As nobody had seen Deep Moat Grange since it had been taken over by Mr. Hobby Stennis and the crew he had gathered about him, it may be as well to describe it as I saw it—now that it is swept from off the face of the earth.
The old, many-gabled, brick-built house was ivy-covered—in poor repair, but clean. Curious-looking, stocking-shaped contrivances cowled the chimneys, or such of them as were used. The Grange was set so deep in the woods that when the wind blew with any violence, and apparently from any quarter, it raced and gusted and whirled down the chimneys so as to blow the faggots out on the hearths.
But without and within the house, it was anything but dirty. That is, so far as I—no great judge, mayhap—could make out. At times Jeremy Orrin, who now followed us, laughing and jeering, could work like a demon, clearing up some debris. And Mr. Stennis kept poking his nose here and there into the outhouses and cart sheds with a curious, dithering thrill of apprehension, not at all like a master coming back to his own house, or looking if his servants' work were well performed. Still, if he looked for dirt, he found none. No, nor anything else—except in the great barn, empty of everything (for the horse's oats and bedding were kept in the stable). Here Mr. Stennis, tripping along with his tread of a frightened hen, lifted a huge curtain of corn sacks, thick and heavy, made after the pattern of those at church doors abroad, and we went in.
As soon as we stood on the beaten floor of hard earth, we could not take our eyes from what we beheld at the upper end. There was a kind of altar, rudely shaped, with a table and a cross, all as if hewn with an axe out of live wood, and painted black. On the table were the little black coffins, each small as baby's toys, which we had seen the mad women carry through the garden. Each of these had now a candle burning upon it. But the central light, a little larger than the rest, was protected about the flame by a curious contrivance made of red paper glued upon bits of stick which gave it (from where we stood) the appearance of a crimson lantern.
For the first time, I think Elsie was now a little frightened. And no wonder, for suddenly we saw something appear in the dark of the big empty barn, amid a curious pervading smell that I took to be incense, but which might have been cockroaches. I liked bravely for Elsie to feel like that. For she had been just all too secure and cock-a-hoop up till now.
What we saw was a row of kneeling figures singing a strange wordless chant, something between the wind in a score of keyholes and distant dog kennels on a moon-light night. At any rate, it tried the little girl's stomach. Because, quite suddenly she pitched forward on my shoulder and cried: "O Joe, get me out of this!"
Then the next moment, just like thrusting a stick into a wasp's byke, each of the black kneeling figures had snatched her candle and made after us.
I don't know what might have happened. To me it was like a nightmare till we found ourselves in the open courtyard again. This had seemed creepy enough to me before. But now it was just like our own back green, as homelike and as pleasant, with the open air and the waving woods and all.
Within the barn we heard elricht squeaks and cries, like those of bats. But outside the door, holding the heavy curtain back, so that we could get out easily, stood a tall, masculine woman with gray, smoothly brushed hair, dressed in a black blouse and skirt that had something under them which looked like the haircloth covering of the chairs in our second best parlour at home—the kind my father sits in and smokes over his books and cash-box. She was the woman with the short skirt we had seen watering the lilies when we looked across the black and oily moat.
"This is Miss Orrin, my housekeeper," said Elsie's grandfather automatically.
"Aphra Orrin!" said the lady, with a prim intonation, tossing her head like one hurt in her pride, "one who hath been raised up to be a mother to the orphan and the shelterless, to avenge the witless and those at whom fools make a mock!Be quiet, you there!"
She sent the door of the barn clashing into its place with her foot, and with the click of the well-oiled wards the screeching behind it redoubled.
The tall woman sighed and folded her arms across her breast. There was a certain weary dignity about her, and at first I could not believe that she was really out of her mind, as all in Breckonside averred. "They are worse than usual to-day," she said, with a careless nod of the head in the direction of the barn, "but that will teach them. They shall stay there till I come and fetch them out! No food for such as they!"
She turned about and called hurriedly: "Jeremy! Jeremy!"
Then the big black man with the ringlets, the onyx eyes and gipsy's skin, came bounding toward us. He seemed to arrive from the direction of the moat, but from much farther round and nearer to the house than the bridge by which we had crossed. He was grinning and holding his hands behind him, like a child who fears to be punished. I soon noticed that he was far more afraid of his sister than he had been of Mr. Stennis and his riding whip.
"Show your hands!" The tall woman spoke in a tone of command. Jeremy stood grinning before her. Then quite suddenly he began to cry. Big tears rolled down his face.
"I haven't—I haven't, indeed, Aphra!" he whimpered. "I have only been sailing boats on the moat! Indeed, I have!"
"Show your hands!"
She spoke so shortly that the great, cleanly built powerful giant fairly quaked before her.
"I will—I will!" he repeated. "Yes, Aphra!"
And all the time he was evidently rubbing them together as hard as he could. I could see his shoulders and elbows working. Then the tall woman, losing all patience, snatched at his arms and pulled the hands sharply forward. The marks of earth between the fingers and about the nails were obvious. But Jeremy still continued to rub off the little pellets of mould, raising his fingers and looking at them with an air of surprise, as if he wondered how in the world the dirt had got there.
"You have been digging again!" cried Miss Orrin; "this is the third time, and you are well aware of the penalty!"
"Oh, no, no!" cried the big man, catching her by the skirt, which she swept away from him, the tears fairly rolling down his cheeks. "Whip me, if you like, Aphra, but——"
"Go and shut yourself up in the dark hole," she said firmly; "see you shut the door tight. I shall come round and lock it after a little!"
