“Maybe ’t is so; but a gude faither to me.”
“An’ a gude friend to me, for that matter. He aint got nothing ’gainst me, anyway—no more ’s any man living.”
“Awnly the youth and fieriness of ’e.”
“Me fiery! I lay you wouldn’t find a cooler chap in Chagford.”
“You ’m a dinky bit comical-tempered now and again, dear heart.”
He flushed, and the corners of his jaw thickened.
“If a man was to say that, I’d knock his words down his throat.”
“I knaw you would, my awn Will; an’ that’s bein’ comical-tempered, ban’t it?”
“Then perhaps I’d best not to see your faither arter all, if you ’m that way o’ thinkin’,” he answered shortly.
Then Phoebe purred to him and rubbed her cheek against his chin, whereon the glint vanished from his eyes, and they were soft again.
“Mother’s the awnly livin’ sawl what understands me,” he said slowly.
“And I—I too, Will!” cried Phoebe. “Ess fay. I’ll call you a holy angel if you please, an’ God knaws theer ’s not an angel in heaven I’d have stead of ’e.”
“I ban’t no angel,” said Will gravely, “and never set up for no such thing; but I’ve thought a lot ’bout the world in general, and I’m purty wise for a home-stayin’ chap, come to think on it; and it’s borne in ’pon me of late days that the married state ’s a gude wan, and the sooner the better.”
“But a leap in the dark even for the wisest, Will?”
“So’s every other step us takes for that matter. Look at them grasshoppers. Off they goes to glory and doan’t knaw no more ’n the dead wheer they’ll fetch up. I’ve seed ’em by the river jump slap in the water, almost on to a trout’s back. So us hops along and caan’t say what’s comin’ next. We ’m built to see just beyond our awn nose-ends and no further. That’s philosophy.”
“Ban’t comfortin’ if ’t is,” said Phoebe.
“Whether or no, I’ll see your faither ’fore night and have a plain answer. I’m a straight, square man, so’s the miller.”
“You’ll speed poorly, I’m fearin’, but ’t is a honest thing; and I’ll tell faither you ’m all the world to me. He doan’t seem to knaw what it is for a gal to be nineteen year old somehow.”
Solemnly Will rose, almost overweighted with the consciousness of what lay before him.
“We’ll go home-along now. Doan’t ’e tell him I’m coming. I’ll take him unbeknawnst. And you keep out the way till I be gone again.”
“Does your mother knaw, Will?”
“Ess, she an’ Chris both knaw I be gwaine to have it out this night. Mother sez I be right, but that Miller will send me packing wi’ a flea in my ear; Chris sez I be wrong to ax yet awhile.”
“You can see why that is; ’she ’s got to wait herself,” said Phoebe, rather spitefully.
“Waitin’ ’s well enough when it caan’t be helped. But in my case, as a man of assured work and position in the plaace, I doan’t hold it needful no more.”
Together the young couple marched down over the meadows, gained the side of the river, and followed its windings to the west. Through a dip in the woods presently peeped the ancient stannary town of Chagford, from the summit of its own little eminence on the eastern confines of Dartmoor. Both Will and Phoebe dwelt within the parish, but some distance from the place itself. She lived at Monks Barton, a farm and mill beside the stream; he shared an adjacent cottage with his mother and sister. Only a bend of the river separated the dwellings of the lovers—where Rushford Bridge spanned the Teign and beech and fir rose above it.
In a great glory of clearness after rain, boy and girl moved along together under the trees. The fisherman’s path which they followed wound where wet granite shone and ivy glimmered beneath the forest; and the leaves still dripped briskly, making a patter of sound through the underwood, and marking a thousand circles and splashes in the smooth water beneath the banks of the stream. Against a purple-grey background of past rain the green of high summer shone bright and fresh, and each moss-clad rock and fern-fringed branch of the forest oaks sent forth its own incense of slender steam where the sunlight sparkled and sucked up the moisture. Scarce half a mile from Phoebe’s home a shining yellow twig bent and flashed against the green, and a broad back appeared through a screen of alder by the water’s edge.
“ ’T is a rod,” said Will. “Bide a moment, and I’ll take the number of his ticket. He ’m the first fisherman I’ve seen to-day.”
As under-keeper or water-bailiff to the Fishing Association, young Blanchard’s work consisted in endless perambulation of the river’s bank, in sharp outlook for poacher and trespasser, and in the survey of fishermen’s bridges, and other contrivances for anglers that occurred along the winding course of the waters. His also was the duty of noting the license numbers, and of surprising those immoral anglers who sought to kill fish illegally on distant reaches of the river. His keen eyes, great activity, and approved pluck well fitted Will for such duties. He often walked twenty miles a day, and fishermen said that he knew every big trout in the Teign from Fingle Bridge to the dark pools and rippling steps under Sittaford Tor, near the river’s twin birthplaces. He also knew where the great peel rested, on their annual migration from sea to moor; where the kingfisher’s nest of fish-bones lay hidden; where the otter had her home beneath the bank, and its inland vent-hole behind a silver birch.
Will bid the angler “good afternoon,” and made a few general remarks on sport and the present unfavourable condition of the water, shrunk to mere ribbons of silver by a long summer drought. The fisherman was a stranger to Will—a handsome, stalwart man, with a heavy amber moustache, hard blue eyes, and a skin tanned red by hotter suns than English Augusts know. His disposition, also, as it seemed, reflected years of a tropic or subtropic existence, for this trivial meeting and momentary intrusion upon his solitude resulted in an explosion as sudden as unreasonable and unexpected.
“Keep back, can’t you?” he exclaimed while the young keeper approached his side; “who ’s going to catch fish with your lanky shadow across the water?”
Will was up in arms instantly.
“Do ’e think I doan’t knaw my business? Theer ’s my shadder ’pon the bank a mile behind you; an’ I didn’t ope my mouth till you’d fished the stickle to the bottom and missed two rises.”
This criticism angered the elder man, and he freed his tailfly fiercely from the rush-head that held it.
“Mind your own affairs and get out of my sight, whoever you are. This river’s not what it used to be by a good deal. Over-fished and poached, and not looked after, I’ll swear.”
Thus, in ignorance, the sportsman uttered words of all most like to set Will Blanchard’s temper loose—a task sufficiently easy at the best of times.
“What the hell d’ you knaw ’bout the river?” he flamed out. “And as to ’my affairs,’ ’t is my affairs, an’ I be water-bailiff, an’ I’ll thank you for the number of your ticket—so now then!”
“What’s become of Morgan?” asked the other.
“He ’m fust, I be second; and ’t is my job to take the license numbers.”
“Pity you’re such an uncivil young cub, then.”
“Gimme your ticket directly minute!”
“I’m not going to.”
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