Children of the Mist. Eden Phillpotts

sense was absolutely powerless to probe even the crust of Clement’s nature; but she was satisfied that his poetry must be a thing as marketable as that in printed books. Indeed, in an elated moment he had assured her that it was so. During the earlier stages of their attachment, she pestered him to write and sell his verses and make money, that their happiness might be hastened; while he, on the first budding of his love, and with the splendid assurance of its return, had promised all manner of things, and indeed undertaken to make poems that should be sent by post to the far-away place where they printed unknown poets, and paid them. Chris believed in Clement as a matter of course. His honey must at least be worth more to the world than that of his bees. Over her future husband she began at once to exercise the control of mistress and mother; and she loved him more dearly after they had been engaged a year than at the beginning of the contract. By that time she knew his disposition, and instead of displaying frantic impatience at it, as might have been predicted, her tolerance was extreme. She bore with Clem because she loved him with the full love proper to such a nature as her own; and, though she presently found herself powerless to modify his character in any practical degree, his gloomy and uneven mind never lessened the sturdy optimism of Chris herself, or her sure confidence that the future would unite them. Through her protracted engagement Mrs. Blanchard’s daughter maintained a lively and sanguine cheerfulness. But seldom was it that she lost patience with the dreamer. Then her rare, indignant outbursts of commonplace and common sense, like a thunderstorm, sweetened the stagnant air of Clement’s thoughts and awoke new, wholesome currents in his mind.

      As a rule, on the occasion of their frequent country walks, Clem and Chris found personal problems and private interests sufficient for all conversation, but it happened that upon a Sunday in mid-December, as they passed through the valley of the Teign, where the two main streams of that river mingle at the foothills of the Moor, the subject of Will and Phoebe for a time at least filled their thoughts. The hour was clear and bright, yet somewhat cheerless. The sun had already set, from the standpoint of all life in the valley, and darkness, hastening out of the east, merged the traceries of a million naked boughs into a thickening network of misty grey. The river beneath these woods churned in winter flood, while clear against its raving one robin sang little tinkling litanies from the branch of an alder.

      Chris stood upon Lee Bridge at the waters’ meeting and threw scraps of wood into the river; Clem sat upon the parapet, smoked his pipe, and noted with a lingering delight the play of his sweetheart’s lips as her fingers strained to snap a tough twig. Then the girl spoke, continuing a conversation already entered upon.

      “Phoebe Lyddon’s that weak in will. How far’s such as her gwaine in life without some person else to lean upon?”

      “If the ivy cannot find a tree it creeps along the ground, Chrissy.”

      “Ess, it do; or else falls headlong awver the first bank it comes to. Phoebe’s so helpless a maiden as ever made a picksher. I mind her at school in the days when we was childer together. Purty as them china figures you might buy off Cheap Jack, an’ just so tender. She’d come up to dinky gals no bigger ’n herself an’ pull out her li’l handkercher an’ ax ’em to be so kind as to blaw her nose for her! Now Will’s gone, Lard knaws wheer she’ll drift to.”

      “To John Grimbal. Any man could see that. Her father’s set on it.”

      “Why don’t Will write to her and keep her heart up and give her a little news? ’Twould be meat an’ drink to her. Doan’t matter ’bout mother an’ me. We’ll take your word for it that Will wants to keep his ways secret. But a sweetheart—’tis so differ’nt. I wouldn’t stand it!”

      “I know right well you wouldn’t. Will has his own way. We won’t criticise him. But there’s a masterful man in the running—a prosperous, loud-voiced, bull-necked bully of a man, and one not accustomed to take ’no’ for his answer. I’m afraid of John Grimbal in this matter. I’ve gone so far as to warn Will, but he writes back that he knows Phoebe.”

      “Jan Grimbal’s a very differ’nt fashion of man to his brother; that I saw in a moment when they bided with us for a week, till the ’Three Crowns’ could take ’em in. I hate Jan—hate him cruel; but I like Martin. He puts me in mind o’ you, Clem, wi’ his nice way of speech and tender quickness for women. But it’s Phoebe we’m speaking of. I think you should write stern to Will an’ frighten him. It ban’t fair fightin’, that poor, dear Phoebe ’gainst the will o’ two strong men.”

      “Well, she’s had paltry food for a lover since he went away. He’s got certain ideas, and she’ll hear direct when—but there, I must shut my mouth, for I swore by fantastic oaths to say nothing.”

      “He ought to write, whether or no. You tell Will that Jan Grimbal be about building a braave plaace up under Whiddon, and is looking for a wife at Monks Barton morning, noon, an’ evening. That’s like to waken him. An’ tell him the miller’s on t’other side, and clacking Jan Grimbal into Phoebe’s ear steadier than the noise of his awn water-wheel.”

      “And she will grow weak, mark me. She sees that red-brick place rising out of the bare boughs, higher and higher, and knows that from floor to attics all may be hers if she likes to say the word. She hears great talk of drawing-rooms, and pictures, and pianos, and greenhouses full of rare flowers, and all the rest—why, just think of it!”

      “Ban’t many gals as could stand ’gainst a piano, I daresay.”

      “I only know one—mine.”

      Chris looked at him curiously.

      “You ’m right. An’ that, for some queer reason, puts me in mind of the other wan, Martin Grimbal. He was very pleasant to me.”

      “He’s too late, thank God!”

      “Ess, fay! An’ if he’d comed afore ’e, Clem, he’d been tu early. Theer’s awnly wan man in the gert world for me.”

      “My gypsy!”

      “But I didn’t mean that. He wouldn’t look at me, not even if I was a free woman. ’T was of you I thought when I talked to Mr. Grimbal. He’m well-to-do, and be seekin’ a house in the higher quarter under Middledown. You an’ him have the same fancy for the auld stones. So you might grow into friends—eh, Clem? Couldn’t it so fall out? He might serve to help—eh? You ’m two-and-thirty year auld next February, an’ it do look as though they silly bees ban’t gwaine to put money enough in the bank to spell a weddin’ for us this thirty year to come. Theer’s awnly your aunt, Widow Coomstock, as you can look to for a penny, and that tu doubtful to count on.”

      “Don’t name her, Chris. Good Lord! poor drunken old thing, with that crowd of hungry relations waiting like vultures round a dying camel! Never think of her. Money she has, but I sha’n’t see the colour of it, and I don’t want to.”

      “Well, let that bide. Martin Grimbal’s the man in my thought.”

      “What can I do there?”

      “Doan’t knaw, ’zactly; but things might fall out if he got to like you, being a bookish sort of man. Anyway, he’s very willing to be friends, for that he told me. Doan’t bear yourself like Lucifer afore him; but take the first chance to let him knaw your fortune’s in need of mendin’.”

      “You say that! D’ you think self-respect is dead in me?” he asked, half angry.

      There was no visible life about them, so she put her arms round him.

      “I ax for love of ’e, dearie, an’ for want of ’e. Do ’e think waitin’ ’s sweeter for me than for you?”

      Then he calmed down again, sighed, returned the caress, touched her, and stroked her breast and shoulder with sudden earthly light in his great eyes.

      “It ’s hard to wait.”

      “That’s why I say doan’t lose chances that may mean a weddin’ for us, Clem. Theer ’s so much hid in ’e, if awnly the way to bring it out could be found.”

      “A