"You can tell him I want to see him; you can say I order him to come to the Red House between eight and nine next Monday."

"Be you a fule? Who's he, to come at your bidding?"

"He's a--well, no matter. You've got enough to trouble you. But I think he will come. Tell him that I know where he was during the autumn and winter of the year that I returned home from Africa. Tell him I know where he came from to marry you. Tell him the grey suit of clothes reached the owner safely--remember, the grey suit of clothes. That will refresh his memory. Then I think he will come fast enough and let me have the truth concerning this brat. If he refuses, I shall take steps to see justice done."

"I lay he's never put himself in the power of a black-hearted, cruel beast like you," blazed out the woman, furious and frightened at once.

"Has he not? Ask him. You don't know where he was during those months? I thought you didn't. I do. Perhaps this child--perhaps the other woman's the married one--"

Phoebe dropped her basket and her face grew very pale before the horrors thus coa.r.s.ely spread before her. She staggered and felt sick at the man's last speech. Then, with one great sob of breath, she turned her back on him, nerved herself to use her shaking legs, and set off at her best speed, as one running from some dangerous beast of the field.

Grimbal made no attempt to follow, but watched her fade into the mist, then turned and pursued his way through the dripping woodlands. Sunrise fires gleamed along the upper layers of the fading vapours and gilded autumn's handiwork. Ripe seeds fell tapping through the gold of the horse-chestnuts, and many acorns also pattered down upon a growing carpet of leaves. Webs and gossamers twinkled in the sunlight, and the flaming foliage made a pageant of colour through waning mists where red leaves and yellow fell at every breath along the thinning woods. Beneath trees and hedgerows the ripe mosses gleamed, and coral and amber fungi, with amanita and other hooded folk. In companies and cl.u.s.ters they sprang or arose misshapen, sinister, and alone. Some were orange and orange-tawny; others white and purple; not a few peered forth livid, blotched, and speckled, as with venom spattered from some reptile's jaws. On the wreck of the year they flourished, sucked strange life from rotten stick and hollow tree, opened gills on lofty branch and bough, shone in the green gra.s.s rings of the meadows, thrust cup and cowl from the concourse of the dead leaves in ditches, cl.u.s.tered like the uprising roof-trees of a fairy village in dingle and in dene.

At the edge of the woods John Grimbal stood, and the hour was very dark for him and he cursed at the loss of his manhood. His heart turned to gall before the thought of the thing he had done, as he blankly marvelled what unsuspected base instinct had thus disgraced him. He had plumbed a possibility unknown within his own character, and before his shattered self-respect he stood half pa.s.sionate, half amazed. Chance had thus wrecked him; an impulse had altered the whole face of the problem; and he gritted his teeth as he thought of Blanchard's feelings when Phoebe should tell her story. As for her, she at least had respected him during the past years; but what must henceforth be her estimate of him?

He heaped bitter contempt upon himself for this brutality to a woman; he raged, as he pursued long chains of consequences begot of this single lapse of self-control. His eye was cleared from pa.s.sion; he saw the base nature of his action and judged himself as others would judge him. This spectacle produced a definite mental issue and aroused long-stagnant emotions from their troubled slumbers. He discovered that a frank hatred of Will Blanchard awoke and lived. He told himself this man was to blame for all, and not content with poisoning his life, now ravaged his soul also and blighted every outlook of his being. Like a speck upon an eyeball, which blots the survey of the whole eye, so this wretch had fastened upon him, ruined his ambitions, wrecked his life, and now dragged his honour and his very manhood into the dust. John Grimbal found himself near choked by a raging fit of pa.s.sion at last. He burnt into sheer frenzy against Blanchard; and the fuel of the fire was the consciousness of his own craven performance of that morning. Flying from self-contemplation, he sought distraction and even oblivion at any source where his mind could win it; and now he laid all blame on his enemy and suffered the pa.s.sion of his own shame and remorse to rise, as it had been a red mist, against this man who was playing havoc with his body and soul. He trembled under the loneliness of the woods in a debauch of mere brute rage that exhausted him and left a mark on the rest of his life. Even his present powers appeared trifling and their exercise a deed unsatisfying before this frenzy. What happiness could be achieved by flinging Blanchard into prison for a few months at most?

