(Written in her French Exercise Book by Miss Elsie Stennis.)
I left home on Friday morning at about the usual time—perhaps five minutes sooner. It was a fine morning—wintry, bright, just enough snow underfoot to crisp the road, and enough tingle in the air to make the buds of the willows glitter with rime.
I was reading as I walked. I always do on my way to school, having learned when quite a girl. It gets over the road. Besides, if you don't want particularly to see any one—that is a reason.
Not that I was expecting to see anybody—least of all Joe Yarrow. He had his "Caws"—let him be content. That was what I was saying to myself. But just at the corner where there is a square inset—or outset—in which they crack stones with a hammer to mend the bad places, I slackened a little. There was such an interesting piece in the French grammar—all about the rules for the conversational use of "en" and "y"—that I went a bit slower, just to make it out. The sense was difficult to follow, you know.
Besides, I heard a noise like the sound of footsteps behind me. I knew that it could only be that donkey Joe, broke loose from his rookery; so, of course, I did not turn round, nor make the least sign. Why should I, indeed? I am not Harriet Caw.
But I heard a voice, which I knew in a minute was not Joe's, calling out—
"Miss Stennis! Miss Stennis!"
That made me turn, as, of course, it would any one, just to see who it could be.
And it was Miss Orrin—the elder one they call Aphra. You never saw such a change in any woman. She looked like a minister's widow, or some one of good family, living quietly and dressed in mourning. She had a black dress—fine silk, it was, quite real—of an old fashion, certainly, but no more so than you see at hydropathics and other places to which old solitary ladies come for the purpose of talking over their infirmities with one another. I was once at the Clifton one with mother—oh, so long ago, before leaving Wood Green! But I seem to remember these times better than things more recent. I really can't help telling about it, though I am wasting my paper, I know. I used to think there was nothing funnier in the world than to see two very deaf old ladies, neither taking the trouble to listen to the other, lecturing away to each other—only agreeing with the nods of each other's head. One would be talking about the Primrose League at her native Pudley-in-the-Hole, and the other—the learned one—about the internal state of South Nigeria, as illustrated by the fact that her grandson had not seen an ordained clergyman for four years!
"Think what his spiritual condition must be by this time, my dear! Such things ought not to be allowed in a Christian country, under the flag of England!"
"No, indeed," agreed the other, who had not heard a word. "Of course, it was all the doing of that Gladstone. Even one of the lecturers who came to speak to us, he was all for work among the lower classes. As if we could admit the like of them into our League—people who have strikes, wear red ties, and read Socialist papers! Really, dear, it was expecting too much, though he was an archbishop's son!"
"Yes; and my grandson wrote home for books to read—to be sent out by a friend, an officer on a river gunboat—I think his name was Judson. His life has been written by somebody whose books I don't consider at all suitable for James. And so I went down to the Curates' Aid and got a list of everything likely to be of service to one who for four years had been devoid of all means of grace. But I fear they never reached my poor James. For when he came home, and I asked him about them, he did not seem ever to have read any of them. But I dare say it was that Judson's fault. With these naval officer men you never can tell. I dare say the sailors divided them up among themselves on the voyage out!"
"Exactly. What we wanted, was, of course, to keep our League select. No one very swell, but well connected, and all most careful about appearances——"
"And my grandson in Nigeria brought home a lot of crocodiles and a rare postage stamp, or a rare crocodile and a lot of postage stamps—I am not sure which. Anyway, I would not have it. I said he could not keep both in my house. He must give either to the Zoo. But I don't know——"
And so on. It was fun, and now I like to remember it, though it does fill up the pages of my note-book even when I am writing very small. Still, it is always something to do.
Well, Miss Orrin was dressed just like these ancient hydropathickers. Only, she was as alert as a fox and as demure as a mouse, in spite of being in a kind of mourning, with a big jet crucifix on a thick jet chain. That was the only thing about her that was not as sober and serious as a fifty-year-old tombstone. She had such a lot of jet ornaments about her, all cut into symbolic shapes, that she moved with a clitter-clatter, just like a little dog walking on a chain with fal-de-rals on its collar.
But, withal, she had such a grave air that I never once thought of laughing. Miss Aphra was not a person to laugh at in the gayest of times.
"Miss Stennis," she said, "I know you have not been well received at the house of your nearest relative. I am acquainted with all the long-continued ill-usage so unjustly dealt out to your mother and yourself. Long have I tried my best to bring your grandfather to a better frame of mind. But he is a dour old man—indurated, impervious to good influence. But what I was unable to do all these years, the near approach of death has brought about. When the angel Israfel passes upon his wings of darkness, then the heart hears and is afraid!"
At these last words she showed a countenance as it were transfigured. It was the first glimpse of her former madness that I observed about the woman.
"But what do you wish me to do?" I asked, knowing well that she would not seek me without a purpose.
"Your grandfather, Mr. Howard Stennis, is dying," she said solemnly. "He has had a stroke, and may pass away at any moment. Two doctors from Longtown and East Dene have come all the way to visit him. They give no hope. But he gets no rest, crying out constantly that he cannot die without seeing you. And you must come instantly. I am here to beseech you. Behold in me the spirit of a father pleading for a daughter's forgiveness."
She seized me by the arm. In a sudden access of terror, I wrenched myself free, and instantly Miss Orrin began to sob. She sank on her knees before me.
