(The last Testimony of Miser Hobby is continued and concluded)
"It was in the days after the disappearance of Henry Foster, the mail-post carrier between Bewick and Breckonside, that I became aware of the increasing madness of those whom I had so rashly taken under my roof and protection. The younger sisters, especially Honorine, thought nothing of standing on walls screaming like peacocks, flapping their arms, and declaring that they were winged angels, ready on a signal from on high to fly upward into the blue. At such times Jeremy would take to his fiddle and lock himself in the top rooms of the house, especially affecting the tower chamber overlooking the Moat. He even refused on several occasions to go to work, though the business indicated was safe and remunerative enough. I had often observed with great interest the home coming of young Jamie Caig, of Little Springfield, a great taker of grass parks, a mighty dealer in well-wintered sheep and fat bullocks. On one occasion I watched him all the way from Longtown with the best part of a thousand pounds in his pockets.
"I remember that he had on a shiny white mackintosh, and I thought he would never leave the town, going into all sorts of foolish and expensive cook shops and toy bazaars to buy trinkets and knick-knacks.
"Then, after all, at the arch of trees on the Pond Road where the way narrows, there was no Jeremy—though I knew that the usual boat was moored within twenty yards—fifteen to be exact. Thus Caig, the younger, and his thousand pounds passed unharmed. In the dull light I could see him put his hand into an open packet of candy and take out a piece to suck it. He went by whistling, mocking at me, as it were—only that he was such a grown-up babe.
"But there was worse to come. At some risk to myself I followed behind. He never even looked over his shoulder, only quickening his pace as he got near to the tumble-down, out-at-elbows steading of Little Springfield which he had leased for himself.
"The inhabitants, one and all, must have been waiting for young Jamie Caig. For before I could turn away a troop of children issued out and rushed at him, taking him by escalade, routed out his pockets, even his wife and sisters taking part, and he all the time laughing. I never saw a more disgusting sight in my life.
"That night I broke in the door of Jeremy's room where he sat playing on the flute, and, with a revolver in one hand to keep him in awe, I thrashed him severely about the neck and shoulders with my cane. His sister said that it was the only way to teach him obedience.
"Indeed, Miss Orrin was a sensible woman, and at this time remained my only stand-by. So long as I supported the mad troop, I could count upon her, even though it perilled her soul. She aided me with her brother also, and from her I learned a thing about Jeremy which, though I am generally brave enough, I will admit disquieted me.
"Jeremy had taken to digging under the lily roots with his finger nails, and when checked for it by his sister, he said that he wanted to see whether Lang Hutchins, Harry Foster, and the others were 'coming up.' He added that there would be a resurrection some day, and he was scratching to see how soon it would happen. He did not want it to come unawares, when he was asleep, for instance.
"And he made even my well-trained blood run cold by laughing with chuckling pleasure, declaring that 'when they stick their heads through, Jeremy will be on hand to do his wark a' ower again! He will twine a halter round their necks as they are sproutin' and fill their mouths fu' o' clay. Then Jeremy will defy even Aphra to gar them rise again. There's nae word o' twa resurrections, ye ken! So Jeremy will do for them that time!'
"At other seasons, especially after he had been punished for scratching in the soil, he would cry like a child. He generally did this when Aphra whipped him. But in half an hour I would find him again among the lily beds, his hands all bound up in fingerless gloves, but his ear close down against the earth.
"'Wheesht—wheesht!' he would whisper, putting up a linen-wrapped stump to stay me. 'Listen to them knocking—they are knocking to get oot. Jeremy can hear them!'
"And though I raised him with the toe of my boot and made him be off into the house, yet his words shook my nerves so that I had to go into the weaving-chamber, where I was not myself till I had taken a good long spell at the loom.
"After some of the later disappearances, notably that of Harry Foster—for, as he was in some sort a public servant wearing a uniform, the postman's case received attention out of all proportion to its importance—the police would come about us, asking questions and taking down notes and references. There was nothing serious in that, though I was even asked to justify myalibiby giving the employ of my time during the day previous to 'the unfortunate occurrence'—unfortunate, indeed, for me and for all concerned—Harry Foster included. As, however, I had both lunched and supped with my old friend and lawyer, Mr. Gillison Kilhilt, and afterwards slept at his house, I could not have been more innocent if I had done the same with the Queen herself, God bless her!
"But it was not the police, rate-supported and by law established (whom I have always encouraged and aided in every possible way, entertaining them, and facilitating their researches and departures), that annoyed me. The little, mean, paltry spying of Breckonside and the neighbourhood was infinitely more difficult to bear.
"For instance, there was a boy—a youth, I suppose I should call him—one Joseph Yarrow, upon whose rich father I had long had my eye. If it had not been that he generally came in the company of my own granddaughter Elsie, his neck would soon enough have been twisted. But as it was, he put us to an enormous amount of trouble. One never knew when he would be spying about, and once, by an unfortunate mistake of my own, I introduced my granddaughter and this intrusive young good-for-nothing into a barn of which our mad people had been making a kind of chapel of Beelzebub.
