He hesitated, and his words when they came halted somewhat, but his meaning was evident.
“I’m glad you’m back to home. I’ll forget all what’s gone, if you will. ’Twas give an’ take, I s’pose. I took my awn anyway, an’ you comed near killing me for’t, so we’m upsides now, eh? We’m men o’ the world likewise. So—so shall us shake hands an’ let bygones be, Jan Grimbal?”
He half raised his hand, and looked up, with a smile at the corner of his lip ready to jump into life if the rider should accept his friendship. But Grimbal’s response was otherwise.
To say little goodness dwelt in this man had been untrue, but recent events and the first shattering reverse that life brought him proved sufficient to sour his very soul and eclipse a sun which aforetime shone with great geniality because unclouded. Fate hits such men particularly hard when her delayed blow falls. Existences long attuned to success and level fortune; lives which have passed through five-and-thirty years of their allotted span without much sorrow, without sharp thorns in the flesh, without those carking, gnawing trials of mind and body which Time stores up for all humanity—such feel disaster when it does reach them with a bitterness unknown by those who have been in misery’s school from youth. Poverty does not bite the poor as it bites him who has known riches and afterwards fights destitution; feeble physical circumstances do not crush the congenital invalid, but they often come near to break the heart of a man who, until their black advent, has known nothing but rude health; great reverses in the vital issues of life and fortune fail to obliterate one who knows their faces of old, but the first enemy’s cannon on Time’s road must ever bring ugly shock to him who has advanced far and happily without meeting any such thing.
Grimbal’s existence had been of a rough-and-ready sort shone over by success. Philosophy he lacked, for life had never turned his mind that way; religion was likewise absent from him; and his recent tremendous disappointment thus thundered upon a mind devoid of any machinery to resist it. The possession of Phoebe Lyddon had come to be an accepted and accomplished fact; he chose her for his own, to share the good things Fortune had showered into his lap—to share them and be a crowning glory of them. The overthrow of this scheme at the moment of realisation upset his estimate of life in general and set him adrift and rudderless, in the hurricane of his first great reverse. Of selfish temperament, and doubly so by the accident of consistent success, the wintry wind of this calamity slew and then swept John Grimbal’s common sense before it, like a dead leaf. All that was worst in him rose to the top upon his trouble, and since Will’s marriage the bad had been winning on the good and thrusting it deeper and deeper out of sight or immediate possibility of recovery. At all times John Grimbal’s inferior characteristics were most prominently displayed, and superficial students of character usually rated him lower than others really worse than himself, but who had wit to parade their best traits. Now, however, he rode and strode the country a mere scowling ruffian, with his uppermost emotions still stamped on his face. The calamity also bred an unsuspected sensitiveness in him, and he smarted often under the reflection of what others must be thinking. His capability towards vindictiveness proved very considerable. Formerly his anger against his fellow-men had been as a thunder-storm, tremendous but brief in duration; now, before this bolt of his own forging, a steady, malignant activity germinated and spread through the whole tissue of his mind.
Those distractions open to a man of Grimbal’s calibre presently blunted the edge of his loss, and successful developments of business also served to occupy him during the visit he paid to Africa; but no interests as yet had arisen to obscure or dull his hatred of Will Blanchard. The original blaze of rage sank to a steady, abiding fire, less obviously tremendous than that first conflagration, but in reality hotter. In a nature unsubtle, revenge will not flourish as a grand passion for any length of time. It must reach its outlet quickly and attain to its ambition without overmuch delay, else it shrivels and withers to a mere stubborn, perhaps lifelong, enmity—a dwarfish, mulish thing, devoid of any tragic splendour. But up to the point that John Grimbal had reached as yet, his character, though commonplace in most affairs, had unexpectedly quickened to a condition quite profound where his revenge was concerned.
He still cherished the certainty of a crushing retaliation. He was glad he had not done Blanchard any lifelong injury; he was glad the man yet lived for time and him to busy themselves about; he was even glad (and herein appeared the unsuspected subtlety) that Will had prospered and come by a little show of fortune. Half unconsciously he hoped for the boy something of his own experiences, and had determined with himself—in a spirit very melodramatic but perfectly sincere at present—to ruin his enemy if patience and determination could accomplish it.
In this mood, with his wrongs sharpened by return to Chagford and his purposes red-hot, John Grimbal now ran against his dearest foe, received the horsewhip from him, and listened to his offer of peace.
He still kept silence and Will lowered the half-lifted arm and spoke again.
“As you please. I can bide very easy without your gude word.”