"Doan't go against a word in season, my dear sawl. 'Tis our duty to set each other right. That's what we'm put here for, I doubt. Many's the time you've given me gude advice, an' I've thanked 'e an' took it."

Then he went for the spirits and mixed Mr. Blee a dose of more than usual strength.

"You'm the most biting user of language in Chagford, when you mind to speak sour," declared Billy. "If I thought you meant all you said, I'd go an' hang myself in the barn this instant moment. But you doan't."

He snuffled and dried his scanty tears on a red handkerchief, then cheered up and drank his liquor.

"It do take all sorts to make a world, an' a man must act accordin' as he'm built," continued Mr. Lyddon. "Ban't no more use bein' angered wi'

a chap given to women than 'tis bein' angered wi' a fule, because he's a fule. What do 'e expect from a fule but folly, or a crab tree but useless fruit, or hot blood but the ways of it? This ban't to speak of Will Blanchard, though. 'Pon him we'll say no more till he've heard what's on folks' tongues. A maddening bwoy--I'll allow you that--an'

he've took a year or two off my life wan time an' another. 'Pears I ban't never to graw to love un as I would; an' yet I caan't quite help it when I sees his whole-hearted ferment to put money into my pocket; or when I hears him talk of nitrates an' the ways o' the world; or watches un playin' make-believe wi' the childer--himself the biggest cheel as ever laughed at fulishness or wanted spankin' an' putting in the corner."

CHAPTER VIII

FLIGHT

On the following morning Miller Lyddon arose late, looked from his window and immediately observed the twain with whom his night thoughts had been concerned. Will stood at the gate smoking; small Timothy, and another lad, of slightly riper years, appeared close by. The children were fighting tooth and nail upon the ownership of a frog, and this reptile itself, fastened by the leg to a stick, listlessly watched the progress of the battle. Will likewise surveyed the scene with genial attention, and encouraged the particular little angry animal who had most claim upon his interest. Timothy kicked and struck out pretty straight, but fought in silence; the bigger boy screamed and howled and scratched.

"Vang into un, man, an' knock his ugly head off!" said Will encouragingly, and the babe to whom he spoke made renewed efforts as both combatants tumbled into the road, the devil in their little bright eyes, each puny muscle straining. Tim had his foe by the hair, and the elder was trying to bite his enemy's leg, when Martin Grimbal and Chris Blanchard approached from Rushford Bridge. They had met by chance, and Chris was coming to the farm while the antiquary had business elsewhere.

Now a scuffle in a cloud of dust arrested them and the woman, uninfluenced by considerations of sportsmanship, pounced upon Timothy, dragged him from his operations, and, turning to Will, spoke as Martin Grimbal had never heard her speak before.

"You, a grawed man, to stand theer an' see that gert wild beast of a bwoy tear this li'l wan like a savage tiger! Look at his sclowed faace all streaming wi' blood! 'S truth! I'd like to sarve you the same, an' I would for two pins! I'm ashamed of 'e!"

"He hit wi' his fistes like a gude un," said Will, grinning; "an' he'm made o' the right stuff, I'll swear. Couldn't have done better if he was my awn son. I be gwaine to give un a braave toy bimebye. You see t'other kid's faace come to-morrow!"

Martin Grimbal watched Chris fondle the gasping Timothy, clean his wounds, calm his panting heart; then, as though a superhuman voice whispered in his ear, her secret stood solved, and the truth of Timothy's parentage confronted him in a lightning flash of the soul. He looked at Chris as a man might gaze upon a spectre; he stared at her and through her into her past; he pieced each part of the puzzle to its kindred parts until all stood complete; he read "mother" in her voice, in her caressing hands and gleaming eyes as surely as man reads morning in the first light of dawn; and he marvelled that a thing so clear and naked had been left to his discovery. The revelation shook him not a little, for he was familiar with the rumours concerning Tim's paternity, and had been disposed to believe them; but from the moment of the new thought's inception it gripped him, for he felt that the thing was true.

As lamps, so ordered that the light of each may fall on the fringe of darkness where its fellow fades, and thus complete a chain of illumination, so the present discovery, duly considered, was but one point of truth revealing others. It made clear much that had not been easy to understand, and the tremendous fact rose in his mind as a link in such a perfect sequence of evidence that doubt actually vanished before he had lost sight of Chris and pa.s.sed dumfounded upon his way.

Her lover's sudden death, her own disappearance, the child's advent at Newtake, and the woman's subsequent return--these main incidents connected a thousand others and explained what little mystery still obscured the position. He pursued his road and marvelled as he went how a tragedy so thinly veiled had thus escaped every eye. Within the story that Chris had told, this other story might be intercalated without convicting her of any spoken falsehood. Now he guessed at the reason why Timothy's mother had refused to marry him on his last proposal; then, thinking of the child, he knew Tim's father.

