-requited toil and eternal hardship, quickly dwarf and shrink, until even the most sanguine seldom extend hope much beyond necessity.
Will grumbled, growled, and fought on, while Phoebe, who knew how nobly the valleys repaid husbandry, mourned in secret that his energetic labours here could but produce such meagre results. Very gradually their environment stamped its frosty seal on man and woman; and by the time that little Will was two years old his parents viewed life, its good and its evil, much as other Moor folks contemplated it. Phoebe’s heart was still sweet enough, but she grew more selfish for herself and her own, more self-centred in great Will and little Will. They filled her existence to the gradual exclusion of wider sympathies. Miller Lyddon had given his grandson a silver mug on the day he was baptised, though since that time the old man held more aloof from the life of Newtake than Phoebe understood. Sometimes she wondered that he had never offered to assist her husband practically, but Will much resented the suggestion when Phoebe submitted it to him. There was no need for any such thing, he declared. As for him, transitory ambitions and hopes gleamed up in his career as formerly, though less often. So man and wife found their larger natures somewhat crushed by the various immediate problems that each day brought along with it. Beyond the narrow horizon of their own concerns they rarely looked, and Chagford people, noting the change, declared that life at Newtake was tying their tongues and lining their foreheads. Will certainly grew more taciturn, less free of advice, perhaps less frank than formerly. A sort of strangeness shadowed him, and only his mother or his son could dispel it. The latter soon learnt to understand his father’s many moods, and would laugh or cry, show joy or fear, according to the tune of the man’s voice.
There came an evening in mid-September when Will sat at the open hearth and smoked, with his eyes fixed on a fire of scads.13 He remained very silent, and Phoebe, busy about a small coat of red cloth, to keep the cold from her little son’s bones during the coming winter, knew that it was not one of her husband’s happiest evenings. His eyes were looking through the fire and the wall behind it, through the wastes and wildernesses beyond, through the granite hills to the far-away edge of the world, where Fate sat spinning the threads of the lives of his loved ones. Threads they looked, in his gloomy survey of that night, much deformed with knot and tangle, for the Spinner cared nothing at all about them. She suffered each to wind heedlessly away; she minded not that they were ugly; she spared no strand of gold or silver from her skein of human happiness to brighten the grey fabric of them. So it seemed to Will, and his temper chimed with the rough night. The wind howled and growled down the chimney, uttered many a sudden yell and ghostly moan, struck with claws invisible at the glowing heart of the peat fire, and sent red sparks dancing from a corona of faint blue flame.
“Winter’s comin’ quick,” said Phoebe, biting her thread.
“Ess, winter’s allus comin’ up here. The fight begins again so soon as ever ’t is awver—again and again and again, ’cordin’ to the workin’ years of a man’s life. Then he turns on his back for gude an’ all, an’ takes his rest, wheer theer’s no more seasons, nor frost, nor sunshine, in the world under.”
“You’m glumpy, dear heart. What’s amiss? What’s crossed ’e? Tell me, an’ I lay I’ll find a word to smooth it away. Nothin’ contrary happened to market?”
“No, no—awnly my nature. When the wind’s spelling winter in the chimbley, an’ the yether’s dead again, ’t is wisht lookin’ forrard. The airth ’s allus dyin’, an’ the life of her be that short, an’ grubbing of bare food an’ rent out of her is sour work after many years. Thank God I’m a hopeful, far-seem’ chap, an’ sound as a bell; but I doan’t make money for all my sweat, that’s the mystery.”
“You will some day. Luck be gwaine to turn ’fore long, I hope. An’ us have got what’s better ’n money, what caan’t be bought.”
“The li’l bwoy?”
“Aye; if us hadn’t nothin’ but him, theer’s many would envy our lot.”
“Childer’s no such gert blessin’, neither.”
“Will! How can you say it?”
“I do say it. We ’m awnly used to keep up the breed, then thrawed o’ wan side. I’m sick o’ men an’ women folks. Theer’s too many of ’em.”
“But childer—our li’l Will. The moosic of un be sweeter than song o’ birds all times, an’ you’d be fust to say so if you wasn’t out of yourself.”
“He ’m a braave, small lad enough; but theer again! Why should he have been pitched into this here home? He might have been put in a palace just as easy, an’ born of a royal queen mother, ’stead o’ you; he might have opened his eyes ’pon marble walls an’ jewels an’ precious stones, ’stead of whitewash an’ a peat fire. Be that baaby gwaine to thank us for bringing him in the world, come he graw up? Not him! Why should he?”
“But he will. We ’m his faither an’ mother. Do ’e love your mother less for bearin’ you in a gypsy van? Li’l Will’s to pay us noble for all our toil some day, an’ be a joy to our grey hairs an’ a prop to our auld age, please God.”
“Ha, ha!—story-books! Gi’ me a cup o’ milk; then us’ll go to bed.”
She obeyed; he piled turf upon the hearth, to keep the fire alight until morning, then took up the candle and followed Phoebe through another chamber, half-scullery, half-storehouse, into which descended the staircase from above. Here hung the pale carcase of a newly slain pig, suspended by its hind legs from a loop in the ceiling; and Phoebe, many of whose little delicacies of manner had vanished of late, patted the carcase lovingly, like the good farmer’s wife she was.
“Wish theer was more so big in the sties,” she said.
Arrived at her bedside, the woman prayed before sinking to rest within reach of her child’s cot; while Will, troubling Heaven with no petition or thanksgiving, was in bed five minutes sooner than his wife.
“Gude-night, lad,” said Phoebe, as she put the candle out, but her husband only returned an inarticulate grunt for answer, being already within the portal of sleep.
A fair morning followed on the tempestuous night, and Winter, who had surely whispered her coming under the darkness, vanished again at dawn. The Moor still provided forage, but all light was gone out of the heather, though the standing fern shone yellow under the sun, and the recumbent bracken shed a rich russet in broad patches over the dewy green where Will had chopped it down and left it to dry for winter fodder. He was very late this year in stacking the fern, and designed that labour for his morning’s occupation.
Ted Chown chanced to be away for a week’s holiday, so Will entered his farmyard early. The variable weather of his mind rarely stood for long at storm, but, unlike the morning, he had awakened in no happy mood.
A child’s voice served for a time to smooth his brow, now clouded from survey of a broken spring in his market-cart; then came the lesser Will with a small china mug for his morning drink. Phoebe watched him sturdily tramp across the yard, and the greater Will laughed to see his son’s alarm before the sudden stampede of a belated heifer, which now hastened through the open gate to join its companions on the hillside.
“Cooshey, cooshey won’t hurt ’e, my li’l bud!” cried Phoebe, as Ship jumped and barked at the lumbering beast. Then the child doubled round a dung-heap and fled to his father’s arms. From the byre a cow with a full udder softly lowed, and now small Will had a cup of warm milk; then, with his red mouth like a rosebud in mist and his father’s smile magically and laughably reproduced upon his little face, he trotted back to his mother.
A moment later Will, still milking, heard himself loudly called from the gate. The voice he knew well enough, but it was pitched unusually high, and denoted a condition of excitement and impatience very seldom to be met with in its possessor. Martin Grimbal, for it was he, did not observe Blanchard, as the farmer emerged from the byre. His eye was bent in startled and critical scrutiny of a granite post, to which the front gate of Newtake latched, and he continued shouting aloud until Will stood beside him. Then he appeared on his hands and knees beside the gate-post. He had flung down his stick and satchel; his mouth was slightly open; his cap rested on the side of his head; his face seemed transfigured before some overwhelming discovery.
Relations were still strained between these men; and Will did not forget the fact, though it had evidently escaped Martin in his present excitement.
“What the deuce be doin’ now?” asked Blanchard abruptly.