What salve could be won from thought of this man's disgrace and social ruin? The spectacle sank into pettiness now. His blood was surging through his veins and crying for action. Primitive pa.s.sion gripped him and craved primitive outlet. At that hour, in his own deepest degradation, the man came near madness, and every savage voice in him shouted for blood and blows and batterings in the flesh.

Phoebe Blauchard hastened home, meanwhile, and kept her own counsel upon the subject of the dawn's sensational incidents. Her first instinct was to tell her husband everything at the earliest opportunity, but Will had departed to his work before she reached the farm, and on second thoughts she hesitated to speak or give John Grimbal's message. She feared to precipitate the inevitable. In her own heart what mystery revolved about Will's past performances undoubtedly embraced the child fashioned in his likeness; and though she had long fought against the rumour and deceived herself by pretending to believe Chris, whose opinion differed from that of most people, yet at her heart she felt truth must lie hidden somewhere in the tangle. Will and Mr. Lyddon alone knew nothing of the report, and Phoebe hesitated to break it to her husband. He was happy--perhaps in the consciousness that n.o.body realised the truth; and yet at his very gates a bitter foe guessed at part of his secret and knew the rest. Still Phoebe could not bring herself to speak immediately. A day of mental stress and strain ended, and she retired and lay beside Will very sad. Under darkness of night the threats of the enemy grew into an imminent disaster of terrific dimensions, and with haunting fear she finally slept, to waken in a nightmare.

Will, wholly ignorant of the facts, soothed Phoebe's alarm and calmed her as she clung to him in hysterical tears.

"No ill shall come to 'e while I live," she sobbed: "not if all the airth speaks evil of 'e. I'll cleave to 'e, and fight for 'e, an' be a gude wife, tu,--a better wife than you've been husband."

"Bide easy, an' doan't cry no more. My arm's round 'e, dearie. Theer, give awver, do! You've been dreamin' ugly along o' the poor supper you made, I reckon. Doan't 'e think n.o.body's hand against me now, for ban't so. Folks begin to see the manner of man I am; an' Miller knaws, which is all I care about. He've got a strong right arm workin' for him an' a tidy set o' brains, though I sez it; an' you might have a worse husband, tu, Phoebe; but theer--shut your purty eyes--I knaw they 'm awpen still, for I can hear your lashes against the sheet. An' doan't 'e go out in the early dews mushrooming no more, for 't is cold work, an' you've got to be strong these next months."

She thought for a moment of telling him boldly concerning the legend spreading on every side; but, like others less near and dear to him, she feared to do so.

Knowing Will Blanchard, not a man among the backbiters had cared to risk a broken head by hinting openly at the startling likeness between the child and himself; and Phoebe felt her own courage unequal to the task just then. She racked her brains with his dangers long after he was himself asleep, and finally she determined to seek Chris next morning and hear her opinion before taking any definite step.

On the same night another pair of eyes were open, and trouble of a sort only less deep than that of the wife kept her father awake. Billy had taken an opportunity to tell his master of the general report and spread before him the facts as he knew them.

The younger members of the household had retired early, and when Miller Lyddon took the cards from the mantelpiece and made ready for their customary game, Mr. Blee shook his head and refused to play.

"Got no heart for cards to-night," he said.

"What's amiss, then? Thank G.o.d I've heard little to call ill news for a month or two. Not but what I've fancied a shadow on my gal's face more'n wance."

"If not on hers, wheer should 'e see it?" asked Mr. Blee eagerly."

I've seed it, tu, an' for that matter theer's sour looks an' sighs elsewheer. People ban't blind, worse luck. 'Tis grawed to be common talk, an' I've fired myself to tell you, 'cause 'tis fitting an' right, an' it might come more grievous from less careful lips."

"Go on then; an' doan't rack me longer'n you can help. Use few words."