"There was also a High-Church clergyman—a kind of mission priest, I think he called himself—come north with a friend to convert the Scotch. He took it into his head that, not making great progress with the sane of the neighbourhood, he might perhaps have better luck with Miss Aphra and her private asylum!
"And I must say that he had. The processions and peacock screamings went on, but there was an end of skulls and little coffins and crossbones knocked together like cymbals as they marched. Instead, they had tables with crucifixes, and confessionals, and all sorts of paraphernalia in gold lace and tags. Mr. Ablethorpe (that was the High-Churchman's name) was pleased and proud. Four at once, sane or insane, was an unprecedented increase to his scanty flock. And as for him everything depended upon the proper taking of the sacraments, it was all right. Honorine and the rest would take them, or anything else, twenty times an hour.
"But in addition there was 'confession,' and you may be sure I went carefully into that business with Miss Aphra. However, she reassured me.
"'These poor ones' (so she always named her sisters, Honorine, Camilla, and Sidonia) 'know nothing about it. And as for me, I confess only what will not endanger the shelter of the roof which covers us. Because of that I am willing, for some time longer, to retain unconfessed and unforgiven sin on my soul!'
"This sounded all right to me. But, fool that I was, as usual my confiding nature put me in danger. If I had suspected that some day that same Mr. Ablethorpe, whom I had received and warmed like a snake in my bosom, would carry off not only Honorine and her two mad companions to one of his patent sisterhoods (even Aphra herself fleeing, probably to join them later) leaving me (as I am at present) alone with Jeremy to face the storm—well, I would have nipped in the very bud the propagation of erroneous and Romanist doctrines. I have always been conscientiously opposed to these in any case!
"It was the increasing waywardness of the entire Orrin family which threatened to be the ruin of all my carefully planned scheme. If only I could have kept them as I first got them—Jeremy docile and comparatively easy of influence even in his hours of wildness, Aphra sage and wise in counsel, with a firm hand over the others, and all that property of Deep Moat Grange so excellently laid out, as if on purpose for our operations!
"But, alas! Folly no more than wisdom will stand still. If only they had been like my web, full of subtle combinations and devices which none could work out in full beauty save myself, yet abiding still and waiting for my hand without the changing of a stitch! The Orrins were no more than my loom wherewith to spin gold—but—they would not bide as they were during my absences, however short.
"The worst of it all was that, having once begun to operate on their own accounts, though most unfortunately and ill advisedly, they would no longer confine themselves to legitimate business. Not only Jeremy, but even Aphra must needs try to realize the most fantastic and impossible combinations, like some poor drudging weaver who should attempt to execute one of my patterns. It was not in them, the hare-brained, mauling crew, and naturally enough they spoiled the web.
"First of all, there was the affair of that young vagabond's father, the rich shopkeeper at Breckonside—rich, that is, not as I am rich, but rich for a little town village anchored down on a dozen miles square of fertile lands between the Bewick marshes and the uplands of Cheviot.
"Now, I had always had it in my head that some day a trifle might be made out of this Joseph Yarrow, senior. But he was a bold, straight-dealing man, who knew that the nearest bank, or a good investment through his lawyer, was the best way of keeping his head whole on his shoulders. He went and came ostentatiously along both our roads, by night or day—it mattered little to him. He had never more than five shillings and a brass watch in his pockets. All his business he did by cheque, and he was not at all ashamed to enter a shop, or even accost a man on the street of a town where he was known, and ask for the loan of five shillings—which was certain to be returned on the morrow, with a pot of home-made jam or some delicacy from the crowded shelves of his shop.
"Most people liked dealing with this man Yarrow. As for me, I never could bear him. He had a scornful eye, not questing, like his son's (whose neck I could twist), but merely sneering—especially when, at distant market towns, he would hear me addressed as 'Laird,' which is my rightful title. At such times he would smile a little smile that bit like vitriol, and turn away. And I knew well enough that he was thinking and saying to himself—'Miser Hobby—Miser Hobby!' Still, had I had the sense to look at the matter in the right light, this should have cheered me—that he onlydespisedme, I mean. For if Joseph Yarrow, the cleverest man in all the neighbourhood, was not calling me 'Murderer Hobby,' then I was safe from all the rest. But so curious a thing is man, and so much harder to bear is scorn than the worst accusation of crime, that it was often on my tongue tip to jolt his self-complaisance with a little inkling of the truth.
