“Doan’t make that noise. Just listen and stand still. I’m in earnest. It pleases me to know the true history of this child, and I mean to. As a Justice of the Peace I mean to.”
“Ax Will Blanchard then an’ let him answer. Maybe you’ll be sorry you spoke arter.”
“You can tell him I want to see him; you can say I order him to come to the Red House between eight and nine next Monday.”
“Be you a fule? Who’s he, to come at your bidding?”
“He’s a—well, no matter. You’ve got enough to trouble you. But I think he will come. Tell him that I know where he was during the autumn and winter of the year that I returned home from Africa. Tell him I know where he came from to marry you. Tell him the grey suit of clothes reached the owner safely—remember, the grey suit of clothes. That will refresh his memory. Then I think he will come fast enough and let me have the truth concerning this brat. If he refuses, I shall take steps to see justice done.”
“I lay he’s never put himself in the power of a black-hearted, cruel beast like you,” blazed out the woman, furious and frightened at once.
“Has he not? Ask him. You don’t know where he was during those months? I thought you didn’t. I do. Perhaps this child—perhaps the other woman’s the married one—”
Phoebe dropped her basket and her face grew very pale before the horrors thus coarsely spread before her. She staggered and felt sick at the man’s last speech. Then, with one great sob of breath, she turned her back on him, nerved herself to use her shaking legs, and set off at her best speed, as one running from some dangerous beast of the field.
Grimbal made no attempt to follow, but watched her fade into the mist, then turned and pursued his way through the dripping woodlands. Sunrise fires gleamed along the upper layers of the fading vapours and gilded autumn’s handiwork. Ripe seeds fell tapping through the gold of the horse-chestnuts, and many acorns also pattered down upon a growing carpet of leaves. Webs and gossamers twinkled in the sunlight, and the flaming foliage made a pageant of colour through waning mists where red leaves and yellow fell at every breath along the thinning woods. Beneath trees and hedgerows the ripe mosses gleamed, and coral and amber fungi, with amanita and other hooded folk. In companies and clusters they sprang or arose misshapen, sinister, and alone. Some were orange and orange-tawny; others white and purple; not a few peered forth livid, blotched, and speckled, as with venom spattered from some reptile’s jaws. On the wreck of the year they flourished, sucked strange life from rotten stick and hollow tree, opened gills on lofty branch and bough, shone in the green grass rings of the meadows, thrust cup and cowl from the concourse of the dead leaves in ditches, clustered like the uprising roof-trees of a fairy village in dingle and in dene.
At the edge of the woods John Grimbal stood, and the hour was very dark for him and he cursed at the loss of his manhood. His heart turned to gall before the thought of the thing he had done, as he blankly marvelled what unsuspected base instinct had thus disgraced him. He had plumbed a possibility unknown within his own character, and before his shattered self-respect he stood half passionate, half amazed. Chance had thus wrecked him; an impulse had altered the whole face of the problem; and he gritted his teeth as he thought of Blanchard’s feelings when Phoebe should tell her story. As for her, she at least had respected him during the past years; but what must henceforth be her estimate of him? He heaped bitter contempt upon himself for this brutality to a woman; he raged, as he pursued long chains of consequences begot of this single lapse of self-control. His eye was cleared from passion; he saw the base nature of his action and judged himself as others would judge him. This spectacle produced a definite mental issue and aroused long-stagnant emotions from their troubled slumbers. He discovered that a frank hatred of Will Blanchard awoke and lived. He told himself this man was to blame for all, and not content with poisoning his life, now ravaged his soul also and blighted every outlook of his being. Like a speck upon an eyeball, which blots the survey of the whole eye, so this wretch had fastened upon him, ruined his ambitions, wrecked his life, and now dragged his honour and his very manhood into the dust. John Grimbal found himself near choked by a raging fit of passion at last. He burnt into sheer frenzy against Blanchard; and the fuel of the fire was the consciousness of his own craven performance of that morning. Flying from self-contemplation, he sought distraction and even oblivion at any source where his mind could win it; and now he laid all blame on his enemy and suffered the passion of his own shame and remorse to rise, as it had been a red mist, against this man who was playing havoc with his body and soul. He trembled under the loneliness of the woods in a debauch of mere brute rage that exhausted him and left a mark on the rest of his life. Even his present powers appeared trifling and their exercise a deed unsatisfying before this frenzy. What happiness could be achieved by flinging Blanchard into prison for a few months at most? What salve could be won from thought of this man’s disgrace and social ruin? The spectacle sank into pettiness now. His blood was surging through his veins and crying for action. Primitive passion gripped him and craved primitive outlet. At that hour, in his own deepest degradation, the man came near madness, and every savage voice in him shouted for blood and blows and batterings in the flesh.