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Children of the Mist by Eden Phillpotts

E >> Eden Phillpotts >> Children of the Mist




"By God! I didn't think to meet so soon!"

Here was a red-hot raving Nemesis indeed; and Will, while prepared for a
speedy meeting with his enemy, neither expected nor desired an encounter
just then. But it had come, and he knew what was before him. Grimbal,
just returned from a long day's sport, rode back to his hotel in a good
temper. He drank a brandy-and-soda at the bar, then went up to his rooms
and found Phoebe's letter; whereupon, as he was in muddy pink, he set
off straight for Monks Barton; and now he stood face to face with the
man on earth he most desired to meet. By the light of his match Will saw
a red coat, white teeth under a great yellow moustache, and a pair of
mad, flaming eyes, hungry for something. He knew what was coming, moved
quickly from the parapet of the bridge, and flung away his pipe to free
his hands. As he did so the other was on him. Will warded one tremendous
stroke from a hunting-crop; then they came to close quarters, and
Grimbal, dropping his whip, got in a heavy half-arm blow on his enemy's
face before they gripped in holds. The younger man, in no trim for
battle, reeled and tried to break away; but the other had him fast,
picked him clean off the ground, and, getting in his weight, used a
Yankee throw, with intent to drop Will against the granite of the
bridge. But though Blanchard went down like a child before the attack,
he disappeared rather than fell; and in the pitchy night it seemed as
though some amiable deity had caught up the vanquished into air. A
sudden pressure of the low parapet against his own legs as he staggered
forward, told John Grimbal what was done and, at the same moment, a
tremendous splash in the water below indicated his enemy's dismal
position. Teign, though not in flood at the time, ran high, and just
below the bridge a deep pool opened out. Around it were rocks upon which
rose the pillars of the bridge. No sound or cry followed Will
Blanchard's fall; no further splash of a swimmer, or rustle on the
river's bank, indicated any effort from him. Grimbal's first instincts
were those of regret that revenge had proved so brief. His desire was
past before he had tasted it. Then for a moment he hesitated, and the
first raving lust to kill Phoebe's husband waned a trifle before the
sudden conviction that he had done so. He crept down to the river,
ploughed about to find the man, questioning what he should do if he did
find him. His wrath waxed as he made search, and he told himself that he
should only trample Blanchard deeper into water if he came upon him. He
kicked here and there with his heavy boots; then abandoned the search
and proceeded to Monks Barton.

Into the presence of the miller he thundered, and for a time said
nothing of the conflict from which he had come. The scene needs no
special narration. Vain words and wishes, oaths and curses, filled John
Grimbal's mouth. He stamped on the floor, finding it impossible to
remain motionless, roared the others down, loaded the miller with bitter
reproaches for his blindness, silenced Mr. Blee on every occasion when
he attempted to join the discussion. The man, in fine, exhibited that
furious, brute passion and rage to be expected from such a nature
suddenly faced with complete dislocation of cherished hopes. His life
had been a long record of success, and this tremendous reverse, on his
first knowledge of it, came near to unhinge John Grimbal's mind. Storm
succeeded storm, explosion followed upon explosion, and the thought of
the vanity of such a display only rendered him more frantic. Then chance
reminded the raging maniac of that thing he had done, and now, removed
from the deed by a little time, he gloried in it.

"Blast the devil--short shrift he got--given straight into my hand! I
swore to kill him when I heard it; an' I have--pitched him over the
bridge and broken his blasted neck. I'd burn in ragin' hell through ten
lifetimes to do it again. But that's done once for all. And you can tell
your whore of a daughter she's a widow, not a wife!"

"God be gude to us!" cried Billy, while Mr. Lyddon started in dismay.
"Is this true you'm tellin'? Blue murder? An' so, like's not, his awn
mother'll find un when she goes to draw water in the marnin'!"

"Let her, and his sister, too; and my God-damned brother! All in
it--every cursed one of 'em. I'd like--I'd like--Christ--"

He broke off, was silent for a moment, then strode out of the room
towards the staircase. Mr. Lyddon heard him and rushed after him with
Billy. They scrambled past and stood at the stair-foot while Grimbal
glanced up in the direction of Phoebe's room, and then glared at the two
old men.

"Why not, you doddering fools? Can you still stand by her, cursed jade
of lies? My work's only half done! No man's ever betrayed me but he's
suffered hell for it; and no woman shall."

He raged, and the two with beating hearts waited for him.

Then suddenly laughing aloud, the man turned his back, and passed into
the night without more words.