The great lout went awayboo-hooinglike a "soft" schoolboy whom a sturdier comrade has sent home provided with something substantial to tell his mother. Anything more unlike the idea which we, in common with all Breckonside, had formed of the dreaded "mounster" of the Moat Grange, could not well be imagined.
Then his sister turned to us, and in the most conventional way possible she asked us to go into the house "to drink a dish of tea!"
It was hardly the hour for this, but our long morning's jaunt in the open air and varied excitements had not at all taken away our appetites. We were literally as hungry as hunters.
I think, if Elsie and I had kept all our wits about us, that we should have refused such an invitation. But children often do very bold things through sheer thoughtlessness and curiosity. And we were little more than children, for all our age.
But it all turned out well for us—indeed, even better than that. We had supped so full of surprises that day, that at this point I think hardly anything would have sufficed us or come up to our demands! Perhaps an introduction to a company of sheeted ghosts, or an invitation to take afternoon tea with blood-boltered Banquo, might have filled the bill of our expectation.
As it fell out, nothing was ever more dull and orderly, Miss Orrin showed us into a neatly arranged parlour, with the usual stuffy smell from unopened windows. She left us a minute alone to examine the knick-knacks, while she went elsewhere, doubtless to arrange matters with her erring brother Jeremy. We were still in the dark as to the crime he had committed, and, each remaining seated on the edge of a chair, looked about us curiously, with our ears at a permanent full cock.
Miss Orrin had pulled up the blinds, and through them we could see the wide green lawn, broken here and there by the dense plots of lilies, which almost formed groves in some places. The parlour was a large room, covered with faded yellow paper, bearing traces of a blue flower, perhaps wreaths of forget-me-nots, but all so faint that it was only a strong imagination which could again body them forth. The furniture was chiefly of old black oak, with an extraordinary number of chests with various ornamental work round the walls. These had been covered, presumably by Miss Orrin, with bright-coloured chintz of a salmon-pink edged with frills and furbelows which somehow cheapened the high, antique mantelpiece, the quaint corner cupboards, and the tall, high-backed open chairs ranged at equal intervals about the room.
I am not sure if I have described all this aright. For, indeed, the vague stuffy smell took us by the throats. Both Elsie and I were glad when Mr. Stennis came back and bustled about, sniffing, growling, and opening windows and doors.
One of these, that to the left of the wide fireplace, gave into a small room full of curious wooden machinery to which our eyes were instantly attracted.
"The old weaver's hand does not forget its cunning—the trade by which he made his siller!" said Mr. Stennis, with a faint shadow of a smile, the first we had seen cross his anxious face.
He showed us beautiful pieces of ornamental fabric, upon one of which he was at present engaged, and even entered into a long explanation as to his methods of working. Finally he sat down before the intricate spider's web, and with a skilled click and wheeze sent the shuttle flying for our benefit. I stood back a good way, but Elsie remained close beside him. And I could not have believed it, if I had not seen it—how in the joy of work the "laird" died out of the man, and the little bow-backed weaver came again plain to the eye.
I turned about, conscious of some unknown interruption. There was a faint creaking of the door, and through it I could see Miss Orrin, a tray with tea dishes in her hands, glaring speechlessly at Elsie. The young girl had laid an unconscious hand on her grandfather's arm. She was asking him to explain something in the manipulation. But on the face of the woman who stood without, watching, I surprised cold Death, and as it were, Hell following after.
I felt that we had no real business in that house, neither Elsie nor I, and that the sooner I got her safe back to Nance Edgar's, the better pleased I should be. But Elsie was a difficult girl to shift till she took it into her own head. Then with a beaming smile Miss Orrin came into the parlour and began to lay the cloth.
"Ye will be hungry, bairns," she said, with a curious nervous laugh, which reminded us unpleasantly of her sisters.
"Yes!" we answered together. But somehow I wasn't. The hunger had left me.
We had scarcely started our tea, and hunger was still keen upon Elsie, when there came a noise of calling, quite different from the howling of mad folk, or the mocking laughter or ugly whine of Jeremy. Miss Orrin poured out tea with a kind of grimaplomb. If I had been afraid that she meant to poison us—or at least Elsie, I was soon undeceived. The amount of tea that she poured down her own throat was astonishing in the extreme. There were, however, certainly several sorts of cake that she would not allow her master, Mr. Stennis, to touch, on pretext of indigestion, but which she pressed upon us. And it was all that I could do, by kicking her shins beneath the table, to keep Elsie from accepting.
I managed it all right, though. They might have been as harmless as my father's acid drops. But after all there was only one Elsie, and I was not going to run any risks.
There was a distant sound of calling across the moat, and at the noise, Mr. Stennis frowned, an ugly look coming over his face, while on the contrary the sound had a still more extraordinary effect upon Miss Orrin. Her eyes gleamed more softly, losing for a moment their iron-gray expression. Her hands went up instinctively to the thin little corkscrew curls which bobbed at either side of her face.
In ten seconds the fierce, angular old maid looked ten years younger. Love, vanity, self-consciousness—ye are wondrous things.
"If it's that interfering curate from Over Breckonton, I'll throw him into the moat! I'll have the dogs on him," growled Mr. Stennis, "always poking his nose in when he is least wanted!"
Then he turned to his housekeeper, and detecting her busy fingers, he said with a sneer—
"What, prinking again! I see. Only the beneficed clergy have any chance with you, Miss Aphra!"
"Beneficed!" she cried. "Ah! poor lad, I wish he were! If I had my will it would not all go to that lazy vicar, who never does a ha'pworth of good, but rides to hounds and preaches his father's sermons, because he cannot make one for himself."