“Man alive! A marvel! Look here—to think I have passed this stone a hundred times and never noticed!”
He rose, brushed his muddy knees, still gazing at the gate-post, then took a trowel from his bag and began to cut away the turf about the base of it.
“Let that bide!” called out the master sharply. “What be ’bout, delving theer?”
“I forgot you didn’t know. I was coming to see you on my way to the Moor. I wanted a drink and a handshake. We mustn’t be enemies, and I’m heartily sorry for what I said—heartily. But here’s a fitting object to build new friendship on. I just caught sight of the incisions through a fortunate gleam of early morning light. Come this side and see for yourself. To think you had what a moorman would reckon good fortune at your gate and never guessed it!”
“Fortune at my gate? Wheer to? I aint heard nothin’ of it.”
“Here, man, here! D’ you see this post?”
“Not bein’ blind, I do.”
“Yet you were blind, and so was I. There ’s excuse for you—none for me. It’s a cross! Yes, a priceless old Christian cross, buried here head downward by some profane soul in the distant past, who found it of size and shape to make a gate-post. They are common enough in Cornwall, but very rare in Devon. It’s a great—a remarkable discovery in fact, and I’m right glad I found it on your threshold; for we may be friends again beside this symbol fittingly enough—eh, Will?”
“Bother your rot,” answered the other coldly, and quite unimpassioned before Martin’s eloquence. “You doubted my judgment not long since and said hard things and bad things; now I take leave to doubt yours. How do ’e knaw this here ’s a cross any more than t’ other post the gate hangs on?”
Martin, recalled to reality and the presence of a man till then unfriendly, blushed and shrank into himself a little. His voice showed that he suffered pain.
“I read granite as you read sheep and soil and a crop ripening above ground or below—it’s my business,” he explained, not without constraint, while the enthusiasm died away out of his voice and the fire from his face. “See now, Will, try and follow me. Note these very faint lines, where the green moss takes the place of the lichen. These are fretted grooves—you can trace them to the earth, and on a ‘rubbing,’ as we call it, they would be plainer still. They indicate to me incisions down the sides of a cross-shaft. They are all that many years of weathering have left. Look at the shape too: the stone grows slightly thinner every way towards the ground. What is hidden we can’t say yet, but I pray that the arms may be at least still indicated. You see it is the base sticking into the air, and more’s the pity, a part has gone, for I can trace the incisions to the top. God knows the past history of it, but—”
“Perhaps He do and perhaps He doan’t,” interrupted the farmer. “Perhaps it weer a cross an’ perhaps it weern’t; anyway it’s my gate-post now, an’ as to diggin’ it up, you may be surprised to knaw it, Martin Grimbal, but I’ll see you damned fust! I’m weary of all this bunkum ’bout auld stones an’ circles an’ the rest; I’m sick an’ tired o’ leavin’ my work a hunderd times in summer months to shaw gaping fules from Lunnon an’ Lard knaws wheer, them roundy-poundies ’pon my land. ’Tis all rot, as every moorman knaws; yet you an’ such as you screams if us dares to put a finger to the stone nowadays. Ban’t the granite ours under Venwell? You knaw it is; an’ because dead-an’-gone folk, half-monkeys belike, fashioned their homes an’ holes out of it, be that any cause why it shouldn’t be handled to-day? They’ve had their use of it; now ’tis our turn; an ’tis awnly such as you be, as comes here in shining summer, when the land puts on a lying faace, as though it didn’t knaw weather an’ winter—’tis awnly such as you must cry out against us of the soil if we dares to set wan stone ’pon another to make a wall or to keep the blasted rabbits out the young wheat.”
“Your attitude is one-sided, Will,” said Martin Grimbal gently; “besides, remember this is a cross. We’re dealing with a relic of our faith, take my word for it.”
“Faith be damned! What’s a cross to me? ’Tisdoin’ more gude wheer’t is than ever it done afore, I’ll swear.”
“I hope you’ll live to see you’re wrong, Blanchard. I’ve met you in an evil hour it seems. You’re not yourself. Think about it. There’s no hurry. You pride yourself on your common sense as a rule. I’m sure it will come to your rescue. Granted this discovery is nothing to you, yet think what it means to me. If I’d found a diamond mine I couldn’t be better pleased—not half so pleased as now.”
Will reflected a moment; but the other had not knowledge of character to observe or realise that he was slowly becoming reasonable.
“So I do pride myself on my common sense, an’ I’ve some right to. A cross is a cross—I allow that—and whatever I may think, I ban’t so small-minded as to fall foul of them as think differ’nt. My awn mother be a church-goer for that matter, an’ you’ll look far ways for her equal. But of coourse I knaw what I knaw. Me an’ Hicks talked out matters of religion so dry as chaff.”
“Yet a cross means much to many, and always will while the land continues to call itself Christian.”
“I knaw, I knaw. ’Twill call itself Christian long arter your time an’ mine; as to bein’ Christian—that’s another story. Clem Hicks lightened such matters to me—fule though he was in the ordering of his awn life. But s’pose you digs the post up, for argeyment’s sake. What about me, as have to go out ’pon the Moor an’ blast another new wan out the virgin granite wi’ gunpowder? Do’e think I’ve nothin’ better to do with my time than that?”
Here, in his supreme anxiety and eagerness, forgetting the manner of man he argued with, Martin made a fatal mistake.
“That’s reasonable and business-like,” he said. “I wouldn’t have you suffer for lost time, which is part of your living. I’ll give you ten pounds for the stone, Will, and that should more than pay for your time and for the new post.”
He glanced into the other’s face and instantly saw his error. The farmer’s countenance clouded and his features darkened until he looked like an angry Redskin. His eyes glinted steel-bright under a ferocious frown; the squareness of his jaw became much marked.
“You dare to say that, do’e? An’ me as good a man, an’ better, than you or your brother either! Money—you remind me I’m—Theer! You can go to blue, blazin’ hell for your granite crosses—that’s wheer you can go—you or any other poking, prying pelican! Offer money to me, would ’e? Who be you, or any other man, to offer me money for wasted time? As if I was a road scavenger or another man’s servant! God’s truth! you forget who you’m talkin’ to!”
“This is to purposely misunderstand me, Blanchard. I never, never, meant any such thing. Am I one to gratuitously insult or offend another? Typical this! Your cursed temper it is that keeps you back in the world and makes a failure of you,” answered the student of stones, his own temper nearly lost under exceptional provocation.
“Who says I be a failure?” roared Will in return. “What do you know, you grey, dreamin’ fule, as to whether I’m successful or not so? Get you gone off my land or—”
“I’ll go, and readily enough. I believe you’re mad. That’s the conclusion I’m reluctantly driven to—mad. But don’t for an instant imagine your lunatic stupidity is going to stand between the world and this discovery, because it isn’t.”
He strapped on his satchel, picked up his stick, put his hat on straight, and prepared to depart, breathing hard.
“Go,” snorted Will; “go to your auld stones—they ’m the awnly fit comp’ny for ’e. Bruise your silly shins against ’em, an’ ax ’em if a moorman’s in the right or wrong to paart wi’ his gate-post to the fust fule as wants it!”
Martin Grimbal strode off without replying, and Will, in a sort of grim good-humour at this victory, returned to milking his cows. The encounter, for some obscure reason, restored him to amiability. He reviewed his own dismal part in it with considerable satisfaction, and, after going indoors and eating a remarkably good breakfast, he lighted his pipe and, in the most benignant of moods, went out with a horse and cart to gather withered fern.
