In the big barn doorway the Skipjack and Willie Ramsey appeared. They, too, had caught up what lay nearest to hand—Charlie, the crooked iron handle of some machine, and Willie a breadth of a split lid with a batten across it full of bent nails. There were no doors to the barn, and behind these three other faces peered out anxiously. Old Jerrymuttered, “Nay, this is no good; we’re done afore we start”; and he thought of the axes that lay under the brushwood in the Ladyshaws.
“That’s the Skipjack, him wi’ th’ crook; what did I tell ye?” a tall fellow, bound, cried appealingly to a man with a hooked nose and a blue coat with white facings. “And him wi’ th’ black hair’s Willie something—he were back of a hazel bush wi’ a lass—it’s true what I say——”
“Close in and seize them,” the lieutenant ordered. “Creep along the wall, one or two of you, and the rest rush in.”
“Ay, that’s th’ road,” Jerry muttered again, bitterly; “well, we’ll ha’ one knock——”
And, indeed, there could be but one end to it; the plight was hopeless. The short scuffle barely lasted two minutes. A stretcher cracked across Jerry’s shins and he went down; at the very first stroke that Willie struck, his batten nailed itself fast to a cudgel, and, having no handle, was wrenched from his hand; and the Skipjack’s crank, having a wooden case for the grip, twirled uselessly this way and that. They struck with their hands, but were overborne and rolled over with their assailants, and the sailors leaped over them as they rolled, and poured into the barn. Half of them had not even their boots on, but desperate grunts and scuffles sounded inside the dark sheds. Jerry, his arms already secured, was crouched up against a wall, his head bowed almost to his injured shins.The Skipjack lay near him with the breath knocked out of him; and as Willie Ramsey lay flat on his belly with a heavy knee in his back he suddenly made a “Tss, Nell!” between his teeth, and the retriever fastened herself to the officer’s hand. The lieutenant gave a cry and an oath with the pain, and then he drew and shortened his sword and ran the retriever through the body.
Suddenly Willie shouted in a loud voice, “Bide where ye are, Jessie!” and at that the informer pressed nearer to the lieutenant.
“Ay, they ha’ some women wi’ em, four of ’em, but I don’t know where they are——”
“Curse ’em,” snarled the officer, wringing the dark blood from his hand; “where there’s women there’s men. Rout ’em out.”
A dozen men were already at the door of the laithe. Suddenly they fell back, and the informer, raising himself on his toes, cried, “Ay, her wi’ red hair; wasn’t it true what I told ye, captain?...”
Her arms were white and bare to the short shift that showed at her shoulders, and her brown hands fumbled at her waist. Her hair lay in a heavy mass half down her back, and her boots were thrust on unlaced. Her mouth was open, and her eyes shifted rapidly, seeking Willie. She saw him, and made a little shuffling run, her boots slipping; and a sailor barred her way and glanced at the officer for orders.
The lieutenant advanced and peered into her face.
“Wife?... Ah, sweetheart!” His eyes rested on the gold locket at her naked bosom. He put out his hand to touch it, and Willie cried in a low, husky voice, “Man, loose my hands ... gi’e me my billet o’ wood and tak’ your sword ... or wi’ my naked hands——”
Jessie dropped to her knees and seized the officer’s hand. He drew it away with a sharp exclamation.
“Oh, ’tis blood!” she cried.—“Nay, I didn’t mean to hurt thee, sir, but dinna tak’ him! Let me bind thy hand, i’ pity and friendliness, and dinna tak’ him! A handkercher and some watter—see, let me cleanse it and heal it wi’ herbs and draw th’ foulness out wi’ my mouth. But poor wood-folk we are, fro’ th’ inland parts, and harm none, but pill th’ trees i’ springtime, ask th’ bailiff else.... He’s my lad, and’ll wed me this back-end, and’ll ha’ th’ farm when his father’s ta’en—nay, I sorrow to see thee bleed so!—and thou’s ha’ my prayers every night....”
His blood had dripped to her own naked arms, and then, all at once, she saw the dead retriever. Her mouth went round as an O with horror. Still kneeling, she sank back till she had to put one hand behind her for support; and she breathed softly, “Oh—Nellie!” The next moment she was up on her feet, quivering and ugly with passion.
“Ay?” she cried in a high voice, “Ay? Th’ dog too? Let’s see thee, Nell.—Ay, right through;th’ dog, too! They tak’ their swords to dogs, gentlemen does; cocked hats and lace on ’em, they kill dogs. Tak’ her and wash her, Maggie, for me to bury: and ye ken herbs.—Did I touch yon man’s hand that kills dogs?—Ye ken herbs: tell me o’ one that keeps wounds oppen, and lets ’em drain, and sets a venom i’ ’em so they shriek at th’ sight o’ watter, dog-killers, and slaver at their cruel mouths through their teeth that’s locked i’ torment——”
“Oh, come away, Jessie!” Maggie implored, seizing her arms.
“A sword! Ay, a sword to a dog, but a man wi’ his bare hands is bound fast wi’ cords——”
“Do you know who you’re wreaking this on?” said the lieutenant, in a smothered voice; “not on me, my lass!——” His voice changed, and he cried abruptly, “Come, stir; do we need a whole night for a bare dozen capstan-pushers? Fall in! Gag that whining pickpocket! Form ’em up, coxswain! Ready?”
“Ye’d best tak’ th’ dog’s tongue,” Jessie cried, “chance another gentleman boasts he’s killed him. Lend me thy sword while I cut it out!”
“By God, your own ought to be cut out, you red witch!—Faugh!—Up, men!”
“Ay, forward; I’m walking Portsannet way mysel’; I’ve a dead dog to show folk; me and Nellie’s for Portsannet!—Come, poor lass.”
She took the dead retriever up in her arms. Thewomen strove to restrain her, but she answered them in a hard voice; and the hook-nosed lieutenant, grinding his teeth as she railed, was yet unable to keep his eyes from her throat and shoulders. She saw it, and laughed shrilly, and made a display of the bare arms that held the dog for him. He swore a filthy oath under his breath; Fat Maggie and Jerry’s wife and daughter wept; the men’s faces were hard set; and the two terriers leaped and barked about the lieutenant as Jessie clucked them on with her tongue and asked him where his sword was. They set forward down the meadows; a dim ring of orange showed where the moon swam behind the clouds; and as they left the meadows and began the descent to the valley the coxswain stepped back to Jessie, who was heaping taunt on taunt, and said, “Let it alone—ye’re but making it worse for him....”
THEnews had spread in Portsannet, and many of the decent fisherfolk had joined the common sort at the head of the street. They murmured, but it was little of their business, after all. Had any of their own kin been seized, they might have resisted; as it was, Portsannet was well rid of a rogue or two; and as for the Pillers, they, too, were in a sort vagrants. True, when a red-haired, slipshod, unkempt wench appeared, holding a dead retriever bitch in her arms, they wondered, and some called her a hussy; but others, looking again, cried that it was a shame. But a dead dog was not a deal to make a trouble about, and what they would be gladdest to see was the stern of the longboat that was fastened down by the jetty.
And why did Jessie, with her lover pinioned and about to be reft from her, take his case less passionately than that of the cold and heavy animal? She could not have told you. Maybe her mind could comprehend only the small evil; or, as men in moments of stress will occupy themselves withfoolish, trivial things, an instinct bade her hold the unbearable thought away from her. Likely enough it was this last; for, suddenly seeing Willie’s haggard eyes on her, she cried, faintly: “Dinna look at me now, or ’twill be th’ last! Turn thy face away! And ye—some o’ ye—show me where th’ bailiff lives——”
A woman took her own shawl and set it over her shoulders. “Dinna shame us, lassie,” she said; and “Ay, ay—where d’ye say he lives?” Jessie replied.
“Best tak’ her to our spare cham’er, Ellen,” a man’s voice said; but Jessie called again for the bailiff: he was a harmless man, wi’ a pleasant word for folk; his oaks and pines were but half cut; nay, they had not started with the pines....