"Ha!" cried the old man, "be off with you, young ones. Miss Orrin is going to receive spiritual direction and absolution."
The tall old woman started up, her right hand upon the bread knife, as if she could have killed her master with it on the spot.
"Well would it be for you, Hobby Stennis, if you did the like!" she said, restraining herself with difficulty. "But there's Mr. Ablethorpe, and he must not be kept waiting!"
"Of course not, Miss Orrin," said Mr. Stennis sneeringly. "It were a pity indeed that he should—and he come so far to administer spiritual consolation to conscious sinners!"
Then the old woman was roused to fury.
"Sinner am I?" she said, going up and bending her body till her face came within an inch of two of that of the old man, who was seated, pretending to go on with his tea. "Sinner am I? Well, I do not deny it. But at least, if sinner I be, it is that I may find a home and a livelihood for those three poor things, whom God hath bereft of their reason! But as for you—for what do you sin—sin till the sand of the sea could hardly tell the multitude of your crimes, poured from the hand like water, a grain for a sin? For money—yes, for dirty gold! For money which you dare not spend, and for gear which you dare not show! Answer me that! And if sinner I be—I have never heard or read that the Gospel is not for sinners! Do I not need it the more, Hobby Stennis? And the young man is a good young man, and speaks to me of high things—such as I need much, and you more!"
"Have your shown him your Mumbo-Jumbo worship in the barn? Or your sisters, kneeling before the little coffins—all that flummery? You ought to be ashamed—you, Aphra Orrin, you, a woman of sense, and able to know better!"
"And if I told Mr. Ablethorpe all, he would understand," retorted the old maid. "He would understand that those who cannot know God must be content with such a God as they can understand!"
Mr. Stennis laughed, but there was a false ring in his laughter.
"Aye," he said, "doubtless there are a great many things which the good young man, Mr. Ablethorpe, cannot understand. Did you ever, by chance, try to teach him a little gardening?"
"No, and well for you, Hobby Stennis!" cried the woman, still threateningly.
"Well or ill," said the old man, "I go to see these bairns across the bridge and safe on their way home. Then to my weaving! Where is Jeremy?"
"How should I know were Jeremy is—on some of your errands, doubtless!" she cried. "Come, I will let down the drawbridge myself. Also I shall see to it that you offer no indignity to the one honest man who deigns to enter your house."
This quarrel between the two most sane inhabitants of Deep Moat Grange let me deeper into the secrets of that evil dwelling than anything else. At least, so I thought at the time. But I found afterwards that all I thought I knew had but lain on the surface. I had conceited to find Shallow Moat Grange, and lo! the name was no misnomer. The moat was Deep, indeed.
All the same, it was like coming out of a heated room, with many people therein, into the silence and chill of the winter stars, to get one's head outside that abominable house of the Grange. How good to pass by the lily clumps, and feel one's feet on green grass again! It seemed to me that even the dull and sullen moat could be crossed, if you only took it determinedly enough. We had seen Jeremy come over and return, and so surely could we, fleeing (if need were) for our lives.
But there was no need at present. Miss Orrin had thrown a white shawl about her head and shoulders, and drawn a pair of tight silk lacy "mits" over her bony wrists. She made straight for the drawbridge, walking at least ten yards in front of us—apparently that she might get the first word with the fine young man in clerical attire who stood waiting on the further bank.
"I am sorry to have kept you, sir," she said, in a voice which I could not have believed to be hers, had I not seen her lips moving as we arrived; "I will let down the bridge in a moment. Mr. Stennis has been entertaining some relatives of his own, and did not wish to be disturbed."
"I hope that I am not intruding!" called out the young man from the farther bank. "I can easily look in again. It will not be the least trouble, I assure you!"
"Not for the world," cried the old woman hastily; "in a moment the bridge will be down."
And she rushed to the little wheelhouse, to let go the chain with a relieving motion of her foot. And immediately the ponderous affair came clanking to the ground, locking into the pawls at the other side with the pleasantsloopof well-oiled machinery.
Then it was our turn to be introduced. Mr. Ablethorpe came across the wood with the firm tread of an athlete. He held out his hand first to Miss Orrin, who bowed over it, as if she would have loved to raise it reverently to her lips.
Then he shook hands with Mr. Stennis, who took the matter cavalierly enough, immediately turning on his heel and going off in the direction of his weaving-room, which had an additional entrance from the front. The young curate was apparently well enough accustomed to such treatment, and thought nothing of it, but Miss Orrin bit her thin lips and looked daggers at the bowed head of the old weaver-farmer as he trudged away.
"Halloo, Joseph Yarrow," said Mr. Ablethorpe lightly, as he ruffled my head with his hand. (I understood well enough to take off my cap to a clergyman.) "Joe Yarrow, I know your father. And I think—yes, I think—" (he put a lot of accent on thethink) "Master Joseph, you ought to be at school. Shall I tell your father, Joseph? If I did, I make no doubt that he would give you a coat of a few colours, mainly black and blue. Ha! ha!"
But he had that light way with him, which made us quite sure that he would do nothing half so mean as to tell either my father or Mr. Mustard the schoolmaster.
"And who is this young lady?" he said, looking at Elsie, who was tall, and when taken short like that had a kind of "distant" look which made people think she was haughty. But she looked very nice that way—what people call pretty and "chic" (whatever that may be). I could see that Mr. Ablethorpe was interested in her directly. I could have knocked his head off! Cheek, indeed!
"She lives with a poor working woman," said Miss Orrin, who had no doubt noticed the interest as well as I, "one named Nance Edgar, not very far out of Breckonside village. But not in your parish, Mr. Ablethorpe. Will you come this way, Mr. Ablethorpe? There is tea ready for you."