"All the same, I laid it all up against him—some day I would catch him coming home with a goodly sum. So, after long thought, I arranged that a letter should be sent to warn him that one Steve Cairney, a slippery 'dealer' who had long owed him a large amount, would be at the Longtown Fair to sell horses, and that it was now or never. The thing was true. Nothing, indeed, could be truer. Jeremy was forewarned, and all should have passed off easily and fitly as the drawing on of an old glove. But because that fool Jeremy had seen instruments of music (of which he is inordinately fond) by the score and gross in Yarrow's shop down at Breckonside, he must needs put the man into a cell behind the Monks' Oven, instead of finishing the matter out of hand. Aphra also mixed herself up in the affair, urging Yarrow, who must have had an excellent idea where he was, to sign the cheque they had found on him, as if that made any difference! I know a man in Luxembourg who will give two-thirds value on a cheque drawn on a sound account, and, in addition, provide the signature from any reasonable copy. It is never the first owners who lose with such things. There were plenty of Yarrow's receipted bills about the house, and there need have been no difficulty about that. But unhappily I was from home, and so everything went to pigs and whistles.
"Then it pleased Miss Orrin to take a violent jealousy of my granddaughter, Elsie Stennis, and to sequester her somewhere about the premises, which, of course, brought the storm about our ears in full force. With this folly, worse than any crime, I am glad to record that I had nothing whatever to do. Doubtless the business was carried out by Jeremy under the orders of his sister Aphra. I have at least this to be thankful for, that as long as I retained the full and entire direction of affairs Deep Moat Grange might have been called the vale of peace and plenty.
"Then came Parson Ablethorpe, who in collusion, most likely, with his missionary associate—De la Poer, I think he calls himself—spirited off the women, Aphra last of all. It was a case of rats leaving a sinking ship. Had it not been for the loss of Miss Aphra, for whose character I had some respect, I should have been glad to see the last of them. But as soon as the influence of his sister was removed, Jeremy became wilder and madder than ever. I could see him on moonlight nights creeping about among the lily clumps, digging here and scraping there, his hands and feet bare and earth-stained. Then, seated tailorwise among the mould, he would play strange music on his violin, and laugh. On dark nights it was not much better. I could not see him, it is true. But I could hear him digging and panting like a wild beast, or laughing to himself, and then stopping suddenly to croon, 'Down Among the Dead Men!'"
*****
"This," said Mr. Fiscal McMath, "is the last entry in what purports to be a narrative or diary." He turned to another leaf left behind in the house and recovered by the searchers.
"Ah," he said, "here is yet another paragraph. It is dated 'February 10, morning," and runs as follows: "'Came home to an empty house. Jeremy madder than ever, playing and laughing about the house—nothing to eat. Dined with Ball at the bailiff's cottage. I did not like the way Jeremy looked at me when I refused him money. But it is he or I for the mastery. In case of anything happening, the lines which follow contain my last will and testament: I die at peace with all men, and I leave everything of which I die possessed to my granddaughter, Elsie Stennis!
"(Signed)"HOWARD (sometimes called Hobby) STENNIS."
"The wretch! The villain! The robber!" cried Aphra Orrin, for a moment forgetting her role of penitent—"to take from us who earned in order to give all to a stranger!"
"Elsie will never touch a penny of it!" I shouted, but my voice was lost in the universal howl.
"The woman stands fully committed—take her away!" cried the sheriff.
He had glanced at his watch. It was in fact, long past his dinner hour! As if moved by his hand policemen rapidly displaced the two clergymen, and Aphra disappeared down a flight of stairs to the cells below.
But, curiously enough, the mob had no thought of her. The reading of Hobby Stennis' confession—so ghastly, perverted, cold-blooded, dead to all moral sense, even triumphant, ending with the will which gave everything to Elsie—had so incensed the people that there was a rush when a kind of crack-witted preaching man from Bewick shouted, "Make an end, ye people, make an end! Let none of the viper's brood escape! She is a woman, this Elsie, and will breed the like—murderers and monsters every one! She is a Stennis, and we have had enough of such. To Breckonside! To the Bridge End! Find the heiress, chosen as the fittest to succeed the man-slayers and make an end! Hang her quick to a tree!"
I could now see what my father had meant by leaving the place so hurriedly. Mr. Ablethorpe, who knew, had warned him of what was coming. And that, as there was no other outlet for the passions of the angry mob, Elsie might be in some temporary danger of violence and ill usage, if of nothing worse. Therefore, he had hurried off, taking Rob Kingsman with him. As for me, even while thinking these thoughts, I was swept out of the doorway, and carried along by the throng, my feet scarcely touching the ground. The mob, chiefly rough Bewick miners and labourers, took the road toward the Bridge End of Brecksonside at a trot, bawling "Death and vengeance!" against all of the blood of Stennis.
And there was now but one of that name and race—Elsie!
You may be sure that I kept up with the crowd. It was a disagreeable crowd—Bewick Muir pitmen, and the navvies from the East Dene and Thorsby waterworks—they were making a new pipe-line through the Bewick Beck Valley, and the navvies were interested in poaching—so that was what had brought them so far from home. Only the few Breckonside people who had not left early knew anything bout Elsie.