CHAPTER IV
MARTIN’S RAID
Mrs. Blanchard now dwelt alone, and all her remaining interests in life were clustered about Will. She perceived that his enterprise by no means promised to fulfil the hopes of those who loved him, and realised too late that the qualities which enabled her father to wrest a living from the moorland farm were lacking in her son. He, of course, explained it otherwise, and pointed to the changes of the times and an universal fall in the price of agricultural produce. His mother cast about in secret how to help him, but no means appeared until, upon an evening some ten days after Blanchard’s quarrel with Grimbal over the gate-post, she suddenly determined to visit Monks Barton and discuss the position with Miller Lyddon.
“I want to have a bit of a tell with ’e,” she said, “’pon a matter so near to your heart as mine. Awnly you’ve got power an’ I haven’t.”
“I knaw what you’m come about before you speak,” answered the other.“ Sit you down an’ us’ll have a gude airing of ideas. But I’m sorry we won’t get the value o’ Billy Blee’s thoughts ’pon the point, for he’s away to-night.”
Damaris rather rejoiced than sorrowed in this circumstance, but she was too wise to say so.
“A far-thinkin’ man, no doubt,” she admitted.
“He is; an’ ’t is straange your comin’ just this night, for Blee’s away on a matter touching Will more or less, an’ doan’t reckon to be home ’fore light.”
“What coorious-fashion job be that then?”
“Caan’t tell ’e the facts. I’m under a promise not to open my mouth, but theer’s no gert harm. Martin Grimbal’s foremost in the thing so you may judge it ban’t no wrong act, and he axed Billy to help him at my advice. You see it’s necessary to force your son’s hand sometimes. He’m that stubborn when his mind’s fixed.”
“A firm man, an’ loves his mother out the common well. A gude son, a gude husband, a gude faither, a hard worker. How many men’s all that to wance, Miller?”
“He is so—all—an’ yet—the man have got his faults, speaking generally.”
“That’s awnly to say he be a man; an’ if you caan’t find words for the faults, ’t is clear they ban’t worth namin’.”
“I can find words easy enough, I assure ’e; but a man’s a fule to waste breath criticising the ways of a son to his mother—if so be he’s a gude son.”
“What fault theer is belongs to me. I was set on his gwaine to Newtake as master, like his gran’faither afore him. I urged the step hot, and I liked the thought of it.”
“So did he—else he wouldn’t have gone.”
“You caan’t say that. He might have done different but for love of me. ’T is I as have stood in his way in this thing.”
“Doan’t fret yourself with such a thought, Mrs. Blanchard; Will’s the sort as steers his awn ship. Theer’s no blame ’pon you. An’ for that matter, if your faither saved gude money at Newtake, why caan’t Will?”
“Times be changed. You’ve got to make two blades o’ grass graw wheer wan did use, if you wants to live nowadays.”
“Hard work won’t hurt him.”
“But it will if he reckons’t is all wasted work. What’s more bitter than toiling to no account, an’ knawin all the while you be?”
“Not all wasted work, surely?”
“They wouldn’t allow it for the world. He’s that gay afore me, an’ Phoebe keeps a stiff upper lip, tu; but I go up unexpected now an’ again an’ pop in unawares an’ sees the truth. You with your letter or message aforehand, doan’t find out nothing, an’ won’t.”
“He’m out o’ luck, I allow. What’s the exact reason?”
“You’ll find it in the Book, same as I done. I knaw you set gert store ’pon the Word. Well, then, ’them the Lard loveth He chasteneth.’ That’s why Will’s languishin’ like. ’T won’t last for ever.”
“Ah! But theer’s other texts to other purpose. Not that I want ’e to dream my Phoebe’s less to me than your son to you. I’ve got my eye on ’em, an’ that’s the truth; an’ on my li’l grandson, tu.”
“Theer’s gert things buddin’ in that bwoy.”
“I hope so. I set much store on him. Doan’t you worrit, mother, for the party to Newtake be bound up very close wi’ my happiness, an’ if they was wisht, ban’t me as would long be merry. I be gwaine to give Master Will rope enough to hang himself, having a grudge or two against him yet; then, when the job’s done, an’ he’s learnt the hard lesson to the dregs, I’ll cut un down in gude time an’ preach a sarmon to him while he’s in a mood to larn wisdom. He’s picking up plenty of information, you be sure—things that will be useful bimebye: the value of money, the shortness o’ the distance it travels, the hardness o’ Moor ground, an’ men’s hearts, an’ such-like branches of larning. Let him bide, an’ trust me.”
The mother was rendered at once uneasy and elated by this speech. That, if only for his wife and son’s sake, Will would never be allowed to fail entirely seemed good to know; but she feared, and, before the patronising manner of the old man, felt alarm for the future. She well knew how Will would receive any offer of assistance tendered in this spirit.
“Like your gude self so to promise; but remember he ’m of a lofty mind and fiery.”
“Stiff-necked he be, for certain; but he may graw quiet ’fore you think it. Nothing tames a man so quick as to see his woman and childer folk hungry—eh? An’ specially if ’t is thanks to his awn mistakes.”
Mrs. Blanchard flushed and felt a wave of anger surging through her breast. But she choked it down.
“You ’m hard in the grain, Lyddon—so them often be who’ve lived over long as widow men. Theer ’s a power o’ gude in my Will, an’ your eyes will be opened to see it some day. He ’m young an’ hopeful by nature; an’ such as him, as allus looks up to gert things, feels a come down worse than others who be content to crawl. He ’m changing, an’ I knaw it, an’ I’ve shed more ’n wan tear awver it, bein’ on the edge of age myself now, an’ not so strong-minded as I was ’fore Chris went. He ’m changing, an’ the gert Moor have made his blood beat slower, I reckon, an’ froze his young hope a bit.”
“He ’s grawiug aulder, that’s all. ’T is right as he should chatter less an’ think more.”
“I suppose so; yet a mother feels a cold cloud come awver her heart to watch a cheel fighting the battle an’ not winning it. Specially when she can awnly look on an’ do nothin’.”
“Doan’t you fear. You ’m low in spirit, else you’d never have spoke so open; but I thank you for tellin’ me that things be tighter to Newtake than I guessed. You leave the rest to me. I knaw how far to let ’em go; an’ if we doan’t agree ’pon that question, you must credit me with the best judgment, an’ not think no worse of me for helpin’ in my awn way an’ awn time.”
With which promise Mrs. Blanchard was contented. Surveying the position in the solitude of her home, she felt there was much to be thankful for. Yet she puzzled her heart and head to find schemes by which the miller’s charity might be escaped. She considered her own means, and pictured her few possessions sold at auction; she had already offered to go and dwell at Newtake and dispose of her cottage. But Will exploded so violently when the suggestion reached his ears that she never repeated it.
While the widow thus bent her thoughts upon her son, and gradually sank to sleep with the problems of the moment unsolved, a remarkable series of incidents made the night strange at Newtake Farm.
Roused suddenly a little after twelve o’clock by an unusual sound, Phoebe woke with a start and cried to her husband:
“Will—Will, do hark to Ship! He ’m barkin’ that savage!”
Will turned and growled sleepily that it was nothing, but the bark continued, so he left his bed and looked out of the window. A waning moon had just thrust one glimmering point above the sombre flank of the hill. It ascended as he watched, dispensed a sinister illumination, and like some remote bale-fire hung above the bosom of the nocturnal Moor. His dog still barked, and in the silence Will could hear a clink and thud as it leapt to the limit of its chain. Then out of the night a lantern danced at Newtake gate, and Blanchard, his eyes now trained to the gloom, discovered several figures moving about it.
“Baggered if it bau’t that damned Grimbal come arter my gate-post,” he gasped, launched instantly to high wakefulness by the suspicion. Then, dragging on his trousers, and thrusting the tail of his nightshirt inside them, he tumbled down-stairs, with passion truly formidable, and hastened naked footed through the farmyard.