But Mr Ablethorpe had his own time of doing things, and with such a girl as Elsie in front of him, he was not in a hurry.
"Lives with a poor woman, does she?—Nancy—Nancy—what name did you say?" he went on in the tone in which people ask for additional information.
But I was not going to stand this—from Miss Orrin or any one, about my Elsie.
"This is Miss Elsie Stennis," I said, with what of dignity I could compass with my inches, "the only grand daughter of Mr Stennis, the owner of this property."
"But how?" said the young man, looking, as I thought, a little reproachfully at Miss Orrin; "I was not seriously aware that Mr. Stennis had any relatives alive."
"This girl has been represented as the child of his daughter Isabella," said Miss Orrin, "but Mr. Stennis, doubtless for excellent reasons, has never acknowledged her as such!"
"But the church records and the registrar have, though," said I. "You can speak to old Mr. Askew, if you like—he knows!"
"You can go now," said Miss Orrin, with dignity, cutting me short, "and remember that you are not to return till you have received an invitation. Mr. Stennis will overlook your conduct on this occasion, in consideration of your youth and ignorance. But you will know better the next time, and no such excuse will be accepted."
As Mr. Ablethorpe passed me he nodded his blonde curly head at me, twinkled his eye, and said: "Tell your father that I am going to look him up one of these days. I want a subscription for our Organ Fund, but I won't say anything about where I found you—I promise you that."
He looked at Elsie, too, as if he had meant to say something jokingly to her also, but thought better of it. Then he lifted his hat and passed away across the green lawn side by side with Miss Orrin. They wove their way among the clumps of lilies till they were lost to view, and I could see that they were talking earnestly together.
And from the barn, very lonesome across the black water of the moat, came the indignant hooting of the mad sisters still shut up behind the barred door, with the black altar and the little coffins.
It was a night or two after our first and (for the time being) last visit to Deep Moat Grange. Elsie and I had arrived back at Nance's, our hands and even our arms laden with flowers. For Nance had been at home all day, and so Elsie and I had been taking a holiday—I from lessons, and Elsie from looking after the house. We had gone wandering over the long whinny knowes which stretch away to the south, till, from the top of Brom Beacon, one can see the ships crowding into the docks of East Dene and Thorsby, collier and tug and tall sea-going brig, every ship after her kind.
It was a day to be remembered, and as a matter of fact neither of us has forgotten it. We crossed Brom Water where it was as broad as a lake. Our conveyance was a penny flatboat, running on a chain, which chain hauled itself up wet and dripping from the bed of the river. A little farther on we stretched ourselves out on the greensward upon a green knoll above a railway cutting. We talked. We were silent, and listened to the the wind among the leaves and the hum of insects among the lime trees and meadow plants. Mr. Mustard was not at all in our thoughts. Nor yet my father in mine. Only one thing troubled me—the knowledge that in the autumn I must leave Breckonside and go to college. College itself I did not mind about. There was a certain amount of fun in being a student—or so I had always been told. What I really did mind about was leaving Elsie.
It would be—I knew it by instinct—like cutting off a part of my own body to go walking lonely on Saturdays when we had so often loitered in company, thinking that the good days would never cease, wanting nothing better, nothing other than just what we had. Ah! I had a prevision that day that Elsie and I had better make the most of our time during this summer. For the winter would try our friendship.
What I did not foresee was how suddenly Elsie would grow up. Yet she had always done things suddenly—from boxing my ears to deciding to continue her studies at home. She did the latter that very day, and in the evening she announced to Nance that she was not going back to school.
"Very well," said Nance, not in the least surprised. Indeed, with her own limited education, she had often wondered why Elsie had prolonged hers so unnecessarily.
It was pleasant in Nance's cottage by the Bridge End of Breckonside. The house was, as perhaps I have already explained, overwhelmed in a perfect show of creeping flowers, not all of them yet in their full bloom of colour, but always spreading up to the chimneys and throwing abroad reckless tendrils that brushed the face as one entered the little wooden porch.
Nance was busy with the supper dishes, and Elsie had come down after "giving her hair a tidy," as she had been commanded by Nance to do.
"Who do you think has been here the day?" said Nance suddenly.
And I knew in a minute, but Elsie guessed her grandfather.
"The young English minister from Over Breckonton."
"Yes," Nance went on to give details, finding that nobody exclaimed at her news; "as fine an Englisher as ever was, with a bit cambric handkerchief that wad hae been little use to a man wi' a cauld in his heid, and a black cane wi' real silver bands. Extraordinary civil he was, and bode near an hour talkin' to puir auld Nance, and speirin' where ye were, Elsie, and what time ye wad be hame!"
I looked at Elsie. She was busily engaged in tying up some sprays of early heath, which we had gathered on the steep sides of Brom Beacon. She did not seem to be listening. But she heard well enough, as her words proved.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Ralph Ablethorpe! Joe and I met him by chance on the way to my grandfather's the other day."
Now the vixen knew very well that there would be no more question of the "coming of the Englishy minister" after an announcement like that. Nance was all agog to hear of the wonders of Deep Moat Grange, which she had never seen except from the outside, and news of the mad people my lassie's granddad had gathered about him. Small wonder, either! For, indeed, no one had crossed the Moat for years except the High-Church curate, who (as they said) went periodically to "confess" Miss Orrin.
Even such things as coals and provisions were brought by the bailiff to the end of the drawbridge in sacks, and from thence carried across on the back of the powerful Jeremy, the same Jeremy whom we had seen that day weeping like a child.