"I know I have no right to ask," she said. "You have been shamefully treated, and have no need to forgive. But as you hope for pardon yourself, hasten and come to your grandfather, that he may hear you pardon him before he dies. If not, the sin of his uneasy spirit will be upon your head! Besides"—her voice dropped to a whisper—"there is something that he wishes to confess to you concerning your mother. It is on his conscience. He cannot die without telling you. Come—come! By the forgiveness you hope for yourself, or for those dear to you, I bid you come!"
I lifted her up, and obeying a sudden impulse, I turned with her down the lane which led from the corner where she had surprised me, away from the school-house. I cannot tell you how I came to do it. I had expected—why, I know not—some one else to meet me there. Well, I suppose I may say—Joe Yarrow. And the thought that he was philandering his time away with those Caws made me ready for almost anything.
Besides, I had been to Moat Grange House before. I knew that Mr. Ablethorpe went there regularly, and that he had services with the poor mad folk. So I was not nearly so afraid of Aphra Orrin as I had been.
It was bright and clear still, though the morning was overcasting a little, as we passed through the meadows. There is a private road most of the way till you enter the woods of Deep Moat. The people of the Moat Grange, therefore, never had any need to cross Brom Common or go the way that we had always taken—Joe and I—on our expeditions and researches.
All the way Miss Orrin talked incessantly of my grandfather, of how that he had been like a saviour to her poor sisters and herself, receiving them when they would have been shut up in an asylum, and of a certainty would have died there. She spoke also of his kindness to herself.
"They call him the Golden Farmer," she said. "And of a truth that is what he has been to us, for his heart is of pure gold."
I ventured to suggest that the folk of the countryside held a very different opinion of Mr. Stennis. But I could not have made a more unfortunate remark. In a moment the fire of madness flashed up from her eyes. The colour fled her lips. Her fingers twitched as if drawn by wires. She was again the mad woman I had seen leading the procession of the little coffins. "The folk of the countryside!" she screamed. "Ranging bears, wild beasts of the field! Oh, I could tear them to pieces! Gangs of evil beasts, slow bellies, coming here roaring and mouthing, trampling my lily beds, uprooting everything, laying waste the labour of years. Oh, I would slay them with my hands—yes, root out and destroy, even as Sodom and as Gomorrah!"
And suddenly lifting up her hands with the action of a prophetess inspired, she chanted—
O daughter of Babylon,Near to destruction,Bless'd shall he be that thee rewardsAs thou to us hast done.
Yea, happy, surely, shall he be,Thy tender little ones,Who shall lay hold upon, and themShall dash against the stones.
I trembled, as well I might, at the fury I had unwittingly kindled.
We were now in the woods, the main travelled road far behind us, a complexity of paths and rabbit tracks all about, and before us a green walk, dark and clammy, upon which the snow had hardly yet laid hold. On one side rose up the wall of an ancient orchard, which they said had been planted and built about by the monks of old. On the other was the moat, still frozen, only divided from us by an evergreen fence, untrimmed, thick, and high, probably contemporary with the orchard.
Suddenly, at the entrance to this green tunnel, Aphra Orrin turned and grasped me by both wrists. Her face, as it glowered down at me, had become as the face of a fiend seen fresh from the place of the Nether Hate.
"Jeremy, Jeremy!" she cried. And at the sound of her voice it came to me that of a certainty I had fallen into a trap. This was not the road to the House of Deep Moat. I ought to have known better. I had been drawn hither solely to be murdered. I tried to scream, but could not. As in a dream, when one is chased by terrible things out of the Unknown, speech left me. I felt my knees weaken. And, indeed, had I been as strong as ever I was in my life, of what use would my strength have been? For there, at the entrance of the green tunnel, stood Mad Jeremy, smiling and licking his lips.
Meantime Aphra Orrin held me, shaking me to and fro as a terrier might a rat. She was as strong as most men—stronger, indeed, with the madness that was in her.
"Slay the daughter of Babylon! Slay her! Slay, and spare not!" she cried.
And while I stood thus, trembling violently, with that dreadful woman gripping my wrists so that she hurt them, Jeremy came leisurely up with his hands in his pockets—sauntering is the word that will best express it. He bent down and looked at me. For he was very tall. And I looked up at him with, I dare say, wide and terrified eyes. How indeed, could they be otherwise?
"Where is your knife?" cried Aphra Orrin. "Quick! Make an end—do as with the others! This is the last seed of iniquity. She will take from us our riches—all that should be ours—hard earned, suffered for, all that lies under the green turf—all you have won, Jeremy, and I have paid for twice over with weary nights of penance. That old man would steal it from us, from us who gained it for him, to give it all to this pretty china doll he calls his granddaughter!"
Had it been the will of Aphra Orrin at that moment, the opportunity would have been wanting for me to fill this copybook with these notes, to pass the weary time. For she loosened one hand, and snatched at the knife in Mad Jeremy's belt—the same we had once seen in his teeth when he swam the Deep Moat to get at Joe and me.
But happily, or so it appeared at the time, Mad Jeremy was in another humour. He thrust his sister off, and, as it seemed, with the lightest jerk of one hand he took me out of her clutches.
"Na, na," he said; "this dainty queen is far ower bonnie for a man like me to be puttin' the knife into as if she were a yearling grice. The knife for the lads that winna pay the ransom, if ye like. But a bonnie lass, and the heiress to a' the riches at the Grange—auld Hobby's hoards—I tell ye, her and me will do fine, Aphra! Let her be, Sis, or you and me will quarrel. Ay, ay, and maybe ye will find oot what the blade o' my gully knife is for. We will see if ye hae ony bluid o' your ain in your veins, Sis—you that's sae fond o' seein' the colour o' ither folks'!"
