BOOK III
HIS GRANITE CROSS
CHAPTER I
BABY
Succeeding upon the tumultuous incidents of Clement’s death and Chris Blanchard’s disappearance, there followed a period of calm in the lives of those from whom this narrative is gleaned. Such transient peace proved the greater in so far as Damaris and her son were concerned, by reason of an incident which befell Will on the evening of his sister’s departure. Dead she certainly was not, nor did she mean to die; for, upon returning to Newtake after hours of fruitless searching, Blanchard found a communication awaiting him there, though no shadow of evidence was forthcoming to show how it had reached the farm. Upon the ledge of the window he discovered it when he returned, and read the message at a glance:
“Don’t you nor mother fear nothing for me, nor seek me out, for it would be vain. I’m well, and I’m so happy as ever I shall be, and perhaps I’ll come home-along some day.—CHRIS.”
On this challenge Will acted, ignored his sister’s entreaty to attempt no such thing, and set out upon a resolute search of nearly two months’ duration. He toiled amain into the late autumn, but no hint or shadow of her rewarded the quest, and sustained failure in an enterprise where his heart was set, for his mother’s sake and his own, acted upon the man’s character, and indeed wrought marked changes in him. Despite the letter of Chris, hope died in Will, and he openly held his sister dead; but Mrs. Blanchard, while sufficiently distressed before her daughter’s flight, never feared for her life, and doubted not that she would return in such time as it pleased her to do so.
“Her nature be same as yours an’ your faither’s afore you. When he’d got the black monkey on his shoulder he’d oftentimes leave the vans for a week and tramp the very heart o’ the Moor alone. Fatigue of body often salves a sore mind. He loved thunder o’ dark nights—my husband did—and was better for it seemin’ly. Chris be safe, I do think, though it’s a heart-deep stroke this for me, ’cause I judge she caan’t ’zactly love me as I thought, or else she’d never have left me. Still, the cold world, what she knaws so little ’bout, will drive her back to them as love her, come presently.”
So, with greater philosophy than her son could muster, Damaris practised patience; while Will, after a perambulation of the country from north to south, from west to east, after weeks on the lonely heaths and hiding-places of the ultimate Moor, after visits to remote hamlets and inquiries at a hundred separate farmhouses, returned to Newtake, worn, disappointed, and gloomy to a degree beyond the experience of those who knew him. Neither did the cloud speedily evaporate, as was most usual with his transient phases of depression. Circumstances combined to deepen it, and as the winter crowded down more quickly than usual, its leaden months of scanty daylight and cold rains left their mark on Will as time had never done before.
During those few and sombre days which represented the epact of the dying year, Martin Grimbal returned to Chagford. He had extended his investigations beyond the time originally allotted to them, and now came back to his home with plenty of fresh material, and even one or two new theories for his book. He had received no communications during his absence, and the news of the bee-keeper’s death and his sweetheart’s disappearance, suddenly delivered by his housekeeper, went far to overwhelm him. It danced joy up again through the grey granite. For a brief hour splendid vistas of happiness reopened, and his laborious life swept suddenly into a bright region that he had gazed into longingly aforetime and lost for ever. He fought with himself to keep down this rosy-fledged hope; but it leapt in him, a young giant born at a word. The significance of the freedom of Chris staggered him. To find her was the cry of his heart, and, as Will had done before him, he straightway set out upon a systematic attempt to discover the missing girl. Of such uncertain temper was Blanchard’s mind at this season, however, that he picked a quarrel out of Martin’s design, and questioned the antiquary’s right to busy himself upon an undertaking which the brother of Chris had already failed to accomplish.
“She belonged to me, not to you,” he said, “an’ I done all a man could do to find her. See her again we sha’n’t, that’s my feelin’, despite what she wrote to me and left so mysterious on the window. Madness comed awver her, I reckon, an’ she’ve taken her life, an’ theer ban’t no call for you or any other man to rip up the matter again. Let it bide as ’t is. Such black doin’s be best set to rest.”
But, while Martin did not seek or desire Will’s advice in the matter, he was surprised at the young farmer’s attitude, and it extracted something in the nature of a confession from him, for there was little, he told himself, that need longer be hidden from the woman’s brother.
“I can speak now, at least to you, Will,” he said. “I can tell you, at any rate. Chris was all the world to me—all the world, and accident kept me from knowing she belonged to another man until too late. Now that he has gone, poor fellow, she almost seems within reach again. You know what it is to love. I can’t and won’t believe she has taken her life. Something tells me she lives, and I am not going to take any man’s word about it. I must satisfy myself.”