But it was then that I began first to understand what absence at college might cost me. I looked at Elsie. She was still tying up the little pink bundles of "bell heather," but her face was held down, and there was a little conscious flush upon her cheek. I had never thought it before, and it came on me like a judgment. Elsie was pretty.
I did not exactly wish she hadn't been, but oh, I did wish that nobody had been able to see it but myself!
That English curate, with his curly poll and clear blue eyes, rode me like a nightmare. I resolved to break his head, handsome as it looked—aye, if he were the best man that ever stepped in shoe leather, and had climbed all the mountains in Switzerland and given all that he got for doing it to the poor, as they said he had done. I did not care how good he was. I was desperate at the thought of losing Elsie. Not for love—oh no, thank you. I had more sense than that. But just to go about with, and be my little 'panion, as she had always said she would be, and as I expected her to remain.
But the curate did not let grass grow under his footsteps. It was only two days before he was back again at the little cottage at the Bridge End. Nance had work that day, and if I had not had the sense to play truant he would have found Elsie by herself, as no doubt he expected to do. But I was there seated on the table, swinging my legs.
He began at once saying how sorry he was that Nance was out, and that he had so much enjoyed the talk with her the other day. But under my breath I kept saying, "Liar! Liar!" Because I knew quite well that he was coming of purpose to see Elsie, and the thought gave me catchings of the breath when I thought of going to college. I wasn't jealous a bit, of course, only I couldn't bear to think of any other fellow being friends with Elsie.
But after awhile I began to like the parson better. He had heard that I could bowl more than a bit, and he asked me to make one of the team he was getting up to play the second eleven of East Dene. I took to him more after that, and really he did not talk to Elsie oftener than he did to me. More than that, he did not make me feel in the way.
But it was all no go. From deep down in my heart there kept bobbing up the feeling that somehow I was to lose Elsie, and that this young parson with the curly head would be the cause of it. Of course, I was going on to eighteen, and a big fellow for my age, with a moustache you could see by looking for it. But this was a full-grown man of twenty-four at the least—for all that his shaven face and sort of painted-window hair made him look any age from that of a choir boy to that of a holy angel.
He asked about Elsie's grandfather, saying that he had struggled long and vainly to get him to come to church, or at least to communion, but without success. More than that, he seemed to be keeping Miss Orrin from attending the parish church of Over Breckonton. Miss Orrin, so it seemed, had good instincts—she was well affected toward religion, but something always seemed to hold her back. At a certain point she became silent, and he, Ralph Ablethorpe, could do nothing more with her. This resistance he hoped, however, to overcome one day. It was his duty to study the welfare of every soul in his parish, and also of those wandering and foldless sheep who were cared for by nobody.
I had it on my tongue tip to say that there were many who cared for souls when they were connected with comely bodies, for that was the kind of thing that my father was always saying. He took himself for an advanced thinker whenever he quarrelled with our vicar, but between times he was as good a conservative as anybody, and stood up for law and order like the chucker-out of a bar-room.
Elsie had not much to say about her people. She never had. But I told him, as I always did any one who asked, that her father had been an army officer, and her mother the only daughter of the Golden Farmer, only that neither the one nor the other of them could stand the old man's ways.
Then the young parson, as I found to be his custom, started in to defend the absent, which is all right when the "absent" is anyway decent.
"Yes," he said, "Mr. Stennis's habits are certainly eccentric. I cannot deny that. But after all he does a lot of good in rather creditable circumstances. He gives shelter to four poor lunatics whom a sisterly love has preserved from the living death of a common asylum."
I told him plainly that I thought it would be much better for themselves, and infinitely so for the countryside, if they were all shut up in the nearest asylum under proper care.
"What do you mean?" says he, rather startled. For I could see by the changing of his countenance that he, too, had seen strange things. As, indeed, he was bound to do, if he kept his eyes open at all, going to Deep Moat Grange as often as he did.
But then, you see, he was a simple sort of young man, and never thought, or at least said, any evil of anybody.
Then he suggested that we would walk home together, and though I had meant to stay at the cottage all day, I actually went. But I soon got him into a hot argument with my father (who could argue the handle off the village pump) about doctrine and sacraments, and things that a boy has to learn about in school till he hates the very name of them. At least, if he has a master like old Mr. Mustard. Then I up and shinned out of the back door as quick as I could, lest father should ask me where I was going, and send me kiting all over the country with one of our delivery vans. I found Elsie looking out of the window and very pensive.
So I told her to her face that she was thinking of that curly-headed curate, and she answered me (as, of course, she would naturally do) that whether she was or wasn't, it was no business of mine.
Then I vowed I would make it my business.
"Then make it!" says she, and turned away very haughty and went and sulked in Nancy's little room, which was off the big kitchen. It was as much as I could do to keep from turning on my heel and walking away, never more to return. But I knew that it was wrong to yield to passion. So I was noble and stopped where I was.
Instead I began to sweep up the cinders about the grate and get everything ready for tea, even to scouring the teapot and things. I used coarse, common powder, and this I moistened by a coarse and familiar method. The act brought Elsie out promptly. Just bounding she was. Mad was no name for it. She called me all the names she could think of, but she didn't sulk any more. I thought she wouldn't. That always fetches her. She knows I do it a-purpose to make her angry, but she can't help it—not one time in a thousand. Elsie is built that way, and from what I have seen quite a lot of women are.
It works far better than taffying up to them, or doing the dreadful humble. Get them spitting mad, and they will love you ever after, or at least for quite a while.
