Children of the Mist by Eden Phillpotts

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CHILDREN OF THE MIST

BY

EDEN PHILLPOTTS

Author of "Down Dartmoor Way," "Some Everyday Folks," "My Laughing
Philosopher," "Lying Prophets," etc.

1898

BOOK I--THE BOY'S ROMANCE

I THE PIXIES' PARLOUR
II A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING
III EXIT WILL
IV BY THE RIVER
V THE INCIDENT OF MR. JOEL FORD
VI AN UNHAPPY POET
VII LIBATION TO POMONA
VIII A BROTHERS' QUARREL
IX OUTSIDE EXETER GAOL
X THE BRINGING OF THE NEWS
XI LOVE AND GREY GRANITE
XII A STORY-BOOK
XIII THE MILLER'S OFFER
XIV LOGIC

BOOK II--THE ENTERPRISE

I SPRINGTIME
II NEWTAKE FARM
III OVER A RIDING-WHIP
IV DEFEATED HOPES
V THE ZEAL OF SAM BONUS
VI A SWARM OF BEES
VII AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE
VIII MR. BLEE FORGETS HIMSELF
IX A DIFFERENCE WITH THE DUCHY
X CONNECTING LINKS
XI TOGETHER
XII THROUGH ONE GREAT DAY
XIII THE WILL
XIV A HUNDRED POUNDS
XV "THE ANGEL OF THE DARKER DRINK"
XVI BEFORE THE DAWN
XVII MISSING

BOOK III--HIS GRANITE CROSS

I BABY
II THE KNIGHT OF FORLORN HOPES
III CONCERNING THE GATE-POST
IV MARTIN'S RAID
V WINTER
VI THE CROSS UPREARED
VII GREY TWILIGHT

BOOK IV--HIS SECRET

I A WANDERER RETURNS
II HOPE RENEWED
III ANSWERED
IV THE END OF THE FIGHT
V TWO MIGHTY SURPRISES
VI THE SECRET OUT
VII SMALL TIMOTHY
VIII FLIGHT
IX UNDER COSDON BEACON
X BAD NEWS FOR BLANCHARD
XI PHOEBE TAKES THOUGHT
XII NEW YEAR'S EVE AND NEW YEAR'S DAY
XIII MR. LYDDON'S TACTICS
XIV ACTION
XV A BATTLE
XVI A PAIR OF HANDCUFFS
XVII SUSPENSE
XVIII THE NIGHT OF JUBILEE

CHILDREN OF THE MIST

BOOK I

THE BOY'S ROMANCE

CHAPTER I

THE PIXIES' PARLOUR

Phoebe Lyddon frowned, and, as an instant protest, twin dimples peeped
into life at the left corner of her bonny mouth. In regarding that
attractive ripple the down-drawn eyebrows were forgotten until they rose
again into their natural arches. A sweet, childish contour of face
chimed with her expression; her full lips were bright as the bunch of
ripe wood-strawberries at the breast of her cotton gown; her eyes as
grey as Dartmoor mists; while, for the rest, a little round chin, a
small, straight nose, and a high forehead, which Phoebe mourned and kept
carefully concealed under masses of curly brown hair, were the sole
features to be specially noted about her. She was a trifle below the
standard of height proper to a girl of nineteen, but all compact, of
soft, rounded lines, plump, fresh of colour, healthy, happy, sweet as a
ripe apple.

From a position upon swelling hillsides above the valley of a river, she
scanned the scene beneath, made small her eyes to focus the distance,
and so pursued a survey of meadow and woodland, yet without seeing what
she sought. Beneath and beyond, separated from her standpoint by
grasslands and a hedge of hazel, tangled thickets of blackthorn, of
bracken, and of briar sank to the valley bottom. Therein wound tinkling
Teign through the gorges of Fingle to the sea; and above it, where the
land climbed upward on the other side, spread the Park of Whiddou, with
expanses of sweet, stone-scattered herbage, with tracts of deep fern,
coverts of oak, and occasional habitations for the deer.

