“It’s all very well to build theories on board ship about bettering myself socially and all that, but it’s rot; I’ll be knocked over by one of the country witches, I know I shall—I feel it. I love the sound of the Devon on their lips, and the clear eyes of them, and the bright skin. ’Tis all I can do to keep from hugging the women, and that’s a fact. But you, you cold-blooded beggar, your heart’s still for the grey granite and the old ghostly stones, and creepy, lonely places on the Moor! We’re that different, you and me.”
Martin nodded thoughtfully, and, the meal being now ended, both men strolled out of doors, then wandered down to smoke a pipe on Rushford Bridge and listen to the nightly murmur of the river. Darkness moved on the face of land and water; twilight had sucked all the colour away from the valley; and through the deepening monochrome of the murk there passed white mists with shadowy hands, and peeped blind pale eyes along the winding water, where its surface reflected the faded west. Nocturnal magic conjured the least meadow into an unmeasured sea of vapour; awoke naiads in the waters and dryads in the woods; transformed the solemn organ music of great beetles into songs of a roaming spirit; set unseen shapes stirring in the starlight; whispered of invisible, enchanted things, happy and unhappy, behind the silence.
A man moved from the bridge as the brothers reached it. Then Will Blanchard, knocking out his pipe and taking a big inspiration, set his face steadily toward Monks Barton and that vital interview with Miller Lyddon now standing in the pathway of his life.
He rapped at the farm door and a step came slowly down the stone-paved passage. Then Billy Blee, the miller’s right-hand man, opened to him. Bent he was from the small of the back, with a highly coloured, much wrinkled visage, and ginger hair, bleached by time to a paler shade. His poll was bald and shining, and thick yellow whiskers met beneath a clean-shorn chin. Billy’s shaggy eyebrows, little bright eyes, and long upper lip, taken with the tawny fringe under his chops, gave him the look of an ancient and gigantic lion-monkey; and indeed there was not lacking in him an ape-like twist, as shall appear.
“Hullo! boy Blanchard! An’ what might you want?” he asked.
“To see Miller.”
“Come in then; we’m all alone in kitchen, him and me, awver our grog and game. What’s the matter now?”
“A private word for Miller’s ear,” said Will cautiously.
“Come you in then. Us’ll do what we may for ’e. Auld heads be the best stepping-stones young folks can have, understood right; awnly the likes of you mostly chooses to splash through life on your awn damn silly roads.”
Mr. Blee, whose friendship and familiarity with his master was of the closest, led on, and Will soon stood before Mr. Lyddon.
The man who owned Monks Barton, and who there prosperously combined the callings of farmer and miller, had long enjoyed the esteem of the neighbourhood in which he dwelt, as had his ancestors before him, through many generations. He had won reputation for a sort of silent wisdom. He never advised any man ill, never hesitated to do a kindly action, and himself contrived to prosper year in, year out, no matter what period of depression might be passing over Chagford. Vincent Lyddon was a widower of sixty-five—a grey, thin, tall man, slow of speech and sleepy of eye. A weak mouth, and a high, round forehead, far smoother than his age had promised, were distinguishing physical features of him. His wife had been dead eighteen years, and of his two children one only survived. The elder, a boy toddling in early childhood at the water’s edge, was unmissed until too late, and found drowned next day after a terrible night of agony for both parents. Indeed, Mrs. Lyddon never recovered from the shock, and Phoebe was but a year old when her mother died. Further, it need only be mentioned that the miller had heard of Will’s courting more than once, but absolutely refused to allow the matter serious consideration. The romance was no more than philandering of children in his eyes.
“Will—eh? Well, my son, and how can I serve you?” asked the master of Monks Barton, kindly enough. He recrossed his legs, settled in his leather chair, and continued the smoking of a long clay pipe.
“Just this, Mr. Lyddon,” began Will abruptly. “You calls me your ‘son’ as a manner o’ speech, but I wants to be no less in fact.”
“You ban’t here on that fool’s errand, bwoy, surely? I thought I’d made my mind clear enough to Phoebe six months ago.”
“Look you here now. I be earnin’ eighteen shillings a week an’ a bit awver; an’ I be sure of Morgan’s berth as head-keeper presently; an’ I’m a man as thinks.”
“That’s brave talk, but what have ’e saved, lad?” inquired Mr. Blee.
The lover looked round at him sharply.
“I thought you was out the room,” he said. “I be come to talk to Miller, not you.”
“Nay, nay, Billy can stay and see I’m not tu hard ’pon ’e,” declared Mr. Lyddon. “He axed a proper question. What’s put by to goody in the savings’ bank, Will?”
“Well—five pounds; and ’t will be rose to ten by Christmas, I assure ’e.”
“Fi’ puns! an’ how far ’s that gwaine?”
“So far as us can make it, in coourse.”
“Doan’t you see, sonny, this ban’t a fair bargain? I’m not a hard man—”
“By gor! not hard enough by a powerful deal,” said Billy.
“Not hard on youth; but this match, so to call it, looks like mere moonshine. Theer ’s nought to it I can see—both childer, and neither with as much sense as might sink a floatin’ straw.”
“We love each other wi’ all our hearts and have done more ’n half a year. Ban’t that nothing?”
“I married when I was forty-two,” remarked the miller, reflectively, looking down at his fox-head slippers, the work of Phoebe’s fingers.
“An’ a purty marryin’ time tu!” declared Mr. Blee. “Look at me,” he continued, “parlous near seventy, and a bacherlor-man yet.”
“Not but Widow Comstock will have ’e if you ax her a bit oftener. Us all knows that,” said the young lover, with great stratagem.
Billy chuckled, and rubbed his wrinkles.
“Time enough, time enough,” he answered, “but you—scarce out o’ clouts—why, ’t is playin’ at a holy thing, that’s what ’t is—same as Miss Phoebe, when she was a li’l wee cheel, played at bein’ parson in her night-gownd, and got welted for it, tu, by her gude faither.”
“We ’m both in earnest anyway—me and Phoebe.”
“So am I,” replied the miller, sitting up and putting down his pipe; “so am I in earnest, and wan word ’s gude as a hunderd in a pass like this. You must hear the truth, an’ that never broke no bones. You ’m no more fitted to have a wife than that tobacco-jar—a hot-headed, wild-fire of a bwoy—”
“A right Jack-o’-Lantern, as everybody knaws,” suggested Mr. Blee.
“Ess fay, ’tis truth. Shifting and oncertain as the marsh gallopers on the moor bogs of a summer night. Awnly a youth’s faults, you mind; but still faults. No, no, my lad, you’ve got to fight your life’s battle and win it, ’fore you’m a mate for any gal; an’ you’ve got to begin by fightin’ yourself, an’ breaking an’ taming yourself, an’ getting yourself well in hand. That’s a matter of more than months for the best of us.”
“And then?” said Will, “after ’tis done? though I’m not allowin’ I’m anything but a ripe man as I stand here afore you now.”
“Then I’d say, ‘I’m glad to see you grawed into a credit to us all, Will Blanchard, and worth your place in the order o’ things; but you doan’t marry Phoebe