“I’ll tak’ ye to th’ bailiff, dearie. Come, then,” said the woman who had given her the shawl; and suddenly Jessie began to tremble. Without glancing once at Willie, she crossed to the narrow entry of a passage, laid down the dog’s body, and then turned to the woman. “Come, make haste,” she said. She passed the lieutenant without seeming to see him. The two women turned into a dark lane that was deep rutted with carts, as if it led to a farm. By and by Jessie began to run.
Through a bare orchard a candle shone in the bailiff’s window. They found him in his comfortable kitchen smoking his strong tobacco. The two pieces of wood he had brought from the Ladyshawslay on the table before him, and with the point of his penknife he was counting the rings of the tree’s growth. “A hundred and ninety-six—a hundred and ninety-seven—a hundred and ninety-eight,” he said, counting aloud; and when he got to the two hundredth ring he stuck the point of his penknife into the wood and looked up mildly and enquiringly.
Jessie’s railing was past now; she thought no more of Nellie.
“They’re taking th’ men—th’ press—that’s cutting the trees; they’re taking ’em down th’ street now,” she announced shortly; “go stop ’em.”
“Men?” the bailiff enquired, quite unruffled: “Oh, ay, the Pillers. I remember ye were with ’em. Dear, dear, now; that’s awk’ard. Two more days o’ this weather and the leaves’ll be breaking out everywhere. We shall lose the price o’ the bark—wi’out we could prosecute for it—no—now that’s vexing.... Ye’d see this piece of oak this morning? Of course. I’ve counted two hundred; think o’ that! Two hundred year sin’ them letters were cut, and more to count yet.”
“But they’re taking ’em—Willie and Jerry,” Jessie murmured, dazed. “Like enow ye wouldn’t know Willie’s name—it were him cut them pieces for ye.... Oh, man!” she cried suddenly, “he’s my lover—chance ye’re wed yoursel’——”
“Eh?” said the bailiff; “No.”
“Oh, think, wi’ your talk o’ two hundred year—happen lovers cut them marks, same as ye’ve cut a lass’s name on a tree!”
“Them that I heard tell of was King’s marks,” the bailiff mused, “but ay, happen this would be some lad——”
Jessie dropped face foremost on the table, and the fisherwoman spoke sharply.
“Come out o’ your moon-trances, Matthew Hudson!” she cried; “think what can be done. They’ll up anchor in a couple of hours wi’ th’ turn o’ th’ tide.—Wad th’ Warden stop ’em?”
Jessie moaned softly on the table, and the bailiff deliberated.
“Ay—no—there’s no knowing; the Warden might.”
“Then put th’ horse i’ the trap, ye daft fool, and tak’ us ower!” the woman cried, losing her temper.
And as the bailiff set his pieces of wood aside with a sigh, he murmured, “Me wed? No——”
In ten minutes the trap was ready, and the bailiff started the horse at a walk down the rutted lane.
“Give me them reins, ye fat oaf!” Ellen exclaimed. “D’ye think to-morrow’ll do for this?”
She shook up the horse, and the trap rocked and jolted. She made a cut with the whip as they reached the street; but Jessie, her face buried in the shawl, saw nothing of the throng a couple of score yards away.
“He trots better nor he gallops,” the bailiffsuggested mildly, as they turned into another miry lane.
Soon Ellen passed the reins to the bailiff and set her arm about Jessie’s swaying, jolting body. She turned back a corner of the shawl to say in her ear, “‘Twill be all right yet, dearie! Come, be easy, now.”
Before them, where the road wound round the headland, spread the impenetrable blackness of the sea. A sharp turn showed lights half a mile ahead, a little way up the hill; and as they drew nearer the bailiff remarked, as if the fact were not without interest, “He’s up, for a wonder; I’d have laid a crown he’d gone to bed.”
He pulled up at a wooden gate that had neither lodge nor avenue. One end of the large house a little way up the hill was brightly lighted.
“Lean on my shoulder, lassie,” Ellen said. “And you, Matthew, just step as if ye knew what ye’d come about.”
They passed up the treeless drive, and at a dark side door the bailiff rang a bell. A servant appeared with a candle, the bailiff said a few words, and they were shown into a small office with a desk and ledgers and tin boxes. The servant left the candle on the desk, and they waited.
In five minutes a heavily-built, grave-looking, elderly man appeared in the doorway. He looked first at one, then at another of the three, and, finally, he turned to the bailiff.
“What’s the meaning of this, Hudson?” he demanded.
The bailiff glanced at Ellen and murmured, “Ay, ’tis late—past eleven—half-past eleven, I should say——”
“I’ll tell ye th’ meaning of it, sir,” Ellen said, abruptly. “They’ll be off afore Matthew’s done looking for his wits i’ th’ candle-flame.” She told him how eight or nine unoffending landsmen, going quietly about their trade, had been seized for service on the gun-deck of the third-rater that lay off Portsannet Head.
“Well?” said the Warden; and Matthew removed his eyes from the flame of the candle.
“Ay,” he said. “It’s them that’s pilling up at Ladyshaws, and the question is, sir, in two days the sap’ll be set and ye’ll lose the price o’ the bark. Wi’ them off and away, an action would never lie. The best ye could do would be to seize the odd day’s pilling.”
“I know this woman; who’s the other?”
“Nay, I’m sure I can’t tell ye,” the bailiff replied; and then, at a touch from Ellen, Jessie let the shawl slip from her head, and looked at the grave face of the Warden. She did not speak. Quietly, as quietly as if she had been at her own bedside, she sank to her knees and folded her hands. She closed her eyes, and the Warden looked on her with knitted brows for a moment, and then began to walk up and down the small apartment.
“I think I see,” he said, by and by, stopping before Jessie, and taking her hand and raising her. “I passed Edward my word,” he continued, half to himself, “on condition our own people were unmolested. That I can’t withdraw, not even on the plea that these are in my own employ. But I’ll do what I can. Follow me.”
He led the way along a dark passage, and at the end of it drew a curtain aside. A soft glow of light spread about them. “Go in that door,” the Warden said, pushing Jessie gently forward; and Jessie found herself in a dining-room where half a dozen candles in silver sticks stood over their own still images in a polished table. “There’s the Commander himself,” said the Warden.
A white-haired gentleman, in a rich uniform of blue, white, and gold, sat at one corner of the shining-table. A decanter of wine stood at his elbow, the breaking of the soft light through which dyed the white ruffle at his wrist with ruby red. He was looking at a watch that he held in his hand, and Jessie knew not what beauty it was in his face that seemed to steal like a comforting balsam over her heart. The Warden crossed and spoke in a low voice to him, and presently he looked up from his watch. At a sign from him Jessie stood forward, and Ellen and the bailiff fell back.
“What is your name?” he asked her, in a very gentle voice; and when she had told him, “Where do you live?” he asked again. She told him that,too; and then he began to ask her many questions. What brought her so far from her home? Of what sort were her friends? What her daily life?—She answered all very tremblingly; she felt that there could be no passion in this man’s presence; and by and by he knew all about Willie and Jerry and Fat Maggie and the fatal journey that had given her her first sight of the sea.
“Come nearer, my maid.—And so you have but now seen the sea and a ship?”
“Ay, sir, to my sorrow.”
“So?” answered the stately gentleman. “Ah, women, women, never one of you yet but dreaded the sea!—Tell me, Henry: is it that they know the sea is more powerful than they? Do they know the dream that we, we others, dream—the discontent that lies in all achievement, the urge?... And not the youth only; the old man, too, is drawn from the chimney-corner, as I am drawn—as I must go even now with the turn of the tide.—Well, I had my choice, and twice or thrice I have warmed my hands at a fire that glows on no husband’s hearth. Perhaps I shall do so once more, and so die content. For marrying some, but we others are for the sea, the dream, the unrest....” He mused, and Jessie wondered if the face of a saint could be more beautiful than that on which her eyes were fixed.