This spectacle, through a grey veil of fine rain, Phoebe noted at
mid-afternoon of a day in early August; and, as she watched, there
widened a rift under the sun's hidden throne, and a mighty, fan-shaped
pencil of brightness straggled downwards, proceeded in solemn sweep
across the valley, and lighted the depths of the gorge beyond with a
radiance of misty silver. The music of jackdaws welcomed this first
indication of improved weather; then Phoebe's sharp eyes beheld a
phenomenon afar off through the momentary cessation of the rain. Three
parts of a mile away, on a distant hillside, like the successive
discharges of a dozen fowling-pieces, little blotches of smoke or mist
suddenly appeared. Rapidly they followed each other, and sometimes the
puffs of vapour were exploded together, sometimes separately. For a
moment the girl felt puzzled; then she comprehended and laughed.

"'Tis the silly auld sheep!" she said to herself. "They 'm shakin 'theer
fleeces 'cause they knaw the rain's over-past. Bellwether did begin, I
warrant, then all the rest done the same."

Each remote member of the flock thus freed its coat from the accumulated
moisture of a long rainfall; then the huddled heap, in which they had
combined to withstand the weather and show tail to the western storm,
began to scatter. With coughs and sneezes the beasts wandered forward
again, and pursued their business of grazing.

Steadily the promises of the sky multiplied and Phoebe's impatience
increased. Her position did not, however, depend for comfort upon the
return of sunshine, for she stood out of the weather, where sundry giant
rocks to the number of five arose in a fantastic pile. Nature's primal
architects were responsible for the Pixies' Parlour, and upon the awful
morning of Dartmoor's creation these enormous masses had first been
hurled to their present position--outposts of the eternal granite,
though themselves widely removed from the central waste of the Moor.
This particular and gigantic monument of the past stands with its feet
in land long cultivated. Plough and harrow yearly skirt the Pixies'
Parlour; it rises to-day above yellow corn, to-morrow amid ripening
roots; it crowns the succeeding generations of man's industry, and
watches a ceaseless cycle of human toil. The rocks of which it is
composed form a sort of rude chamber, sacred to fairy folk since a time
before the memory of the living; briars and ivy-tods conceal a part of
the fabric; a blackthorn, brushed at this season with purple fruit,
rises above it; one shadowed ledge reveals the nightly roosting place of
hawk or raven; and marks of steel on the stone show clearly where some
great or small fragment of granite has been blasted from the parent pile
for the need of man. Multi-coloured, massive, and picturesque, the
Parlour, upon Phoebe Lyddon's visit to it, stood forth against the red
bosom of naked land; for a fierce summer had early ripened the vanished
harvest, and now its place was already ploughed again, while ashes of
dead fire scattered upon the earth showed where weed and waste had been
consumed after ingathering of the grain.

Patches of August blue now lightened the aerial grey; then sunshine set
a million gems twinkling on the great bejewelled bosom of the valley.
Under this magic heat an almost instantaneous shadowy ghost of fresh
vapour rose upon the riparian meadows, and out of it, swinging along
with the energy of youth and high spirits, came a lad. Phoebe smiled and
twinkled a white handkerchief to him, and he waved his hat and bettered
his pace for answer.

Soon Will Blanchard reached his sweetheart, and showed himself a brown,
straight youngster, with curly hair, pugnacious nose, good shoulders,
and a figure so well put together that his height was not apparent until
he stood alongside another man. Will's eyes were grey as Phoebe's, but
of a different expression; soft and unsettled, cloudy as the recent
weather, full of the alternate mist and flash of a precious stone, one
moment all a-dreaming, the next aglow. His natural look was at first
sight a little stern until a man came to know it, then this impression
waned and left a critic puzzled. The square cut of his face and abrupt
angle of his jaw did not indeed belie Will Blanchard, but the man's
smile magically dissipated this austerity of aspect, and no sudden
sunshine ever brightened a dark day quicker than pleasure made bright
his features. It was a sulky, sleepy, sweet, changeable face--very
fascinating in the eyes of women. His musical laugh once fluttered
sundry young bosoms, brightened many pretty eyes and cheeks, but Will's
heart was Phoebe Lyddon's now--had been for six full months--and albeit
a mere country boy in knowledge of the world, younger far than his
one-and-twenty years of life, and wholly unskilled in those arts whose
practice enables men to dwell together with friendship and harmony, yet
Will Blanchard was quite old enough and wise enough and rich enough to
wed, and make a husband of more than common quality at that--in his own
opinion.