Four men blankly awaited him. Ignoring their leader—none other than Martin himself—he turned upon Mr. Blee, who chanced to be nearest, and struck from his hand a pick.
“What be these blasted hookem-snivey dealings, then?” Will thundered out, “an’ who be you, you auld twisted thorn, to come here stealin’ my stone in the dead o’ night?”
Billy’s little eyes danced in the lantern fire, and he answered hastily before Martin had time to speak.
“Well, to be plain, the moon and the dog’s played us false, an’ you’d best to knaw the truth fust as last. Mr. Grimbal’s writ you two straight, fair letters ’bout this job, so he’ve explained to me, an’ you never so much as answered neither; so, seem’ this here’s a right Christian cross, ban’t decent it should bide head down’ards for all time. An’ Mr. Grimbal have brought up a flam-new granite post, hasp an’ all complete—’t is in the cart theer—an’ he called on me as a discreet, aged man to help un, an’ so I did; an’ Peter Bassett an’ Sam Bonus here corned likewise, by my engagement, to do the heavy work an’ aid in a gude deed.”
“Dig an inch, wan of ’e, and I’ll shaw what’s a gude deed! I doan’t want no talk with you or them hulking gert fules. ’T is you I’d ax, Martin Grimbal, by what right you’m here.”
“You wouldn’t answer my letters, and I couldn’t find it in my heart to leave an important matter like this. I know I wasn’t wise, but you don’t understand what a priceless thing this is. I thought you’d find the new one in the morning and laugh at it. For God’s sake be reasonable and sensible, Blanchard, and let me take it away. There’s a new post I’ll have set up. It’s here waiting. I can’t do more.”
“But you’ll do a darned sight less. Right’s right, an’ stealin’s stealin’. You wasn’t wise, as you say—far from it. You’m in the wrong now, an’ you knaw it, whatever you was before. A nice bobbery! Why doan’t he take my plough or wan of the bullocks? Damned thieves, the lot of’e!”
“Doan’t cock your nose so high, Farmer,” said Bonus, who had never spoken to Will since he left Newtake; “’t is very onhandsome of ’e to be tellin’ like this to gentle-folks.”
“Gentlefolks! Gentlefolks would ax your help, wouldn’t they? You, as be no better than a common poacher since I turned ’e off! You shut your mouth and go home-long, an’ mind your awn business, an’ keep out o’ the game preserves. Law’s law, as you’m like to find sooner’n most folks.”
This pointed allusion to certain rumours concerning the labourer’s present way of life angered Bonus not a little, but it also silenced him.
“Law’s law, as you truly say, Will Blanchard,” answered Mr. Blee, “an’ theer it do lie in a nutshell. A man’s gate-post is his awn as a common, natural gate-post; but bein’ a sainted cross o’ the Lard sticked in the airth upsy-down by some ancient devilry, ’t is no gate-post, nor yet every-day moor-stone, but just the common property of all Christian souls.”
“You’m out o’ bias to harden your heart, Mr. Blanchard, when this gentleman sez ’t is what ’t is,” ventured the man Peter Bassett, slowly.
“An’ so you be, Blanchard, an’ ’t is a awful deed every ways, an’ you’ll larn it some day. You did ought to be merry an’ glad to hear such a thing ’s been found ’pon Newtake. Think o’ the fortune a cross o’ Christ brings to ’e!”
“An’ how much has it brought, you auld fule?”
“Gude or bad, you’ll be a sight wuss off it you leave it wheer ’t is, now you knaw. Theer’ll be hell to pay if it’s let bide now, sure as eggs is eggs an’ winter, winter. You’ll rue it; you’ll gnash awver it; ’t will turn against ’e an’ rot the root an’ blight the ear an’ starve the things an’ break your heart. Mark me, you’m doin’ a cutthroat deed an’ killin’ all your awn luck by leavin’ it here an hour longer.”
But Will showed no alarm at Mr. Blee’s predictions.
“Be it as ’t will, you doan’t touch my stone—cross or no cross. Damn the cross! An’ you tu, every wan of ’e, dirty night birds!”
Then Martin, who had waited, half hoping that Billy’s argument might carry weight, spoke and ended the scene.
“We’ll talk no more and we’ll do no more,” he said. “You’re wrong in a hundred ways to leave this precious stone to shut a gate and keep in cows, Blanchard. But if you wouldn’t heed my letters, I suppose you won’t heed my voice.”
“Why the devil should I heed your letters? I told ’e wance for all, didn’t I? Be I a man as changes my mind like a cheel?”
“Crooked words won’t help ’e, Farmer,” said the stolid Bassett. “You ’m wrong, an’ you knaw right well you ’m wrong, an’ theer’ll come a day of reckoning for ’e, sure ’s we ’m in a Christian land.”
“Let it come, an’ leave me to meet it. An’ now, clear out o’ this, every wan, or I’ll loose the dog ’pon ’e!”
He turned hurriedly as he spoke and fetched the bobtailed sheep-dog on its chain. This he fastened to the stone, then watched the defeated raiders depart. Grimbal had already walked away alone, after directing that a post which he had brought to supersede the cross, should be left at the side of the road. Now, having obeyed his command, Mr. Blee, Bonus, and Bassett climbed into the cart and slowly passed away homewards. The moon had risen clear of earth and threw light sufficient to show Bassett’s white smock still gleaming through the night as Will beheld his enemies depart.
Ten minutes later, while he washed his feet, the farmer told Phoebe of the whole matter, including his earlier meeting with Martin, and the antiquary’s offer of money. Upon this subject his wife found herself in complete disagreement with Blanchard, and did not hesitate to say so.
“Martin Grimbal ’s so gude a friend as any man could have, an’ you did n’t ought to have bullyragged him that way,” she declared.
“You say that! Ban’t a man to speak his mind to thieves an’ robbers?”
“No such thing. ’T is a sacred stone an’ not your property at all. To refuse ten pound for it!”
“Hold your noise, then, an’ let me mind my business my awn way,” he answered roughly, getting back to bed; but Phoebe was roused and had no intention of speaking less than her mind.
“You ’m a knaw-nought gert fule,” she said, “an’ so full of silly pride as a turkey-cock. What ’s the stone to you if Grimbal wants it? An’ him taking such a mint of trouble to come by it. What right have you to fling away ten pounds like that, an’ what ’s the harm to earn gude money honest? Wonder you ban’t shamed to sell anything. ’T is enough these times for a body to say wan thing for you to say t’other.”
This rebuke from a tongue that scarcely ever uttered a harsh word startled Will not a little. He was silent for half a minute, then made reply.
“You can speak like that—you, my awn wife—you, as ought to be heart an’ soul with me in everything I do? An’ the husband I am to ’e. Then I should reckon I be fairly alone in the world, an’ no mistake—’cept for mother.”
Phoebe did not answer him. Her spark of anger was gone and she was passing quickly from temper to tears.
“’T is queer to me how short of friends I ’pear to be gettin’,” confessed Will gloomily. “I must be differ’nt to what I fancied for I allus felt I could do with a waggon-load of friends. Yet they ’m droppin’ off. Coourse I knaw why well enough, tu. They’ve had wind o’ tight times to Newtake, though how they should I caan’t say, for the farm ’s got a prosperous look to my eye, an’ them as drops in dinnertime most often finds meat on the table. Straange a man what takes such level views as me should fall out wi’ his elders so much.”
“’T is theer fault as often as yours; an’ you’ve got me as well as your mother, Will; an’ you’ve got your son. Childern knaw the gude from the bad, same as dogs, in a way hid from grawn folks. Look how the li’l thing do run to ’e ’fore anybody in the world.”