All that was known to the bulk of those present was that Hobby Stennis had amassed a great fortune by entrapping and making away with drovers, farmers and cattle dealers—that he had rigged out Deep Moat Grange for that purpose, and that in his last will and testament he had expressed a wish that his heirs should continue the business. The sole heir appeared to be a certain Elsie, and her they naturally enough took for a dangerous malefactor.
There must, however, have been a Breckonside traitor among them, for as soon as they reached the town they made straight for the cottage at the Bridge End. The door was burst in, the poor furniture turned topsy-turvy—Elsie's books thrown about. But I knew better than to interfere at this point. There was something much more serious coming.
I knew very well that my father would never let poor Nance Edgar suffer for something that she had not been mixed in at all. When Joseph Yarrow started in to do a thing—I don't mean me—it had to be gone through with, even though it cost some odd halfpence. For my father, keen at a bargain as he was, did not spare his money when once he put his hand deep into his pocket.
So I pegged it down the road and over the bridge, with the hottest of the pack at my heels. Somebody must have told them that Elsie had gone to "the Mount." And if I could find who that person was, I would wring his neck on the High Street of Breckonside—which would be not a bit more than he deserves.
"Death to the Stennises! Death to the murderers!"
I could hear the shout right at my heels, turning after turning, till at last I was in the home stretch, and clambering up the steep ascent to the red brick wall within which stood the house that was my home. What was my surprise to find all the iron window shutters, which ever since I could remember had been turned back against the wall (and each caught there with a screw catch) fitted into the window frames!
My father was on the housetop. I could just see him over the railings, for it was darkish in spite of the moon.
"Is that you, Joe?" he called out, leaning forward till I thought he would fall off.
I answered that it was—I and no other.
"Then be off with you round by the stables. All is shut here. One of the two Robs will let you in!"
He meant Rob Kingsman or Rob McKinstrey. So I tell you I tracked it about the house and thumped on the gate. There was not much time, you understand, for the first of the band were already shouting and gesticulating to my father to give up Elsie Stennis. They meant to make an end of all the "murdering lot," and of any who sheltered them! So they said, and by the accent and the taint of whiskey in the air, I could make out that there were a lot of Irish among them. Now the Irish that stay at home are very decent people indeed, as I have good reason to know, but those that come about Breckonside to work at the quarries and waterworks are the devil and all—if Mr. Ablethorpe and the vicar will excuse me the expression.
Well, I knocked and I shouted, but never an answer got I.
At last, at the window of the sleeping-room that was Rob Kingsman's, I saw a white blob which I made out to be the occupant's face.
"Hey, Rob!" I cried; "let me in, Rob. They are after me—at my heels!"
"Reason the mair for you bidin' where ye are," said Rob, whose strong point was certainly not courage, "if they have done ye no harm as yet, just keep quiet and they will do ye none whatever. Ye are no Stennis. The Stennises are a' weel-faured!"
"But I want to help—I want to get in! De'il tak' ye, Rob, let me in!"
I think even the vicar, good Churchman as he is (though not in Mr. Ablethorpe's sense) would have forgiven me the strength of the last expression—considering the provocation, that is. As also the fact that, living so near Scotland, where there are so many "Presbies" about, the very best Churchman is sometimes seduced into their rough, but picturesque, habit of speech.
"Here, Joe!" said Rob, after a while, taking pity on me. He opened a little wicket—just one pane of his iron-barred window, for my father had had everything about the place strengthened at the first scare about Riddick of Langbarns and the other lost farmers and drovers; "here, lad, tak' haud o' this! There's a barrel that had sugar intil't doon by the weighing machine. Creep into that. And mind—dinna shoot onybody. Use the pistol only in self-defence. There's nae law again' that!"
The next moment I had a revolver in one hand and a pouch of cartridges in the other—yellow bag, waist belt and all! I tell you I felt the citizen of no mean city as I buckled them on. I would not have changed places with the Prince of Wales going to open an Aquarium. For, you see, I had never been allowed to go near the little room where my father kept the firearms for sale, the sporting ammunition, and the other touch-and-go truck, which interested me more than anything in the place. Of course, when father was lost for so long, I could have gone and helped myself. But, though you mayn't think it, I had a sort of pride about that.
I wasn't going to do when he was away what I durstn't do when he was stamping about the yard and stores. So I didn't. But to have a real,realrevolver given me, with proper cartridges—and me outside and all the others inside—why, it was just the primest thing that ever happened to me in all my life.
When I reached the outer gate (that by which Dapple had entered, Mad Jeremy, no doubt, riding her to the door) Rob McKinstrey shouted that if I looked sharp he would let me in and have the yard door shut again before ever one of the Paddies could get his nose inside.