"Mad, so mad as any zany!" gasped Mr. Blee. "Thank God the whim's took
un to go. My innards was curdlin' afore him!"

The extravagance of Grimbal's rage had affected Mr. Lyddon also. With
white and terrified face he crept after Grimbal, and watched that
tornado of a man depart.

"My stars! He do breathe forth threatenings and slaughters worse 'n in
any Bible carater ever I read of," said the miller, "and if what he sez
be true--"

"I'll wager 't is. Theer 's method in him. Your son-in-law, if I may say
it, be drownded, sure 's death. What a world!"

"Get the lanterns and call Sam Bonus. He must stand to this door an' let
no man in while we 'm away. God send the chap ban't dead. I don't like
for a long-cripple to suffer torture."

"That's your high religion. An' I'll carry the brandy, for 't is a
liquor, when all 's said, what 's saved more bodies in this world than
it 's damned sawls in the next, an' a thing pleasant, tu, used with
sense--specially if a man can sleep 'fore 't is dead in un."

"Hurry, hurry! Every minute may mean life or death. I'll call Bonus; you
get the lanterns."

Ten minutes later a huge labourer stood guard over Monks Barton, and the
miller, with his man, entered upon their long and fruitless search. The
thaw had come, but glimmering ridges of snow still outlined the bases of
northern-facing hedges along the river. With infinite labour and some
difficulty they explored the stream, then, wet and weary, returned by
the southern bank to their starting-point at Rushford Bridge. Here Billy
found a cloth cap by the water's edge, and that was the only evidence of
Will's downfall. As they clambered up from the river Mr. Lyddon noted
bright eyes shining across the night, and found that the windows of Mrs.
Blanchard's cottage were illuminated.

"They 'm waitin' for him by the looks of it," he said. "What ought us to
do, I wonder?"

Billy never objected to be the bearer of news, good or ill, so that it
was sensational; but a thought struck him at seeing the lighted windows.

"Why, it may be he's theer! If so, then us might find Grimbal didn't
slay un arter all. 'T was such a miz-maze o' crooked words he let fly
'pon us, that perhaps us misread un."

"I wish I thought so. Come. Us can ax that much."

A few minutes later they stood at Mrs. Blanchard's door and knocked. The
widow herself appeared, fully dressed, wide awake, and perfectly
collected. Her manner told Mr. Lyddon nothing.

"What might you want, Miller?"

"'T is Will. There's bin blows struck and violence done, I hear."

"I can tell 'e the rest. The bwoy's paid his score an' got full measure.
He wanted to be even with you, tu, but they wouldn't let un."

"If he ban't dead, I'll make him smart yet for his evil act."

"I warned 'e. He was cheated behind his back, an' played with the same
cards what you did, and played better."

"Wheer is he now? That's what I want to knaw."

"Up in the house. They met on the bridge an' Grimbal bested him, Will
bein' weary an' empty-bellied. When the man flinged him in the stream,
he got under the arch behind the rocks afore he lost his head for a time
and went senseless. When he comed to he crawled up the croft and I let
un in."

"Thank God he's not dead; but punishment he shall have if theer's
justice in the land."

"Bide your time. He won't shirk it. But he's hurted proper; you might
let Jan Grimbal knaw, 't will ease his mind."

"Not it," declared Billy; "he thought he'd killed un; cracked the neck
of un."

"The blow 'pon his faace scatted abroad his left nostril; the fall
brawked his arm, not his neck; an' the spurs t' other was wearin' tored
his leg to the bone. Doctor's seen un; so tell Grimbal. Theer's pleasure
in such payment."

She spoke without emotion, and showed no passion against the master of
the Red House. When Will had come to her, being once satisfied in her
immediate motherly agony that his life was not endangered, she allowed
her mind a sort of secret, fierce delight at his performance and its
success in the main issue. She was proud of him at the bottom of her
heart; but before other eyes bore herself with outward imperturbability.

"You'll keep the gal, I reckon?" she said quietly; "if you can hold hand
off Will till he'm on his legs again, I'd thank you."

"I shall do what I please, when I please; an' my poor fule of a daughter
stops with me as long as I've got power to make her."

"Hope you'll live to see things might have been worse."

"That's impossible. No worse evil could have fallen upon me. My grey
hairs a laughing-stock, and your awn brother's hand in it. He knawed
well enough the crime he was committing."

"You've a short memory, Miller. I lay Jan Grimbal knaws the reason if
you doan't. The worm that can sting does, if you tread on it. Gude-night
to 'e."

