“Gone for ever; and she—my Chris—my dear—is she to dwell in the darkness for all time, too? O God, I would rather hear one whisper of her voice, feel one touch of her brown hand, than learn the primal truth of every dumb stone wonder in the world!”
CHAPTER III
CONCERNING THE GATE-POST
So that good store of roots and hay continue for the cattle during those months of early spring while yet the Moor is barren; so that the potato-patch prospers and the oats ripen well; so that neither pony nor bullock is lost in the shaking bogs, and late summer is dry enough to allow of ample peat-storing—when all these conditions prevail, your moorman counts his year a fat one. The upland farmers of Devon are in great measure armed against the bolts of chance by the nature of their lives, the grey character of even their most cheerful experiences and the poverty of their highest ambitions. Their aspirations, becoming speedily cowed by ill-requited toil and eternal hardship, quickly dwarf and shrink, until even the most sanguine seldom extend hope much beyond necessity.
Will grumbled, growled, and fought on, while Phoebe, who knew how nobly the valleys repaid husbandry, mourned in secret that his energetic labours here could but produce such meagre results. Very gradually their environment stamped its frosty seal on man and woman; and by the time that little Will was two years old his parents viewed life, its good and its evil, much as other Moor folks contemplated it. Phoebe’s heart was still sweet enough, but she grew more selfish for herself and her own, more self-centred in great Will and little Will. They filled her existence to the gradual exclusion of wider sympathies. Miller Lyddon had given his grandson a silver mug on the day he was baptised, though since that time the old man held more aloof from the life of Newtake than Phoebe understood. Sometimes she wondered that he had never offered to assist her husband practically, but Will much resented the suggestion when Phoebe submitted it to him. There was no need for any such thing, he declared. As for him, transitory ambitions and hopes gleamed up in his career as formerly, though less often. So man and wife found their larger natures somewhat crushed by the various immediate problems that each day brought along with it. Beyond the narrow horizon of their own concerns they rarely looked, and Chagford people, noting the change, declared that life at Newtake was tying their tongues and lining their foreheads. Will certainly grew more taciturn, less free of advice, perhaps less frank than formerly. A sort of strangeness shadowed him, and only his mother or his son could dispel it. The latter soon learnt to understand his father’s many moods, and would laugh or cry, show joy or fear, according to the tune of the man’s voice.
There came an evening in mid-September when Will sat at the open hearth and smoked, with his eyes fixed on a fire of scads.[13] He remained very silent, and Phoebe, busy about a small coat of red cloth, to keep the cold from her little son’s bones during the coming winter, knew that it was not one of her husband’s happiest evenings. His eyes were looking through the fire and the wall behind it, through the wastes and wildernesses beyond, through the granite hills to the far-away edge of the world, where Fate sat spinning the threads of the lives of his loved ones. Threads they looked, in his gloomy survey of that night, much deformed with knot and tangle, for the Spinner cared nothing at all about them. She suffered each to wind heedlessly away; she minded not that they were ugly; she spared no strand of gold or silver from her skein of human happiness to brighten the grey fabric of them. So it seemed to Will, and his temper chimed with the rough night. The wind howled and growled down the chimney, uttered many a sudden yell and ghostly moan, struck with claws invisible at the glowing heart of the peat fire, and sent red sparks dancing from a corona of faint blue flame.
“Winter’s comin’ quick,” said Phoebe, biting her thread.
“Ess, winter’s allus comin’ up here. The fight begins again so soon as ever ’t is awver—again and again and again, ’cordin’ to the workin’ years of a man’s life. Then he turns on his back for gude an’ all, an’ takes his rest, wheer theer’s no more seasons, nor frost, nor sunshine, in the world under.”
“You’m glumpy, dear heart. What’s amiss? What’s crossed ’e? Tell me, an’ I lay I’ll find a word to smooth it away. Nothin’ contrary happened to market?”
“No, no—awnly my nature. When the wind’s spelling winter in the chimbley, an’ the yether’s dead again, ’t is wisht lookin’ forrard. The airth ’s allus dyin’, an’ the life of her be that short, an’ grubbing of bare food an’ rent out of her is sour work after many years. Thank God I’m a hopeful, far-seem’ chap, an’ sound as a bell; but I doan’t make money for all my sweat, that’s the mystery.”
“You will some day. Luck be gwaine to turn ’fore long, I hope. An’ us have got what’s better ’n money, what caan’t be bought.”