“So he do; an’ if you ’m wise enough to see that, you ought to be wise enough to see I’m right ’bout the gate-post. Who ’s Martin Grimbal to offer me money? A self-made man, same as me. Yet he might have had it, an’ welcome if he’d axed proper.”
“Of course, if you put it so, Will.”
“Theer ’s no ways else to put it as I can see.”
“But for your awn peace of mind it might be wisest to dig the cross up. I listened by the window an’ heard Billy Blee tellin’ of awful cusses, an’ he ’s wise wi’out knawin’ it sometimes.”
“That’s all witchcraft an’ stuff an’ nonsense, an’ you ought to knaw better, Phoebe. ’T is as bad as setting store on the flight o’ magpies, or gettin’ a dead tooth from the churchyard to cure toothache, an’ such-like folly.”
“Ban’t folly allus, Will; theer ’s auld tried wisdom in some ancient sayings.”
“Well, you guide your road by my light if you want to be happy. ’T is for you I uses all my thinking brain day an’ night—for your gude an’ the li’l man’s.”
“I knaw—I knaw right well ’t is so, dear Will, an’ I’m sorry I spoke so quick.”
“I’ll forgive ’e before you axes me, sweetheart. Awnly you must larn to trust me, an’ theer ’s no call for you to fear. Us must speak out sometimes, an’ I did just now, an’ ’t is odds but some of them chaps, Grimbal included, may have got a penn’orth o’ wisdom from me.”
“So ’t is, then,” she said, cuddling to him; “an’ you’ll do well to sleep now; an’—an’ never tell again, Will, you’ve got nobody but your mother while I’m above ground, ’cause it’s against justice an’ truth an’ very terrible for me to hear.”
“’T was a thoughtless speech,” admitted Will, “an’ I’m sorry I spake it. ’T was a hasty word an’ not to be took serious.”
They slept, while the moon wove wan harmonies of ebony and silver into Newtake. A wind woke, proclaiming morning, as yet invisible; and when it rustled dead leaves or turned a chimney-cowl, the dog at the gate stirred and growled and grated his chain against the granite cross.
CHAPTER V
WINTER
As Christmas again approached, adverse conditions of weather brought like anxieties to a hundred moormen besides Will Blanchard, but the widespread nature of the trouble by no means diminished his individual concern. A summer of unusual splendour had passed unblessed away, for the sustained drought represented scanty hay and an aftermath of meagre description. Cereals were poor, with very little straw, and the heavy rains of November arrived too late to save acres of starved roots on high grounds. Thus the year became responsible for one prosperous product alone: rarely was it possible to dry so well those stores gathered from the peat beds. Huge fires, indeed, glowed upon many a hearth, but the glory of them served only to illumine anxious faces. A hard winter was threatened, and the succeeding spring already appeared as no vision to welcome, but a hungry spectre to dread.
Then, with the last week of the old year, winter swept westerly on hyperborean winds, and when these were passed a tremendous frost won upon the world. Day followed day of weak, clear sunshine and low temperature. The sun, upon his shortest journeys, showed a fiery face as he sulked along the stony ridges of the Moor, and gazed over the ice-chained wilderness, the frozen waters, and the dark mosses that never froze, but lowered black, like wounds on a white skin. Dartmoor slept insensible under granite and ice; no sheep-bell made music; no flocks wandered at will; only the wind moaned in the dead bells of the heather; only the foxes slunk round cot and farm; only the shaggy ponies stamped and snorted under the lee of the tors and thrust their smoking muzzles into sheltered clefts and crannies for the withered green stuff that kept life in them. Snow presently softened the outlines of the hills, set silver caps on the granite, and brought the distant horizon nearer to the eye under crystal-clear atmosphere. Many a wanderer, thus deceived, plodded hopefully forward at sight of smoke above a roof-tree, only to find his bourne, that seemed so near, still weary miles away. The high Moors were a throne for death. Cold below freezing-point endured throughout the hours of light and grew into a giant when the sun and his winter glory had huddled below the hills.
Newtake squatted like a toad upon this weary waste. Its crofts were bare and frozen two feet deep; its sycamores were naked save for snow in the larger forks, and one shivering concourse of dead leaves, where a bough had been broken untimely, and thus held the foliage. Suffering almost animate peered from its leaded windows; the building scowled; cattle lowed through the hours of day, and a steam arose from their red hides as they crowded together for warmth. Often it gleamed mistily in the light of Will’s lantern when at the dead icy hour before dawn he went out to his beasts. Then he would rub their noses, and speak to them cheerfully, and note their congealed vapours where these had ascended and frozen in shining spidery hands of ice upon the walls and rafters of the byre. Fowls, silver-spangled and black, scratched at the earth from habit, fought for the daily grain with a ferocity the summer never saw, stalked spiritless in puffed plumage about the farmyard and collected with subdued clucking upon their roosts in a barn above the farmyard carts as soon as the sun had dipped behind the hills. Ducks complained vocally, and as they slipped on the glassy pond they quacked out a mournful protest against the times.
The snow which fell did not melt, but shone under the red sunshine, powdered into dust beneath hoof and heel; every cart-rut was full of thin white ice, like ground window-glass, that cracked drily and split and tinkled to hobnails or iron-shod wheel. The snow from the house-top, thawed by the warmth within, ran dribbling from the eaves and froze into icicles as thick as a man’s arm. These glittered almost to the ground and refracted the sunshine in their prisms.
Warm-blooded life suffered for the most part silently, but the inanimate fabric of the farm complained with many a creak and crack and groan in the night watches, while Time’s servant the frost gnawed busily at old timbers and thrust steel fingers into brick and mortar. Only the hut-circles, grey glimmering through the snow on Metherill, laughed at those cruel nights, as the Neolithic men who built them may have laughed at the desperate weather of their day; and the cross beside Blanchard’s gate, though an infant in age beside them, being fashioned of like material, similarly endured. Of more lasting substance was this stone than an iron tongue stuck into it to latch the gate, for the metal fretted fast and shed rust in an orange streak upon the granite.
Where first this relic had risen, when yet its craftsman’s work was perfect and before the centuries had diminished its just proportions, no living man might say. Martin Grimbal suspected that it had marked a meeting-place, indicated some Cistercian way, commemorated a notable deed, or served to direct the moorland pilgrim upon his road to that trinity of great monasteries which flourished aforetime at Plympton, at Tavistock, and at Buckland of the Monks; but between its first uprising and its last, a duration of many years doubtless extended.
The antiquary’s purpose had been to rescue the relic, judge, by close study of the hidden part, to what date it might be assigned, then investigate the history of Newtake Farm, and endeavour to trace the cross if possible. After his second repulse, however, and following upon a conversation with Phoebe, whom he met at Chagford, Martin permitted the matter to remain in abeyance. Now he set about regaining Will’s friendship’in a gradual and natural manner. That done, he trusted to disinter the coveted granite at some future date and set it up on sanctified ground in Chagford churchyard, if the true nature of the relic justified that course. For the present, however, he designed no step, for his purpose was to visit the Channel Islands early in the new year, that he might study their testimony to prehistoric times.
A winter, to cite whose parallel men looked back full twenty years, still held the land, though February had nearly run. Blanchard daily debated the utmost possibility of his resources with Phoebe, and fought the inclement weather for his early lambs. Such light as came into life at Newtake was furnished by little Will, who danced merrily through ice and snow, like a scarlet flower in his brilliant coat. The cold pleased him; he trod the slippery duck pond in triumph, his bread-and-milk never failed. To Phoebe her maternal right in the infant seemed recompense sufficient for all those tribulations existence just now brought with it; from which conviction resulted her steady courage and cheerfulness. Her husband’s nebulous rationalism clouded Phoebe’s religious views not at all. She daily prayed to Christ for her child’s welfare, and went to church whenever she could, at the express command of her father. A flash of folly from Will had combined with hard weather to keep the miller from any visit to Newtake. Mr. Lyddon, on the beginning of the great frost, had sent two pairs of thick blankets from the Monks Barton stores to Phoebe, and Will, opening the parcel during his wife’s absence, resented the gift exceedingly, and returned it by the bearer with a curt message of thanks and the information that he did not need them. Much hurt, the donor turned his face from Newtake for six weeks after this incident, and Phoebe, who knew nothing of the matter, marvelled at her father’s lengthy and unusual silence.
