“I doan’t knaw what to think,” answered Mr. Lyddon, somewhat gloomily. “I ban’t so much in her confidence as of auld days. Damaris Blanchard’s right, like enough. A maid ’s tu deep even for the faither that got her, most times. A sweet, dear gal as ever was, for all that. How fares it, John? She never names ’e to me, though I do to her.”
“I’m biding my time, neighbour. I reckon ’t will be right one day. It only makes me feel a bit mean now and again to have to say hard things about young Blanchard. Still, while she ’s wrapped up there, I may whistle for her.”
“You ’m in the right,” declared Billy. “ ’T is an auld sayin’ that all manner of dealings be fair in love, an’ true no doubt, though I’m a bachelor myself an’ no prophet in such matters.”
“All’s fair for certain,” admitted John, as though he had not before considered the position from this standpoint.
“Ay, an’ a darter’s welfare lies in her faither’s hand. Thank God, I’m not a parent to my knowledge; but ’tis a difficult calling in life, an’ a young maiden gal, purty as a picksher, be a heavy load to a honest mind.”
“So I find it,” said the miller.
“You’ve forbid Will—lock, stock, and barrel—therefore, of coourse, she ’s no right to think more of him, to begin with,” continued the old man. It was a new idea.
“Come to think of it, she hasn’t—eh?” asked John.
“No, that’s true enough,” admitted Mr. Lyddon.
“I speak, though of low position, but well thought of an’ at Miller’s right hand, so to say,” continued Mr. Blee; “so theer ’t is: Missy’s in a dangerous pass. Eve’s flesh be Eve’s flesh, whether hid under flannel or silk, or shawed mother-naked to the sun after the manner of furrin cannibals. A gal ’s a gal; an’ if I was faither of such as your darter, I’d count it my solemn duty to see her out of the dangers of life an’ tidily mated to a gude man. I’d say to myself, ’Her’ll graw to bless me for what I’ve done, come a few years.’ ”
So Billy Blee, according to his golden rule, advised men upon the road they already desired to follow, and thus increased his reputation for sound sense and far-reaching wisdom.
“It’s true, every word he says,” declared John Grimbal.
“I believe it,” answered the miller; “though God forbid any word or act of mine should bring wan tear to Phoebe’s cheek. Yet, somehow, I doan’t knaw but you ’m right.”
“I am, believe me. It’s the truth. You want Phoebe’s real happiness considered, and that now depends on—well, I’ll say it out—on me. We have reached the point now when you must speak, as you promised to speak, and throw the weight of your influence on my side. Then, after you’ve had your say, I’ll have mine and put the great question.”
Mr. Lyddon nodded his head and relapsed into taciturnity.
CHAPTER VI
AN UNHAPPY POET
That a man of many nerves, uncertain in temper and with no physical or temporal qualifications, should have won for himself the handsomest girl in Chagford caused the unreflective to marvel whenever they considered the point. But a better knowledge of Chris Blauchard had served in some measure to explain the wonder. Of all women, she was the least likely to do the thing predicted by experience. She had tremendous force of character for one scarce twenty years of age; indeed, she lived a superlative life, and the man, woman, child, or dog that came within radius of her existence presently formed a definite part of it, and was loved or detested according to circumstances. Neutrality she could not understand. If her interests were wide, her prejudices were strong. A certain unconscious high-handedness of manner made the circle of her friends small, but those who did love her were enthusiastic. Upon the whole, the number of those who liked her increased with years, and avowed enemies had no very definite reasons for aversion. Of her physical perfections none pretended two opinions; but the boys had always gone rather in fear of Chris, and the few men who had courted her during the past few years were all considerably her seniors. No real romance entered into this young woman’s practical and bustling life until the advent of Clement Hicks, though she herself was the flame of hearts not a few before his coming.
Neurotic, sensual, as was Chris herself in a healthy fashion, a man of varying moods, and perhaps the richer for faint glimmerings of the real fire, Hicks yet found himself no better than an aimless, helpless child before the demands of reality. Since boyhood he had lived out of touch with his environment. As bee-keeper and sign-writer he made a naked living for himself and his mother, and achieved success sufficient to keep a cottage roof over their heads, but that was all. Books were his only friends; the old stones of the Moor, the lonely wastes, the plaintive music of a solitary bird were the companions of his happiest days. He had wit enough to torture half his waking hours with self-analysis, and to grit his teeth at his own impotence. But there was no strength, no virile grip to take his fate in his own hands and mould it like a man. He only mourned his disadvantages, and sometimes blamed destiny, sometimes a congenital infirmity of purpose, for the dreary course of his life. Nature alone could charm his sullen moods, and that not always. Now and again she spread over the face of his existence a transitory contentment and a larger hope; but the first contact with facts swept it away again. His higher aspirations were neither deep nor enduring, and yet the man’s love of nature was lofty and just, and represented all the religion he had. No moral principles guided him, conscience never pricked. Nevertheless, thus far he had been a clean liver and an honest man. Vice, because it affronted his sense of the beautiful and usually led towards death, did not attract him. He lived too deep in the lap of Nature to be deceived by the pseudo-realism then making its appearance in literature, and he laughed without mirth at these pictures from city-bred pens at that time paraded as the whole truth of the countryman’s life. The later school was not then above the horizon; the brief and filthy spectacle of those who dragged their necrosis, marasmus, and gangrene of body and mind across the stage of art and literature, and shrieked Decay, had not as yet appeared to make men sicken; the plague-spot, now near healed, had scarce showed the faintest angry symptom of coming ill. Hicks might under no circumstances have been drawn in that direction, for his morbidity was of a different description. Art to this man appeared only in what was wholesome; it even embraced a guide to conduct, for it led him directly to Nature, and Nature emphatically taught him the value of obedience, the punishment of weakness, the reward for excess and every form of self-indulgence. But a softness in him shrank from these aspects of the Mother. He tried vainly and feebly to dig some rule of life from her smiles alone, to read a sermon into her happy hours of high summer sunshine. Beauty was his dream; he possessed natural taste, and had cultivated the same without judgment. His intricate disposition and extreme sensitiveness frightened him away from much effort at self-expression; yet not a few trifling scraps and shreds of lyric poetry had fallen from his pen in high moments. These, when the mood changed, he read again, and found dead, and usually destroyed. He was more easily discouraged than a child who sets out to tell its parent a story, and is all silence and shamefaced blushes at the first whisper of laughter or semblance of a smile. The works of poets dazed him, disheartened him, and secret ambitions toward performance grew dimmer with every book he laid his hands on. Ambition to create began to die; the dream scenery of his ill-controlled mental life more and more seldom took shape of words on paper; and there came a time when thought grew wholly wordless for him; a mere personal pleasure, selfish, useless, unsubstantial as the glimmer of mirage over desert sands.
Into this futile life came Chris, like a breath of sweet air from off the deep sea. She lifted him clean out of his subjective existence, awoke a healthy, natural love, built on the ordinary emotions of humanity, galvanised self-respect and ambition