“Well, that is my destiny, not another’s,” he resumed by and by.—“My child, have they toldyou why the acorn is set in the ground, and tended and fostered till it becomes a tree, and then dies, as we all die, to a nobler service?”
Jessie did not reply, not rightly understanding him; and the white-haired commander, putting his fingers into the pocket of his waistcoat, drew out two acorns. He considered them as they lay in the palm of his hand.
“Heart o’ the oak, that holds it all for us, for us others—the rest we scorned in our youth, the boundless sea, the endeavour that must be its own reward, the pleasantness of life foregone.... It may be that we chose ignorantly, blindly; perhaps we have doubted since, doubted but it had been better to choose the shelter of the rafters and the woman at our side and the little ones ... no matter. Twice or thrice, and once more under God’s pleasure.... Girl, I come ashore but thrice in ten years, and there are hardly ten of years now remaining to me. For thirty years I have carried acorns in my pocket, and have planted them when opportunity came, and have seen tall oaks of my own planting. And your woodsmen come in the season and cut them down, and they are bolted together to be the houses of some of us—our hearths, homes, lodging, we others who have chosen it so.... Think of it when you see your lover set his hand to the axe, and when you feel his arms about you in the darkness, too.... You, too, have your choice; go—nay,stay.—You shall see the last of me, Henry: the gig is waiting now.—Plant me these last acorns, girl; heart o’ the oak, heart o’ the oak....”
* * * * *
The tide rustled and talked as it receded swiftly down the river channel, and here and there one of the stakes that marked out the waterway could be distinguished dimly in the darkness. The craft in the harbour began to heel over as the water left them. The tide washed and slapped against hulls and pebbles and wooden groynes and stone angles; and at the top of the breakwater half a dozen lanterns showed a group of dark figures that looked seaward.
The riding-lights of the ship had changed position; and between the ship and the harbour mouth the grunt of oars on rowlocks could be heard. A light appeared at the bow of a boat and shone on the water that broke at its foot. The groups shuffled to one side of the breakwater as the creaking of the oars drew nearer, and they could see the effort of the rowers as the current became rapid and confined. The boat laboured up past the stone entrance, and a man ran along the breakwater, leaped down to the crunching pebbles, and cast a rope. The pebbles grated harshly as the group followed him and pressed down to the boats. A man sprang from the ship’s boat to a rocking dinghy, and thence to another and another; andthe boats tossed and knocked, and the water lapped loudly. The man sprang down to the beach, and Jessie Wheeler ran to him with a low cry. Another followed him, but, except that Jennie Holmes cried once “Father!” nobody spoke. In a few minutes all were landed, and the boat was thrust off immediately. Mechanically the group moved towards the breakwater again; they stood there as the boat dropped down the harbour and went out on the whispering tide.
Suddenly Jennie Holmes broke into hysterical sobs, and Willie Ramsey caught Jessie in his arms as she reeled against a wooden butt.
A woman touched his arm.
“Are ye him?... Ay, she’s overwrought. Ye’d best carry her to my house while morning. Happen a two-three neighbours’ll put the rest o’ ye up. What say ye, folk?”
—And the Pillers turned their backs to the sea, filed off the breakwater, and followed the men and women of Portsannet.
A wise man loves the ocean,A good man loves the hills.
A wise man loves the ocean,A good man loves the hills.
A wise man loves the ocean,A good man loves the hills.
WITHthe wearing on of the afternoon, the flat, treeless country to which for half a day I had steadily dropped had but increased in monotony, and long before nightfall I had begun to weary for other company than that of my own meditations. The road, of a reddish gravel, had begun to cross, by wooden bridges, innumerable drains and channels and narrow waterways; and that there was clay beneath it was evident no less from the wreaths and wisps of vapour that crept fantastically over carr and mere than from the sudden chills of the air, that seemed to stand in banks or to move in thick, idle currents. The clatter of the mare’s hoofs on the bridges flushed multitudes of waterfowl, that rose with harsh cries and beatings of wings; and from the number of gulls I had noticed among these while yet a little light remained, I had judged I could not be far from the sea.
How it came to pass that I, having had lands of my own, should find myself so circumstanced as to be fain to look after those of somebody else as factor or steward, is of no present moment; it is more to the point that, if this was the domain of the Master of Skelf, I liked it exceedingly little. The continual flurry and commotion of the waterfowl seemed to rouse in me a restlessness; and, remembering what Cardan had said of lands with a dark and fennish air, that they had the property of folding our thoughts back on themselves, I could only hope that I should not prove the worse bailiff for being acquainted with Cardan.
At first I mistook the man’s lantern for an ignis fatuus; but I heard a whistle and the panting of a dog, and he gave me good-evening. He was a tall fellow, with a sheepskin about him; he carried his lantern at the end of a long pole; and he told me, as he trotted by my side, that I was within the confines of Skelf Decoy. I eased the mare that he might keep pace with me.
“Ay, this is Skelf Decoy, and I tend it; they call me Ducky Watt, but they mean Decoy. It isn’t what it were, not for fish, sin’ they drained it, but there’s Friday-meat yet, and birds.... Ower th’ Wolds, are ye? Well, it’s a good air o’ th’ Wolds. They ha’ farmed part about here too, but it’s a black ear and thin crops; that’s th’ fogs.... Ay, we fish—hark! yon’s a pike—trout and eels and roach and pike—and tak’ birds forth’ markets. Ye’ll be a arable man; all’s carrs hereabouts; but I don’t doubt ye know all about Skelf-Mary.”
I told him that I had never been there before.
“Ay? H’m!... Ye’ll know nowt o’ th’ sea i’ these parts, then?”
I said that I did not.
“H’m!—well, this is how it is. Th’ sea’s taking it, as it’s ta’en Auburn and Hartburn and Ravenspur; and a two-three stops, but th’ most’s flitted months back; ye’ll see to-morrow.—Ye won’t ha’ heard o’ Buttevant-Mary neither: no. Well, they talk o’ bells chiming under th’ sea o’ still nights, and folks seen walking up and down th’ wharves and marts, and all that; I think them’s tales; but Kempery and Flaxton isn’t tales. Th’ Sheriff o’ Kingston, he’ll show ye th’ Court Rolls o’ Flaxton; and Kempery—I’ll show ye where Kempery is to-morrow, for ye’d best bide wi’ me to-night.—Ay, they took Flaxton Church to Windlesea i’ carts; and then there’s sea-marks....”
“In a word, the sea’s advancing?”
“Ay; sometimes just licking-like, and sometimes a dozen yards of a sudden; ye’ll see to-morrow.—And th’ sea doesn’t keep all it taks, neither. Ye’ll be a arable man, say; well, there’s a thousand acres o’ warp come up out o’ Humber, and wheat on it now; a foot-bridge joins it; but there’s men has seen deep keels, half a dozen on ’em, passing up yon same channel. That’s thatside; and o’ this, as I tell ye, a farmer can go to bed i’ reaping-time and wake up wi’ a swath or two less to reap....”
He continued to tell me tales of lost villages, of broken houses with their chambers open to the winds, of wooden groynes that had been put up and abandoned, and a deal more well fitted to the hour and place. Suddenly I asked him about the Master of Skelf-Mary; and the light of the lantern shone on his knuckles as he thumbed his chin.
“Ay, ye’re th’ new steward.... What wad ye know o’ him?” he asked, slowly.
“Seeing I know nothing, you can’t get wrong.”
“And that’s providential—if it was true,” he retorted. “Well, sir, if ye can’t bide while morning, ye can put your questions now.”