As for Will, during these black days, the steadfast good temper of his wife almost irritated him; but he saw the prime source of her courage, and himself loved their small son dearly. Once a stray journal fell into his hands, and upon an article dealing with emigration he built secret castles in the air, and grew more happy for the space of a week. His mother ailed a little through the winter, and he often visited her. But in her presence he resolutely put off gloom, spoke with sanguine tongue of the prosperity he foresaw during the coming spring, and always foretold the frost must break within four-and-twenty-hours. Damaris Blanchard was therefore deceived in some measure, and when Will spent five shillings upon a photograph of his son, she felt that the Newtake prospects must at least be more favourable than she feared, and let the circumstance of the picture be generally known.
Not until the middle of March came a thaw, and then unchained waters and melted snows roared and tumbled from the hills through every coomb and valley. Each gorge, each declivity contributed an unwonted torrent; the quaking bogs shivered as though beneath them monsters turned in sleep or writhed in agony; the hoarse cry of Teign betokened new tribulations to the ears of those who understood; and over the Moor there rolled and crowded down a sodden mantle of mist, within whose chilly heart every elevation of note vanished for days together. Wrapped in impenetrable folds were the high lands, and the gigantic vapour stretched a million dripping tentacles over forests and wastes into the valleys beneath. Now it crept even to the heart of the woods; now it stealthily dislimned in lonely places; now it redoubled its density and dominated all things. The soil steamed and exuded vapour as a soaked sponge, and upon its surcharged surface splashes and streaks and sheets of water shone pallid and ash-coloured, like blind eyes, under the eternal mists and rains. These accumulations threw back the last glimmer of twilight and caught the first grey signal of approaching dawn; while the land, contrariwise, had welcomed night while yet wan sunsets struggled with the rain, and continued to cherish darkness long after morning was in the sky. Every rut and hollow, every scooped cup on the tors was brimming now; springs unnumbered and unknown had burst their secret places; the water floods tumbled and thundered until their rough laughter rang like a knell in the ears of the husbandmen; and beneath crocketed pinnacles of half a hundred church towers rose the mournful murmur of prayer for fair weather.
There came an afternoon in late March when Mr. Blee returned to Monks Barton from Chagford, stamped the mud off his boots and leggings, shook his brown umbrella, and entered the kitchen to find his master reading the Bible.
“’Tis all set down, Blee,” exclaimed Mr. Lyddon with the triumphant voice of a discoverer. “These latter rains be displayed in the Book, according to my theory that everything ’s theer!”
“Pity you didn’t find ’em out afore they comed; then us might have bought the tarpaulins cheap in autumn, ’stead of payin’ through the nose for ’em last month. Now ’t is fancy figures for everything built to keep out rain. Rabbit that umberella! It’s springed a leak, an’ the water’s got down my neck.”
“Have some hot spirits, then, an’ listen to this—all set out in Isaiah forty-one—eighteen: ‘I will open rivers in high places and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water.’ Theer! If that ban’t a picter of the present plague o’ rain, what should be?”
“So ’t is; an’ the fountains in the midst of the valleys be the awfullest part. Burnish it all! The high land had the worst of the winter, but we in the low coombs be gwaine to get the worst o’ the spring—safe as water allus runs down-long.”
“’T will find its awn level, which the prophet knawed.”
“I wish he knawed how soon.”
“’T is in the Word, I’ll wager. I may come upon it yet.”
“The airth be damn near drowned, an’ the air’s thick like a washin’-day everywheers, an’ a terrible braave sight o’ rain unshed in the elements yet.”
“’T will pass, sure as Noah seed a rainbow.”
“Ess, ’t will pass; but Monks Barton’s like to be washed to Fingle Bridge fust. Oceans o’ work waitin’, but what can us be at? Theer ban’t a bit o’ land you couldn’t most swim across.”
“Widespread trouble, sure ’nough—all awver the South Hams, high an’ low.”
“By the same token, I met Will Blanchard an hour agone. Gwaine in the dispensary, he was. The li’l bwoy’s queer—no gert ill, but a bit of a tisseck on the lungs. He got playin’ ’bout, busy as a rook, in the dirt, and catched cold.”
Miller Lyddon was much concerned at this bad news.
“Oh, my gude God!” he exclaimed, “that’s worse hearin’ than all or any you could have fetched down. What do Doctor say?”
“Wasn’t worth while to call un up, so Will thought. Ban’t nothin’ to kill a beetle, or I lay the mother of un would have Doctor mighty soon. Will reckoned to get un a dose of physic—an’ a few sweeties. Nature’s all for the young buds. He won’t come to no hurt.”
“Fust thing morning send a lad riding to Newtake,” ordered Mr. Lyddon. “Theer’s no sleep for me to-night, no, nor any more at all till I hear tell the dear tibby-lamb’s well again. ’Pon my soul, I wonder that headstrong man doan’t doctor the cheel hisself.”
“Maybe he will. Ban’t nothin ’s beyond him.”
“I’ll go silly now. If awnly Mrs. Blanchard was up theer wi’ Phoebe.”
“Doan’t you grizzle about it. The bwoy be gwaine to make auld bones yet—hard as a nut he be. Give un years an’ he’ll help carry you to the graave in the fulness of time, I promise ’e,” said Billy, in his comforting way.
CHAPTER VI
THE CROSS UPREARED
Mr. Blee had but reported Will correctly, and it was not until some hours later that the child at Newtake caused his parents any alarm. Then he awoke in evident suffering, and Will, at Phoebe’s frantic entreaty, arose and was soon galloping down through the night for Doctor Parsons.
His thundering knock fell upon the physician’s door, and a moment later a window above him was opened.
“Why can’t you ring the bell instead of making that fiendish noise, and waking the whole house? Who is it?”
“Blanchard, from Newtake.”
“What’s wrong?”
“’T is my bwoy. He’ve got something amiss with his breathing parts by the looks of it.”
“Ah.”
“Doan’t delay. Gert fear comed to his mother under the darkness, ’cause he seemed nicely when he went to sleep, then woke up worse. So I felt us had better not wait till morning.”
“I’ll be with you in five minutes.”
Soon the Doctor appeared down a lane from the rear of the house. He was leading his horse by the bridle.
“I’m better mounted than you,” he said, “so I’ll push forward. Every minute saved is gained.”
Will thanked him, and Doctor Parsons disappeared. When the father reached home, it was to hear that his child was seriously ill, though nothing of a final nature could be done to combat the sickness until it assumed a more definite form.
“It’s a grave case,” said the physician, drearily in the dawn, as he pulled on his gloves and discussed the matter with Will before departing. “I’ll be up again to-night. We mustn’t overlook the proverbial vitality of the young, but if you are wise you will school your mind and your wife’s to be resigned. You understand.”
He stroked his peaked naval beard, shook his head, then mounted his horse and was gone.