"An' how do you find yourself now?" Billy inquired, as his master and he
returned to Monks Barton.

"Weary an' sick, an' filled with gall. Was it wrong to make the match,
do 'e think, seein' 't was all for love of my cheel? Was I out to push
so strong for it? I seem I done right, despite this awful mischance."

"An' so you did; an' my feelin's be the same as yours to a split hair,
though I've got no language for em at this unnatural hour of marnin',"
said Billy.

Then in silence, to the bobbing illumination of their lanterns, Mr.
Lyddon and his familiar dragged their weary bodies home.




CHAPTER XI

LOVE AND GREY GRANITE


The lofty central area of Devon has ever presented a subject of
fascination to geologists; and those evidences of early man which adorn
Dartmoor to-day have similarly attracted antiquarian minds for many
generations past. But the first-named student, although his researches
plunge him into periods of mundane time inconceivably more remote than
that with which the archaeologist is concerned, yet reaches conclusions
more definite and arrives at a nearer approximation to truth than any
who occupy themselves in the same area with manifold and mysterious
indications of early humanity's sojourn. The granite upheaval during
that awful revolt of matter represented by the creation of Dartmoor has
been assigned to a period between the Carboniferous and Permian eras;
but whether the womb of one colossal volcano or the product of a
thousand lesser eruptions threw forth this granite monster, none may yet
assert. Whether Dartmoor first appeared as a mighty shield, with one
uprising spike in its midst, or as a target supporting many separate
bosses cannot be declared; for the original aspect of the region has
long vanished, though our worn and weathered land of tors still shadows,
in its venerable desolation, those sublimer, more savage glories
manifested ere the eye of man or beast existed to receive an image of
them.

But the earliest human problems presented by Devon's watershed admit of
no sure solution, albeit they date from a time adjacent contrasted with
that wherein the land was born. Nature's message still endures for man
to read as his knowledge grows; but the records of our primal fellows
have grown dim and uncertain as the centuries rolled over them. There
exists, however, within the lofty, lonely kingdom of the granite, a
chain of human evidences extending from prehistoric ages to the ruined
shepherd's cot of yesterday. At many spots a spectator may perceive in
one survey the stone ruin of the Danmonian's habitation, and hypaethral
temple or forum, the heather-clad debris left by Elizabethan streamers
of alluvial tin, the inky peat-ridges from which a moorman has just cut
his winter firing. But the first-named objects, with kindred fragments
that have similarly endured, chiefly fire imagination. Seen grey at
gloaming time, golden through sunny dawns, partaking in those spectral
transformations cast upon the moor by the movement of clouds, by the
curtains of the rain, by the silver of breaking day, the monotone of
night and the magic of the moon, these relics reveal themselves and
stand as a link between the present and the far past. Mystery broods
over them and the jealous wings of the ages hide a measure of their
secret. Thus far these lonely rings of horrent stones and the alignments
between them have concealed their story from modern man, and only in
presence of the ancient pound, the foundations of a dwelling, the
monolith that marked a stone-man's sepulchre, the robbed cairn and naked
kistvaen, may we speak with greater certainty and, through the
glimmering dawn of history and the records of Britain's earliest foes,
burrow back to aboriginal man on Dartmoor. Then research and imagination
rebuild the eternal rings of granite and, erecting upon them tall domes
of thatch and skins on wattle ribs, conceive the early village like a
cluster of gigantic mushrooms, whose cowls are uplifted in that rugged
fastness through the night of time. We see Palaeolithic man sink into
mother earth before the superior genius of his Neolithic successor; and
we note the Damnonian shepherds flourishing in lonely lodges and
preserving their flocks from the wolf, while Egypt's pyramids were still
of modern creation, and the stars twinkled in strange constellations,
above a world innocent as yet of the legends that would name them. The
stone-workers have vanished away, but their labour endures; their
fabricated flints still appear, brought to light from barrows and
peat-ties, from the burrows of rabbits and the mounds of the antiquary
mole; the ruins of their habitations, the theatres of their assemblies
and unknown ceremonies still stand, and probably will continue so to do
as long as Dartmoor's bosom lies bare to the storm and stress of the
ages.