"Never—never! You lie, Jeremy!" cried Aphra. "I know nothing about that. I swear I am ignorant. As to Elsie Stennis, I did but jest. At any rate, she must not see her grandfather. He is in a foolish mood, and might take us from house and manor, roof and shelter, house and bedding—ay, all that by right belongs to us. Besides"—here she moved up closer to her brother—"she knows too much. She might prove a telltale, and then you, Jeremy, would be hanged—hanged by the neck till you were dead!"
She repeated the words with a space between each, sinking her voice till it ended in a hoarse whisper.
"Na, na!" cried Jeremy. "I but helpit the puir craiturs oot o' their misery. They cried na long. And then they wad be that pleased to hae nae mair trouble, but juist to lie doon agang the lily beds and forget a' the cares o' the warl'!"
"Hush, hush, Jeremy!" cried Aphra. "Think what you are saying, brother. But bethink yourself, brother dear, you must make an end now. The girl has heard too much, and that from your own lips."
Mad Jeremy ran his fingers through his long, glossy ringlets with something like a smirk.
"Na, na," he said, "I can better that! She shall bide in the cove behind the muckle oven, where three times a week Jeremy bakes the bread. She will be fine and warm there. Nothing to do but set her soles against the waa', and in a trice she will be as comfortable as a ha'penny breakfast roll. No like yin I could name—ha, ha!—freezin' in the——"
But this time Aphra fairly sprang upon him, putting her hand over his mouth to stop his speech.
"Oh, that I should be troubled with fools that know not their own folly," she cried—"I, that have given more than my life, almost my soul, for these poor things, my sisters and my brother, yet who will not be guided by me!"
Mad Jeremy laughed cunningly, or rather, perhaps, emitted a cackling sound.
"Be guided by you, Aphra?" he said. "No, and I don't think! Jeremy may be mad, but he kens a trick worth two of that. He will keep this little ladybird safe—oh, very safe, till the wedding dress is ready! Heiress if you like, sister. But then Jeremy will be the heir. And a bonnie, bonnie bride he will hae into the bargain. Come your ways, hinny—come your ways!"
He spoke to me with a curious, caressing voice, bowing low like a dancing master, with his broad bonnet in his hand, and making all sorts of ludicrous gestures to prove that I would be safe with him.
I did not know what to do. From the woman I had nothing to expect but a knife at my throat, and yet to accompany Mad Jeremy! That I could not do.
Suddenly I screamed aloud at the top of my voice, hoping that some one would hear me and come to my assistance. But Mad Jeremy only put his arm about me and covered my mouth with one great hairy paw.
"Gently then, lass—nane o' that, noo! It wanna do," he said, not angrily at all, but rather like one soothing an infant; "ye see there's nae workers in the fields thae winter days. And if there were hail armies, they wad kep wide o' the Deep Moat Wood, for they hae seen Jeremy gang in there a gye wheen times—ech, aye!"
And picking me up in his arms as easily as a babe, Mad Jeremy carried me into an ivy-covered ruin, and after that all was a labyrinth of passages and tunnels till I found myself in the place where I wrote these notes.
The chamber into which Jeremy led me was small, but it had evidently been used for a sleeping-room before. A couch was placed in the corner. There were chairs and even a table. But I saw at the first glance that the window, placed high in the vaulted roof, was unglazed, but barred.
"It is not precisely a palace, so to speak," said Jeremy, shaking his long snaky curls, and smiling his unctuous thin-lipped smile; "but in comparison wi' some—mercy me, but ye should be content. Ye will be braw and warm here. This was never aught but a cosy corner—see, bonnie lass! There's the auld monks' wark—the oven where they baked their pies!"
And taking my hand in his great one he slapped the wall which ended my prison vault, cutting it, as it were, into two parts. It was, in fact, quite as warm as the fingers could bear, and most of the time since has kept an equal temperature—though, if anything, a little stifling on baking days.
"Here ye shall bide," said Jeremy, standing dark and lithe in the doorway; "I myself shall be your keeper, but think not but that Jeremy Orrin kens bravely how to behave himself to a leddy. Ye will wait here, sacred as St. Theresa, till the wedding gown is prepared and the table spread. But Jeremy will feed his ladybird with his own hand three times a day—nor shall his sister Aphra put so much as a pot stick in the cooking, for fear of mistakes! She's a fine lass, Aphra, when ye ken her, but little to trust to when she has a spite against ye. Stick you by Jeremy, leddy, and he will stick by you!"
After he was gone, and the silence had re-established itself, listening intently, I caught the sound of water flowing somewhere near, and lifting up a little square of wood let into the stone floor in the angle behind the couch, I saw black water creeping sullenly along underneath my dungeon—probably the outlet of the Moat Pond on its way to join the Brom Water. And I could not keep thinking of the fate of those "others," who had not the doubtful but yet puissant protection of Jeremy. The trapdoor was certainly large enough to take a man, and the water, creeping ice-free down to the Moat Pond, would tell no tales. As it was I tore one or two little notes sent me by Joe into the smallest pieces, and watched them float away—that I might in no way connect him with the miseries into which my foolish confidence had brought me.
