FLIGHT
On the following morning Miller Lyddon arose late, looked from his
window and immediately observed the twain with whom his night thoughts
had been concerned. Will stood at the gate smoking; small Timothy, and
another lad, of slightly riper years, appeared close by. The children
were fighting tooth and nail upon the ownership of a frog, and this
reptile itself, fastened by the leg to a stick, listlessly watched the
progress of the battle. Will likewise surveyed the scene with genial
attention, and encouraged the particular little angry animal who had
most claim upon his interest. Timothy kicked and struck out pretty
straight, but fought in silence; the bigger boy screamed and howled and
scratched.
"Vang into un, man, an' knock his ugly head off!" said Will
encouragingly, and the babe to whom he spoke made renewed efforts as
both combatants tumbled into the road, the devil in their little bright
eyes, each puny muscle straining. Tim had his foe by the hair, and the
elder was trying to bite his enemy's leg, when Martin Grimbal and Chris
Blanchard approached from Rushford Bridge. They had met by chance, and
Chris was coming to the farm while the antiquary had business elsewhere.
Now a scuffle in a cloud of dust arrested them and the woman,
uninfluenced by considerations of sportsmanship, pounced upon Timothy,
dragged him from his operations, and, turning to Will, spoke as Martin
Grimbal had never heard her speak before.
"You, a grawed man, to stand theer an' see that gert wild beast of a
bwoy tear this li'l wan like a savage tiger! Look at his sclowed faace
all streaming wi' blood! 'S truth! I'd like to sarve you the same, an' I
would for two pins! I'm ashamed of 'e!"
"He hit wi' his fistes like a gude un," said Will, grinning; "an' he'm
made o' the right stuff, I'll swear. Couldn't have done better if he was
my awn son. I be gwaine to give un a braave toy bimebye. You see t'other
kid's faace come to-morrow!"
Martin Grimbal watched Chris fondle the gasping Timothy, clean his
wounds, calm his panting heart; then, as though a superhuman voice
whispered in his ear, her secret stood solved, and the truth of
Timothy's parentage confronted him in a lightning flash of the soul. He
looked at Chris as a man might gaze upon a spectre; he stared at her and
through her into her past; he pieced each part of the puzzle to its
kindred parts until all stood complete; he read "mother" in her voice,
in her caressing hands and gleaming eyes as surely as man reads morning
in the first light of dawn; and he marvelled that a thing so clear and
naked had been left to his discovery. The revelation shook him not a
little, for he was familiar with the rumours concerning Tim's paternity,
and had been disposed to believe them; but from the moment of the new
thought's inception it gripped him, for he felt that the thing was true.
As lamps, so ordered that the light of each may fall on the fringe of
darkness where its fellow fades, and thus complete a chain of
illumination, so the present discovery, duly considered, was but one
point of truth revealing others. It made clear much that had not been
easy to understand, and the tremendous fact rose in his mind as a link
in such a perfect sequence of evidence that doubt actually vanished
before he had lost sight of Chris and passed dumfounded upon his way.
Her lover's sudden death, her own disappearance, the child's advent at
Newtake, and the woman's subsequent return--these main incidents
connected a thousand others and explained what little mystery still
obscured the position. He pursued his road and marvelled as he went how
a tragedy so thinly veiled had thus escaped every eye. Within the story
that Chris had told, this other story might be intercalated without
convicting her of any spoken falsehood. Now he guessed at the reason why
Timothy's mother had refused to marry him on his last proposal; then,
thinking of the child, he knew Tim's father.
So he stood before the truth; and it filled his heart with some agony
and some light. Examining his love in this revelation, he discovered
strange things; and first, that it was love only that had opened his
eyes and enabled him to solve the secret at all. Nobody had made the
discovery but himself, and he, of all men the least likely to come at
any concern others desired to hide from him, had fathomed this great
fact, had won it from the heart of unconscious Chris. His love widened
and deepened into profound pity as he thought of all that her secret and
the preservation of it must have meant; and tears dimmed his eyes as he
pictured her life since her lover's passing.
To him the discovery hurt Chris so little that for a time he underrated
the effect of it upon other people. His affection rose clean above the
unhappy fact, and it was some time before he began to appreciate the
spectacle of Chris under the world's eye with the truth no longer
hidden. Then a sense of his own helplessness overmastered him; he walked
slowly, drew up at a gate and stood motionless, leaning over it. So
silent did he stand, and so long, that a stoat hopped across the road
within two yards of him.