But I knew better than that—oh, ever so much better.
Not many fellows get a chance to die nobly, like a young hero, in front of his own father's house, in defence of his girl—with not only that girl, her own self, but also his second best—I mean another girl friend (of his mother's) looking out at him from the wall, just like the beautiful Jewess Rebecca, and Rowena the Saxon, and all that lot.
So I charged round, knowing that the eyes of Elsie and the Caw girls were on me. And there in front of the house was a whole mob of Geordies and Paddies, navvies, and all the general riff-raff, with here and there an angry Bewicker who knew no better—all calling for Elsie to be given up to them. My father was up on a flat part of the roof, and was haranguing them, as if he had been brought up to the business. They were flinging dirt and stones at him, too, and one had clipped him on the side of his head, so that the blood was trickling down his temple, which made me mad to watch. Morning had come by this time, so that was how I could see so well. It comes precious early at Breckonside this time of the year, as you would know if your father started you out as early as mine did. We have lots of winter there, but when the light time does arrive, it comes along early and stays to supper.
Well, you see, ever since my father took so stiffly to Elsie, I had been pretty much gone on the governor. I suppose, even before that, I would not have seen him mishandled without shaking a stick for him. But now, it just made my blood boil, and I am not one of your furious heroes either. I always think well before I let my courage boil over. As you may have noticed from this biography, I do not profess to be one of your fetch-a-howl-and-jump-into-the-ring heroes.
But, as father's spring sale advertisements say, this was an opportunity which might never occur again. (It didn't, as a fact.)
So I got right between the crowd and our varnished front door, over which stood my father with his broken head, still holding forth as to what he would do to every man present. "Twenty years hard" was the least that even the back ranks would get.
There was not a real armed man among them. So, when I stepped up on the stone stoop with the morning sun glinting down my revolver and my warlike eye squinting t'other way along the sights, one hand behind my back as I had seen them do in pictures of duellists in theGraphic(when they do half-page pictures to illustrate what father calls "bloodthirsty yarns." I never read the small print, of course, but the pictures are prime for sticking up over a fellow's bed) and the yellow leather belt and open pouch for cartridges—well, I wouldn't have taken the fanciest price for myself at that moment—I really wouldn't. If it had been at Earl's Court, they would have marked meHors Concours, and set me to judge the other exhibits!
Well, of course, these fellows had never seen the funny round black dot a loaded revolver makes when it is pointed square at your right eye and the fellow behind looks like pulling the trigger. And I tell you they scurried back, fifty yards at least, and some of the less keen even began to sneak off. Pretty soon they all did so. I think they felt that they had been behaving foolishly.
But what they felt was nothing to whatIdid a moment after.
You see, my father didn't know what had been happening down below. He couldn't see, for one thing. The jut of the porch hid my warlike array and bold defence. So he couldn't understand who the—umph—was down there. To make out he came forward and leaned over the stone cornice at the end of the railings, with Elsie on one side of him and Harriet Caw on the other.
I stood up as noble as the boy on the burning deck or Fitz-James, when he said—
"Come one, come all, this rock shall flyFrom its firm base as soon as I!"
Or, at any rate, something like that. Butmyfeet were really on my native doorstep, while as for Fitz-James—my father says that, whether the rock flew or not, he had no title to it that could stand the least sniff of law.
Before my father spoke to me, both Elsie and Harriet Caw thought that I looked "just too heroic." This I heard on good authority, and it pleased me, for that was the exact effect I was trying to produce. Elsie was such a brick as to swear that she thought so even after, and to this day she sticks to it. Girls have some good points.
But it was awful enough at the time.
"Joe," shouted my father, and I could see his face red and threatening above me, with the effort of leaning so far over, "if you do not put up that popgun and come in the house directly, I will come out with a cane and thrash you within an inch of your life!"
He even went on to give particulars, which I think was mean of him in the circumstances. But no fellow can argue with his father—at least, not with one like mine—so I stepped round to the door. My father met me, took the revolver away from me, and made as if he would box my ears. Last of all, he told me to go into the back kitchen and wash my face—and ears.
I could have forgiven him all but that word.
Then Harriet Caw giggled, and said she would come and see that I did it. But just then the tide turned. For, hearing Harriet say this, Elsie came along, too, and though I was, indeed, pretty grimy with racing and scratching along after these Bewick pit fellows, she took my hands, right under the nose of Harriet Caw, and said, "Joe, I thank you for saving my life!"
Then, loosing one of my hands, she put her palm on my shoulder, and stooped and kissed me on the forehead, ever so stately and noble, like another of thoseGraphicpictures.
But evidently Harriet Caw did not think so, for she only sniffed and, turning on her patent india-rubber heels (which she had bought to imitate Elsie), she went right upstairs.
