Children of the Mist | Page 8

bonds of blood, love of their native land, and parity of ambition, first manifested in early desires to become independent. Together they had gone abroad, together they returned; and now each according to his genius designed to seek happiness where he expected to find it. John still held interests in South Africa, but Martin, content with less fortune, and mighty anxious to be free of all further business, realised his wealth and now knew the limits of his income.
The brothers supped in good spirits and Will Blanchard's sister waited upon them. Chris was her "brother in petticoats," people said, and indeed she resembled him greatly in face and disposition. But her eyes were brown, like her dead father's, and a gypsy splendour of black hair crowned her head. She was a year younger than Will, wholly wrapped up in him and one other.
A familiarity, shy on Martin's side and patronising in John, obtained between the brothers and their pretty attendant, for she knew all about them and the very cottage in which their parents had dwelt and died. The girl came and went, answered John Grimbal's jests readily, and ministered to them as one not inferior to those she served. The elder man's blue eyes were full of earthy admiration. He picked his teeth between the courses and admired aloud, while Chris was from the room.
"'Tis wonderful how pretty all the women look, coming back to them after ten years of nigger girls. Roses and cream isn't in it with their skins, though this one's dark as a clear night--Spanish fashion."
"Miss Blanchard seems very beautiful to me certainly," admitted Martin.
"I've seen only two maids--since setting foot in Chagford," continued his brother, "and it would puzzle the devil to say which was best to look at."
"Your heart will soon be lost, I'll wager--to a Chagford girl, I hope. I know you talked about flying high, but you might be happier to take a mate from--well, you understand."
"It's all very well to build theories on board ship about bettering myself socially and all that, but it's rot; I'll be knocked over by one of the country witches, I know I shall,--I feel it. I love the sound of the Devon on their lips, and the clear eyes of them, and the bright skin. 'Tis all I can do to keep from hugging the women, and that's a fact. But you, you cold-blooded beggar, your heart's still for the grey granite and the old ghostly stones, and creepy, lonely places on the Moor! We're that different, you and me."
Martin nodded thoughtfully, and, the meal being now ended, both men strolled out of doors, then wandered down to smoke a pipe on Rushford Bridge and listen to the nightly murmur of the river. Darkness moved on the face of land and water; twilight had sucked all the colour away from the valley; and through the deepening monochrome of the murk there passed white mists with shadowy hands, and peeped blind pale eyes along the winding water, where its surface reflected the faded west. Nocturnal magic conjured the least meadow into an unmeasured sea of vapour; awoke naiads in the waters and dryads in the woods; transformed the solemn organ music of great beetles into songs of a roaming spirit; set unseen shapes stirring in the starlight; whispered of invisible, enchanted things, happy and unhappy, behind the silence.
A man moved from the bridge as the brothers reached it. Then Will Blanchard, knocking out his pipe and taking a big inspiration, set his face steadily toward Monks Barton and that vital interview with Miller Lyddon now standing in the pathway of his life.
He rapped at the farm door and a step came slowly down the stone-paved passage. Then Billy Blee, the miller's right-hand man, opened to him. Bent he was from the small of the back, with a highly coloured, much wrinkled visage, and ginger hair, bleached by time to a paler shade. His poll was bald and shining, and thick yellow whiskers met beneath a clean-shorn chin. Billy's shaggy eyebrows, little bright eyes, and long upper lip, taken with the tawny fringe under his chops, gave him the look of an ancient and gigantic lion-monkey; and indeed there was not lacking in him an ape-like twist, as shall appear.
"Hullo! boy Blanchard! An' what might you want?" he asked.
"To see Miller."
"Come in then; we'm all alone in kitchen, him and me, awver our grog and game. What's the matter now?"
"A private word for Miller's ear," said Will cautiously.
"Come you in then. Us'll do what we may for 'e. Auld heads be the best stepping-stones young folks can have, understood right; awnly the likes of you mostly chooses to splash through life on your awn damn silly roads."
Mr. Blee, whose friendship and familiarity with his master was