So he stood before the truth; and it filled his heart with some agony and some light. Examining his love in this revelation, he discovered strange things; and first, that it was love only that had opened his eyes and enabled him to solve the secret at all. n.o.body had made the discovery but himself, and he, of all men the least likely to come at any concern others desired to hide from him, had fathomed this great fact, had won it from the heart of unconscious Chris. His love widened and deepened into profound pity as he thought of all that her secret and the preservation of it must have meant; and tears dimmed his eyes as he pictured her life since her lover's pa.s.sing.

To him the discovery hurt Chris so little that for a time he underrated the effect of it upon other people. His affection rose clean above the unhappy fact, and it was some time before he began to appreciate the spectacle of Chris under the world's eye with the truth no longer hidden. Then a sense of his own helplessness overmastered him; he walked slowly, drew up at a gate and stood motionless, leaning over it. So silent did he stand, and so long, that a stoat hopped across the road within two yards of him.

He realised to the full that he was absolutely powerless. Chris alone must disperse the rumours fastening on her brother if they were to be dispersed. He knew that she would not suffer any great cloud of unjust censure to rest upon Will, and he saw what a bitter problem must be overwhelming her. n.o.body could help her and he, who knew, was as powerless as the rest. Then he asked himself if that last conviction was true. He probed the secret places of his mind to find an idea; he prayed for some chance spark or flash of genius to aid him before this trial; he mourned his own simple brains, so weak to aid him in this vital pa.s.s.

But of all living men the accidental discovery was most safe with him.

His heart went out to the secret mother, and he told himself that he would guard her mystery like gold.

It was strange in a nature so timorous that not once did a suspicion he had erred overtake him, and presently he wondered to observe how ancient this discovery of the motherhood of Chris had grown within his mind. It appeared as venerable as his own love for her. He yearned for power to aid; without conscious direction of his course he proceeded and strode along for hours. Then he ate a meal of bread and cheese at an inn and tramped forward once more upon a winding road towards the village of Zeal.

Through his uncertainty, athwart the deep perplexity of his mind, moved hope and a shadowed joy. Within him arose again the vision of happiness once pictured and prayed for, once revived, never quite banished to the grey limbo of ambitions beyond fulfilment. Now realities saddened the thought of it and brought ambition within a new environment less splendid than the old. But, despite clouds, hope shone fairly forth at last. So a planet, that the eye has followed at twilight and then lost a while, beams anew at dawn after lapse of days, and wheels in wide mazes upon some new background of the unchanging stars.

Elsewhere Mr. Lyddon braced himself to a painful duty, and had private speech with his son-in-law. Like a thunderbolt the circling suspicions fell on Will, and for a moment smothered his customary characteristics under sheer surprise.

The miller spoke nervously, and walked up and down with his eyes averted.

"Ban't no gert matter, I hope, an' I won't keep 'e from your work five minutes. You've awnly got to say 'No,' an' theer's an end of it so far as I'm concerned. 'Tis this: have 'e noticed heads close together now an' again when you pa.s.sed by of late?"

"Not me. Tu much business on my hands, I a.s.sure 'e. Coourse theer's envious whisperings; allus is when a man gets a high place, same as what I have, thanks to his awn gude sense an' the wisdom of others as knaws what he's made of. But you trusted me wi' all your heart, an' you'll never live to mourn it."

"I never want to. You'm grawing to be much to me by slow stages. Yet these here tales. This child Timothy. Who's his faither, Will, an' who's his mother?"

"How the flaming h.e.l.l should I knaw? I found him same as you finds a berry on a briar. That's auld history, surely?"

"The child graws so 'mazing like you, that even dim eyes such as mine can see it."

A sudden flash of light came into Blanchard's face. Then the fire died as quickly as it had been kindled, and he grew calm.

"G.o.d A'mighty!" he said, in a voice hushed and awed. "They think that! I lay that's why your darter's cried o' nights, then, an' Chris have grawed sad an' wisht in her ways, an' mother have pet the bwoy wan moment an' been short wi' un the next."

He remained marvellously quiet under this attack, but amazement chiefly marked his att.i.tude. Miller Lyddon, encouraged by this unexpected reasonableness, spoke again more sternly.

"The thing looks bad to a wife an' mother, an' 'tis my duty to ax 'e for a plain, straightforward answer 'pon it. Human nature's got a ugly trick of repeatin' itself in this matter, as we all knaws. But I'll say nought an' think nought till you answers me. Be the bwoy yourn or not? Tell me true, with your hand on this."

He took his Bible from the mantelpiece, while Will, apparently cowed by the gravity of the situation, placed both palms upon it, then fixed his eyes solemnly upon Mr. Lyddon.

"As G.o.d in heaven's my judge, he ban't no cheel of mine, and I knaw nothing about him--no, nor yet his faither nor mother nor plaace of birth. I found un wheer I said, and if I've lied by a fraction, may G.o.d choke me as I stand here afore you."

