Children of the Mist Part 42

At the next round sh.e.l.ls burst a little too short of the earthworks, and again a slight modification in the range was made. Now missiles began to descend in and around the distant redoubt, and each as it exploded dealt out shattering destruction to the dummy men which represented an enemy.

One projectile smashed against the side of Oke Tor, and sent back the ringing sound of its tremendous impact.

Subsequent practice, now that the range was found, produced results above the average in accuracy, and Major Tremayne's good-humour increased.

"Five running plump into the redoubt! That's what we can do when we try," he said to Grimbal, while the amateur awarded his meed of praise and admiration.

Anon the business was at an end; the battery limbered up; the guns, each drawn by six stout horses, disappeared with many a jolt over the uneven ground, as the soldiers clinked and clashed away to their camp on the high land above Okehamptou.

Under the raw smell of burnt powder Major Tremayne took leave of Grimbal and the rest; each man went his way; and John, pursuing a bridle-path through the marshes of the Taw, proceeded slowly to his appointment.

An unexpected spring r.e.t.a.r.ded Grimbal's progress and made a considerable detour necessary. At length, however, he approached Oke Tor, marked the tremendous havoc of the firing, and noted a great grey splash upon the granite, where one sh.e.l.l had abraded its weathered face.

John Grimbal dismounted, tied up his horse, then climbed to the top of the Tor, and searched for an approaching pedestrian. n.o.body was visible save one man only; amounted soldier riding round to strike the red warning flags posted widely about the ranges. Grimbal descended and approached the southern side, there to sit on the fine intermingled turf and moss and smoke a cigar until his man should arrive. But rounding the point of the low cliff, he found that Hicks was already there.

Clement, his hat off, reclined upon his back with his face lifted to the sky. Where his head rested, the wild thyme grew, and one great, black b.u.mble-bee boomed at a deaf ear as it clumsily struggled in the purple blossoms. He lay almost naturally, but some distortion of his neck and a film upon his open eyes proclaimed that the man neither woke nor slept.

His lonely death was on this wise. Standing at the edge of the highest point of Oke Tor, with his back to the distant guns, he had crowned the artillerymen's target, himself invisible. At that moment firing began, and the first sh.e.l.l, suddenly shrieking scarcely twenty yards above his head, had caused Hicks to start and turn abruptly. With this action he lost his balance; then a projection of the granite struck his back as he fell and brought him heavily to the earth upon his head.

Now the sun, creeping westerly, already threw a ruddiness over the Moor, and this warm light touching the dead man's cheek brought thither a hue never visible in life, and imparted to the features a placidity very startling by contrast with the circ.u.mstances of his sudden and violent end.

CHAPTER XVI

BEFORE THE DAWN

It proclaims the att.i.tude of John Grimbal to his enemy that thus suddenly confronted with the corpse of a man whom he believed in life, his first emotion should have betokened bitter disappointment and even anger. Will Blanchard's secret, great or small, was safe enough for the present; and the hand stretched eagerly for revenge clutched air.

Convincing himself that Hicks was dead, Grimbal galloped off towards Belstone village, the nearest centre of civilisation. There he reported the facts, directed police and labourers where to find the body and where to carry it, and subsequently rode swiftly back to Chagford.

Arrived at the market-place, he acquainted Abraham Chown, the representative of the Devon constabulary, with his news, and finally writing a brief statement at the police station before leaving it, Grimbal returned home.

Not until after dark was the impatient mother made aware of her son's end, and she had scarcely received the intelligence before he came home to her--with no triumphant news of the Red House Farm, but dead, on a sheep-hurdle. Like summer lightning Clement's fate leapt through the length and breadth of Chagford. It penetrated to the vicarage; it reached outlying farms; it arrived at Monks Barton, was whispered near Mrs. Blanchard's cottage by the Teign, and, in the early morning of the following day, reached Newtake.

Then Will, galloping to the village while dawn was yet grey, met Doctor Parsons, and heard the truth of these uncertain rumours which had reached him.

"It seems clear enough when Grimbal's statement comes to be read,"

explained the medical man. "He had arranged a meeting with poor Hicks on Oke Tor, and, when he went to keep his appointment, found the unfortunate man lying under the rocks quite dead. The spot, I must tell you, was near a target of the soldiers at Okehampton, and John Grimbal first suspected that Hicks, heedless of the red warning flags, had wandered into the line of fire and been actually slain by a projectile.