It is wonderful how soon a thing is forgotten, or at least put on a shelf in people's memories. Poor Harry Foster, for example! There was a man now—a man murdered in the discharge of his duty, if ever a man was. And after a month or two another man was travelling the same road with a new mail cart and new sacks of letters, as quiet as water going down a mill-lade. The only difference was that he started a while later in the morning than poor Harry, after it was daylight, in fact, so that the Bewick people had to wait, often till midday, before they got their letters.
And when they made complaint to the Postmaster-General, or some other big-wig, he up and said to them, "You Bewickers, it is open to you to choose one of yourselves to bring up the mails from Breckonside, running the risk of Harry Foster's fate and providing a sufficient guarantee for any loss the post office run by Her Royal High Majesty may sustain."
Something like that he said. But no Bewicker offered. Of course not—why, they had skin creeps at the very thought.
"So," says the post official big-wig, "you Bewick cowards, be good enough to shut up and take your letters when they are sent out to you."
Still there were people who kept thinking about poor Harry for all that. And I was one of them. Elsie did not seem to care so much, or at least so long. Did you never observe that you can't keep a girl long interested in the same thing, unless you keep on telling her all the time how much prettier she is getting to look? But I did not know even that much, not then. I was just mortal green—green as father's spare pasture field after three days' steady rain and one of May sunshine. And, indeed, to tell the truth outright, I thought altogether too much at that time about people, and too little about my Latin and Greek prose, as Mr. Mustard, who was a good classic himself, often told me. He said I should rue it. But I can't say I have ever gone as far as that. Not to date, anyway. Perhaps I may some day, when I start reading Latin to pass the time.
The adventure grew more interesting to me after the policeman and detectives had one by one all cleared off. The affair was "classed," as the French say in their crime books—I learned my French out of these, and a jolly easy way, too—that is, the police were not going to do anything more in the matter, unless something fresh turned up. And it would have to be something mighty fresh, too, to move them. They had all got so sick of the whole business.
There was just one thing that kept me back. That was, I was nearly sure that Elsie's grandfather had something to do with the whole series of crimes of which the death of poor Harry was only the last and the most senseless. Perhaps not Mr. Stennis directly, but somebody about Deep Moat Grange. So, of course, I did not want to bring Elsie into it if I could help it. Because if her grandfather was a murderer, and if all the missing drovers and absconding cattle dealers were laid to his account, and he hanged for it, it would be clearly impossible for Elsie to go on living with Nance Edgar at the Bridge End. And as I was not yet ready to make other arrangements for her (besides being mortally afraid of the curate), I said nothing to any one—least of all to Elsie herself.
I think I had suspected everybody for miles round in turn—from Mr. Codling the policeman to the vicar himself. As for poor Mr. Ball, I had him so completely under observation, and was so sure of his guilt, that when the unfortunate bailiff went out only to fodder the cattle, I followed stealthily in his footsteps, sure that the secret of the mystery lay in the range of cattle sheds or under the pigs' feeding troughs. In the end I only managed to get a welting from father for coming home all muddy from head to foot—and not pleasant mud at that.
But really I did not mind. I was always glad when I got home safe. Now I know that I was taking my life in my hands every minute. Even then I had glimmerings of the fact. The folks of Breckonside might say, as they always did, that the killing of poor Harry was the work of some chance tramps, who would be far away by the next morning. But putting everything together, just as Sherlock Holmes used to do, I couldn't make it out at all. I had his spirit, but not his luck—no, not by any means his luck.
This, however, was what I made out. Harry had jogged on till he met with some one whom he knew, that is, almost immediately after he parted with Davie Elshiner, the poacher. He had talked, parleyed, and then accepted company. Then some one of these, sitting on the back seat of the dog cart, had covered up his mouth and butchered him most foully. After that no more was to be learned. The light vehicle which had bounded from side to side of the narrow drove-road had certainly been empty. I am no Sherlock Holmes, but my father and I know about horses and local conveyances. And we could see by the rebounding, the one wheel climbing the bank, and the other sinking in the slough, that if any one had been inside—nay anything, the contents of the cart, be they what they would, must have been emptied out.
But Harry, the mail bags, even the parcels for Bewick, had completely disappeared. Nothing except the empty cart and the broad plane-tree leaves were ever seen again. It seemed so simple a thing to trace—a dead body, accounted no easy thing to make away with even professionally, a dozen bags of letters—many with negotiable values, of which the issuing bank had, luckily, reserved the numbers—tobacco in tins, cigarettes in boxes, sweets, sugar in cones, even a Stilton cheese for the old bachelor, Major Templand (retired), who cried out more about the loss of his Welsh rabbit than all the others put together. Clues—there were balls and wads of clues! Only, none of them led anywhere. Neither did the woods, through which there was no track of anything previous to those made by Mr. Stennis's pony the following day. Nothing either way along the road. No, I could put my hand on nothing and nobody. And I gave it up at last, sure nevertheless that it was somewhere about the house of Deep Moat that the solution must be looked for.
And, indeed, some light, such as it was, came from the last quarter from which it could be expected.
Mr. Ablethorpe arrived one fine summer afternoon at our place in Breckonside. I was playing in the backyard, half a dozen dogs tumbling over me. It had been intended that I should go out that afternoon with a van, but somehow one of the men had got back earlier from his morning round, and had been re-dispatched as more trustworthy. Also idleness in a boy was bad enough, but in a man paid weekly wages—insupportable.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Yarrow," cried the curate in his hearty voice, loud but not a bit preachy—I give him that due—"can I have your Joe an hour or two?"