I was altogether alone. On the table Jeremy had put a candle with matches. When he brought my evening meal of porridge, cooked in the monks' bakery by himself, he asked if I wanted anything to read.
"I canna aye gie ye my company," he said. "What wi' the maister bein' no well, I hae great stress o' business—but can ye read?"
I told him that I could, and awaited with some curiosity the books which Mad Jeremy would bring me. His choice was better than I could have expected. It comprisedDriver's Complete Farriery,The Heather Lintie, (poems), a book of sermons with the titleIn Hoc Signo—or something like that—Markham's Complete Housewife, Cavendish on Whist, and two huge volumes ofPinkerton's Voyages.
"I wad hae brocht ye a Bible, too, but Aphra micht hae noticed," he said. "There's mair nor a packet o' candles in the press, forbye a half loaf if ye are hungrysome i' the nicht-time. It's little likely that ye will ken how to play the fiddle?"
I told him I had no such skill, at which he sighed.
"I was dootin' that," he said. "If ye had I could hae played the seconds to ye fine! But Jeremy can play for twa when the fit is on him. Ye never heard Jeremy. He has a fiddle that is a real—Jeremy forgets the name—but it's real something awesome grand. And that's a deal mair than maist braw folk can say o' their fiddles. For they are maistly made i' the Gressmarket o' Edinbory! There's a melodeon, though, wi' silver keys, that's better still. But Hobby winna gie Jeremy the siller to buy it. It's in Lithgow's window at Langtoon, and some day it will be Jeremy's ain. Maybe afore ye think. Then he will come and play ye the bonnie music. Ye can dance, Elsie? Eh, that's weel. Jeremy canna dance, but he can play the bonnie music to dance till, and it's the finest sicht in the world to see a feat young lass footing it dentily to 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley' or 'Tullochgorum.'"
After Jeremy was gone, I went over many things in my mind. Whatever part my grandfather Stennis had taken in the disappearances of Harry Foster, Riddick of Langbarns, Lang Hutchins the drover, and Joe Yarrow's father, obviously he had nothing to do with this. Therefore, I could only hope and pray that he was alike innocent of the others.
Not that the justice, or injustice, of the country would in any case hold him guiltless. He it was who had brought this wild crew about the lonely and formidable House of the Grange. Because of them the Deep Moat glimmered through a mist of fear, and the sullen expanse of the Moat Pond had its waters, like once on a time the Nile, turned by the evening sun into blood.
Still, I should be glad, even in my own heart, to be able to think better of my mother's father, even if no one agreed with me.
Having seen the disturbances which followed the disappearances of Harry Foster and Mr. Yarrow, I pleased myself with the thought that soon my prison house would be broken open, and this foul brood of birds of prey compelled to flee for their lives. But I had not forgotten that it was the return of Harry's blood-stained mail cart which had awakened suspicion, and in the case of Joe's father, the coming back of the mare by way of the locked door of the yard. But a girl with half a dozen books under her arm, on her way to teach a few infants in a school, would be in a very different position. Joe and Nance Edgar would ask questions, doubtless. But I had quarrelled with the one, and never really been open or companionable with the other. So it might be said (was indeed said) that I had taken French leave of Breckonside in a fit of temper, and had gone off to meet friends, or to teach in a school for which I had long been applying. Indeed, the postman had brought me an official blue paper that morning, by virtue of which I was informed of my registration as a regular certificated teacher under the Act of 1871.
As a matter of fact, there was even a greater upheaval after my departure, but owing to doubts, and to the want of outward and visible signs to provoke it, the outburst seemed longer in coming. I considered myself, indeed as girls often do, much more friendless than I really was.
Then began in my oven prison a period of great silence and regularity. In writing the tale, I am following the entries in my diary day by day, and shall endeavour to make a story out of them as best I can. There is really little to tell, romantic as the circumstances were. As Mad Jeremy had truly said, the place was warm enough. The absence of the light of day was what I felt the most—also the lack of all sound, either of human voice or any living creature. Each alternate weekday I could hear Jeremy raking his fire to its proper heat before thrusting in the pans containing his batch of bread. Thrice every day he would come to bring me something to eat. But never did he offer me the least violence all the time I remained in the vaulted chamber.
Perhaps the moon was in good season. Perhaps the fool had regained a little sanity in the mere act of going contrary to his sister. At any rate his madness showed itself chiefly in his bringing every sort of musical instrument to my prison house. Upon these he played with considerable skill, but with a strange, weird, irresponsible irony running through even the most familiar tunes—something, as one might say, like "God save the King" played by the host's own piper, when George the Fourth made his state entrance into his own palace.
It must have been a strange sight to see us, seated of an evening in a little semicircle, Jeremy with the three younger of his sisters—but always without Aphra, or Euphrasia, as I found her real name to be. And these occasions were by no means unwelcome. For, mad as the women were, there was about them something of the village "innocent," lit with a certain flame of religious enthusiasm. They were very different from that tall, stern figure of granite—their elder sister. Honorine, who had had some training in dressmaking, was always at work with futile industry, confectioning some garment which, when finished, was more like the dress of a Christmas guiser or carnival clown than a respectable garment for everyday use. Her sisters, Camilla and Sidonia, sat looking listlessly at nothing, or engaging in purposeless infantile controversies with one another. Jeremy at one end of the circle sat strumming fitfully upon his latest instrument, violin or Jew's harp, his half-savage music breaking in upon Honorine's ceaseless chatter without prelude or apology. But these interruptions did not in the least put out his sister. She was proud of some remnants of a former short-lived beauty, and loved to recount and magnify the ancient flames she had kindled when "head of a department," dictating the fashions to the good ladies of Thorsby at Hood and Truslove's long extinct but once celebrated emporium in the High Street there.