So it was Elsie who helped me to wash away the smoke of battle. That wasn't so altogether bad. You should have seen her eyes, all you other fellows, when I undid the yellow leather belt from about my war-worn waist, and gave her the pouch of cartridges to put away.
"Are they Dum-Dum?" she said reverently.
And I said they were.
I didn't really know about the cartridges, but at leastIwas—and Elsie liked it very well. The fellows who talk a lot at such times never get on with girls.
Jove, wasn't it just ripping to think that at last a chap could go where he liked, and do what he liked—all that horrid lot at the Grange being either dead or with the locksmith's fingers between them and the outside world! Ripping? Rather! It was like a new earth.
All the same, you have no idea what a show place the ruined Grange became. Old Bailiff Ball stayed on and made a pretty penny by showing the people over. Especially the weaving-room, and where old Hobby sat, and the keyhole through which Elsie peeped to see her grandfather as if praying over the loom, with Jeremy's knife hafted between his shoulder blades! I think they would have had a magic lantern next! But finally this was stopped by the police people. For Miss Orrin was still to be tried, and all the money that could be got out of the grounds of Deep Moat Grange was to be given back to the friends and relatives of the people who had been "arranged for." But the mischief was, nobody wanted to buy, and the whole place was in danger of going to rack and ruin.
As for me, I took to wandering about a good deal there. Maybe I was love-sick—though I hope not, for my good name's sake. At least, it was about this time father said that we were far too young for any thought of marriage, but that Elsie could stay on in our house. Then Elsie was not happy, and was all the time wanting to go back to Nance Edgar's and her teaching at Mr. Mustard's—because my mother had got accustomed to the Caw girls, Harriet and Constantia, by this time, and could not bear the thought of parting with them. So Elsie, of course, would not stay, and go she did, as you shall hear.
We could have had some pretty good times, she and I, but for this worry. Father was about as fond of Elsie as I was (owing to the time behind the Monks' Oven). But, of course, he would not go openly against mother—that is, not in the house. It was not to be expected. If it had been anything to do with the shop or business, he would simply have told mother to mind her own affairs. And mother would have done it, too. But with the house it was different.
Well, all this made me pretty melancholy—with no more stand-up in me than a piece of chewed string. I read poetry, too, on the sly—such rot, as I now see—never anything written plain out, but all the words twisted, the grammar all tail foremost, and no sense at all mostly. I don't wonder nowadays people only use it in church to sing—and even then never think of bringing away their hymn books with them.
So what with the poetry, and the melancholy brought on by the thought of Elsie going back to have that old bristly weasel-faced Mustard breathe down her neck when she was doing sums, I brought myself to a pretty low ebb. Elsie was sorry for me, I think, but said nothing. She had aches of her own under the old blue serge blouse (left side front) when Harriet Caw went past her on our stairs rustling in silk underthings and an impudent little nose in the air as if she smelt a drain.
At any rate I spent a good deal of time in the woods that summer. Woods are most sympathetic places when you are young and just desperately sad, but can't for the life of you tell why. Doctors, I believe, know. But when mother asked old Doc McPhail, he only grinned and said she had better "let the kail-pot simmer a while longer. The broth would be none the worse!"
But my mother could make nothing out of that, nor I either for that matter. Yet through the glass of the office door I actually saw the doctor grin at my father, and my father—yes, he actually winked back! Old brutes, both of them—fifth commandment or no fifth commandment!
"No books—no office!" said old McPhail, "not for a while. Let the colt run till he tires!"
So the colt was, as it were, turned out to grass. The official explanation was that between nineteen and twenty there occurred a dangerous period—twenty-one was a yet more dangerous age.And I had overgrown my strength!
I liked that—Iwho could vault the counter twenty-five times back and forth, leaning only on the fingers of one hand!
Something during the long summer days drew me persistently to the Deep Moat Woods. Some magnet of danger past and gone for ever—something, too, of nearness to the little schoolhouse, to which, spite of my father and myself, Elsie had carried her point and returned. I was sulky and jealous about this—much to Elsie's indignation.
"Mr. Mustard—Mr. Mustard!" she said, with her eyes cold and contemptuous; "I can keep Mr. Mustard in his place—ay, or ten of him—you too, Joseph Yarrow, mopping about the woods like a sick cat! You are not half the man your father is!"
And, indeed, I never set myself up to be.
The day I am telling about was a Saturday. Elsie was to have gone for a walk with me; I expected it. But, instead, she informed me in the morning, when I met her setting out to go to the school-house for an extra lesson, that she had arranged to spend the afternoon with father in his office, going into her grandfather's affairs.
"Mr. Yarrow," she said, "thinks that everything which my grandfather possessedbeforehe began to kill people is quite rightly mine. He had weaved hard for that. It would have been my mother's, and it ought to be mine, too. Even a bad man, your father says, ought to be allowed to do a little good after he is dead, if it can be arranged honestly. That is what your father says."