But, though I interrogated him, he so fubbed me off with bland and wary answers that I was little the wiser by the time I desisted. The Master of Skelf-Mary, I gathered, was all but bed-ridden, and in very ill fame with such as read their Bibles (but that might have been because he had turned the chapel of the mansion into a library); but my friend was sensible, and careful to assign to others certain tales of devils and familiars and voices that servants, with their ears at the rosewood door of the library, had heard o’ nights. Nevertheless, his reluctance was evident, and by and by he pointed out a beam of light smothered in the fen-mists; that was his cottage.
I supped and lay that night in his hut; and by eight o’clock next morning he had conducted me to the village of Skelf-Mary. It was much as he had described it. One or two houses on the north side of the market-place, opposite an ancient butter-cross, appeared to be tenanted, as did also a row of very poor cottages that ran towards the sea; the rest was desolate, and already grass pushed between the cobbles. Two or three folk appeared at upper windows, hearing the sound of hoofs (having no business to take them abroad, I judged they were still abed); and as we left the cottages a couple of rabbits scampered across the street. Half a mile before us lay the church and hall, and beyond it the smooth sea, with a brig motionless far out.
“This road,” said the keeper, indicating a bridlepath to the right; but that was so plainly not the road that I answered shortly, “No, it isn’t,” and pushed forward towards the church. Five minutes brought me level with it; and then I stopped with an exclamation.
A few yards beyond a rail of hedge-stakes the road ended as suddenly as if it had been cut off with a knife. The fencing, that was continued on either hand, straggled to the north across the middle of the graveyard, and the marks of wheels in the red clay and the unsightly mounds in which they ended showed what had recently been done. Over the rails, hulks and shoulders of earth fouled the beach; and from the point to which, with adreadful curiosity, I advanced I saw three square ends, ochrous with the clay, sticking out to the tide like “throughs” in a stone wall.
The keeper pointed to a three-inch fissure at my feet.
“That’s th’ next,” he said, gloomily; “th’ first heavy rain—a touch o’ frost—th’ sea eats it down there, and a touch o’ frost and rain.... Yonder’s Kempery.” ... He pointed to the motionless brig.
“Let’s get to the hall,” I said; and we did not speak further till we reached the mansion that had so gruesome a prospect to the north of it. It was of grey pebbles, set in a sort of mud-mortar, and was very ancient and handsome. The south lawn was overlooked by an octagonal bay-window, from the flat leads of which (so the keeper said) dead and gone lords of the manor and their chaplains had addressed the assembled tenantry; and this bay formed one end of a long western wing that I judged to be the chapel turned library. To the north lay the courtyard and outbuildings; and to the east, not twenty yards away, was the placid sea and the brig motionless over Kempery.
KNOWINGwhat I now know, I think I might almost have guessed, from my first glance at him as the bandy-legged servant closed the rosewood door of the library behind me, what manner of man he was; nevertheless, this knowledge was not long delayed. The bed he seldom left was wheeled into the octagonal window-bay; he was propped up in wraps and blankets, with a book set against his sharp knees; and as he turned, his profile, for flat brow and beak, was for all the world like some grotesque bird carved on a pillar or spout. His large dull eyes, too, protruded remarkably; and the tying of the clout wherewith his head was bound as if for study resembled ears laid back.
“Ye are a day late, sir,” he said at once in a sick, querulous voice; and when I answered that I had been stayed on the road, “Ay,” he complained, “it was a dark night last night; enough.—And now that ye have seen the place in the daylight, ye’ll be of the same mind as the rest of them, eh?”
For all his sickness, this nettled me a little, andI replied that if the opinion of others was that the coast in the immediate vicinity was not a pleasing sight, I was disposed to agree with them; “but,” I added, “for that matter, I have some acquaintance with the sciences, and am free from superstition.”
“Eh?” he said sharply. “And what may that amount to?”
Certainly he had in some measure the right to catechise me, albeit not to be both petulant and domineering, as he was; and as I answered his questions as to the extent of my reading, I noticed with what ease I could have taken up his shrivelled figure. By and by he changed abruptly to matters of business; and as in this I wish to imitate his own brevity, I will only say that to a factor’s ordinary duties was to be added all the care of a considerabledéménagement. He ceased; and I had bowed and was for leaving him when he beckoned me to come nearer. I stooped over the couch.
“Tell me,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper, “tell me, has it been your chance in the course of your reading to come across—this?”
His face was within a foot of mine, and I barely checked a sound that, for all the early morning, was one of fright. Few men but in an idle moment now and then have tried that trick of gazing into metals, and phials, and flames of candles; and of the stupor or lethargy a man can work in himself by these means I had read in Olaus Magnus, inSuavius, and elsewhere. Neither was I entirely ignorant of that disordered function of the mind whereby a man can people the world with images of his own raising; but he was an ugly devil at best, and the abominable expression into which for a moment his eyeballs were deliberately set—the Squint Upwards and Inwards—added a sensible horror to the already horrible.... As I turned away his gaze righted again; but I knew him now. “I see ye know it,” he said.
“I do, sir,” I answered curtly over my shoulder. “What good the Platonists had of it I could never see, and, by your leave, I will confine myself to my stewardship, which I take to be the godlier business.”
“He, he!” he chuckled weakly. “Free from superstition, too!—So we both know it; good, we will talk of it later.”
“You shall pardon me,” thought I; and left him.
Here, then, was Cardan out-Cardaned; and there rose in my mind an image, not of this terrestrial sea that overwhelms the pleasant habitations of men, but of a dreader ocean, that of the terror of the Spirit, which, when men with anguish and labour have raised creeds and customs and laws against the void the thought of which they could not else endure, licks and laps till darkness cover all again. In this more heinous destruction and treason against all mankind this man trafficked.But if I am to tell my tale—or, rather, to set down this inconclusive record—I must trust you to take my meaning without further words.
The conversation of the bandy-legged servant was, as I should have expected, of the commonplace of desolate neighbourhoods, and I omit it that I may come the sooner to the man under whose influence, within a week, I found myself. For it was easier to say that I would have no commerce with him other than that of my office than it was to perform it; and, being inveigled willy-nilly into it, I salved my conscience by persuading myself that my study was of him and not of his theories. Unless you had read somewhat of the books I have mentioned, you would have found the fabric of folly that composed even the ordinary of his conjectures hard to credit; and since I cannot omit it altogether, it was of such stuff as this: Whether spirits do not commonly assume the globular shape, as being the most perfect of shapes; whether, could we but see them, the air might not be (as Leo Suavius held) thick with them as with snowflakes; whether that be true of the witches of Lapland,ecstasi omnia prædicere; and, above all, of the substance of spirits and of the texture of those light essences that, being divided, come with such celerity together again. That he should need a doctor to come over from Kingston twice in the week was little wonder to me; and when, shortly, this doctor persuaded me that my companionship would begood for my employer’s unsettled mind, I only stipulated that I should be spared that distortion of his face that had first shocked me.
The night whereon the invalid first broke his word in this respect was one evening in the middle of October, when I had been, maybe, a month at Skelf-Mary. For several days we had had thick, misty weather (I remember I had been that afternoon to the Decoy, and I leave it to you which was the more dismal, carr or coast), and the fog, penetrating the library, made haloes about the two tapers. The master’s face was very white and peaked that evening, and the little nodule of his hooked nose where bone joined cartilage showed sharply. The chamber was full of vague mists and shadows; now and then a ship’s horn hooted far out; we had ceased to talk; and while I had settled down to a bundle of lawyer’s tangle, he had apparently dozed over the book that was propped against his knees.
I know not what it was that caused me to look up, but I did so as if I had been bidden; and from the way his glassy corneas were set they might have been so for hours. He would no more have felt it had a fly crossed his eyeballs than do cattle. He had managed again to put himself into his trance, and instinctively I glanced over my shoulder to the upper end of the library.
“This is beyond the bargain, sir!” I cried, bringing my hand down on the table. He did not hear.I passed a taper before his eyes, but he did not see. It lasted for some minutes; then the balls traversed the farther end of the library, and the lids flickered and fell. He was asleep. Again I thumped the table, and he woke sluggishly.