It did not occur to me till afterwards that I ought to have been frightened—thus sequestered from the world, and my life hardly worth five minutes' purchase, if I should chance to incur the anger of one of those mad creatures. But at the time I sat with my French grammar on my knees, thinking chiefly how funny it was to see the five of us all seated with the soles of our feet turned to a blank wall. This we did for the warmth of the dividing wall. And indeed it was never cold—for before my side had time to cool, Jeremy was firing up his oven again for the next batch of bread to feed the Deep Moat Grangers and their guests.
That these could be dangerous thieves and murderers, in spite of the gossip I had heard, never crossed my mind. They were to me, as I think to Mr. Ablethorpe, just so many poor things who had lost their senses. I noticed, however, that all except Jeremy were accustomed to hush their voices when they spoke of their terrible sister Aphra. And little by little I was able to draw from Honorine (who, above all things, loved to talk) the sad history of their wanderings. I will not attempt to reproduce in detail all her babblings. Indeed, she never quite finished a sentence. Nor did she ever continue where she left off. But, so far as I understood her relation, controlled as it was continually by the denials of Sidonia and Camilla, and punctuated by the scornful strains of Mad Jeremy, the story of the Orrin family amounted to this—
Their father had been a teacher in a large Lanarkshire village; but some money having come into his hands by the death of a distant relative, he went to Lancashire and there started a mill. He left a fortune to his children, valued at some £40,000. But what had been quickly gained proved just as easy to lose.
At his death Aphra kept on the spinning mill, and for a time made a brave face to adverse fortune. But a combination among bigger employers froze her out. The mill failed, and with it was engulfed the wealth of her sisters and the portion of her one brother. Hitherto Jeremy had behaved more humanly than any of the others, learning the business of the mill, with the hope that some day he might be able to conduct one of his own. But the sudden failure of all his hopes overthrew an ill-balanced brain. He grew wild and untamable in his habits, only appearing at home at rare intervals, and then only to claim more and more money from his sister.
The others, Honorine, Camilla and Sidonia, mentioned the name of their eldest sister with a kind of awe, but Jeremy never without a sneer or a taunt—except only in her presence, and when taxed with digging in the garden, a habit for which, Honorine whispered, Aphra was accustomed to punish him severely.
After their failure in Wigham, the passage of the Orrin family southward through England is marked only by some vague reminiscences of Honorine. She would begin a sentence "When we were at Bristol" and end it with "This happened after Aphra had brought us to Leeds." Nevertheless the nodded confirmations of the other two sisters, silently listening as they twisted their fingers, together with the "humphs" and denials of Jeremy, let me understand the truth with sufficient clearness.
If Aphra had been alone, unsaddled with her flock of mad folk, whom she treated like grown-up children, yet loved with more than sisterly devotion, she would have had no difficulty in providing for herself.
At Bristol, for instance, she had established herself with what remained of their small capital in a ready-made shoe shop in a well-frequented street, while Honorine and Sidonia interpreted the latest London fashions to the dwellers in Clifton. But the latter branch failed because Honorine refused to serve those customers who, on entering the shop, would not consent to bow the knee and worship the statue of the Virgin, which they kept in a wall niche surrounded with ever-burning candles. This did not at all suit the ideas of the Cliftonians, and soon the two sisters were back hanging on as before to the skirts of Aphra. As for Jeremy, he wandered about the docks, finding mysterious means of filling his pockets, but always sharing the proceeds.
But his strength waxed so great, his temper so uncertain, that practically he was allowed to go his way. From this time forward not even Aphra was able to control him. More than once he had threatened her life with his clasp knife. Still she did not insist upon his leaving the house. As the head of the family, she was responsible for all. Jeremy was a prodigal son, but still a son—indeed, the only son of the house. Her father had confided him to Aphra, and she would be faithful to her trust.
It was about this time that the family became touched with that mystic spirit which Mr. Ablethorpe had thought to utilize in leading them to better things. But the attempt was vain from the first.
Even at Bristol an attempt to walk in procession upon the street with white banners and mystic emblems awoke so much mingled hostility and mirth that the police were fain to interfere. And an assault made by Honorine upon a visiting bishop of Low Church tendencies, who dared to preach in a Geneva gown, led to the closing of the boot shop and their migration once more to the north.
Everywhere they went Honorine was the bane of custodians of High Anglican and Catholic churches. She insisted upon spending the whole day in such buildings, kneeling for hours together before the sacred pictures, especially those representing favourite saints, making her stations of the cross several times a day, and representing to the distressed church officers (who wanted their dinners) that it was no time to think of earthly nourishment here below—because at any moment their brains might be sucked up by a steam engine even as hers had been. She continued, therefore, in spite of gowned Anglican church officers, magnificent Catholic "Suisses," and arrogant parish beadles, to do penance for sins which she had never committed.
"There are enough misdeeds in the family, though, to keep you at penance all your life," grunted Jeremy with a grin, as Honorine finished her confession. "You did quite right, Honor; I always said that you had more sense than Aphra!"
"Aphra is wise," said her sister, "but she does not know that, owing to my prolonged studies in the Book of Nature, I am enabled to cure toothache."