Fortified by this conviction, and determined to wait no longer, he now
came to see Phoebe. Within the sheltering arms of the Pixies' Parlour he
kissed her, pressed her against his wet velveteen jacket, then sat down
under the rocks beside her.

"You 'm comed wi' the sun, dear Will."

"Ay--the weather breaks. I hope theer'll be a drop more water down the
river bimebye. You got my letter all right?"

"Ess fay, else I shouldn't be here. And this tremendous matter in
hand?"

"I thought you'd guess what 't was. I be weary o' waitin' for 'e. An' as
I comed of age last month, I'm a man in law so well as larnin', and I'm
gwaine to speak to Miller Lyddon this very night."

Phoebe looked blank. There was a moment's silence while Will picked and
ate the wood-strawberries in his sweetheart's dress.

"Caan't 'e think o' nothin' wiser than to see faither?" she said at
last.

"Theer ban't nothin' wiser. He knaws we 'm tokened, and it's no manner
o' use him gwaine on pretendin' to himself 't isn't so. You 'm
wife-old, and you've made choice o' me; and I'm a ripe man, as have
thought a lot in my time, and be earnin' gude money and all. Besides, 't
is a dead-sure fact I'll have auld Morgan's place as head waterkeeper,
an' the cottage along with it, in fair time."

"Ban't for me to lift up no hindrances, but you knaw faither."

"Ess, I do--for a very stiff-necked man."

"Maybe 't is so; but a gude faither to me."

"An' a gude friend to me, for that matter. He aint got nothing 'gainst
me, anyway--no more 's any man living."

"Awnly the youth and fieriness of 'e."

"Me fiery! I lay you wouldn't find a cooler chap in Chagford."

"You 'm a dinky bit comical-tempered now and again, dear heart."

He flushed, and the corners of his jaw thickened.

"If a man was to say that, I'd knock his words down his throat."

"I knaw you would, my awn Will; an' that's bein' comical-tempered,
ban't it?"

"Then perhaps I'd best not to see your faither arter all, if you 'm that
way o' thinkin'," he answered shortly.

Then Phoebe purred to him and rubbed her cheek against his chin, whereon
the glint vanished from his eyes, and they were soft again.

"Mother's the awnly livin' sawl what understands me," he said slowly.

"And I--I too, Will!" cried Phoebe. "Ess fay. I'll call you a holy angel
if you please, an' God knaws theer 's not an angel in heaven I'd have
stead of 'e."

"I ban't no angel," said Will gravely, "and never set up for no such
thing; but I've thought a lot 'bout the world in general, and I'm purty
wise for a home-stayin' chap, come to think on it; and it's borne in
'pon me of late days that the married state 's a gude wan, and the
sooner the better."

"But a leap in the dark even for the wisest, Will?"

"So's every other step us takes for that matter. Look at them
grasshoppers. Off they goes to glory and doan't knaw no more 'n the dead
wheer they'll fetch up. I've seed 'em by the river jump slap in the
water, almost on to a trout's back. So us hops along and caan't say
what's comin' next. We 'm built to see just beyond our awn nose-ends and
no further. That's philosophy."

"Ban't comfortin' if 't is," said Phoebe.

"Whether or no, I'll see your faither 'fore night and have a plain
answer. I'm a straight, square man, so's the miller."

"You'll speed poorly, I'm fearin', but 't is a honest thing; and I'll
tell faither you 'm all the world to me. He doan't seem to knaw what it
is for a gal to be nineteen year old somehow."

Solemnly Will rose, almost overweighted with the consciousness of what
lay before him.

"We'll go home-along now. Doan't 'e tell him I'm coming. I'll take him
unbeknawnst. And you keep out the way till I be gone again."