He realised to the full that he was absolutely powerless. Chris alone
must disperse the rumours fastening on her brother if they were to be
dispersed. He knew that she would not suffer any great cloud of unjust
censure to rest upon Will, and he saw what a bitter problem must be
overwhelming her. Nobody could help her and he, who knew, was as
powerless as the rest. Then he asked himself if that last conviction was
true. He probed the secret places of his mind to find an idea; he prayed
for some chance spark or flash of genius to aid him before this trial;
he mourned his own simple brains, so weak to aid him in this vital pass.
But of all living men the accidental discovery was most safe with him.
His heart went out to the secret mother, and he told himself that he
would guard her mystery like gold.
It was strange in a nature so timorous that not once did a suspicion he
had erred overtake him, and presently he wondered to observe how ancient
this discovery of the motherhood of Chris had grown within his mind. It
appeared as venerable as his own love for her. He yearned for power to
aid; without conscious direction of his course he proceeded and strode
along for hours. Then he ate a meal of bread and cheese at an inn and
tramped forward once more upon a winding road towards the village of
Zeal.
Through his uncertainty, athwart the deep perplexity of his mind, moved
hope and a shadowed joy. Within him arose again the vision of happiness
once pictured and prayed for, once revived, never quite banished to the
grey limbo of ambitions beyond fulfilment. Now realities saddened the
thought of it and brought ambition within a new environment less
splendid than the old. But, despite clouds, hope shone fairly forth at
last. So a planet, that the eye has followed at twilight and then lost a
while, beams anew at dawn after lapse of days, and wheels in wide mazes
upon some new background of the unchanging stars.
Elsewhere Mr. Lyddon braced himself to a painful duty, and had private
speech with his son-in-law. Like a thunderbolt the circling suspicions
fell on Will, and for a moment smothered his customary characteristics
under sheer surprise.
The miller spoke nervously, and walked up and down with his eyes
averted.
"Ban't no gert matter, I hope, an' I won't keep 'e from your work five
minutes. You've awnly got to say 'No,' an' theer's an end of it so far
as I'm concerned. 'Tis this: have 'e noticed heads close together now
an' again when you passed by of late?"
"Not me. Tu much business on my hands, I assure 'e. Coourse theer's
envious whisperings; allus is when a man gets a high place, same as what
I have, thanks to his awn gude sense an' the wisdom of others as knaws
what he's made of. But you trusted me wi' all your heart, an' you'll
never live to mourn it."
"I never want to. You'm grawing to be much to me by slow stages. Yet
these here tales. This child Timothy. Who's his faither, Will, an' who's
his mother?"
"How the flaming hell should I knaw? I found him same as you finds a
berry on a briar. That's auld history, surely?"
"The child graws so 'mazing like you, that even dim eyes such as mine
can see it."
A sudden flash of light came into Blanchard's face. Then the fire died
as quickly as it had been kindled, and he grew calm.
"God A'mighty!" he said, in a voice hushed and awed. "They think that! I
lay that's why your darter's cried o' nights, then, an' Chris have
grawed sad an' wisht in her ways, an' mother have pet the bwoy wan
moment an' been short wi' un the next."
He remained marvellously quiet under this attack, but amazement chiefly
marked his attitude. Miller Lyddon, encouraged by this unexpected
reasonableness, spoke again more sternly.
"The thing looks bad to a wife an' mother, an' 'tis my duty to ax 'e for
a plain, straightforward answer 'pon it. Human nature's got a ugly trick
of repeatin' itself in this matter, as we all knaws. But I'll say nought
an' think nought till you answers me. Be the bwoy yourn or not? Tell me
true, with your hand on this."
He took his Bible from the mantelpiece, while Will, apparently cowed by
the gravity of the situation, placed both palms upon it, then fixed his
eyes solemnly upon Mr. Lyddon.
"As God in heaven's my judge, he ban't no cheel of mine, and I knaw
nothing about him--no, nor yet his faither nor mother nor plaace of
birth. I found un wheer I said, and if I've lied by a fraction, may God
choke me as I stand here afore you."
"An' I believe you to the bottom!" declared his father-in-law. "I
believe you as I hopes to be believed myself, when I stands afore the
Open Books an' says I've tried to do my duty. You've got me on your
side, an' that's to say you'll have Phoebe an' your mother, tu, for
certain."
Then Blanchard's mood changed, and there came a tremendous rebound from
the tension of the last few minutes. In the anti-climax following upon
his oath, passion, chained a while by astonishment, broke loose in a
whirlwind.
"Let 'em believe or disbelieve, who cares?" he thundered out. "Not
me--not a curse for you or anybody, my awn blood or not my awn blood. To
harbour lies against me! But women loves to believe bad most times."
"Who said they believed it, Will? Doan't go mad, now 'tis awver and
done."