From that day forward life stood still at Newtake, in so far as it is possible for life to do so, and a long-drawn weariness of many words dragged dully of a hundred pages would be necessary to reflect that tale of noctural terrors and daylight respites, of intermittent fears, of nerve-shattering suspense, and of the ebb and flow of hope through a fortnight of time. Overtaxed and overwrought, Phoebe ceased to be of much service in the sick-room after a week without sleep; Will did all that he could, which was little enough; but his mother took her place in the house unquestioned at this juncture, and ruled under Doctor Parsons. The struggle seemed to make her younger again, to rub off the slow-gathering rust of age and charm up all her stores of sense and energy.
So they battled for that young life. More than once a shriek from Phoebe would echo to the farm that little Will was gone; and yet he lived; many a time the child’s father in his strength surveyed the perishing atom, and prayed to take the burden, all too heavy for a baby’s shoulders. In one mood he supplicated, in another cursed Heaven for its cruelty.
There came a morning in early April when their physician, visiting Newtake before noon, broke it to husband and wife that the child could scarcely survive another day. He promised to return in the evening, and left them to their despair. Mrs. Blanchard, however, refused to credit this assurance, and cried to them to be hopeful still.
In the afternoon Mr. Blee rode up from Monks Barton. Daily a messenger visited Newtake for Mr. Lyddon’s satisfaction, but it was not often that Billy came. Now he arrived, however, entered the kitchen, and set down a basket laden with good things. The apartment lacked its old polish and cleanliness. The whitewash was very dirty; the little eight-day clock on the mantelpiece had run down; the begonias in pots on the window-ledge were at death’s door for water. Between two of them a lean cat stretched in the sun and licked its paws; beside the fire lay Ship with his nose on the ground; and Will sat close by, a fortnight’s beard upon his chin. He looked listlessly up as Mr. Blee entered and nodded but did not speak.
“Well, what ’s the best news? I’ve brought ’e fair-fashioned weather at any rate. The air ’s so soft as milk, even up here, an’ you can see the green things grawin’ to make up for lost time. Sun was proper hot on my face as I travelled along. How be the poor little lad?”
“Alive, that’s all. Doctor’s thrawed un awver now.”
“Never! Yet I’ve knawed even Parsons to make mistakes. I’ve brought ’e a braave bunch o’ berries, got by the gracious gudeness of Miller from Newton Abbot; also a jelly; also a bottle o’ brandy—the auld stuff from down cellar—I brushed the Dartmoor dew, as ’t is called, off the bottle myself; also a fowl for the missis.”
“No call to have come. ’T is all awver bar the end.”
“Never say it while the child’s livin’! They ’m magical li’l twoads for givin’ a doctor the lie. You ’m wisht an’ weary along o’ night watchings.”
“Us must faace it. Ban’t no oncommon thing. Hope’s dead in me these many days; an’ dying now in Phoebe—dying cruel by inches. She caan’t bring herself to say ‘gude-by’ to the li’l darling bwoy.”
“What mother could? What do Mrs. Blanchard the elder say?”
“She plucks up ’bout it. She ’m awver hopeful.”
“Doan’t say so! A very wise woman her.”
Phoebe entered at this moment, and Mr. Blee turned from where he was standing by his basket.
“I be cheerin’ your gude man up,” he said.
She sighed, and sat down wearily near Will.
“I’ve brought ’e a chick for your awn eatin’ an’—”
Here a scuffle and snarling and spitting interrupted Billy. The hungry cat, finding a fowl almost under its nose, had leapt to the ground with it, and the dog observed the action. Might is right in hungry communities; Ship asserted himself, and almost before the visitor realised what had happened, poor Phoebe’s chicken was gone.
“Out on the blamed thieves!” cried Billy, astounded at such manners. He was going to strike the dog, but Will stopped him.
“Let un bide,” he said. “He didn’t take it, an’ since it weern’t for Phoebe, better him had it than the cat. He works for his livin’, she doan’t.”
“Such gwaines-on ’mongst dumb beasts o’ the field I never seen!” protested Billy; “an’ chickens worth what they be this spring!”
Presently conversation drifted into a channel that enabled the desperate, powerless man to use his brains and employ his muscles; while for the mother it furnished a fresh gleam of hope built upon faith. Billy it was who brought about this consummation. Led by Phoebe he ascended to the sick-room and bid Mrs. Blanchard “good-day.” She sat with the insensible child on her lap by the fire, where a long-spouted kettle sent forth jets of steam.
“This here jelly what I’ve brought would put life in a corpse I do b’lieve; an’ them butivul grapes, tu,—they’ll cool his fever to rights, I should judge.”
“He ’m past all that,” said Phoebe.
“Never!” cried the other woman. “He’m a bit easier to my thinkin’.”
“Let me take un then,” said the mother. “You’m most blind for sleep.”
“Not a bit of it. I’ll have forty winks later, after Doctor’s been again.”
Will here entered, sat down by his mother, and stroked the child’s little limp hand.
“He ban’t fightin’ so hard, by the looks of it,” he said.
“No more he is. Come he sleep like this till dark, I lay he’ll do braave.”
Nobody spoke for some minutes, then Billy, having pondered the point in silence, suddenly relieved his mind and attacked Will, to the astonishment of all present.
“’Tis a black thought for you to knaw this trouble’s of your awn wicked hatching, Farmer,” he said abruptly; “though it ban’t a very likely time to say so, perhaps. Yet theer’s life still, so I speak.”
Will glared speechless; but Billy knew himself too puny and too venerable to fear rough handling. He regarded the angry man before him without fear, and explained his allusion.
“You may glaze ’pon me, an’ stick your savage eyes out your head; but that doan’t alter truth. ’T ’as awnly a bit ago in the fall as I told un what would awvertake un,” he continued, turning to the women. “He left the cross what Mr. Grimbal found upsy-down in the airth; he stood up afore the company an’ damned the glory of all Christian men. Ess fay, he done that fearful thing, an’ if ’t weern’t enough to turn the Lard’s hand from un, what was? Snug an’ vitty he weer afore that, so far as anybody knawed; an’ since—why, troubles have tumbled ’pon each other’s tails like apple-dranes out of a nest.”
The face of Phoebe was lighted with some eagerness, some deep anxiety, and not a little passion as she listened to this harangue.
“You mean that gate-stone brought this upon us?” she asked.
“No, no, never,” declared Damaris; “’t is contrary to all reason.”
“’T is true, whether or no; an’ any fule, let alone a man as knaws like I do, would tell ’e the same. ’T is common sense if you axes me. Your man was told ’t was a blessed cross, an’ he flouted the lot of us an’ left it wheer ’t was. ’T is a challenge, if you come to think of it, a scoffin’ of the A’mighty to the very face of Un. I wouldn’t stand it myself if I was Him.”
“Will, do ’e hear Mr. Blee?” asked Phoebe.
“I hear un. ’T is tu late now, even if what he said was true, which it ban’t.”
“Never tu late to do a gude deed,” declared Billy; “an’ you’ll have to come to it, or you’ll get the skin cussed off your back afore you ’m done with. Gormed if ever I seed sich a man as you! Theer be some gude points about ’e, as everything must have from God A’mighty’s workshop, down to poisonous varmints. But certain sure am I that you don’t ought to think twice ’pon this job.”
“Do ’e mean it might even make the differ’nee between life an’ death to the bwoy?” asked Phoebe breathlessly.
“I do. Just all that.”
“Will—for God’s love, Will!”
“What do ’e say, mother?”
“It may be truth. Strange things fall out. Yet it never hurted my parents in the past.”
“For why?” asked Billy. “’Cause they didn’t knaw ’t was theer, so allowance was made by the Watching Eye. Now ’t is differ’nt, an’ His rage be waxing.”
“Your blessed God ’s got no common sense, then—an’ that’s all I’ve got to say ’bout it. What would you have me do?”
Will put the question to Mr. Blee, but his wife it was who answered, being now worked up to a pitch of frenzy at the delay.