From the date of their leaving Bristol the family had gone where the determined Aphra had led them. Their longest time of refuge was in the service of a German widow named Funkel, who lived in a villa near Surbiton. Devout as Mr. Ablethorpe, this good woman had taken an idea of bringing the Orrins to more settled ways.
Aphra was to be cook and housekeeper, Honorine sewing maid, Camilla waited at table, and Sidonia became laundress. It was a hospitable and kindly arrangement. But the operations of Jeremy, who had charge of the small garden, brought all the dogs of the neighbourhood there to scratch, while within doors the entire service of the household would be interrupted by discussions as to what the exact meaning of a pinch of salt spilled on the right side of the salt cellar, or a tug of war between the younger sisters to decide who was to clean the knives.
As all had foreseen but herself, Madame Funkel had to call in the police before she could get rid of her troop of domestics. It ended in their retreat, after certain threats on Aphra's part—threats which, but for the opportune vanishing of Jeremy, might not have ended pleasantly for their ex-mistress.
Aphra returned to her diminished shoe shop, this time set up in a suburb of Leeds, and Jeremy was next heard of as the companion of Mr. Hobby Stennis in the little wayside cottage where he lived before moving into the larger and more retired Deep Moat Grange.
Honorine asked Jeremy more than once how he came to be acquainted with Mr. Stennis. But his only reply was that "there were certain things which it was good for women to know, but how he first came to meet Mr. Stennis was not one of them."
(The Narrative continued by Joe Yarrow.)
I have given this part of Elsie's diary in full, as she wrote it out, both because she was so far from the truth as to what was happening above ground, and because her style of writing is so literary—far before mine, with words that I should have to look out in the dictionary.
Why, of course, there was no end of a rumpage. The whole country rose. It is the third time that tells. You never saw anything like it. Farmers and their men flocked in from the field, and took shot guns and hay forks, or tied scythes to poles, making ugly enough weapons. The village of Breckonside emptied itself. It chanced that a little boy, Frankie Leslie, on his way to school, had seen "eour teacha," as he called Elsie, in the company of a tall woman in black going through the pastures towards the woods of the Deep Moat.
That was enough. That was evidence at last. There was to be no pausing this time. The place was to be ransacked, if not sacked. And what would have happened to the poor mad sisters if it had not been for the presence of mind of Mr. Ablethorpe, it is better not surmising. I don't believe that the idea of compelling witches by torture to release their victims is extinct—at least, not in such a place as Breckonside. That mob of angry men and furious women which flocked out towards the house of the Golden Farmer would have taken to the red-hot knitting needle and the flat-irons as naturally as their ancestors two hundred years ago on Witches' Hill, a little beyond the Bridge End. They would have burned, too, only that they were afraid of the police—I don't mean old Codling, but the real police, who would come up from East Dene and Longtown.
I had seen the first surprise about the empty mail gig which had been escaladed by the murderers of poor Harry Foster. I had seen the midnight levy when my father's mare came home without him. But far beyond either was the sight of that silent flood of people, at the noon of a winter's day, when in the ordinary course of things they would have been sitting down to dinner: breaking barriers, throwing down gates, and spreading over the fields in the direction of Deep Moat Grange! It fairly took the breath from me.
Once I had even been a leader at that sort of thing. I had found the traces of the crime that had been committed in the case of poor Harry. I had been my father's son on the second occasion. People had deferred to me. Even Ebie the blacksmith, with his fore-hammer over his shoulder, had asked my advice. But now I was nobody. No one was anybody. A force which no one could control had been set in motion. I understood better what is that Democracy of which they speak. It is the setting in motion of destructive forces, always most dangerous when most silent.
The idea in the hearts of all was that this must end. There was no saying whose turn might come next. So the rush was made in the direction of that sinister house in the depths of the woods, surrounded by its moat, and looking out upon the gloomy pond, dark grey under the shadow of the pines.
But those of Breckonside who had imagined that there was nothing but processioning and incensing about Mr. Ablethorpe had their opinions considerably altered that day. Mr. De la Poer was with him. They had been—I forget the word—confessing or cross-examining each other. Oh, no, spiritually directing each other—that is the correct phrase. And when the roar of the village risingen masseagainst its formidable neighbours of the Grange came to their ears, they had just got the job done for the month, and were sitting down to a good cup of tea, which Miss Ablethorpe, the Hayfork's sister, had brewed for them.
Immediately divining the cause, Mr. Ablethorpe dashed across the fields, leaving Mr. De la Poer to act as a drag to the armed villagers. It was evident that he had been successful in his mission; for when the mob poured over the drawbridge, which was hospitably down as if to invite them across, they found at Deep Moat Grange a house empty, swept, and garnished.
In the house they found spotless chambers, which testified to the good housekeeping of Miss Aphra Orrin—full pantries, well-filled larders, the milk standing to cream on the stone slabs of the dairy, butter in lordly dishes on great squares of Parton slate, the quietest, the most innocent house in all the parish of Breckonside.
Nor did they find anything suspicious in all the chambers of the house, though they went everywhere—into Mr. Stennis's workroom, which had the windows tightly barred, but which, when thrown open, revealed nothing but a spare wooden settle in a corner, and on a wonderful hand loom a half-worked pattern, such as only Hobby could weave, with crowns of flowers, roses and lilies, and on a scroll the words: "To Elsie Stennis, on her marriage. The gift of her affectionate grandfather."
