This culmination resulted from a visit to the spiritual head of Phoebe’s dwelling-place. The Rev. James Shorto-Champernowne, Vicar of Chagford, made an appointment to discuss the position with Mr. Lyddon and his daughter. A sportsman of the old type, and a cleric of rare reputation for good sense and fairness to high and low, was Mr. Shorto-Champernowne, but it happened that his more tender emotions had been buried with a young wife these forty years, and children he had none. Nevertheless, taking the standpoint of parental discipline, he held Phoebe’s alleged engagement a vain thing, not to be considered seriously. Moreover, he knew of Will’s lapses in the past; and that was fatal.
“My child, have little doubt that both religion and duty point in one direction and with no faltering hands,” he said, in his stately way. “Communicate with the young man, inform him that conversation with myself has taken place; then he can hardly maintain an attitude of doubt, either to the exalted convictions that have led to your decision, or to the propriety of it. And, further, do not omit an opportunity of well-doing, but conclude your letter with a word of counsel. Pray him to seek a Guide to his future life, the only Guide able to lead him aright. I mean his Mother Church. No man who turns his back upon her can be either virtuous or happy. I mourned his defection from our choir some years ago. You see I forget nobody. My eyes are everywhere, as they ought to be. Would that he could be whipped back to the House of God—with scorpions, if necessary! There is a cowardice, a lack of sportsmanlike feeling, if I may so express it, in these fallings away from the Church of our fathers. It denotes a failing of intellect amid the centres of human activity. There is a blight of unbelief abroad—a nebulous, pestilential rationalism. Acquaint him with these facts; they may serve to re-establish one whose temperament must be regarded as abnormal in the light of his great eccentricity of action. Now farewell, and God be with you.”
The rotund, grey-whiskered clergyman waved his hand; Miller Lyddon and his daughter left the vicarage; while both heard, as it seemed, his studied phrases and sonorous voice rolling after them all the way home. But poor Phoebe felt that the main issues as to conscience were now only too clear; her last anchor was wrenched from its hold, and that night, through a mist of unhappy tears, she succumbed, promised to marry John Grimbal and be queen of the red castle now rising under Cranbrook’s distant heights.
That we have dealt too scantily with her tragic experiences may be suspected; but the sequel will serve to show how these circumstances demand no greater elaboration than has been accorded to them.
CHAPTER VII
LIBATION TO POMONA
A WINTER moon threw black shadows from stock and stone, tree and cot in the valley of the Teign. Heavy snow had fallen, and moor-men, coming down from the highlands, declared it to lie three feet deep in the drifts. Now fine, sharp weather had succeeded the storm, and hard frost held both hill and vale.
On Old Christmas Eve a party numbering some five-and-twenty persons assembled in the farmyard of Monks Barton, and Billy Blee, as master of the pending ceremonies, made them welcome. Some among them were aged, others youthful; indeed the company consisted mostly of old men and boys, a circumstance very easily understood when the nature of their enterprise is considered. The ancients were about to celebrate a venerable rite and sacrifice to a superstition, active in their boyhood, moribund at the date with which we are concerned, and to-day probably dead altogether. The sweet poet2 of Dean Prior mentions this quaint, old-time custom of “christening” or “wassailing” the fruit-trees among Christmas-Eve ceremonies; and doubtless when he dwelt in Devon the use was gloriously maintained; but an adult generation in the years of this narrative had certainly refused it much support. It was left to their grandfathers and their sons; and thus senility and youth preponderated in the present company. For the boys, this midnight fun with lantern and fowling-piece was good Christmas sport, and they came readily enough; to the old men their ceremonial possessed solid value, and from the musty storehouse of his memory every venerable soul amongst them could cite instances of the sovereign virtue hid in such a procedure.
“A brave rally o’ neighbours, sure ’nough,” cried Mr. Blee as he appeared amongst them. “Be Gaffer Lezzard come?”
“Here, Billy.”
“Hast thy fire-arm, Lezzard?”
“Ess, ’t is here. My gran’son’s carrying of it; but I holds the powder-flask an’ caps, so no ruin be threatened to none.”
Mr. Lezzard wore a black smock-frock, across the breast of which extended delicate and skilful needlework. His head was hidden under an old chimney-pot hat with a pea-cock’s feather in it, and, against the cold, he had tied a tremendous woollen muffler round his neck and about his ears. The ends of it hung down over his coat, and the general effect of smock, comforter, gaitered shanks, boots tied up in straw, long nose, and shining spectacles, was that of some huge and ungainly bird, hopped from out a fairy-tale or a nightmare.
“Be Maister Chappie here likewise?” inquired Billy.
“I’m waitin’; an’ I’ve got a fowling-piece, tu.”
“That’s gude then. I be gwaine to carry the auld blunderbuss what’s been in Miller Lyddon’s family since the years of his ancestors, and belonged to a coach-guard in the King’s days. ’T is well suited to apple-christenin’. The cider’s here, in three o’ the biggest earth pitchers us’a’ got, an’ the lads is ready to bring it along. The Maister Grimbals, as will be related to the family presently, be comin’ to see the custom, an’ Miller wants every man to step back-along arterwards an’ have a drop o’ the best, ’cordin’ to his usual gracious gudeness. Now, Lezzard, me an’ you’ll lead the way.”
Mr. Blee then shouldered his ancient weapon, the other veteran marched beside him, and the rest of the company followed in the direction of Chagford Bridge. They proceeded across the fields; and along the procession bobbed a lantern or two, while a few boys carried flaring torches. The light from these killed the moonbeams within a narrow radius, shot black tongues of smoke into the clear air, and set the meadows glimmering redly where contending radiance of moon and fire powdered the virgin snow with diamond and ruby. Snake-like the party wound along beside the river. Dogs barked; voices rang clear on the crystal night; now and again, with laughter and shout, the lads raced hither and thither from their stolid elders, and here and there jackets carried the mark of a snowball. Behind the procession a trampled grey line stretched out under the moonlight. Then all passed like some dim, magic pageant of a dream; the distant dark blot of naked woodlands swallowed them up, and the voices grew faint and ceased. Only the endless song of the river sounded, with a new note struck into it by the world of snow.
For a few moments the valley was left empty, so empty that a fox, who had been prowling unsuccessfully about Monks Barton since dusk, took the opportunity to leave his hiding-place above the ducks’ pool, cross the meadows, and get him home to his earth two miles distant. He slunk with pattering foot across the snow, marking his way by little regular paw-pits and one straight line where his brush roughened the surface. Steam puffed in jets from his muzzle, and his empty belly made him angry with the world. At the edge of the woods he lifted his head, and the moonlight touched his green eyes. Then he recorded a protest against Providence in one eerie bark, and so vanished, before the weird sound had died.
Phoebe Lyddon and her lover, having given the others some vantage of ground, followed them to their destination—Mr. Lyddon’s famous orchard in Teign valley. The girl’s dreary task of late had been to tell herself that she would surely love John Grimbal presently—love him as such a good man deserved to be loved. Only under the silence and in the loneliness of long nights, only in the small hours of day,