“Go! Dig—dig as you never digged afore! Dig the holy stone out the ground direckly minute! Now, now, Will, ’fore the life’s out of his li’l flutterin’ body. Lay bare the cross, an’ drag un out for God in heaven to see! Doan’t stand clackin’ theer, when every moment’s worth more’n gawld.”
“So like’s not He’ll forgive ’e if ’e do,” argued Mr. Blee. “Allowed the Lard o’ Hosts graws a bit short in His temper now an’ again, as with them gormed Israelites, an’ sich like, an’ small blame to Him; but He’s all for mercy at heart, ’cordin’ to the opinion of these times, so you’d best to dig.”
“Why doan’t he strike me down if I’ve angered Him—not this innocent cheel?”
“The sins of the fathers be visited—” began Mr. Blee glibly, when Mrs. Blanchard interrupted.
“Ban’t the time to argue, Will. Do it, an’ do it sharp, if’t will add wan grain o’ hope to the baaby’s chance.”
The younger woman’s sufferings rose to a frantic half-hushed scream at the protracted delay.
“O Christ, why for do ’e hold back? Ban’t anything worth tryin’ for your awn son? I’d scratch the stone out wi’ my raw, bleedin’ finger-bones if I was a man. Do ’e want to send me mad? Do ’e want to make me hate the sight of ’e? Go—go for love of your mother, if not of me!”
“An’ I’ll help,” said Billy, “an’ that chap messin’ about in the yard can lend a hand likewise. I be a cracked vessel myself for strength, an’ past heavy work, but my best is yours to call ’pon in this pass.”
Will turned and left the sick-room without more words, while Billy followed him.
The farmer fetched two picks and a shovel, called Ted Chown and a minute later had struck the first blow towards restoration of his granite cross. All laboured with their utmost power, and Will, who had flung off his coat and waistcoat, bared his arms, tightened his belt, and did the work of two men. The manual labour sweetened his mind a little, and scoured it of some bitterness. While Mr. Blee, with many a grunt and groan, removed the soil as the others broke it away, Blanchard, during these moments of enforced idleness, looked hungrily at the little window of the upper chamber where all his hopes and interests were centred. Then he swung his pick again.
Presently a ray of sunlight brightened Newtake, and contributed to soothe the toiling father. He read promise into it, and when three feet below the surface indications of cross-arms appeared upon the stone, Will felt still more heartened. Grimbal’s prediction was now verified; and it remained only to prove Billy’s prophecy also true. His tremendous physical exertions, the bright setting sunshine, and the discovery of the cross affected Will strangely. His mind swung round from frank irreligion, to a sort of superstitious credulity, awestricken yet joyful, that made him cling to the saving virtue of the stone. Because Martin had been right in his assertion concerning the gate-post, Blanchard felt a hazy conviction that Blee’s estimate of the stone’s virtue must also prove correct. He saw his wife at the window, and waved to her, and cried aloud that the cross was uncovered.
“A poor thing in holy relics, sure ’nough,” said Billy, wiping his forehead.
“But a cross—a clear cross? Keep workin’, Chown, will ’e? You still think ’twill serve, doan’t ’e, Blee?”
“No room for doubt, though woful out o’ repair,” answered Billy, occupied with the ancient monument. “Just the stumps o’ the arms left, but more’n enough to swear by.”
All laboured on; then the stone suddenly subsided and fell in such a manner that with some sloping of one side of the excavated pit they were able to drag it out.
“Something’s talking to me as us have done the wan thing needful,” murmured Will, in a subdued voice, but with more light than the sunset on his face. “Something’s hurting me bad that I said what I said in the chamber, an’ thought what I thought. God’s nigher than us might think, minding what small creatures we be. I hope He’ll forgive them words.”
“He’s a peacock for eyes, as be well knawn,” declared Mr. Blee. “An’ He’ve got His various manners an’ customs o’ handlin’ the human race. Some He softens wi’ gude things an’ gude fortune till they be bound to turn to Him for sheer shame; others He breaks ’pon the rocks of His wrath till they falls on their knees an’ squeals for forgiveness. I’ve seed it both ways scores o’ times; an’ if your little lad ’s spared to ’e, you’ll be brought to the Lard by a easier way than you deserve, Blanchard.”
“I knaw, I knaw, Mr. Blee. He ’m surely gwaine to let us keep li’l Willy, an’ win us to heaven for all time.”
The cross now lay at their feet, and Billy was about to return to the house and see how matters prospered, when Will bade him stay a little longer.
“Not yet,” he said.
“What more’s to do?”
“I feel a kind o’ message like to set it plumb-true under the sky. Us caan’t lift it, but if I pull a plank or two out o’ the pig’s house an’ put a harrow chain round ’em, we could get the cross on an’ let a horse pull un up theer to the hill, and set un up. Then us would have done all man can.”
He pointed to the bosom of the adjacent hill, now glowing in great sunset light.
“Starve me! but you ’m wise. Us’ll set the thing up under the A’mighty’s eye. ’Twill serve—mark my words. ’Twill turn the purpose of the Lard o’ Hosts, or I’m no prophet.”
“’Tis in my head you ’m right. I be lifted up in a way I never was.”
“The Lard ’s found ’e by the looks of it,” said Billy critically, “either that, or you ’m light-headed for want of sleep. But truly I think He’ve called ’e. Now ’t is for you to answer.”
They cleaned the cross with a bucket or two of water, then dragged it half-way up the hill, and, where a rabbit burrow lessened labour, raised their venerable monument under the afterglow.
“It do look as if it had been part o’ the view for all time,” declared Ted Chown, as the party retreated a few paces; and, indeed, the stone rose harmoniously upon its new site, and might have stood an immemorial feature of the scene.
Blanchard stayed not a moment when the work was done but strode to Newtake like a jubilant giant, while Mr. Blee and Chown, with the horse, tools, and rough sledge, followed more slowly.
The father proceeded homewards at tremendous speed; a glorious hope filled his heart, sharing the same with sorrow and repentance. He mumbled shamefaced prayers as he went, speaking half to himself, half to Heaven. He rambled on from a petition for forgiveness into a broken thanksgiving for the mercy he already regarded as granted. His labours, the glamour of the present achievement, and the previous long strain upon his mind and body, united to smother reason for one feverish hour. Will walked blindly forward, now with his eyes upon the window under Newtake’s dark roof below him, now turning to catch sight of the grey cross uplifted on the hill above. A great sweeping sea of change was tumbling through his intellect, and old convictions with scraps of assured wisdom suffered shipwreck in it. His mind was exalted before the certainty of unutterable blessing; his soul clung to the splendid assurance of a Personal God who had wrought actively upon his behalf, and received his belated atonement.
Far behind, Mr. Blee was improving the occasion for benefit of young Ted Chown.
“See how he do stride the hill wi’ his head held high, same as Moses when he went down-long from the Mount. Look at un an’ do likewise, Teddy; for theer goes a man as have grasped God! ’Tis a gert, gay day in human life when it comes.”
Will Blanchard hurried through the farm gate, where it swung idly with its sacred support gone forever; then he drew a great breath and glanced upwards before proceeding into the darkness of the unlighted house. As he did so wheels grated at the entrance, and he knew that Doctor Parsons must be just behind him. Above stairs the sick-room was still unlighted, the long-necked kettle still puffed steam, but the fire had shrunk, and Will’s first word was a protest that it had been allowed to sink so low. Then he looked round, and the rainbow in his heart faded and died. Damaris sat like a stone woman by the window; Phoebe lay upon the bed and hugged a little body in a blanket. Her hair had fallen down; out of the great shadows he saw the white blur on her face, and heard her voice sound strange as she cried monotonously, in a tone from which the first passion had vanished through an hour of iteration.