“I don’t know. I don’t know any more than you do. Something has come over me; I can’t tell you what. I’m more surprised than you are at my silence; but there it is. Why the devil I don’t speak I don’t know. I only know I’m not going to. Our characters are beyond our own power to understand.”
“If you don’t know, I’ll tell you. You’re frightened that he will find out. You’re afraid of him.”
“It’s vain trying to anger me into speaking,” answered the other, showing not a little anger the while; “I’m dumb henceforward.”
“I hope you’ll let your brain influence you towards reason. ’Tis a fool’s trick to turn your back on the chance of a lifetime. Better think twice. And second thoughts are like to prove best worth following. You know where to find me at any rate. I’ll give you six weeks to decide about it.”
John Grimbal waited, hoping that Hicks might yet change his mind before he took his leave; but the bee-keeper made no answer. His companion therefore broke into a sharp trot and left him. Whereupon Clement stood still a moment, then he turned back and, forgetting all about Chris, proceeded slowly homewards to Chagford, deep in thought and heartily astonished at himself. No one could have prompted his enemy to a more critical moment for this great attack; no demon could have sent the master of the Red House with a more tempting proposal; and yet Hicks found himself resisting the lure without any particular effort or struggle. On the one side this man had offered him all the things his blood and brain craved; on the other his life still stretched drearily forward, and nothing in it indicated he was nearer his ambition by a hair’s-breadth than a year before. Yet he refused to pay the price. It amazed him to find his determination so fixed against betrayal of Will. He honestly wondered at himself. The decision was bred from a curious condition of mind quite beyond his power to comprehend. He certainly recoiled from exposure of Blanchard’s secret, yet coldly asked himself what unsuspected strand of character held him back. It was not fear and it was not regard for his sweetheart’s brother; he did not know what it was. He scoffed at the ideas of honour or conscience. These abstractions had possessed weight in earlier years, but not now. And yet, while he assured himself that no tie of temporal or eternal interest kept him silent, the temptation to tell seemed much less on this occasion than in the past when he took a swarm of John Grimbal’s bees. Then, indeed, his mind was aflame with bitter provocation. He affected a cynical attitude to the position and laughed without mirth at a theory that suddenly appeared in his mind. Perchance this steadfastness of purpose resulted, after all, from that artificial thing, “conscience,” which men catch at the impressionable age when they have infantile ailments and pray at a mother’s knee. If so, surely reason must banish such folly before another dawn and send him hot-foot at daybreak to the Red House. He would wait and watch himself and see.
His reflections were here cut short, for a shrill voice broke in upon them, and Clement, now within a hundred yards of his own cottage door, saw Mr. Lezzard before him.
“At last I’ve found ’e! Been huntin’ this longful time, tu. The Missis wants ’e—your aunt I should say.”
“Wants me?”
“Ess. ’T is wan o’ her bad days, wi’ her liver an’ lights a bitin’ at her like savage creatures. She’m set on seein’ you, an’ if I go home-along without ’e, she’ll awnly cuss.”
“What can she want me for?”