Modern man has also fretted the wide expanse, has scratched its surface
and dropped a little sweat and blood; but his mansion and his cot and
his grave are no more; plutonic rock is the only tablet on which any
human story has been scribbled to endure. Castles and manor-houses have
vanished from the moorland confines like the cloudy palaces of a dream;
the habitations of the mining folk shall not be seen to-day, and their
handiwork quickly returns to primitive waste; fern and furze hide the
robbed cairn and bury the shattered cross; flood and lightning and
tempest roam over the darkness of a region sacred to them, and man
stretches his hand for what Nature touches not; but the menhir yet
stands erect, the "sacred" circles are circles still, and these, with
like records of a dim past, present to thinking travellers the crown and
first glory of the Moor. Integral portions of the ambient desolation are
they--rude toys that infant humanity has left in Mother Nature's lap;
and the spectacle of them twines a golden thread of human interest into
the fabric of each lonely heath, each storm-scarred mountain-top and
heron-haunted stream. Nothing is changed since skin-clad soldiers and
shepherds strode these wastes, felt their hearts quicken at sight of
women, or their hands clench over celt-headed spears before danger. Here
the babies of the stone-folk, as the boys and girls to-day, stained
their little mouths and ringers with fruit of briar and whortle; the
ling bloomed then as now; the cotton-grass danced its tattered plume;
the sphagnum mosses opened emerald-green eyes in marsh and quaking bog;
and hoary granite scattered every ravine and desert valley. About those
aboriginal men the Moor spread forth the same horizon of solemn
enfolding hills, and where twinkle the red hides of the moor-man's
heifers through upstanding fern, in sunny coombs and hawthorn thickets,
yesterday the stone-man's cattle roamed and the little eyes of a hidden
bear followed their motions. Here, indeed, the first that came in the
flesh are the last to vanish in their memorials; here Nature, to whom
the hut-circle of granite, all clad in Time's lichen livery of gold and
grey, is no older than the mushroom ring shining like a necklace of
pearls within it--Nature may follow what course she will, may build as
she pleases, may probe to the heart of things, may pursue the eternal
Law without let from the pigmies; and here, if anywhere from man's
precarious standpoint, shall he perceive the immutable and observe a
presentment of himself in those ephemera that dance above the burn at
dawn, and ere twilight passes gather up their gauze wings and perish.

According to individual temperament this pregnant region attracts and
fascinates the human spectator or repels him. Martin Grimbal loved
Dartmoor and, apart from ties of birth and early memories, his natural
predilections found thereon full scope and play. He was familiar with
most of those literary productions devoted to the land, and now
developed an ambition to add some result of personal observation and
research to extant achievements. He went to work with method and
determination, and it was not until respectable accumulations of notes
and memoranda already appeared as the result of his labours that the man
finally--almost reluctantly--reconciled himself to the existence of
another and deeper interest in his life than that furnished by the grey
granite monuments of the Moor. Hide it from himself he could no longer,
nor yet wholly from others. As in wild Devon it is difficult at any time
to escape from the murmur of waters unseen, so now the steady flood of
this disquieting emotion made music at all waking hours in Martin's
archaeologic mind, shattered his most subtle theories unexpectedly, and
oftentimes swept the granite clean out of his head on the flood of a
golden river.

After three months of this beautiful but disquieting experience, Martin
resigned himself to the conclusion that he was in love with Chris
Blanchard. He became very cautious and timid before the discovery. He
feared much and contemplated the future with the utmost distrust. Doubt
racked him; he checked himself from planning courses of conduct built on
mad presumptions. By night, as a sort of debauch, in those hours when
man is awake and fancy free, he conceived of a happy future with Chris
and little children about him; at morning light, if any shadow of that
fair vision returned, he blushed and looked round furtively, as though
some thought-reader's cold eye must be sneering at such presumption. He
despaired of finding neutral ground from which his dry mind could make
itself attractive to a girl. Now and again he told himself that the new
emotion must be crushed, in that it began to stand between him and the
work he had set himself to do for his county; but during more sanguine
moods he challenged this decision and finally, as was proper and right,
the flood of the man's first love drowned menhir and hut-circle fathoms
deep, and demanded all his attention at the cost of mental peace. An
additional difficulty appeared in the fact that the Blanchard family
were responsible for John Grimbal's misfortune; and Martin, without
confusing the two circumstances, felt that before him really lay the
problem of a wife or a brother. When first he heard of the event that
set Chagford tongues wagging so briskly, he rightly judged that John
would hold him one of the conspirators; and an engagement to Chris
Blanchard must certainly confirm the baffled lover's suspicions and part
the men for ever. But before those words, as they passed through his
brain, Martin Grimbal stopped, as the peasant before a shrine. "An
engagement to Chris Blanchard!" He was too much a man and too deep
merged in love to hesitate before the possibility of such unutterable
happiness.