"My father!" I repeated after her bitterly, "it is always my father now."
"And good reason!" cried Elsie, firing up, "he gives the best and wisest advice, and it would tell on you, Master Joe, if you took it a little oftener."
"No wonder mother prefers Harriet Caw!" I muttered. And the next moment I would have given all that I had in possession to have recalled the words, but it is always that way with a tongue which runs too easily.
Turning, Elsie gave me one long look, hurt, indignant, almost anguished. Then she went slowly up the stairs, and in ten minutes her little chest and bundle of wraps were out on the yard pavement. I saw her bargaining with Rob Kingsman to take them across to Nance Edgar's for her. And I think she took a shilling out of her lean purse to give him. I tell you I felt like a hog. I was a hog. I knew it and, shamefaced, betook me to the woods as to a sty.
I had wounded Elsie to the quick, and wronged my father also.... I did not believe that either of them would ever forgive me. For, of course, she would go straight and tell father. I did not feel that I could ever go back. At the wood edge I turned and looked once at the smoke curling up from the chimney of "the Mount" kitchen. It was so hot there was no fire in any of the other rooms. Ah, 'home, sweet, sweet home'!
Then I peeped at the schoolhouse, and saw Mr. Mustard and Elsie walking slowly up to the front door together. She had had that extra lesson, the nature of which she had not thought fit to tell me. Then she would go—well, no matter where. It was all over between us at any rate.
Did you ever know such a fool? Why, yes—there was yourself, dear reader—that is, if you have been wise. If not, it may not even yet be too late to be foolish.
I wasted the day in the woods. That is, I took out my pocket-book, jerked my fountain pen into some activity, and scribbled verses. I was too proud to go back home. And I knew well that my father had accepted in its fullest sense the doctor's advice, "Let him run!" He would neither send after me himself nor allow anyone else to meddle with my comings and goings.
It was curious and fascinating to linger about the Deep Moat Woods, once so terrible, now become a haunt of the sightseer and the day tripper. But I who had seen so much there, and heard more, who with beating heart had adventured so often into these darkling recesses, could not lose all at once the impression of brooding danger they had given me, ever since that first morning when Elsie and I crossed the road and plunged into them on the day of poor Harry Foster's death.
I suppose it was the moody state of my mind (Elsie unkindly calls it "sulks") which led me to stay on and on till the afternoon became the evening, and the shadows of the trees over the pond became more and more gloomy—mere dark purple with blobs and blotches of fire where the sunset clouds showed between the leaves.
I stood leaning against the trunk of a tree, the branches bending down umbrella fashion all about me. In those days I was a limber young fellow enough, and could have acted model for an illustrated-paper hero quite fairly—Childe Harold, the Master of Ravenswood, or one of those young Douglases to whom they brought in the Black Bull's Head in the Castle of Edinburgh, as a sign that they must die.
Of course, I had no business to be there at that time of night, but my own loneliness and Elsie's desertion made me stay on and on—miserable and cherishing my misery, petting my "sulks," and swearing to myself that I would never,nevergive in—neverforgive Elsie,neverreturn to those who had so ill used and misunderstood me.
Yes, what a fool, if you like! But I wasn't the first and I won't be the last to feel and say just the same things.
Then, quick and chillish, like the breaking of cold sweat on a man, though he doesn't know quite why, there passed over me the thrill which tells a fellow that he is not alone. Yet anything more lonely than the Moat Pond ruins, with what remained of the square hulk of the tower cutting the sky—the same from which Jeremy had hurled himself—could not be imagined.
Nevertheless I did not breathe that night air alone. I was sure of that. The bats swooped and recovered, seeing doubtless the white blur of my face in the dusk of the tree shadows.
Before me I could see the green lawn all trampled that had been Miss Orrin's pride. The lilies were mostly uprooted to allow of the perquisitions of the law. But whether it was something supernatural (in which at the time I was quite in a mood to believe), or merely owing to the moving of a soil so pregnant with the exhalations of the marsh—certain it is that I saw the distinct outline of a man's body, with limbs extended, lie in the same place where each of Miser Hobby's "cases" had been interred. They were marked out with a kind of misty fire, like the phosphorus when a damp match won't strike—not bright like the boiling swirl in a vessel's wake. Each of them kept quite still. There was no movement save, perhaps, that of a star, when you see it through the misty air low on the horizon of the west, and kind of swaying, which after all may only have been in my head.
I don't think I was particularly frightened at first. I had had some chemistry lessons with Mr. Ablethorpe, and we had gone pretty far on—boiling a penny in one kind of acid, and making limestone fizz with another—nitrochloric, or hydrochloric, I think. So I knew enough not to be frightened—at least not very badly. But what I saw next scared me stiff. I don't hide the fact. And so it would have scared you!
There was something on the lawn, dabbling among the shiny glimmer of the uprooted lily plots, crouching and scratching!
