The conversation with Mr. Blee was of short duration, and ended by Billy calling down a comprehensive curse on the faithless one and returning to Monks Barton. He had attached little importance to Lezzard’s public protest, upon subsequent consideration and after the first shock of hearing it; but there was no possibility of doubting what he now learned from Mrs. Coomstock’s own lips. That she had in reality changed her mind appeared only too certain.
So he went home again in the last extremity of fury, and Phoebe, who was alone at the time, found herself swept by the hurricane of his wrath. He entered snorting and puffing, flung his hat on the settle, his stick into the corner; then, dropping into a seat by the fire, he began taking off his gaiters with much snuffling and mumbling and repeated inarticulate explosions of breath. This cat-like splutter always indicated deep feeling in Mr. Blee, and Phoebe asked with concern what was the matter now.
“Matter? Tchut—Tchut—Theer ban’t no God—that’s what’s the matter!”
“Billy! How can you?”
“She’m gwaine to marry t’other, arter all! From her awn lips I’ve heard it! That’s what I get for being a church member from the womb! That’s my reward! God, indeed! Be them the ways o’ a plain-dealin’ God, who knaws what’s doin’ in human hearts? No fay! Bunkum an’ rot! I’ll never lift my voice in hymn nor psalm no more, nor pray a line o’ prayer again. Who be I to be treated like that? Drunken auld cat! I cussed her—I cussed her! Wouldn’t marry her now if she axed wi’ her mouth in the dirt. Wheer’s justice to? Tell me that. Me in church, keepin’ order ’mong the damn boys generation arter generation, and him never inside the door since he buried his wife. An’ parson siding wi’ un, I’ll wager. Mother Coomstock ’ll give un hell’s delights, that’s wan gude thought. A precious pair of ’em! Tchut! Gar!”
“I doan’t really think you could have loved Mrs. Coomstock overmuch, Billy, if you can talk so ugly an’ crooked ’bout her,” said Phoebe.
“I did, I tell ’e—for years an’ years. I went down on my knees to the bitch—I wish I hadn’t; I’ll be sorry for that to my dying day. I kissed her, tu,—s’ elp me, I did. You mightn’t think it, but I did—a faace like a frost-bitten beetroot, as ’t is!”
“Doan’t ’e, please, say such horrible things. You must be wise about it. You see, they say Mr. Lezzard has more money than you. At least, so Mrs. Coomstock told her nephew, Clement Hicks. Every one of her relations is savage about it.”
“Well they may be. Why doan’t they lock her up? If she ban’t mad, nobody ever was. ’Money’! Lezzard! Lying auld—auld—Tchut! Not money enough to pay for a graave to hide his rotten bones, I lay. Oh, ’t is enough to—theer, what ’s the use of talkin’? Tchut—Tchut!”
At this point Phoebe, fearing even greater extravagances in Mr. Blee’s language, left him to consider his misfortunes alone. Long he continued in the profoundest indignation, and it was not until Miller Lyddon returned, heard the news, and heartily congratulated Billy on a merciful escape, that the old man grew a little calmer under his disappointment, and moderated the bitterness and profanity of his remarks.