"Have him and keep him, the lazy whelp," cried my father from the back shop, where he was busy writing up his books in his shirt sleeves. Then, laying down his pen where it would not roll over the page (which always roused him to crisply expressed anger), he came out to meet the young curate from the neighbouring parish of Breckonton. Upper or Over Breckonton was still more dependent on my father than my native Breckonside. There were other ways of getting supplies at Breckonside, at least for a time. But Over Breckonton was wholly dependent on my father's vans, carrier's carts, and general delivery of goods.
They shook hands with some heartiness. For though my father had a standing quarrel with both vicars he was always on the best of terms with the curates.
"What might you want him for, Mr. Ablethorpe?"
"Oh," said Mr. Ablethorpe, "the farmers are busy with their moor hay, you see, and I thought if Joe and I——"
"Say no more," cried my father, "you shall have him. And if he does not work like a good 'un, you tell it to me, that's all! I see now why the farmers of your parish call you the 'Hayfork' Minister!"
"Oh, they call me that, do they?" said the curate, not at all disguising his pleasure in the nickname, "well, I'm no great preacher, you know. So it is as well to make oneself of use some way!"
"That's right—that's right," cried my father, "I hope you will put a little of that teaching into the lazy bones of my young whelp. Joe! Ah, Joe, you villain! Come here! Don't skulk!"
As my father did really know where I was (and also because I was an obedient boy with a reverence for the fifth commandment of the Decalogue), I came immediately, greatly to the disappointment of the dogs, who thought themselves in for a good long romp. I found Mr. Ablethorpe explaining to my father that we were just going to call in at Brom Common Farm, to give Caleb Fergusson a lift with his hay—that Caleb was an old man, and would be the better of the assistance of two pairs of sturdy arms. Furthermore, it would keep Joe in training for the next cricket match—Breckonton and Districtv.Upper Dene Hospital it was.
"I don't know exactly how long we shall be, I tell you frankly," said the curate. "If old Caleb has nearly finished, Joe and I may take a walk before coming home. It won't do to have him getting slack, lying about the yard like this."
"That's all right," said my father, who was aching to get back to his books, and wished nothing better than to have me taken off his hands, "all serene! Don't you fret, Mr. Ablethorpe. Joe will be in good keeping along of you. I wish I could say as much of him always. He is a wandering, good-for-nothing wretch!"
That, you see, was my father's way of talking. He didn't mean anything by it. But the words just flowed naturally from him, and he could no more help abusing me, or, indeed, any of his men, than taking a snooze when sleepy in the afternoon.
The curate, who knew that barking keeps the teeth open and so prevents biting, simply laughed and said, "Well, come along, Joe! You are under my care and authority for this day, at any rate."
As for me, I was glad enough. For, but for Elsie, and the thought of my going to college in the late autumn, I liked Mr. Ablethorpe very well, as, for that matter, did nearly every one who knew him—except his vicar, who did not appreciate a young man being so popular; "stealing the hearts of his congregation from him," as he expressed it.
I was still gladder, because I knew that that afternoon there was not the least chance of seeing Elsie. She had gone up to read Latin and piles of hard books with Miss Martha Mustard, the dominie's sister, who was said to be far more learned even than he. At any rate, though not what you would call "honeysuckle sweet," she had at least a far better temper.
The curate and I set out. It was the selfsame road that Elsie and I had taken earlier in the year, on the May morning when we were the first to look inside poor Harry Foster's blood-stained mail cart.
But now the leaves were turning and drying, already brown at the edges, and splotched with yellow and green along the webbing inside. Soon our feet were on the heather, and I watched the curate to see if he would turn his head to take a look across at the little creeper-hidden cot at the Bridge End, where Elsie was not. But either he was on his guard, or he was as well aware as I myself of her absence. At any rate he never turned his head, but swung along with a jolly hillman's stride which it took me all my pith and length of limb to keep pace with.
And as we went he improved the occasion. Not like a common minister, who asks you if you have been a good boy and always tell the truth. Silly questions, as if the man had never been a boy himself!
But the curate said: "Now, look here, you are getting out of the way of going to church, just because of your father's silly quarrel with the vicar of your parish. That may be well enough for your father. He is a grown man, and can judge about these things as well as you or I. But it is different with a young fellow. He gets into bad habits. Oh, yes, I know you go sometimes to the Presbyterian chapel" (he actually used the word chapel!), "but you do that because Miss Stennis is your friend, and though, of course, anything is better than nothing——"
"It's as good as——" I was beginning hotly, when he interrupted me.
"Yes, yes," he cried hastily, "of course that is all right for those who are in it. But you are a Churchman and the son of a Churchman.Idon't go hunting Presbyterians all over two parishes. But when I see a Churchman, and the son of a Churchman, in danger of drifting—well, I step over the line of my duty and speak my mind."
I answered nothing, for after all clergymen have a monopoly of that kind of talk. But I kept my wits about me. I thought he was going to ask me to come regularly to his church so as to keep me away from Elsie, but not a bit of him.
"What I want you to promise me is that when you go to Edinburgh you will lose no time in looking up a friend of mine, Harry Ryan, who has a church on the South Side. If you don't he will look you up. But I want you to go, on the principle of one volunteer being worth two pressed men. More than that, it will do you good, and if you have left any friends here in Breckonside they will, I am sure, be glad that you are being looked after a bit. I don't mean that your liberty will be interfered with in the least. It won't be interfered with half enough in these lecturing barrack-rooms they call Scotch universities. But any way, don't be afraid. Harry Ryan will see you through."