"Does your mother knaw, Will?"

"Ess, she an' Chris both knaw I be gwaine to have it out this night.
Mother sez I be right, but that Miller will send me packing wi' a flea
in my ear; Chris sez I be wrong to ax yet awhile."

"You can see why that is; 'she 's got to wait herself," said Phoebe,
rather spitefully.

"Waitin' 's well enough when it caan't be helped. But in my case, as a
man of assured work and position in the plaace, I doan't hold it needful
no more."

Together the young couple marched down over the meadows, gained the side
of the river, and followed its windings to the west. Through a dip in
the woods presently peeped the ancient stannary town of Chagford, from
the summit of its own little eminence on the eastern confines of
Dartmoor. Both Will and Phoebe dwelt within the parish, but some
distance from the place itself. She lived at Monks Barton, a farm and
mill beside the stream; he shared an adjacent cottage with his mother
and sister. Only a bend of the river separated the dwellings of the
lovers--where Rushford Bridge spanned the Teign and beech and fir rose
above it.

In a great glory of clearness after rain, boy and girl moved along
together under the trees. The fisherman's path which they followed wound
where wet granite shone and ivy glimmered beneath the forest; and the
leaves still dripped briskly, making a patter of sound through the
underwood, and marking a thousand circles and splashes in the smooth
water beneath the banks of the stream. Against a purple-grey background
of past rain the green of high summer shone bright and fresh, and each
moss-clad rock and fern-fringed branch of the forest oaks sent forth its
own incense of slender steam where the sunlight sparkled and sucked up
the moisture. Scarce half a mile from Phoebe's home a shining yellow
twig bent and flashed against the green, and a broad back appeared
through a screen of alder by the water's edge.

"'T is a rod," said Will. "Bide a moment, and I'll take the number of
his ticket. He 'm the first fisherman I've seen to-day."

As under-keeper or water-bailiff to the Fishing Association, young
Blanchard's work consisted in endless perambulation of the river's bank,
in sharp outlook for poacher and trespasser, and in the survey of
fishermen's bridges, and other contrivances for anglers that occurred
along the winding course of the waters. His also was the duty of noting
the license numbers, and of surprising those immoral anglers who sought
to kill fish illegally on distant reaches of the river. His keen eyes,
great activity, and approved pluck well fitted Will for such duties. He
often walked twenty miles a day, and fishermen said that he knew every
big trout in the Teign from Fingle Bridge to the dark pools and rippling
steps under Sittaford Tor, near the river's twin birthplaces. He also
knew where the great peel rested, on their annual migration from sea to
moor; where the kingfisher's nest of fish-bones lay hidden; where the
otter had her home beneath the bank, and its inland vent-hole behind a
silver birch.

Will bid the angler "good afternoon," and made a few general remarks on
sport and the present unfavourable condition of the water, shrunk to
mere ribbons of silver by a long summer drought. The fisherman was a
stranger to Will--a handsome, stalwart man, with a heavy amber
moustache, hard blue eyes, and a skin tanned red by hotter suns than
English Augusts know. His disposition, also, as it seemed, reflected
years of a tropic or subtropic existence, for this trivial meeting and
momentary intrusion upon his solitude resulted in an explosion as sudden
as unreasonable and unexpected.

"Keep back, can't you?" he exclaimed, while the young keeper approached
his side; "who 's going to catch fish with your lanky shadow across the
water?"

Will was up in arms instantly.

"Do 'e think I doan't knaw my business? Theer 's my shadder 'pon the
bank a mile behind you; an' I didn't ope my mouth till you'd fished the
stickle to the bottom and missed two rises."

This criticism angered the elder man, and he freed his tailfly fiercely
from the rush-head that held it.

"Mind your own affairs and get out of my sight, whoever you are. This
river's not what it used to be by a good deal. Over-fished and poached,
and not looked after, I'll swear."

Thus, in ignorance, the sportsman uttered words of all most like to set
Will Blanchard's temper loose--a task sufficiently easy at the best of
times.