"Many words must go to it, I reckon. 'Tis well knawn I unfolds a bit o'

news like the flower of the field--gradual and sure. You might have noticed that love-cheel by the name of Timothy 'bout the plaace? Him as be just of age to harry the ducks an' such-like."

"A nice li'l bwoy, tu, an' fond of me; an' you caan't say he'm a love-cheel, knawin' nothin' 'bout him."

"Love-cheel or changeling, 'tis all wan. Have'e ever thought 'twas coorious the way Blanchard comed by un?"

"Certainly 'twas--terrible coorious."

"You never doubted it?"

"Why for should I? Will's truthful as light, whatever else he may be."

"You believe as he went 'pon the Moor an' found that bwoy in a roundy-poundy under the gloamin'?"

"Ess, I do."

"Have'e ever looked at the laddie close?"

"Oftentimes--so like Will as two peas."

"Theer 'tis! The picter of Will! How do'e read that?"

"Never tried to. An accident, no more."

"A d.a.m.n queer accident, if you ax me. Burnish it all! You doan't see yet, such a genius of a man as you tu! Why, Will Blanchard's the faither of the li'l twoad! You've awnly got to know the laws of nature an'

such-like to swear to it. The way he walks an' holds his head, his curls, his fashion of lording it awver the birds an' beasts, the sudden laugh of un--he's Will's son, for a thousand pound, an' his mother's alive, like as not."

"No mother would have gived up a child that way."

"'Zactly so! Onless she gived it to the faither!" said Billy triumphantly.

Mr. Lyddon reflected and showed an evident disposition to scoff at the whole story.

"'Tis stuff an' rubbish!" he said. "You might as well find a mare's nest t'other side an' say 'twas Will's sister's child. 'Tis almost so like her as him, an' got her brown eyes in the bargain."

"G.o.d forbid!" answered Billy, in horror. "That's flat libel, an' I'd be the last to voice any such thing for money. If a man gets a cheel wrong side the blanket 'tis just a pa.s.sing sarc.u.mstance, an' not to be took too serious. Half-a-crown a week is its awn punishment like. But if a gal do, 'tis destruction to the end of the chapter, an' shame everlasting in the world to come, by all accounts. You didn't ought to think o' such things, Miller,--takin' a pure, gude maiden's carater like that. Surprised at 'e!"

"'Tis just as mad a thought wan way as t'other, and if you'm surprised so be I. To be a tale-bearer at your time o' life!"

"That gormed Blanchard's bewitched 'e from fust to last!" burst out Billy. "If a angel from heaven comed down-long and tawld 'e the truth 'bout un, you wouldn't b'lieve. G.o.d stiffen it! You make me mad! You'd stand 'pon your head an' waggle your auld legs in the air for un if he axed 'e."

"I'll speak to him straight an' take his word for it. If it's true, he 'm wickedly to blame, I knaw that."

"I was thinkin' of your darter. 'Tis black thoughts have kept her waking since this reached her ears."

"Did you tell her what people were sayin'? I warrant you did!"

"You'm wrong then. No such thing. I may have just heaved a sigh when I seed the bwoy playin' in front of her, an' looked at Blanchard, an'

shook my head, or some such gentle hint as that. But no more."

"Well, I doan't believe a word of it; an' I'll tell you this for your bettering,--'tis poor religion in you, Blee, to root into other people's troubles, like a pig in a trough; an' auld though you be, you 'm not tu auld to mind what it felt like when the blood was hot an' quick to race at the sight of a maid."

"I practice same as I preach, whether or no," said Billy stoutly, "an' I can't lay claim to creating nothing lawful or unlawful in my Maker's image. 'Tis something to say that, in these G.o.dless days. I've allus kept my foot on the world, the flesh, an' the Devil so tight as the best Christian in company; an' if that ban't a record for a stone, p'raps you'll tell me a better. Your two-edged tongue do make me feel sometimes as though I did ought to go right away from 'e, though G.o.d knaws--G.o.d, He knaws--"

Billy hid his face and began to weep, while Mr. Lyddon watched the candle-light converge to a shining point upon his bald skull.