“I had your promise,” I said sternly.
“Eh, eh? What’s that ye say?... I have been asleep.”
“Man, do you callthatsleep?——”
“Eh?... Ah, yes!... It is my weakness, sir, and ye shall pardon it,” he replied; and I truly believe that for the moment the creature felt a sort of contrition. Suddenly there came over me a feeling nearer to compassion than to disgust; God knows I am backward to judge those He has seen fit to set in the world with me; and I turned to him earnestly.
“’Tis for your own good,” I said in a moved voice; “good Heaven!... Tell me what you were looking at yonder.”
The weakness following that vile ecstasy seemed to have made him tractable. “’Tis not in the classics,” he muttered; “ye may walk through them without resistance ... how then should there be a mutilation?... I cannot see.”...
This I set down in pity to his lunacy, and he continued to mutter fragments. “A mischance to the mortal remains ... but the hinds inyonder vault were too terrified ... and then, what correspondence....I tell ye, sir, ye know nothing... why does it not reunite?”...
And as he chattered thus, I wondered that I, who dreaded no spectre, should dread exceedingly the mind that could so conjure one up.
On the morrow I again sought Watt the keeper; I had now a purpose, and as he packed hampers in a flat-bottomed boat he again sought to ward off my questions.
“What did he mean by mutilation? You said nothing to me,” I demanded; and “Ye didn’t ask me,” Watt replied; “——come, Bess!”
“And what’s this about a vault?”—“Ay, that’ll be th’ vault i’ th’ churchyard,” he answered; “ye’ll find th’ door there yet, all red wi’ rust and green wi’ verdigris.”
“Don’t fool me,” I cried; and with that the keeper turned fairly on me.
“So ye willn’t let it bide? Very well.—There’s little gossip i’ Skelf-Mary now, by reason o’ there being few folk, but I’ll be rid o’ what I know. They say it’ll be Eustace he sees, that was a priest; but ye needn’t tak’ that fro’ me. When he had th’ vault oppened he asked this and that and t’other, and if he says th’ men was flayed, he’s right.—They couldn’t sort out which were which—ye understand—and th’ breed’s as ugly living as dead to my way o’ thinking. He talked about nowt but ‘knees’ ... faugh! Whose knees he wanted ye know as much as me; but th’ sexton lives owerat Windlesea. Mysel’, I’m a decent wed man, and tak’ no count o’ ghosts and such, ye understand?”...
And Watt’s way of thinking being a good deal my own, I troubled him no further. But, busy as I was, I had found time within three days to see the sexton (who, professionally, had little reluctance), and had pieced roughly together this delusion of the afflicted Master’s. I know not whether it was Eustace who walked the library. That to all intents and purposes his mind conjured up some figure I was as convinced as I was that I myself should never see it. It has been enough for me that, looking where he looked, I have seen but air, while he has seen, stumping across a floor of boards, a shape on thighs that were broken midway.
And with this I come to my own confounding.
MYown apartment was one that had been made in the vaulting of the chapel by the insertion of a ceiling; and this ceiling or floor, having no underdrawing, but consisting simply of planks laid athwart the baulks, was little hindrance to the passage of sound. I now did most of my work here, and it was now my turn to hear him babbling half the night beneath me. Many times I could have raged to hear him; but, my wages being good, my own folly, had I quitted his service, would scarce have been less than his, and I began to welcome as a diversion each journey to Kingston or Beverley, where I had to consult with agents and lawyers.
For a good part of the estate was like to be well disposed of, and I had negotiations in hand for the fishing and shooting of the Decoy. Also, with the estate charged with the cost of proper draining, there was no bad prospect of farming, water-carriage being excellent and cheap. Now and then, for form, I went to see the Master in his bed; but the doctor and the servant knew more of his condition than I, and it was only afterwards that Ilearned how suddenly and alarmingly he had altered for the worse.
The Christmas Eve of that year I remember better than I wish. There was frost enough in the air to set the fires burning brightly, and to give to the stars a wonderful keenness; and so exhilarating was the night that I had taken a walk, returning by way of the forsaken village. But, home again, I noticed as I crossed the courtyard that an unusual number of lights were burning, and with a vague apprehension I made haste to enter.
The Master lay rigid on the bed, and the servant bathed his temples from a kitchen-vessel of vinegar; but it was less of vinegar than of a surgeon that he stood in need. It was useless to address him, seeing how his eyes again were; but when, coherently, though in a very weak voice, he spoke to me, it flashed upon me what had happened. He had, as I take it, strained the muscles of them, and was now cramped so; and even as I stood in awe of the stroke, gazing on the harpy-face, he made as if to point with his finger, and fell back in a fit with a horrid noise of gargling in his throat.
The doctor was due on the morrow, and I arranged with the servant watch and watch for the night. He took the first, and I retired to bed without undressing, and fell into a broken sleep.
I think the noise as of blows with a hammer must have mingled with some dream I had, for although I was conscious of it I did not readilyawake. Then I heard a cry. It was midnight by my watch, and I sprang from my bed and hurried to the library. As I set my hand to the rosewood door it was flung open, and the servant, blubbering like a child, all but embraced me. I pushed past him, and stopped.
Six feet within, in a huddle of blankets on the floor, lay the form of the Master of Skelf; I had to glance at the empty bed to realise it. One taper was overturned by his side, but the other showed the heavy poker that had been the cause of the knocking. The servant moaned that he had not dozed—had not dozed; but I know not how else the Master could have found opportunity, as he had found strength in his extremity (acting on who knows what revelation of his mad brain) to rise from his bed, reach the other end of the library, and to prise up a plank from the floor. Into the opening he had made his arm was plunged to the shoulder. I saw at once that he was dead; then I took the taper and peered down into the hole.
I withdrew his arm and composed his body; then deliberately I set to work to pull up the adjoining plank. It came half way up with a harsh noise, and the rusty nails bent and held it so; and all at once the poker fell from my hand, a violent shiver passed through me, and I found myself gazing stupidly at the older floor that lay a couple of feet beneath.
THEwhite walls of the farmhouse were hot and blinding to look upon in the sunlight, and the row of scoured dairy-pans and vessels that leaned against them blazed in spots like the sun himself. The hills across the narrow Dale quivered in the June afternoon as if seen over a furnace of charcoal, and no sounds were heard but the soft clucking of poultry and the heavy droning of the bees as they spun in and out of the bass-hives. The sky was of a bleached blue; the dripping from the spout of the pump dried where it fell on the baked earth; the smell of hay and hot dust filled the air; and in the grey limestone village lower down the valley not a soul was to be seen abroad.
Harriet Stubbs stood in her dairy at an upright churn. The lime-washed walls glowed with imprisoned sunlight, and only a narrow strip of shade lay without the door. She was six-and-thirty, too tall, too thin, too quick-moving. Rusty freckles gathered thickly over the bridge of hernose and spread over a face that was of the hue of washleather. Her lips had no red; the lower one was dented with an old frost-bite, now healed; and over the upper one a few straggling hairs showed. Her arms as she churned were sinewy as those of a man; and her bluntly-lidded grey eyes were searching and shrewish.
A rank whiff of tobacco came on the hot air, and a man of fifty crossed the bright yard and entered the dairy. She did not stop churning.
“Put that pipe out, Henry Butler; I’ll ha’ no reek i’ my dairy,” she cried; “I had a kern o’ butter as rank as owd hippins last week wi’ one o’ yon gormless wenches settin’ a stinkin’ cheese o’ th’ shelf; th’ De’il himself couldna watch some o’ ye.—An’ what brings ye up fro’ th’ Cotes?”
“I put a owd apron ower th’ horse’s head an’ rade up,” said the farmer, mopping his brow with an old snuff-handkerchief; “it’s blistering hot!”
“If ye cam’ thro’ th’ Cotes to tell me that I’m obliged to ye, but I kenned it, thank ye.”