For his brother he mourned deeply enough, and when the thousand rumours
bred of the battle on the bridge were hatched and fluttered over the
countryside, Martin it was who exerted all his power to stay them. Most
people were impressed with the tragic nature of the unfortunate John's
disappointment; but his energetic measures since the event were held to
pay all scores, and it was believed the matter would end without any
more trouble from him. Clement Hicks entertained a different opinion,
perhaps judging John Grimbal from the secrets of his own character; but
Will expressed a lively faith that his rival must now cry quits, after
his desperate and natural but unsuccessful attempt to render Phoebe a
widow. The shattered youth took his broken bones very easily, and only
grunted when he found that his wife was not permitted to visit him under
any pretence whatever; while as for Phoebe, her wild sorrow gradually
lessened and soon disappeared as each day brought a better account of
Will. John Grimbal vanished on the trip which was to have witnessed his
honeymoon. He pursued his original plans with the modification that
Phoebe had no part in them, and it was understood that he would return
to Chagford in the spring.

Thus matters stood, and when his brother was gone and Will and Phoebe
had been married a month, Martin, having suffered all that love could do
meantime, considered he might now approach the Blanchards. Ignorantly he
pursued an awkward course, for wholly unaware that Clement Hicks felt
any interest in Will and his sister beyond that of friendship, Martin
sought from him the general information he desired upon the subject of
Chris, her family and concerns.

Together the two men went upon various excursions to ancient relics that
interested them both, though in different measure. It was long before
Martin found courage to bring forth the words he desired to utter, but
finally he managed to do so, in the bracing conditions that obtained on
Cosdon Beacon upon the occasion of a visit to its summit. By this time
he had grown friendly with Hicks and must have learnt all and more than
he desired to know but for the bee-keeper's curious taciturnity. For
some whim Clement never mentioned his engagement; it was a subject as
absent from his conversation as his own extreme poverty; but while the
last fact Martin had already guessed, the former remained utterly
concealed from him. Neither did any chance discover it until some time
afterwards.

The hut-circles on Cosdon's south-eastern flank occupied Martin's
pencil. Clement gazed once upon the drawing, then turned away, for no
feeling or poetry inspired the work; it was merely very accurate. The
sketches made, both men ascended immense Cosdon, where its crown of
cairns frets the long summit; and here, to the sound of the wind in the
dead heather, with all the wide world of Northern Devon extended beneath
his gaze under a savage sunset, Martin found courage to speak. At first
Hicks did not hear. His eyes were on the pageant of the sky and paid
tribute of sad thought before an infinity of dying cloud splendours. But
the antiquary repeated his remark. It related to Will Blanchard, and
upon Clement dropping a monosyllabic reply his companion continued:

"A very handsome fellow, too. Miss Blanchard puts me in mind of him."

"They're much alike in some things. But though Chris knows her brother
to be good to look at, you'll never get Will to praise her. Funny, isn't
it? Yet to his Phoebe, she's the sun to a star."

"I think so too indeed. In fact, Miss Blanchard is the most beautiful
woman I ever saw."

Clement did not answer. He was gazing through the sunset at Chris, and
as he looked he smiled, and the sadness lifted a little from off his
face.

"Strange some lucky fellow has not won her before now," proceeded the
other, glancing away to hide the blush that followed his diplomacy.

Here, by all experience and reason, and in the natural sequence of
events Clement Hicks might have been expected to make his confession and
rejoice in his prize, but for some cause, from some queer cross-current
of disposition, he shut his mouth upon the greatest fact of his life. He
answered, indeed, but his words conveyed a false impression. What
sinister twist of mind was responsible for his silence he himself could
not have explained; a mere senseless monkey-mischief seemed to inspire
it. Martin had not deceived him, because the elder man was unused to
probing a fellow-creature for facts or obtaining information otherwise
than directly. Clement noted the false intonation and hesitation,
recollected his sweetheart's allusion to Martin Grimbal, and read into
his companion's question something closely akin to what in reality lay
behind it. His discovery might have been expected to hasten rather than
retard the truth, and a first impulse in any man had made the facts
instantly clear; but Clement rarely acted on impulse. His character was
subtle, disingenuous, secretive. Safe in absolute possession, the
discovery of Martin's attachment did not flutter him. He laughed in his
mind; then he pictured Chris the wife of this man, reviewed the worldly
improvement in her position such a union must effect, and laughed no
more. Finally he decided to hold his peace; but his motives for so doing
were not clear even to himself.

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