"What the hell d' you knaw 'bout the river?" he flamed out. "And as to
'my affairs,' 't is my affairs, an' I be water-bailiff, an' I'll thank
you for the number of your ticket--so now then!"

"What's become of Morgan?" asked the other.

"He 'm fust, I be second; and 't is my job to take the license numbers."

"Pity you're such an uncivil young cub, then."

"Gimme your ticket directly minute!"

"I'm not going to."

The keeper looked wicked enough by this time, but he made a great effort
to hold himself in.

"Why for not?"

"Because I didn't take one."

"That ban't gwaine to do for me."

"Ban't it? Then you'll have to go without any reason. Now run away and
don't bleat so loud."

"Look here," retorted Will, going straight up to the fisherman, and
taking his measure with a flashing eye, "You gimme your ticket number or
your name an' address, else I'll make 'e."

They counted nearly the same inches, but the angler was the elder, and a
man of more powerful build and massive frame than his younger opponent.
His blue eyes and full, broad face spoke a pugnacity not less pronounced
than the keeper's own finer features indicated; and thus these two,
destined for long years to bulk largely each upon the life of the other,
stood eye to eye for the first time. Will's temper was nearly gone, and
now another sneer set it loose with sudden and startling result.

"Make me, my young moorcock? Two more words and I'll throw you across
the river!"

The two words were not forthcoming, but Will dropped his stick and shot
forward straight and strong as an angry dog. He closed before the
stranger could dispose of his rod, gripped him with a strong wrestling
hold, and cross-buttocked him heavily in the twinkling of an eye. The
big man happily fell without hurt upon soft sand at the river's brink;
but the indignity of this defeat roused his temper effectually. He
grinned nevertheless as he rose again, shook the sand off his face, and
licked his hands.

"Good Devon, sure enough, my son; now I'll teach _you_ something you
never heard tell of, and break your damned fool's neck for you into the
bargain!"

But Phoebe, who had wandered slowly on, returned quickly at the sound of
the scuffle and high words. Now she fluttered between the combatants and
rendered any further encounter for the time impossible. They could not
close again with the girl between them, and the stranger, his anger
holding its breath, glanced at her with sudden interest, stayed his
angry growl, suffered rage to wane out of his eyes and frank admiration
to appear in them.

"Doan't be fighting!" cried Phoebe. "Whatever's the mischief, Will? Do
bate your speed of hand! You've thrawed the gentleman down, seemin'ly."

"Wheer 's his ticket to then?"

"Why, it isn't Miller Lyddon's young maid, surely!" burst out the
fisherman; "not Phoebe grown to woman!"

A Devon accent marked the speech, suddenly dragged from him by surprise.

"Ess, I be Phoebe Lyddon; but don't 'e fall 'pon each other again, for
the Lard's sake," she said.

"The boy 's as tetchy in temper as a broody hen. I was only joking all
the time, and see how he made me pay for my joke. But to think I should
remember you! Grown from bud to pretty blossom, by God! And I danced you
on my knee last time I saw you!"

"Then you 'm wan of they two Grimbal brothers as was to be home again in
Chagford to-day!" exclaimed Will.

"That's so; Martin and I landed at Plymouth yesterday. We got to
Chagford early this morning."

Will laughed.

"I never!" he said. "Why, you be lodging with my awn mother at the
cottage above Rushford Bridge! You was expected this marnin', but I
couldn't wait for 'e. You 'm Jan Grimbal--eh?"

"Right! And you're a nice host, to be sure!"

"'T is solemn truth, you 'm biding under our roof, the 'Three Crowns'
bein' full just now. And I'm sorry I thrawed 'e; but you was that
glumpy, and of course I didn't know 'e from Adam. I'm Will Blanchard."

"Never mind, Will, we'll try again some day. I could wrestle a bit once,
and learned a new trick or two from a Yankee in Africa."

"You've come back 'mazin' rich they say, Jan Grimbal?"

"So, so. Not millionaires, but all right--both of us, though I'm the
snug man of the two. We got to Africa at the right moment, before 1867,
you know, the year that O'Reilly saw a nigger-child playing with the
first Kimberley diamond ever found. Up we went, the pair of us. Things
have hummed since then, and claims and half-claims and quarter-claims
are coming to be worth a Jew's eye. We're all right, anyway, and I've
got a stake out there yet."