But the rest was wanting. I stood and wondered as the tide ebbed away to other rooms—first to whom Elsie Stennis was to be married, and whether the inscription on that half-woven wedding present had anything to do with her disappearance in company with the granite-faced woman as reported by Frankie Leslie on his way through the meadows.
I even went so far as to suspect Mr. Ablethorpe. He had always been fond of Elsie. He had always protected her enemies, those whose interest it was to deprive her of her heritage. Perhaps his very pretence of celibacy was only a cover for a deeper design of getting hold of the riches of the Golden Farmer!
But all the turmoil, and the thundering blows of the fore-hammer wielded by Ebie McClintoch discovered nothing—not one of the mad sisters, not their leader and protectress, Miss Orrin, not Mad Jeremy himself. And, of course, no one expected to see anything of Mr. Stennis. He would be far away, as usual, with an alibi obviously provided on purpose.
Most of all, the silence of the place was disquieting. The door of the barn was open. Within, all trace of the ridiculous gauds of a former time had disappeared. It had been restored carefully, with knowledge and discretion, to its first use as a chapel. A crucifix hung above the communion table. The twin sets of commandments, written in gold on blue, were against the wall on either side. The Bible, on the little lectern, behind a gilt eagle no bigger than a sparrow, was open at the lesson for the day. The Breckonside people, though in their Presbyterian hearts condemning such signs and symbols, paused open-mouthed, taken with a kind of awe, and as Mr. De la Poer dropped on one knee to make his altar reverence, all filed out bareheaded and a little ashamed of themselves.
None thought of going farther. Though I knew very well that behind the hanging of dull purple at the lectern was the door by which Mr. Ablethorpe had saved his strange parishioners, and so cheated the hasty angers of Breckonside.
Nor did I tell them of it. Somehow I was no longer a leader. And deep in my heart I felt sure that if Elsie were indeed there, Mr. Ablethorpe would give his life rather than that any harm should come to her. Besides Elsie and I had been so many times in danger of our lives, in that very place even, that I knew somehow she would come back to me unhurt. At any rate, the actual prison house where she was hidden was far beyond our ken. None of us thought of searching on the other side of the moat, where was the underground oven of the Cistercians, in which Elsie (as she has already told) was interned.
Perhaps I did wrong in not revealing the secret of the passage. But then if there had been bloodshed—and our folk were quite in the mood for it—the death or ill-usage of these poor innocents (I do not speak of Miss Orrin or Mad Jeremy) would have been on my head. On the whole, I am still convinced that I acted wisely. And I am sure also that Mr. Ablethorpe did so. For he had, there was no doubt, hurried the sisters Honorine, Camilla, and Sidonia, with their eldest sister Miss Orrin, from the chapel where he had known he would be sure to find them at that hour, by the passage along which I had chased him, and had finally hidden them safely in the range of underground buildings that had been the store and treasure-houses of the monks in the days of the border moss-troopers. For then each good wife of a peel tower sent her husband to "borrow" from the holy clerks of the Moated Abbey as often as the larder and money bag were empty. And her way was a woman's way. She served him at dinner time with only this—a clean spur upon an empty plate, which being interpreted meant, "If thou would'st eat, good man of mine, rise and ride."
They lived in dangerous territory, these good monks, and it is small wonder if after their departure the moated island kept its repute. The very wealth of "hidie-holes" conduced to deeds that feared the light.
Mad Jeremy in his outcast days had sheltered there. He had explored them, and that knowledge had been abundantly utilized since the purchase of the Grange by Mr. Stennis. The whole situation was most favourable for his traffic, and even now when its good repute was blown upon, the Cistercian abbots' "hidie-hole" still showed itself capable of keeping its secrets.
Our Breckonsiders were proverbially slow of belief, but they could not get over the facts. There before us was the house of Deep Moat, all open to the eye, silent like a church on week days, prepared as for visitors from floor to roof tree. And nothing to be found, neither there, nor in the numerous out-buildings of which Mr. Bailiff Ball, a man of approven probity, had the charge.
There was nothing for it therefore but to go home. Or rather the villagers had almost arrived at that decision when Miss Orrin, escorted by Mr. Ablethorpe, walked suddenly into the midst of the crowd of armed country folk.
Her appearance caused an angry roar, pikes and scythes were raised against her. But the presence of a clergyman, the dignity of even an alien cloth, made them turn away a little shamefacedly. Mr. Ablethorpe put up his hand to command silence.
"My friends," he said, "I have lived among you long enough to know that you will offer no indignity to a woman. Miss Orrin is here of her own wish to explain to you all that may be necessary. She does not, of course, make herself responsible for the words or actions of all other members of her family, but so far as she is concerned she is ready to explain."
"Where is Elsie Stennis? Murderess! Burn the witch! The she-devil!" These cries, among others, broke from the crowd, and Miss Orrin was well advised not to attempt any long parley.
"Come with me," she said, "and I will satisfy you! But go gently. For the master of this house is very ill and the doctor is with him even now."
Whereupon she opened with a key a door in the weaving chamber of Mr. Stennis, a door which I had taken for that of a large iron safe, and conveyed us into a smaller chamber, with a barred window looking across the moat. Here Mr. Stennis lay on a bed, very pale and haggard, and with him, his hand upon the sick man's wrist, was Dr. Hector of Longtown, a man whom every one knew and respected—all the more so because of a brusque manner and an authoritative speech that caused people to place great confidence in his judgments.
He looked up astonished and rose to his feet, evidently very angry.