“Nay, I come for a bit crack wi’ ye, Harriet, aboot yon lad o’ mine.”
“Ay?—Tak’ a turn at th’ kern, for ye could wring my shift.”
The farmer took the poss-stick in his knotted hands, and she mopped her freckled brow with her apron; then she sat a-straddle on the corner of the stone table and said: “what’s wrang wi’ Harry?”
“Wrang?” said the farmer, making the churn rock with his energy. “And what should be wrang wi’ short o’ ane-and-twenty but ye perdition women?”
“Ay,” said Harriet composedly, “we’re winsome things, an’ ye canna resist us; not that I’ve seen ye sweat overmuch wi’ trying. Is’t——?”
“Ay, is’t: yon black-haired besom, Bessie Wyatt; but th’ sullen trash is packing to-neet.”
“Packin’! An’ what’s Harry say?”
Farmer Butler scowled out over the hot stackyard.
“’Tis what I cam’ to talk to ye aboot.—Now i’ one word, Harriet: wad ye ha’ him?”
A little blood came into her dry cheeks.
“Ha’ him? Dost mean wed him?”
“Ay, and join the farms—there wadna be another property like it this side o’ Pateley Brigg.”
“He’s not sent thee?—Not he,” she said sourly; “I’d liefer he did his own courtin’.”
The farmer churned angrily, and she watched him keenly.
“Then by ——, he shall,” he cried, “or I’ll sell out and build a kirk!”
“Th’ Butlers’ll build a lot o’ kirks,” she remarked drily. “Wad I ha’ him? Well, I’ll answer him that when he asks me; but I’ll answer ye this now, Henry: They say th’ De’il likes to muck o’ a gurt lump, an’ th’ twa farms wad mak’ a pretty property; but a bonnie thing ’twadbe to hear th’ love he’d whisper to th’ flawpin’ Lad-lass Harriet Stubbs! ‘My own four-hundred acre! My darlin’ twenty-score head o’ beasts! My lovely farm an’ house an’ first mortgage o’ three rows o’ cottages i’ Pateley Town!’ A bonnie wooin’!—When he whispered ‘Bessie!’ at th’ side o’ me at neet I’d say: ‘’Tisna Bessie, love; ’tis thy precious ninety pund a year i’ th’ bank; kiss thy owd Skipton market; kiss thy butter an’ eggs; kiss thy bit o’ horse-trade!’ A pretty wooin’!—Happen I’d see him lookin’ yonderly-like i’ th’ chimley-corner, thinkin’ why I didna bring him a bairn; I’d say, ‘There’s young blood an’ bairns enow; we’ll adopt one, an’ thou can call it Bessie.’—Tch!—’Tis naughbut ye owd nontkates that thinks all women’s th’ same i’ th’ dark! Wadna I ken? Wadna I ken when I were his Bessie? Wadna I brak my heart, bein’ his Bessie? Wadna I brak all three o’ we’r hearts?—Not I, as it chances, for I’m any kind o’ a fool but that kind, so get thy kirk built, Henry. They ha’na named me Lad-lass for naught.”
“Thou doesna ken right what thou’s sayin’,” said the farmer.
“No? So we live and learn, but I thought I did,” she replied imperturbably. “Now thou’s had thy bit crack, an’ there’ll be a mug o’ ale for thee at th’ loupin’-stane.—When wilt call an’ mak love o’ thy own account, Henry? ’Twad be a rare thing to be wed i’ your ain kirk.”
The farmer passed out, and she turned to the churn again.
The butter would not come, and now and then she muttered a man’s oath. The strip of shade outside the door became narrower as the sun crept round. A burnished cock mounted a fence and shrilled out a call that rang over the hot valley, and she unbuttoned her bodice at the throat and fumed.
Suddenly the figure of a girl appeared in the doorway.
She was heavily, moodily handsome, and her coal-black hair escaped from a cotton bonnet that had been pink but was now almost white with washing and exposure to the sun. Her lad’s clogs were white with dust, her round arms were brown and bare above the elbow, and her dark beauty showed brilliantly in the cool light of the dairy.
“I ha’ come to say good-bye, Miss Stubbs,” she said timidly; “I leave to-night.”
Harriet pursed her faded, cracked lips, and blinked her eyes at the other’s shrinking loveliness.
“And thou’s come to say good-bye to me? Well, God grant we may al’ays ha’ more friends nor we ken; I thank ye.”
“I’m Bessie Wyatt, an’ I’ve slipped out unknown o’ purpose to see ye.”
“An’ that’s a jade’s trick, dodgin’ th’ last o’ your wark instead of straightenin’ up for them that’s to follow ye.”
“’Tis what I wad do—straighten up for her that’s to follow me—wi’ Harry.”
The last words were almost inaudible, and Harriet Stubbs let go the poss-stick.
“My garters, but here’s a coil about this Harry to-day! First his father wi’ his kirk-building, an’ then a milkin’-wench comin’ to say good-bye to neist to a stranger!—How’st mean, to follow ye wi’ Harry?”
Bessie’s bosom rose rapidly.
“An’ if a milkin’-wench makes bold for once wi’ th’ mistress o’ her own house an’ lands, ’tis that I ha’ lile time to waste. Miss Stubbs, ye’ll be—oh!—ye’ll be kind to him!” She buried her face in her sleeve against the white wall, and Harriet, bewildered, seized the poss-stick again.
“Is th’ lass gane daft? Here’s another doin’ thy courtin’ for thee, Harriet; thou’ll dee a wed woman yet, th’ next earthquake or th’ next after that.—Now, thou foolish wench, when thou’s done greetin’ happen thou’ll gi’e thy tongue a chance?”
“I am na’ greetin’,” said the girl, raising her big eyes that were quite dry, “an’ I’ll tell ye i’ four words. He wad ha’ borne me on to Rigg village, i’ Scotland, where Davie Laing th’ blacksmith weds ’em for a crown; but I wadna. He maun wed wi’ his father’s goodwill, if it braks my heart; an’ I ken who that is. ’Twad be a sin to lo’e him, another’s; I winna think mair o’ him, an’ I’ll see him na mair.”
Harriet bent her eyes on her.
“So that’s it? Thou’s like Joss Tait, th’ cobbler, who says fowk’s welcome to what he doesn’t want. I’m obliged to ye, Miss Elizabeth Wyatt.—Why, thou hussy,” she broke out suddenly, but she looked away from Bessie, “hast th’ face to come here wi’ thy handin’s-on? Daur ye tell me I canna choose where I like? D’ye tell me I’m six-and-thirty, an’ ha’ packthread o’ my lip, an’ maun be thankful for what I can get?—Ay, but I ken Harry Butler better nor ye, an’ he’s a bonnie ’un to ken—a bonnie ’un to ken!”
“Ye ken na wrang o’ him!” the girl said, flashing her handsome eyes suddenly.
“Tch, ye baggage, dinna tell me what I ken, chance I fetch ye a thwack wi’ th’ poss-stick! I maun tak’ ower thy cast-off an’ be kind to him!—Are his kisses o’ thy lips this day?”
“Ay, are they!” the girl replied proudly, “an’ wad they were branded there wi’ a coal if I could remember him th’ longer for it!”
Harriet winced, and fixed her shrewish eyes on Bessie.
“So that’s thy forgettin’ him that’s another’s! Well, I bless th’ Lord for every freckle I’ve got, for ye red and black witches, good men losses their heads at th’ blink o’ th’ de’il i’ your een! Scotland! Are ye na feared o’ Rebecca an’ her Sweepin’s, then?”
“I’d ha’ feared naught; but ’tis ower.”
“Nor th’ men-women ye mought meet at any Pike?”
“I’d ha’ feared naught; but I’m leavin’ him.”
“An’ ye cam to say good-bye to me?”
Bessie turned half away, and spoke over her shoulder.
