“I can’t tell you. It may be, though, that he is erratic and uncertain in his ways. You cannot predict what he will do next.”
“That’s nothing against him. He’s farming on the Moor now, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Where did he come from when he dropped out of the clouds to marry Phoebe Lyddon?”
The question was not asked with the least idea of its enormous significance. Grimbal had no notion that any mystery hung over that autumn time during which he made love to Phoebe and Will was absent from Chagford. He doubted not that for the asking he could learn how Will had occupied himself; but the subject did not interest him, and he never dreamed the period held a secret. The sudden consternation bred in Hicks by this question astounded him not a little. Indeed, each man amazed the other, Grimbal by his question, Hicks by the attitude which he assumed before it.
“I’m sure I haven’t the least idea,” he answered; but his voice and manner had already told Grimbal all he cared to learn at the moment; and that was more than his wildest hopes had even risen to. He saw in the other’s face a hidden thing, and by his demeanour that it was an important one. Indeed, the bee-keeper’s hesitation and evident alarm before this chance question proclaimed the secret vital. For the present, and before Clement’s evident alarm, Grimbal dismissed the matter lightly; but he chose to say a few more words upon it, for the express purpose of setting Hicks again at his ease.
“You don’t like your future brother-in-law?”
“Yes, yes, I do. We’ve been friends all our lives—all our lives. I like him well, and am going to marry his sister—only I see his faults, and he sees mine—that’s all.”
“Take my advice and shut your eyes to his faults. That’s the best way if you are marrying into his family. I’ve got cause to think ill enough of the scamp, as you know and everybody knows; but life’s too short for remembering ill turns.”
A weight rolled off Clement’s heart. For a moment he had feared that the man knew something; but now he began to suspect Grimbal’s question to be what in reality it was—casual interrogation, without any shadow of knowledge behind it. Hicks therefore breathed again and trusted that his own emotion had not been very apparent. Then, taking the water, he shot a thin shower into the air, an operation often employed to hasten swarming, and possibly calculated to alarm the bees into apprehension of rain.