"You 'm well pleased to come back to dear li'l Chagford after so many
years of foreign paarts, I should think, Mr. Grimbal?" said Phoebe.

"Ay, that I am. There's no place like Devon, in all the earth, and no
spot like Chagford in Devon. I'm too hard grit to wink an eyelid at
sight of the old scenes again myself; but Martin, when he caught first
sight of great rolling Cosdon crowning the land--why, his eyes were
wetted, if you'll believe it."

"And you comed right off to fish the river fust thing," said Will
admiringly.

"Ay, couldn't help it. When I heard the water calling, it was more than
my power to keep away. But you're cruel short of rain, seemingly, and
of course the season 's nearly over."

"I'll shaw you dark hovers, wheer braave feesh be lying yet," promised
Will; and the angler thanked him, foretelling a great friendship. Yet
his eyes rarely roamed from Phoebe, and anon, as all three proceeded,
John Grimbal stopped at the gate of Monks Barton and held the girl in
conversation awhile. But first he despatched Will homewards with a
message for his mother. "Let Mrs. Blanchard know we'll feed at seven
o'clock off the best that she can get," he said; "and tell her not to
bother about the liquor. I'll see to that myself."

CHAPTER II

A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING

Monks Barton, or Barton Monachorum, as the farm was called in a Tudor
perambulation of Chagford, owed its name to traditions that holy men
aforetime dwelt there, performed saintly deeds, and blessed a spring in
the adjacent woods, whose waters from that date ever proved a magical
medicament for "striking" of sore eyes. That the lands of the valley had
once been in monastic possession was, however, probable enough; and some
portions of the old farm did in truth rise upon the ruins of a still
more ancient habitation long vanished. Monks Barton stood, a picturesque
agglomeration of buildings, beside the river. The mill-wheel, fed by a
stream taken from the Teign some distance up the valley and here
returned again to the parent water, thundered on its solemn round in an
eternal twinkling twilight of dripping ferns and green mosses; while
hard by the dwelling-house stood and offered small diamond panes and one
dormer-window to the south. Upon its whitewashed face three fruit-trees
grew--a black plum, a cherry, a winter pear; and before the farmhouse
stretched a yard sloping to the river ford, where a line of massive
stepping-stones for foot-passengers crossed the water. On either side of
this space, walled up from the edge of the stream, little gardens of
raspberry and gooseberry bushes spread; and here, too, appeared a few
apple-trees, a bed of herbs, a patch of onions, purple cabbages, and a
giant hollyhock with sulphur-coloured blossoms that thrust his proud
head upwards, a gentleman at large, and the practical countrymen of the
kitchen-garden. The mill and outbuildings, the homestead and wood-stacks
embraced a whole gamut of fine colour, ranging from the tawny and
crimson of fretted brick and tile to varied greys of drying timber; from
the cushions and pillows of moss and embroidery of houseleeks and
valerian, that had flourished for fifty years on a ruined shippen, to
the silver gleam of old thatches and the shining gold of new. Nor was
the white face of the dwelling-house amiss. Only one cold, crude eye
stared out from this time-tinctured scene; only one raw pentroof of
corrugated iron blotted it, made poets sigh, artists swear, and Miller
Lyddon contemplate more of the same upon his land.

A clucking and grunting concourse of fowls and pigs shared the farmyard;
blue pigeons claimed the roof; and now, in the westering light, with
slow foot, sweet breath, and swelling udder, many kine, red as the ripe
horse-chestnut, followed each other across the ford, assembled
themselves together and lowed musically to the milkers. Phoebe Lyddon
and John Grimbal still stood at the farm-gate, and they watched, as a
boy and an aged man came forward with buckets and stools. Then, to the
muffled thud of the water-wheel and the drone and murmur of the river,
was added a purr of milk, foaming into tin pails, and sharp, thin
monitions from the ancient, as he called the cows by their names and bid
them be still.

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