“Ay, an’ to tell one that I thought were a woman that which if onnybody told it to me wad ha’ been gentler ta’en, an’ happen a tear betwixt th’ two on us.”
Harriet laughed a short, dry laugh.
“I kenned it when I saw ye come in, bairn; an’ now here’s a makkin’ o’ butter settled an’ spoiled. Nay, nay; ye cam’ to gi’e me naught; ye cam’ to greet o’ this bosom o’ mine, if I naughbut had one. Well, greet, bairn.—Thou fool!” she whispered, as Bessie laid her cheek, sobbing, on her flat breast, “up-saddle to-neet, an’ off wi’ him! De’il tak’ me, he lo’es thee; up-saddle an’ off! Rebecca wadna mell on ye; ’tis for the poor fowk she sweeps—th’ poor fowk that bides at home an’ pays under th’ Pike Act for th’ roads that th’ rich gads about on. Has—has he said he lo’es ye?”
“Ay, a thousand times!” Harriet closed her eyes for a moment.
“Then, up an’ off, wer’t i’ thy sark! Harry wad never ha’ had me, e’en if I’d ha’ had him; I’m naughbut an owd shoe to fling at others’weddings; I’m ... up an’ off, to-neet, Bessie; ’tis odds a blacksmith can weld as strong a hoop as a parson!”
* * * * *
The hot June night had fallen two hours back, and the full moon bathed a dozen dales in a soft brilliance. The hills swam in mysterious shadows, and not a breath stirred the tall field-flowers in the meadows. Now and then the cry of a nightjar was heard or that of a corn-crake; and now and then a tree would seem to sigh gently of itself in the still night. The road, of a silver-grey, dipped and wound and disappeared, reappearing a mile or two ahead where it crept over the shoulder of some moonlit moss.
The young man drove the quick-trotting mare in the trap with his right hand, and his left held the girl. Her face was heavy with drowsiness. From time to time she glanced at the trees and fields and shapes of hill and dale in the dreamy moonlight; and as they passed under the dark hawthorn hedges she murmured: “Th’ flowers looks like spirits.... How far are we now, love?”
“Yon’s Newton Moss, an’ ower it Lang Preston. We’se be at Litton Pike i’ an hour, an’ Horton by day-leet. We’ll put up i’ Sedbergh till to-morn th’ neet.—What is’t, love?”
She drew closer to him.
“I tell’d Harriet I wadna be feared, but Rebecca dresses i’ women’s clothes, an’ blacks her face, an’burns yetts an’ toll-houses.—Hark! Dost hear naught at th’ back o’ us?”
“Again, my precious! Nay, there’s naught; an’ I doubt Rebecca wadna sweep as far as Litton. True, she might; she’s busy these nights; but ’tis time enow to meet trouble when it meets ye. Sitha; thou can see into Lancashire; yon’s Pendle.”
The girl took a sharp breath at the sight of the great valley on the left flooded with moonlight, and at the dim mountain rising fifteen miles away; then she pressed close to Harry and said: “I’se gan to sleep awhile; I can scarce keep my een oppen.”
“Then sleep, sweetheart.”
He kissed her, and she slept almost immediately. Slowly the moon touched the summit of her arc and began to decline; the hour of midnight came faintly over the hills from some distant church-tower; and the mare sped tirelessly along the road towards Litton Turnpike.
* * * * *
The setting moon showed no more than half her shape over the crest of Litton Wood, and the old grey stone village under the Brow was lost in night. No sound broke the profound stillness of the Dale, not so much as the rustle of a stalled beast nor the moving of a bird in its nest; and the Bear lay low over the dark fell across the valley. The single stroke of a bell broke fromthe church belfry, pealed, spread away and failed over the Dale as ripples spread over a still pond; and the silence closed in again.
A faint confused noise, a mile and more away, arose, hardly audible at first. Slowly the noise drew nearer, and snatches of singing could be heard, and a dull thumping on a drum or tub. As it swelled and drew still nearer a light appeared in an upper window, and a man’s head was pushed forth from the casement. Candles showed in other windows; more heads appeared; single voices could now be distinguished in the approaching hubbub; and a street door was thrown open and a man in his shirt and trousers shouted: “Th’ Rebeccas!”
In ten minutes three-score men had swarmed up the village street.
You would hardly have known they were men save by their voices. Their faces were hideously smeared with soot, all but their eyelids, which showed grotesquely white when they blinked. They wore the petticoats of women, gaping, fastened with belts or hitched up with string, and they carried lighted lanterns. Half of them bore faggots on their shoulders, other brooms of rush and twig. They thumped on tubs, sang doggerel songs, and whooped up at windows; and at the clamour they made many of the Litton folk retired within their houses, barring the doors and watching the commotion from the windows.
“Mun t’ poor mak rooads for t’ rich to use?” a voice bawled; and in a kind of droning singsong came a chorus of “Sweep, Rebecca, Sweep!”
Their feet caught in their skirts as they capered, and some had rolled their petticoats about their waists, showing their men’s legs beneath. Some had shawls tied over their head, others bonnets; and they lighted pipes at the lanterns. A big fellow demanded the name of the toll-keeper.
“’Tis Matthy Lee, an owd man,” a piping voice replied. “What gars Rebecca sweep so far fro’ hame?”
“Shoo’ll sweep fro’ here to London Town afore shoo sets t’ broom back i’ t’ corner.—I wish there were more wind; a bit o’ breeze mak’s a merry sweepin’.”
“Eh, all’s as dry as kin’lin’-wood this weather. Which is t’ road?”
“This road; step out, lads.”
The leaders set off through the village towards the pike that lay a little way beyond it. The others followed; the singing sounded fainter and fainter down the road, and a few of the Litton men, half dressed, walked after them at a distance.
The single-storied, white-painted toll-house was in darkness, and the white bar-gate glimmered across the road. The dancing lanterns and the singing drew near it, and the hubbub roused the old pike-keeper, who unbarred his door and peered forth, his nightcap on his head. He had lighted a candle, and his nutcracker face showed scaredin the light of it. “The Lord save us!” he said tremblingly; and then the begrimed faces of the Rebeccas, their white eyelids blinking ludicrously, swarmed at the pike.
“Gate! Gate!” they bawled; “three score noblemen’s come to pay their gatecloys!” and one fellow shouted: “If thou wants to save thy bits o’ sticks, owd man, out wi’ ’em into th’ road!”
“My garden! My garden!” the old man whimpered. “Dinna walk ower my garden!”
They laughed. He was thrust aside, and a dozen men climbed the gate and poured into the toll-house. They began to strip walls, to tear up matting, to bundle out bed and bedding, tables and chairs, and pans, and crockery. Others set faggots against the bar-gate, the wooden window-shuts, and the fuel-shed at the back of the house; and the old man sat among his chattels in the road and moaned: “My garden, my garden!”
Soon every faggot was disposed, and the men stood round.
“Ready?” they cried; and fire was laid to the twigs and faggots in a dozen places at once.
* * * * *
“Listen!” said Bessie Wyatt fearfully; “I’m sure there’s wheels at th’ back o’ us, Harry—I ha’ heard ’em this half-hour!”
“Ay, I hear ’em,” Harry replied grimly; “but th’ mare’s doin’ th’ best she can, an’ it’s what’s afore us that’s troublin’ me, sitha!”
She caught her breath.
“Yon’s never th’ dawn, Harry!”
“Not wi’out th’ dawn’s come i’ th’ north for once,” he muttered. “Come up, then, Polly!”
The mare sprang more quickly forward at the trailing of the whiplash over her quarters, and the dark hedges made a long blur on either hand. The odd brightness rose and sank over the distant fell.
“Rebecca afore, an’ th’ father ahint,” he said to himself, “an’ we canna hide th’ trap; we maun chance it. Come up, Polly!—Hark!—Ay, yon’s Beeswing; I ken her trot; thou canna leave Beeswing, Polly, poor lass; we can but go forrard. Polly’s my own, but I ha’ borrowed th’ trap. Come closer, Bess.”