Well, I could say no less than that I would do as he said. And when I heard that Mr. Ryan was a good "cover," as well as a safe bat and change bowler, I thought I would risk it. Afterwards I found it would have been one of the best things I could do. Though, mind you, for all that there may have been some thought of Elsie in the back of Mr. Ablethorpe's mind. For there were heaps and heaps of pretty girls at Mr. Ryan's church, as I found out when I visited the city—all sorts, swell girls, villa girls, and shop girls (these last the prettiest). And he may have thought that among so many I would be almost certain to forget Elsie. Hemay, I say. I don't know that he did. Only—I should in his place.
Well, my curate, he went on like sticks a-breaking all about the difference between church and chapel, and how, though the Presbyterians were by law established in Scotland, they were only chapel people after all. And that there was only one Church, properly so called. Oh, a lot like that. And he got quite hot about it, because he had been in Scotland himself, and had been called a Dissenter by the parish minister. He had never got over this, and even now the remembrance of it made him ruffle up his hair like tossing moist meadow hay. Then he would start in to explain about it all over again.
I didn't mind, for I thought: "The more he cares for things like that 'Postolic Succession and 'Down with John Knox,' the less time will he have for meandering about Elsie." So I was pleased all right with what he said, though I didn't listen much. However, I promised to go to his friend's church in Edinburgh, and not to any of the Presbyterian "schism-shops." That was what he called them, for he pitched into them proper. Then he was as pleased as Punch, and looked upon me with a sort of air as if he owned me. I bet he took me for a brand plucked from the Presbyterian burning. You see, on the border of the two countries it is different from anywhere else. It is like drawing a chalk line, and both sides, Piskies and Presbies, spar up to it. They are always letting out at each other, while thirty miles inland they don't care a jujube about the matter, and even play golf together and smoke pipes on the sly after sermon. This is truth, and you can put it between the leaves of the Holy Book and swear on it.
Well, I told the curate I would go to his friend Harry Ryan's church—St. James the Less was the name of it. But I didn't sayhow oftenI would go! It is always well to keep a sort of anchor out, grappled in the hinterlands of your conscience, when you are promising in the dark, as I was that time.
All this time, when Mr. Ablethorpe was improving me and leading me in the way of the Thirty-nine Articles (no, not exactly—I forgot—he didn't like them; he thought he could have made much better ones, but in the way of the catechism and Prayer Book), we were legging it across big bare Brom Common. He would stop and argue, keeping me looking straight at him till the water came into my eyes. Then on he would go again, more set than ever on making a good Churchman out of me. I never saw anybody quite so certain that he was right as Mr. Ablethorpe. Why, he would have taken his Davy that even the best of Dissenters would only get into a kind of half-way house, back-stairs heaven, and might count themselves lucky if they were not sent flying altogether.
But all this got us over the ground pretty quick, and we were at old Caleb Fergusson's before we knew it. Then, just as we were going into the stackyard I remembered that old Caleb was a Presbyterian, and of the worst and toughest kind—Free Kirk elder right through to the back seam of his coat. So I asked curate how that was, and how he reconciled helping old Caleb with his conscience and all that he had been drilling into me.
But Mr. Ablethorpe only said, "Caleb Fergusson is a Presbyterian, it is true, and very obstinate and blinded. But he has a farm at too dear a rent, and has lost the only son who helped him in the working of it. So I go sometimes to give him a hand."
It was not a very logical explanation after what he had just been unlading into me. But all the same I liked him the better for it—jolly well, too.
We found Caleb just at the end of stacking his meadow hay, and very testy. He had his old wife out to help him. She was tottering on the edge of a rick, half-way up, and all the other help he had was a small boy grandson, whom he was making sorry that he had ever been born. I thought Caleb would have been glad to see us, and so I dare say he was. But his crusty Scotchness would not let him show it. Show it? No fear.
He let Mr. Ablethorpe take his fork, it is true, and ordered down his wife from the stack with the grumble that she had left "the hale affair as saft as saps!"
Then he turned and rated the curate for not coming earlier, if he meant to be any use.
"But it's just like you English Kirkers," he said. "Ye are at the fore wi' your chants and vain ceremonies, but when it comes to the halesome milk o' the Word—faith, but your coo's dry!"
I stood aghast. I expected such a volley from the fervid curate as would sweep the daring old man off the shafts of his red farm cart. But I did not know Mr. Ablethorpe yet.
"I am sorry, Caleb," he said meekly; "I meant to come earlier, but I had a few calls to make and a service to take——"
"Service, quo' he," snorted the old Free Kirker; "the rags o' Rome!"
"And besides," continued the curate, without troubling himself with the taunt, "there was so heavy a dew this morning that I did not think you would be leading till the afternoon!"
"Nae mair we wad, if Providence had left us the means o' waitin' till the hay was decently won. But what can a puir auld bereaved couple dae, hirplin' at death's door, baith the twa o' them?"
By this time I was on the stack, and the Hayfork Minister was sending me up armful after armful to settle into its place.
"Tramp, will ye!" shouted the old man; "that wife o' mine has gotten nae heavier on her feet than a cricket on the hearth, or a spider that taketh hold wi' her hands and is in king's pailaces! Tramp, laddie!"
So, as Mr. Ablethorpe forked the hay, I stepped sturdily round, till I, too, was fain to strip to my shirt, and even moisten the sweet-smelling bog hay with the sweat of my brow.
And while we worked old Caleb stood by, and, as he expressed it, "tightly tairged the Apiscopian on doctrine and the Scriptures." Mr. Ablethorpe was certainly at a disadvantage in a theological argument conducted from a hay cart (with a borrowed horse) against an assailant sitting crumbling tobacco into a pipe on the safe eminence of an upturned wheelbarrow.