"Hello," he said, "what's this? What right have you to come masquerading here with your pitchforks and hedging tools? Out of this, or I'll put my lancet into some of you! I'll wager that I will let more blood in five minutes than you with your entrenching tools in a week—ay, and take it from the right spot, too!"
He followed the defeated Breckonsiders to the door, made a gesture as if to hasten a few laggards with the toe of his boot, and remarked aloud to Miss Orrin: "I thought you had more sense than to encourage this sort of thing!"
"Me encourage it!" cried Miss Orrin, indignantly facing him—"you are under a great mistake, sir!"
"Well, out of this, anyway, all of you," said Dr. Hector. "I will not have it. If my patient's repose is broken into again, tell them I am armed—I will take my horsewhip to the pack of them!"
And curiously enough the crowd of justicers melted more quickly merely with the shame of looking a good man in the face, and before his horsewhip of righteous indignation, than it would have done before Mad Jeremy, armed to the teeth.
"I went this morning to the school where Miss Elsie Stennis teaches," said Miss Orrin, "and I gave her a message that her grandfather was ill and wishful to see her. Dr. Hector is a witness that such was Mr. Stennis's urgent desire. I merely executed it, and all that I know further is that Miss Stennis has not yet complied with that request."
"Our Frankie saw teacher with you on the meadow pasture at nine this morning," interrupted a gaunt woman with the bent shoulders of the outdoor worker and a look of poverty on her face.
"Then your Frankie lied!" retorted Miss Orrin sharply.
And after this direct challenge it needed both Mr. Ablethorpe and Mr. De la Poer to restore order. But the fury of Frankie's mother contrasted so ill with Miss Orrin's glacial calm, that it seemed possible enough that "Frankie" had indeed invented the little circumstance to add to his importance, after hearing of the loss and disappearance of "teacher."
"Moreover," said Miss Orrin, "since Mr. Stennis is too ill to have his bedchamber and house invaded in this way, in future Dr. Hector will arrange for special protection from the police at Longtown. And after this warning let any one cross the moat at their peril."
There was no more to be done. Aphra Orrin had beaten us completely. The baffled tide ebbed back the way it came, and Deep Moat Grange was left alone once more with the secrets it had been successful in guarding in the teeth of a whole countryside in arms and aroused to a high pitch of curiosity.
The two clergymen waited behind, but the sick man would have nothing to do with them, declaring his intention, if he must, of dying as a good Presbyterian. He was the most intractable of invalids, even threatening to break a bottle over Dr. Hector's head if, as he proposed, he should venture to bring with him from Longtown a minister of his own denomination.
"Hobby Stennis is none so ill as that," he said stoutly, "if only I had my will in a safe place, and had seen the little lass, who is all my kith and kin, I would ask no more from doctor or minister in this world."
"I will take charge of the will myself if no better may be," said Dr. Hector. And so, none saying him nay, he rode back to Longtown with the holograph in his breast pocket, jesting with two farmers riding that way as he went. Had he only known, a few sheets of a folio account book covered with close writing in the hand of Mr. Stennis was considerably more dangerous to carry about with him than the latest discovered high explosive!
It was with considerable astonishment that on the evening of his next visit to Deep Moat Grange, about midway between the edge of the woods and the lonely alehouse where my father had alighted, Dr. Hector was suddenly aware of a noose of rope which circled about his neck with a whiz. The next moment he was dragged from his horse. He lay unconscious for an hour on the road, and then coming to himself turned and walked back to Longtown, very stiff and very angry, but conscious of no other loss than that of several copies of prescriptions which he kept in his breast pocket.
"What they can want with these, I don't know," said the vindictive doctor. "I only hope they will take them all together. There was a triple dose of strychnine in one which I wrote for Garmory's dog!"
Now Miss Orrin was a clever woman, and she grasped at once the immense moral value of having the support of Mr. Ablethorpe and his friend and spiritual director Mr. De la Poer. It was quite evident that for the sisters the situation at Deep Moat Grange would no longer be tenable. Mr. Stennis might die any day. The Longtown doctor gave little hope of ultimate recovery. The will had been removed out of Aphra's reach. True, she might possibly induce the old man to make another, disinheriting his granddaughter. If Elsie died in her prison, doubtless sooner or later all would be found out. There were other things also.
It came as the happiest of solutions, therefore, to the strenuous head of the Orrin family, when, a few days after, Mr. Ablethorpe proposed to charge himself with the care of the three "innocents"—Honorine, Camilla, and Sidonia. He knew of a convent, the good sisters of which gave up their lives to the care of women mentally afflicted. Aphra refused point blank any such assistance for herself, even temporarily. But for her sisters she rejoiced openly, and was indeed, after her fashion, really grateful to the two young clergymen who had taken up the cause of the witless and the friendless.
"I know why you do this," she said, "it is that you may clear the board of those who have neither art nor part in the evil. Then you will strike the more surely. I do not blame you, Mr. Ablethorpe, But for me, I will not go with my sisters, who have done nothing—known nothing. If the guilty are to suffer—and if the guilty are indeed my brother and my master—then I will stand in the dock by their side. No one shall ever say that Aphra Orrin went back on a friend, or refused her full share of responsibility. All the same, Mr. Ablethorpe—and you, Mr. De la Poer—I am grateful from my heart for what you are doing for my poor sisters. For me, I am neither mad nor irresponsible—only as the more notable sinner, in the greater need of your ghostly counsels!"