But nothing of that sort happened. I have seen him. The unfortunate man evidently slipped and fell from some considerable height upon his head.

His neck is dislocated and the base of the skull badly fractured."

"Have you seen my poor sister?"

"I was called last night while at Mrs. Hicks's cottage, and went almost at once. It's very terrible--very. She'll get brain fever if we're not careful. Such a shock! She was walking alone, down in the croft by the river--all in a tremendously heavy dew too. She was dry-eyed and raved, poor girl. I may say she was insane at that sad moment. 'Weep for yourself!' she said to me. 'Let this place weep for itself, for there's a great man has died. He was here and lived here and n.o.body knew--n.o.body but his mother and I knew what he was. He had to beg his bread almost, and G.o.d let him; but the sin of it is on those around him--you and the rest.' So she spoke, poor child. These are not exactly her words, but something like them. I got her indoors to her mother and sent her a draught. I've just come from confining Mrs. Woods, and I'll walk down and see your sister now before I go home if you like. I hope she may be sleeping."

Will readily agreed to this suggestion; and together the two men proceeded to the valley.

But many things had happened since the night. When Doctor Parsons left Mrs. Blanchard, she had prevailed upon Chris to go to bed, and then herself departed to the village and sat with Mrs. Hicks for an hour.

Returning, she found her daughter apparently asleep, and, rather than wake her, left the doctor's draught unopened; yet Chris had only simulated slumber, and as soon as her mother retreated to her own bed, she rose, dressed, crept from the house, and hastened through the night to where her lover lay.

The first awful stroke had fallen, but the elasticity of the human mind which at first throws off and off such terrible shocks, and only after the length of many hours finally accepts them as fact, saved Chris Blanchard from going mad. Happily she could not thus soon realise the truth. It recurred, like the blows of a sledge, upon her brain, but between these cruel reminders of the catastrophe, the knowledge of Clement's death escaped her memory entirely, and more than once, while roaming the dew alone, she asked herself suddenly what she was doing and why she was there. Then the mournful answer knelled to her heart, and the recurrent spasms of that first agony slowly, surely settled into one dead pain, as the truth was seared into her knowledge. A frenzied burst of anger succeeded, and under its influence she spoke to Doctor Parsons, who approached her beside the river and with tact and patience at length prevailed upon her to enter her home. She cursed the land that had borne him, the hamlet wherein he had dwelt; and her mother, not amazed at her fierce grief, found each convulsive ebullition of sorrow natural to the dark hour, and soothed her as best she could. Then the elder woman departed a while, not knowing the truth and feeling such a course embraced the deeper wisdom.

Left alone, her future rose before Chris, as she sat upon her bed and saw the time to come glimmer out of the night in colours more ashy than the moonbeams on the cotton blind. Yet, as she looked her face burned, and one flame, vivid enough, flickered through all the future; the light on her own cheeks. Her position as it faced her from various points of view acted upon her physical being--suffocated her and brought a scream to her lips. There was n.o.body to hear it, n.o.body to see the girl tear her hair, rise from her couch, fall quivering, face downward, on the little strip of carpet beside her bed. Who could know even a little of what this meant to her? Women had often lost the men they loved, but never, never like this. So she a.s.sured herself. Past sorrows and fears dwindled to mere shadows now; for the awful future--the crushing months to come, rose grim and horrible on the horizon of Time, laden with greater terrors than she could face and live.

Alone, Chris told herself she might have withstood the oncoming tribulation--struggled through the storms of suffering and kept her broken heart company as other women had done before and must again; but she would not be alone. A little hand was stretching out of the loneliness she yearned for; a little voice was crying out of the solitude she craved. The shadows that might have sheltered her were full of hard eyes; the secret places would only echo a world's cruel laughter now--that world which had let her loved one die uncared for, that world so pitiless to such as she. Her thoughts were alternately defiant and fearful; then, before the picture of her mother and Will, her emotions dwindled from the tragic and became of a sort that weeping could relieve. Tears, now mercifully released from their fountains, softened her bruised soul for a time and moderated the physical strain of her agony. She lay long, half-naked, sobbing her heart out. Then came the mad desire to be back with Clement at any cost, and profound pity for him overwhelmed her mind to the exclusion of further sorrow for herself.