"They _did_ believe it; I knaw, I seed it in theer faaces, come to think
of it. 'Tis the auld song. I caan't do no right. Course I've got childer
an' ruined maids in every parish of the Moor! God damn theer lying,
poisonous tongues, the lot of 'em! I'm sick of this rotten, lie-breeding
hole, an' of purty near every sawl in it but mother. She never would
think against me. An' me, so true to Phoebe as the honey-bee to his awn
butt! I'll go--I'll get out of it--so help me, I will--to a clean land,
'mongst clean-thinking folk, wheer men deal fair and judge a chap by his
works. For a thought I'd wring the neck of the blasted child, by God I
would!"
"He've done no wrong."
"Nor me neither. I had no more hand in his getting than he had himself.
Poor li'l brat; I'm sorry I spoke harsh of him. He was give me--he was
give me--an' I wish to God he _was_ mine. Anyways he shaa'n't come to no
harm. I'll fight the lot of 'e for un, till he 's auld enough to fight
for hisself."
Then Will burst out of Monks Barton and vanished. He passed far from the
confines of the farm, roamed on to the high Moor, and nothing further
was seen of him until the following day.
Those most concerned assembled after his departure and heard the result
of the interview.
"Solemn as a minister he swore," explained Mr. Lyddon; "an' then, a'most
before his hands was off the Book, he burst out like a screeching,
ravin' hurricane. I half felt the oath was vain then, an' 't was his
real nature bubblin' up like."
They discussed the matter, all save Chris, who sat apart, silent and
abstracted. Presently she rose and left them, and faced her own trouble
single-handed, as she had similarly confronted greater sorrows in the
past.
She was fully determined to conceal her cherished secret still; yet not
for the superficial reason that had occurred to any mind. Vast mental
alterations had transformed Chris Blanchard since the death of Clement.
Her family she scarcely considered now; no power of logic would have
convinced her that she had wronged them or darkened their fame. In the
past, indeed, not the least motive of her flight had centred in the fear
of Will; but now she feared nobody, and her own misfortune held no
shadow of sin or shame for her, looking back upon it. Those who would
have denied themselves her society or friendship upon this knowledge it
would have given her no pang to lose. She could feel fiercely still, as
she looked back to the birth of her son and traced the long course of
her sufferings; and she yet experienced occasional thrills of
satisfaction in her weaker moments, when she lowered the mask and
reflected, not without pride, on the strength and determination that had
enabled her to keep her secret. But to reveal the truth now was a
prospect altogether hateful in the eyes of Chris, and she knew the
reason. More than once had she been upon the brink of disclosure, since
recent unhappy suspicions had darkened Phoebe's life; but she had
postponed the necessary step again and again, at one thought. Her
fortitude, her apathy, her stoic indifference, broke down and left her
all woman before one necessity of confession; her heart stood still when
she remembered that Martin Grimbal must know and judge. His verdict she
did, indeed, dread with all her soul, and his only; for him she had
grown to love, and the thought of his respect and regard was precious to
her. Everybody must know, everybody or nobody. For long she could
conceive of no action clearing Will in the eyes of the wider circle who
would not be content to take his word, and yet leaving herself
uninvolved. Then the solution came. She would depart once more with the
child. Such a flight was implicit confession, and could not be
misunderstood. Martin must, indeed, know, but she would never see him
after he knew. To face him after the truth had reached his ear seemed to
Chris a circumstance too terrible to dwell upon. Her action, of course,
would proclaim the parentage of Timothy, and free Will from further
slanderings; while for herself, through tears she saw the kind faces of
the gypsy people and her life henceforth devoted to her little one.
To accentuate the significance of the act she determined to carry out
her intention that same day, and during the afternoon opportunity
offered. Her son, playing alone in the farmyard, came readily enough for
a walk, and before three o'clock they had set out. The boy's face was
badly scratched from his morning battle, but pain had ceased, and his
injuries only served as an object of great interest to Timothy. Where
water in ditch or puddle made a looking-glass he would stop to survey
himself.
A spectator, aware of certain facts, had viewed the progress of Chris
with some slight interest. Three ways were open to her, three main
thoroughfares leading out of Chagford to places of parallel or greater
importance. Upon the Moor road Will wandered in deep perturbation; on
that to Okehampton walked another man, concerned with the same problem
from a different aspect; the third highway led to Moreton; and thither
Chris might have proceeded unchallenged. But a little public vehicle
would be returning just then from the railway station. That the runaway
knew, and therefore selected another path.
In her pocket was all the money that she had; in her heart was a sort of
alloyed sorrow. Two thoughts shared her mind after she had decided upon
a course of action. She wondered how quickly Tim would learn to call her
"mother," for that was the only sweet word life still held; yet of the
child's father she did not think, for her mind, without special act of
volition, turned and turned again to him upon whom the Indian summer of
her love had descended.