Meantime, whilst he reviewed his future with his eyes on a blue cloud of tobacco smoke, Martin passed Phoebe Lyddon farther down the valley. Him she recognised as a stranger; but he, with his eyes engaged in no more than unconscious guarding of his footsteps, his mind buried in the fascinating problems of early British castramentation, did not look at her or mark a sorrowful young face still stained with tears.
Into the gorge Phoebe had wandered after reading her sweetheart’s letter. There, to the secret ear of the great Mother, instinct had drawn her and her grief; and now the earliest shock was over; a dull, numb pain of mind followed the first sorrow; unwonted exercise had made her weary; and physical hunger, not to be stayed by mental suffering, forced her to turn homewards. Red-eyed and unhappy she passed beside the river, a very picture of a woful lover.
The sound of Phoebe’s steps fell on John Grimbal’s ear as he lay upon his back with crossed knees and his hands behind his head. He partly rose therefore, thrust his face above the fern, saw the wayfarer, and then sprang to his feet. The cause of her tearful expression and listless demeanour was known to him, but he ignored them and greeted her cheerily.
“Can’t catch anything big enough to keep, and sha’n’t until the rain comes,” he said; “so I’ll walk along with you, if you’re going home.”
He offered his hand; then, after Phoebe had shaken it, moved beside her and put up his rod as he went.
“Saw your father this morning, and mighty glad I was to find him so blooming. To my eye he looks younger than my memory picture of him. But that’s because I’ve grown from boy to man, as you have from child to woman.”
“So I have, and ’t is a pity my faither doan’t knaw it,” answered Phoebe, smarting under her wrongs, and willing to chronicle them in a friendly ear. “If I ban’t full woman, who is? Yet I’m treated like a baaby, as if I’d got no ’pinions an’ feelings, and wasn’t—wasn’t auld enough to knaw what love meant.”
Grimbal’s eyes glowed at the picture of the girl’s indignation, and he longed to put his arms round her and comfort her.
“You must be wise and dutiful, Phoebe,” he said. “Will Blauchard’s a plucky fellow to go off and face the world. And perhaps he’ll be one of the lucky ones, like I was.”
“He will be, for certain, and so you’d say if you knawed him same as I do. But the cruel waitin’—years and years and years—‘t is enough to break a body’s heart.”
Her voice fluttered like bells in a wild wind; she trembled on the brink of tears; and he saw by little convulsive movements and the lump in her round throat that she could not yet regard her lot with patience. She brought out her pocket-handkerchief again, and the man noticed it was all wet and rolled into a ball.
“Life’s a blank thing at lovers’ parting,” he said; “but time rubs the rough edges off matters that fret our minds the worst. Days and nights, and plenty of ’em, are the best cure for all ills.”
“An’ the best cure for life tu! The awnly cure. Think of years an’ years without him. Yesterday us met up in Pixies’ Parlour yonder, an’ I was peart an’ proud as need be; to-day he’s gone, and I feel auld and wisht and all full of weary wonder how I’m gwaine to fare and if I’llever see him again. ’T is cruel—bitter cruel for me.”
That she could thus pity herself so soon argued a mind incapable of harbouring great sorrow for many years; and the man at her side, without appreciating this fact, yet, by a sort of intuition, suspected that Phoebe’s grief, perhaps even her steadfastness of purpose, would suffer diminution before very great lapse of time. Without knowing why, he hoped it might be so. Her voice fell melodiously upon an ear long tuned to the whine of native women. It came from the lungs, was full and sweet, with a shy suddenness about it, like the cooing of wood doves. She half slipped at a stile, and he put out his hand and touched her waist and felt his heart throb. But Phoebe’s eyes rarely met her new friend’s. The girl looked with troubled brows ahead into the future, while she walked beside him; and he, upon her left hand, saw only the soft cheek, the pouting lips, and the dimples that came and went. Sometimes she looked up, however, and Grimbal noted how the flutter of past tears shook her round young breast, marked the spring of her step, the freedom of her gait, and the trim turn of her feet and ankles. After the flat-footed Kaffir girls, Phoebe’s instep had a right noble arch in his estimation.
“To think that I, as never wronged faither in thought or deed, should be treated so hard! I’ve been all the world to him since mother died, for he’s said as much to many; yet he’s risen up an’ done this, contrary to justice and right and Scripture, tu.”
“You must be patient, Phoebe, and respect his age, and let the matter rest till the time grows ripe. I can’t advise you better than that.”
“ ’Patient!’ My life’s empty, I tell ’e—empty, hollow, tasteless wi’out my Will.”
“Well, well, we’ll see. I’m going to build a big red-brick house presently, and buy land, and make a bit of a stir in my small way. You’ve a pretty fancy in such things, I’ll bet a dollar. You shall give me a helping hand—eh? You must tell me best way of setting up house. And you might help me as to furniture and suchlike if you had time for it. Will you, for an old friend?”
Phoebe was slightly interested. She promised to do anything in her power that might cause Mr. Grimbal satisfaction; and he, very wisely, assured her that there was no salve for sorrow like unselfish labours on behalf of other people. He left her at the farm-gate, and tramped back to the Blanchard cottage with his mind busy enough. Presently he changed his clothes, and set a diamond in his necktie. Then he strolled away into the village, to see the well-remembered names above the little shop windows; to note curiously how Chagford market-place had shrunk and the houses dwindled since last he saw them; to call with hearty voice and rough greeting at this habitation and that; to introduce himself again among men and women who had known him of yore, and who, for the most part, quite failed to recognise in their bluff and burly visitor the lad who set forth from his father’s cottage by the church so many years before.
CHAPTER V
THE INCIDENT OF MR. JOEL FORD
Of Blanchard family history a little more must be said. Timothy Blanchard, the husband of Damaris and father of Will and Chris, was in truth of the nomads, though not a right gypsy. As a lad, and at a time when the Romany folk enjoyed somewhat more importance and prosperity than of late years, he joined them, and by sheer force of character and mother wit succeeded in rising to power amongst the wanderers. The community with which he was connected for the most part confined its peregrinations to the West; and time saw Timothy Blanchard achieve success in his native country, acquire two caravans, develop trade on a regular “circuit,” and steadily save money in a small way; while his camp of some five-and-twenty souls—men, women, and numerous children—shared in their leader’s prosperity. These earlier stages of the man’s career embraced some strange circumstances, chief amongst them being his marriage. Damaris Ford was the daughter of a Moor farmer. Her girlhood had been spent in the dreary little homestead of “Newtake,” above Chagford, within the fringe of the great primeval wastes; and here, on his repeated journeys across the Moor, Tim Blanchard came to know her and love her well.
Farmer Ford swore round oaths, and sent Blanchard and his caravans packing when the man approached him for his daughter’s hand; but the girl herself was already won, and week after her lover’s repulse Damaris vanished. She journeyed with her future husband to Exeter, wedded him, and became mistress of his house on wheels; then, for the space of four years, she lived the gypsy life, brought a son and daughter