She forgot herself wholly in grief that he was gone. She would never hear him speak or laugh again; never again kiss the trouble from his eyes; never feel the warm breath of him, the hand-grip of him. He was dead; and she saw him lying straight and cold in a padded coffin, with his hands crossed and cerecloth stiffly tying up his jaws. He would sink into the silence that dwelt under the roots of the green gra.s.s; while she must go on and fight the world, and in fighting it, bring down upon his grave bitter words and sharp censures from the lips of those who did not understand.

Before which reflection Death came closer and looked kind; and the thought of his hand was cool and comforting, as the hand of a grey moor mist sweeping over the heath after fiery days of cloudless sun. Death stood very near and beckoned at the dark portals of her thought. Behind him there shone a great light, and in the light stood Clem; but the Shadow filled all the foreground. To go to her loved one, to die quickly and take their mutual secret with her, seemed a right and a precious thought just then; to go, to die, while yet he lay above the earth, was a determination that had even a little power to solace her agony. She thought of meeting him standing alone, strange, friendless on the other side of the grave; she told herself that actual duty, if not the vast love she bore him, pointed along the unknown road he had so recently followed. It was but justice to him. Then she could laugh at Time and Fate and the juggling unseen Controller who had played with him and her, had wrecked their little lives, forced their little pa.s.sions under a sham security, then snapped the thread on which she hung for everything, killed the better part of herself, and left her all alone without a hand to shield or a heart to pity. In the darkness, as the moon stole away and her chamber window blackened, she sounded all sorrow's wide and solemn diapason; and the living sank into shadows before her mind's accentuated and vivid picture of the dead. Future life loomed along one desolate pathway that led to pain and shame and griefs as yet untasted.

The rocks beside the way hid shadowy shapes of the unfriendly; for no mother's kindly hand would support her, no brother's stout arm would be lifted for her when they knew. No pure, n.o.ble, fellow-creature might be asked for aid, not one might be expected to succour and cherish in the great strait sweeping towards her. Some indeed there were to look to for the moment, but their voices and their eyes would harden presently, when they knew.

She told herself they must never know; and the solution to the problem of how to keep her secret appeared upon the threshold of the unknown road her lover had already travelled. Now, at the echo of the lowest notes, while she lay with uneven pulses and shaking limbs, it seemed that she was faced with the parting of the ways and must make instant choice. Time would not wait for her and cared nothing whether she chose life or death for her road. She struggled with red thoughts, and fever burnt her lips and stabbed her forehead. Clement was gone. In this supreme hour no fellow-creature could fortify her courage or direct her tottering judgment. Once she thought of prayer and turned from it shuddering with a pa.s.sionate determination to pray no more. Then the vision of Death shadowed her and she felt his brief sting would be nothing beside the endless torment of living. Dangerous thoughts developed quickly in her and grew to giants. Something clamoured to her and cried that delay, even of hours, was impossible and must be fatal to secrecy. A feverish yearning to get it over, and that quickly, mastered her, and she began huddling on some clothes.

Then it was that the sudden sound of the cottage door being shut and bolted reached her ear. Mrs. Blanchard had returned and knowing that she would approach in a moment, Chris flung herself on the bed and pretended to be sleeping soundly. It was not until her mother withdrew and herself slumbered half an hour later that the distracted woman arose, dressed herself, and silently left the house as we have said.

She heard the river calling to her, and through its murmur sounded the voice of her loved one from afar. The moon shone clear and the valley was full of vapoury gauze. A wild longing to see him once more in the flesh before she followed him in the spirit gained upon Chris, and she moved slowly up the hill to the village. Then, as she went, born of the mists upon the meadows, and the great light and the moony gossamers diamonded with dew, there rose his dear shape and moved with her along the way. But his face was hidden, and he vanished at the first outposts of the hamlet as she pa.s.sed into Chagford alone. The cottage shadows fell velvety black in a shining silence; their thatches were streaked, their slates meshed with silver; their whitewashed walls looked strangely awake and alert and surrounded the woman with a sort of blind, hushed stare. One solitary patch of light peered like a weary eye from that side of the street which lay in shadow, and Chris, pa.s.sing through the unbolted cottage door, walked up the narrow pa.s.sage within and softly entered.