“Oh, Harry, ha’ a care; we were a’most i’ th’ dike then! Sitha, how th’ hills swing!—Yon leet’s growin’ breeter.”
“We’se see at th’ next turn,” he said between his teeth.
“Ho’d me close.”
Again he touched the mare; the sombre fell seemed to close in on them, and then to open out again into a further fold. The luminousness ahead grew brighter, and an outlying barn flashed past. They took the dip at Litton village and the rise on the other side without a check; two of the trap wheels left the ground at the turn, touching again twenty yards further on; the light leaped; they saw the blazing toll-bar and the figures thatmoved about it; and Harry muttered, “We can but go forrard—nay, we maun stop. I could ha’ ta’en yon burnin’ yett alone, but wi’ lass and trap—we’re done!”
He drew up within a dozen yards of the blazing toll-house.
“Where are ye for?” the shape of a woman demanded, laying a man’s hand on the bridle.
“Horton—Sedbergh—Carlisle. For God’s sake, fling yon yett back!”
“Wi’ whose leave?”
“Th’ leave o’ Rebecca—aught—oppen th’ yett! ’Tisna th’ likes o’ us ye want to keep. We’re poorer nor ye, an’ followed. Fling th’ yett back, an’ let’s be on!”
The man looked the vehicle up and down.
“A tidy trap an’ mare for a poor man! Followed, are ye? Down ye get, both on ye—a lass, begow! We’re that mony lasses to-neet a man gits mixed ameng ’em.—Followed, are ye? I’m none so capped at that; poor men doesn’t drive traps an’ mares like yon; we arena thieves.—Tak’ th’ mare out.”
The mare was fastened to a tree, and Harry—Bessie wide-eyed at his side—watched the spectacle. Cattle gazed over walls, and moths and buzzards fluttered here and there. The ceiling-baulks of the toll-house bulged beneath the weight of the flagged roof, and the red glare of the fire lighted the filthy faces on which the sweat had trickledand run into the soot. Sparks and flame streamed straight upwards, and a fierce crackling mingled with the shouts of the men. The old toll-keeper on his heap of furniture held his head in his hands and moaned, “My garden, my garden!”
“’Tis awful!” said Bessie, shuddering and pressing closer to Harry.
Suddenly a dozen voices burst forth in a cry of “Heigh, there—stop!” The man who had spoken to Harry turned to him and said, “Yon’s som’b’dy after a trap an’ mare”; and Farmer Butler roared, “D—— ye, hands off! Where is he?”
“Rebecca hes him, same as shoo hes thee,” somebody replied; and Farmer Butler and Harriet Stubbs descended from the trap. Harriet’s sharp eyes scanned the rabble eagerly; they met Harry’s; and while the men-women gathered about Butler with questions she slipped quickly to his side.
“I couldna’ set him wrang—there’s naughbut one road—ye’s get awa’ yet,” she said low and rapidly. “De’il be good to us, what a seet!—Get ye amang th’ villagers yonder, Harry, an’ dinnat be seen; I’se manage for ye. Can th’ mare carry th’ two o’ ye a post or so? Awa’, an’ dinnat be seen. Wait for me yonder, an’ dinnat let him see ye.... Now, Henry, her’s ane o’ ’em, an’ t’ither winna be far off.”
“Bide ye wi’ this unskelped hussy while I find him!” cried the farmer.
“Nay—I spy him!” said Harriet. “Yonder he is!” She darted off, and mingled with the men. Her eyes shone, and she seemed to set herself to some effort.
A huge fellow barred her way.
“Where for, i’ such a hurry?” and she broke into a shrill laugh.
“My ain gait, my owd love—kiss thy Nancy!” She took the man’s bleared face between her hands, and set her own cheek against it.
“Out, ye trollop!”
“An’ out yoursel’, ye greasy muck-slut; tch, ye filthy dozen! Here’s my man.—Doady, come, let’s shak’ a leg, Doady! Wilt dance wi’ thy Nancy? ‘Shak’ it a little, a little, a little. An’ turn ye roundabout!’” she sang, and flung her arms about another fellow. “Nay, thou’s beslubbered my face, chuck; never heed; ain muck’s sweet, an’ thou’s my ain Charlie; a kiss, now! Sink, but we’re as threng as three i’ a bed! Hey, my bonnie black boys!” She turned this way and that among the men, making herself outrageous; and then she slipped out of the ring and sought Harry.
She found him, hidden from the leaping of the fire behind the old pike-keeper’s heap of furniture.
“Whatever are ye doin’ here, Harriet?” he whispered.
“Tch! Dinnat waste a minute,” she replied hoarsely; “come, thy face. There’s th’ mucko’ a dozen greasy rascals here,” she chattered, as she besmirched him. “I’ll lend thee brass for another trap i’ Horton—whisht! ye gormless fool; tak’ it an’ owe it! I ha’ scarce grime enow; we maun mak’ it do. Faugh, what a stock-pot it is! But ’tis worth a crown a scrape. Lig thy cheek agen mine, Harry.—There, there, twa seconds; all th’ muck we can!” He felt how she trembled throughout her frame. “Now thou’s foul enow for hell-kitchen.—O my heart!—Come, don this, quick!”
Her hands fumbled at her waist, and she thrust a petticoat down hurriedly. He stared like a wittol.
“Dinnat stand there gapin’ like a throttled cat; step into ’t, an’ put this about thy shoulders. De’il tak’ me if th’ Lad-lass isna mair a man nor onny o’ em! But woman maist: O Harry!—Awa’ wi’ thee now! I’ll go smear Bessie, an’ ye maun off o’ th’ mare. Here’s brass—an’ bless ye!”
She was off with her hand at her breast.
“Where is he?” the farmer roared. He was at Harry’s elbow, but did not recognise him; and Harriet drew Bessie towards the tree where the mare stood, and fouled her face. “Up ye get; leave room for him i’ front; he can swing up by th’ branch. Nay, he’d best lead her ower by yon pasture.” Bessie flung her arms about Harriet’s neck.
“Oh, Harriet!” she said chokingly; “whether we get awa’ or not, how I lo’e thee!”
“Ho’d thy whisht; dinnat begin to be a fool now! He’ll hire a trap i’ Horton; ye’ll be i’ Sedbergh to-morn; nay, to-day, for sitha at th’ hills yonder. I’ll tak’ th’ linchpins out o’ both traps. Here, rub this bit o’ earth on, an’ tee th’ han’kercher round thy chin! And now kiss me afore I go find him.—Th’ hengments! What’s yon?”
A sudden new roaring and crackling had broken forth from the toll-house. The roof stones had crashed through the burnt baulks, and from the standing walls fountains of fire and sparks shot high into the sky, as if from a huge Jack-in-the-box. The rioters shouted and danced madly, the old pike-keeper looked up with a dazed look, and the birds hopped in the illuminated trees. “Now I’ll send him, while that’s amusin’ ’em,” Harriet muttered; she pressed Bessie’s hand—all of her she could reach—against her cheek for a moment; then she disappeared among the shouting crowd.
* * * * *
The hills in the east were revealed against the grey sky. A light breeze drifted the smoke from the toll-house in the direction of Litton village, and the glow shone luridly on the rolling masses. A cock gave a rousing call, and was answered from farm to farm throughout the grey dale. “Barnaby Bright, langest day an’ shortest night,” a farmer muttered; and russet frets appeared over the hills. The fire burned down, and the embers glowed through a white ash. The Rebeccas were gatheredtogether for departure; and Harriet Stubbs, a grimy, ungainly figure, in a short under-petticoat that revealed her sharp tibias, stood a little apart and watched a man in a woman’s attire who led a horse with a figure upon it quietly round by a wall and down a pasture to the open northward road. Farmer Butler was cursing here and there, and shouting, “Harriet! Harriet Stubbs!”