"An' I believe you to the bottom!" declared his father-in-law. "I believe you as I hopes to be believed myself, when I stands afore the Open Books an' says I've tried to do my duty. You've got me on your side, an' that's to say you'll have Phoebe an' your mother, tu, for certain."

Then Blanchard's mood changed, and there came a tremendous rebound from the tension of the last few minutes. In the anti-climax following upon his oath, pa.s.sion, chained a while by astonishment, broke loose in a whirlwind.

"Let 'em believe or disbelieve, who cares?" he thundered out. "Not me--not a curse for you or anybody, my awn blood or not my awn blood. To harbour lies against me! But women loves to believe bad most times."

"Who said they believed it, Will? Doan't go mad, now 'tis awver and done."

"They _did_ believe it; I knaw, I seed it in theer faaces, come to think of it. 'Tis the auld song. I caan't do no right. Course I've got childer an' ruined maids in every parish of the Moor! G.o.d d.a.m.n theer lying, poisonous tongues, the lot of 'em! I'm sick of this rotten, lie-breeding hole, an' of purty near every sawl in it but mother. She never would think against me. An' me, so true to Phoebe as the honey-bee to his awn b.u.t.t! I'll go--I'll get out of it--so help me, I will--to a clean land, 'mongst clean-thinking folk, wheer men deal fair and judge a chap by his works. For a thought I'd wring the neck of the blasted child, by G.o.d I would!"

"He've done no wrong."

"Nor me neither. I had no more hand in his getting than he had himself.

Poor li'l brat; I'm sorry I spoke harsh of him. He was give me--he was give me--an' I wish to G.o.d he _was_ mine. Anyways he shaa'n't come to no harm. I'll fight the lot of 'e for un, till he 's auld enough to fight for hisself."

Then Will burst out of Monks Barton and vanished. He pa.s.sed far from the confines of the farm, roamed on to the high Moor, and nothing further was seen of him until the following day.

Those most concerned a.s.sembled after his departure and heard the result of the interview.

"Solemn as a minister he swore," explained Mr. Lyddon; "an' then, a'most before his hands was off the Book, he burst out like a screeching, ravin' hurricane. I half felt the oath was vain then, an' 't was his real nature bubblin' up like."

They discussed the matter, all save Chris, who sat apart, silent and abstracted. Presently she rose and left them, and faced her own trouble single-handed, as she had similarly confronted greater sorrows in the past.

She was fully determined to conceal her cherished secret still; yet not for the superficial reason that had occurred to any mind. Vast mental alterations had transformed Chris Blanchard since the death of Clement.

Her family she scarcely considered now; no power of logic would have convinced her that she had wronged them or darkened their fame. In the past, indeed, not the least motive of her flight had centred in the fear of Will; but now she feared n.o.body, and her own misfortune held no shadow of sin or shame for her, looking back upon it. Those who would have denied themselves her society or friendship upon this knowledge it would have given her no pang to lose. She could feel fiercely still, as she looked back to the birth of her son and traced the long course of her sufferings; and she yet experienced occasional thrills of satisfaction in her weaker moments, when she lowered the mask and reflected, not without pride, on the strength and determination that had enabled her to keep her secret. But to reveal the truth now was a prospect altogether hateful in the eyes of Chris, and she knew the reason. More than once had she been upon the brink of disclosure, since recent unhappy suspicions had darkened Phoebe's life; but she had postponed the necessary step again and again, at one thought. Her fort.i.tude, her apathy, her stoic indifference, broke down and left her all woman before one necessity of confession; her heart stood still when she remembered that Martin Grimbal must know and judge. His verdict she did, indeed, dread with all her soul, and his only; for him she had grown to love, and the thought of his respect and regard was precious to her. Everybody must know, everybody or n.o.body. For long she could conceive of no action clearing Will in the eyes of the wider circle who would not be content to take his word, and yet leaving herself uninvolved. Then the solution came. She would depart once more with the child. Such a flight was implicit confession, and could not be misunderstood. Martin must, indeed, know, but she would never see him after he knew. To face him after the truth had reached his ear seemed to Chris a circ.u.mstance too terrible to dwell upon. Her action, of course, would proclaim the parentage of Timothy, and free Will from further slanderings; while for herself, through tears she saw the kind faces of the gypsy people and her life henceforth devoted to her little one.

To accentuate the significance of the act she determined to carry out her intention that same day, and during the afternoon opportunity offered. Her son, playing alone in the farmyard, came readily enough for a walk, and before three o'clock they had set out. The boy's face was badly scratched from his morning battle, but pain had ceased, and his injuries only served as an object of great interest to Timothy. Where water in ditch or puddle made a looking-gla.s.s he would stop to survey himself.