Condolence and tears and buzz of sorrowful friends had pa.s.sed away with the stroke of midnight. Now Mrs. Hicks sat alone with her dead and gazed upon his calm features and vaguely wondered how, after a life of such disappointment and failure and bitter discontent, he could look so peaceful. She knew every line that thought and trouble had ruled upon his face; she remembered their coming; and now, between her fits of grief, she scanned him close and saw that Death had wiped away the furrows here and there, and smoothed his forehead and rolled back the years from off him until his face reminded her of the strange, wayward child who was wont to live a life apart from his fellows, like some wild wood creature, and who had pa.s.sed almost friendless through his boyhood.

Fully he had filled her widowed life, and been at least a loving child, a good son. On him her withered hopes had depended, and, even in their darkest hours, he had laughed at her dread of the workhouse, and a.s.sured her that while head and hands remained to him she need not fear, but should enjoy the independence of a home. Now this sole prop and stay was gone--gone, just as the black cloud had broken and Fate relented.

The old woman sat beside him stricken, shrivelled, almost reptilian in her red-eyed, motionless misery. Only her eyes moved in her wrinkled, brown face, and reflected the candle standing on the mantelpiece above his head. She sat with her hands crooked over one another in her lap, like some image wrought of ebony and dark oak. Once a large house-spider suddenly and silently appeared upon the sheet that covered the breast of the dead. It flashed along for a foot or two, then sat motionless; and she, whose inclination was to loathe such things unutterably, put forth her hand and caught it without a tremor and crushed it while its hairy legs wriggled between her fingers.

To the robbed mother came Chris, silent as a ghost. Only the old woman's eyes moved as the girl entered, fell down by the bier, and buried her face in the pillow that supported her lover's head. Thus, in profound silence, both remained awhile, until Chris lifted herself and looked in the dead face and almost started to see the strange content stamped on it.

Then Mrs. Hicks began to speak in a high-pitched voice which broke now and again as her bosom heaved after past tears.

"The awnly son of his mother, an' she a widow wummon; an' theer 's no Christ now to work for the love of the poor. I be shattered wi' many groans an' tears, Chris Blanchard, same as you be. You knawed him--awnly you an' me; but you 'm young yet, an' memory's so weak in young brains that you'll outlive it all an' forget."

"Never, never, mother! Theer 's no more life for me--not here. He's callin' to me--callin' an' callin' from yonder."

"You'll outlive an' forget," repeated the other. "I cannot, bein' as I am. An', mind this, when you pray to Heaven, ax for gold an' diamonds, ax for houses an' lands, ax for the fat of the airth; an' ax loud. No harm in axin'. Awnly doan't pitch your prayers tu dirt low, for ban't the hardness of a thing stops G.o.d. You 'm as likely or onlikely to get a big answer as a little. See the blessin' flowin' in streams for some folks! They do live braave an' happy, with gude health, an' gude wives, an' money, an' the fruits of the land; they do get butivul childer, as graws up like the corners of the temple; an' when they come to die, they shut their eyes 'pon kind faaces an' lie in lead an' oak under polished marble. All that be theers; an' what was his--my son's?"

"G.o.d forgot him," sobbed Chris, "an' the world forgot him--all but you an' me."

The old woman shifted her hands wearily.

"Theer's a mort for G.o.d to bear in mind, but 't is hard, here an' there, wheer He slips awver some lowly party an' misses a humble whisper.

Clamour if you want to be heard; doan't go with bated breath same as I done. 'T was awnly a li'l thing I axed, an' axed it twice a day on my knees, ever since my man died twenty-three year agone. An' often as not thrice Sundays, so you may count up the number of times I axed if you mind to. Awnly a li'l rubbishy thing you might have thought: just to bring his fair share o' prosperity to Clem an' keep my bones out the poorhouse at the end. But my bwoy 's brawk his neck by a cruel death, an' I must wear the blue cotton."

"No, no, mother."

"Ess. Not that it looks so hard as it did. This makes it easy--" and she put her hand on her son's forehead and left it there a moment.

Presently she continued:

"I axed Clem to turn the bee-b.u.t.ts at my sister's pa.s.sing--Mrs.

Lezzard. But he wouldn't; an' now they'll be turned for him. Wise though the man was, he set no store on the dark, hidden meaning of honey-bees at times of death. Now the creatures be masterless, same as you an' me; an' they'll knaw it; an' you'll see many an' many a-murmuring on his graave 'fore the gra.s.s graws green theer; for they see more 'n what we can."