Something living it was, and pretty active, too—no mistake about that. A dog? Possibly! But the next moment it stood erect on two feet like a man, and, turning slowly, peered all about. Then as suddenly it dropped down on all fours again and fell to the scraping. I could hear the sound distinctly in that lonesome place, where the water in the pond was too thick and heavy even to ripple, and where only the owl cried regularly once in five minutes.
I could not have spoken if I had tried, and I did not try. My tongue dried up like a piece of old bark, and I knew what the Bible meant when it said that sometimes a fellow's tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. Mine would, if the roof had not been as dry as a chip also.
You ask if I watched the Thing. You may take it for gospel that I could not have turned my head or averted my eyes for all the wealth of the Indies, though that, I understand, is a poor country enough.
Well, I saw the Thing scramble from grave to empty grave, scratch at each furiously, obscuring the dim phosphorescent glimmer. Then, standing erect, it flung up great clawlike hands with a ghoulish gesture of disappointment, moaning lamentably to the stars!
I tell you I dripped. My body trembled so that it shook the tree. So would yours have done, if you had been there—perhaps even a bigger tree.
Then some noise from the opposite side of the Moat, or, perhaps, from beyond the Pond, struck the ear of the Thing. I don't know how a spectre disappears. I never saw but that one, and since then I have lost all interest. But at any rate the Shape passed me at a long wolf's lope, making no noise and going fast. Right under my nose it slipped silently into the black deeps of the Pond. I think it sank underneath, for the next moment I could see no more than a wet head, a round, vague sphere that glistened faintly, turning this way and that, and very ghastly.The Thing was swimming, and making no noise.
Then I came to myself with a sudden revulsion. If there were, indeed, anything living on that Island of Deep Moat Grange—yet another of that hideous crew left free and alive—the sooner the world knew about it the better. I had always thought, and my father had said that the official researches in the catacombs, called after the old Cistercian Monks, had been much too summary.
The moisture came slowly back to my mouth. I was still scared, of course, but I had got over the paralysis that comes with a first surprise. If the Thing could swim, I could run, though not quite so noiselessly, as there was an abundance of brushwood which I had to traverse, while the wave undulated like oil off the creature's back, as from an otter crossing a stream. You never saw anything swim so lightly and yet so fast.
It crossed the Pond obliquely, evidently making for the entrance of the Backwater. I could not follow directly. You see, I was constrained to cross at the drawbridge. But, between ourselves, I burned the path under my feet. I have many times run fast, but never so quickly as then. Talk about second wind—second courage is worth ten of it any day; quite as real, too, though less talked about.
It seemed a dreadful long way round about, and my heart was as much in my mouth now lest I should loseIt, as it had been before, lestItshould find me.
But I got there just ahead.
As I expected it had turned down the long, straight cut of the Backwater, and was swimming straight toward me. Now, thought I, I will surely see what the Thing is. But I could only make out—vague, round, and shining, a head that turned this way and that in swimming.
Suddenly the speed was checked. The swimmer, whatever it might be, turned sharply, searched a little, and appeared to hesitate. I took a step and bent forward to listen. A rotten branch cracked sharply under my careless foot. There was a sort of "wallop" like a seal or sea lion turning off a spring-board into a pond. Then came the sharp click of sliding iron. A square of darkness yawned in the canal bank. Something entered, and the door shut with several jerks like machinery in infrequent usage. The Thing had vanished. I was alone with the new terror of the woods of Deep Moat Grange.
Nevertheless I had had a certain lesson some time before. I could not again be altogether deceived. Itwassomething human, though in all probability just so much the more dangerous and cruel for that. He, or she, knew the secret of the iron door which Mr. Ablethorpe had made me enter.
There was, therefore, at least one still left of the devil's brood in their ancient haunts, and the sooner that the world was warned, the better. Or, at least, I would tell my father, and he would get together a few determined men, who would not be afraid to act according to their consciences and the necessities of the case.
As for fear, it had clean gone from me. A kind of singing came into my head instead, but not in my ears, which seemed to act with extraordinary acuteness. After all it was splendid to know what no one else on earth knew. Besides, I would show them all, especially Elsie, what I could do, acting alone. They despised me, laughed at me, yet here was I I had been away all day, without food, without a soul thinking about me or caring for me. Nevertheless I, Joe Yarrow, whom everybody thought an idler, a mere waster of precious time, would spring this news upon the world!
And so I might, but for one thing.
To get away I had to pass the wall of the old orchard and the flagstone on which Mr. Ablethorpe and I had seen Mad Jeremy stamping down with such force. Now, if I had not been such a conceited young man (my father's words), or so taken up with getting the better of Elsie (that young person's own opinion), I would have known that any of the crew who knew the secret of the iron door and the bricked passage would also be sure to know that of the flagstone and the way out by the orchard.
But at any rate it did not occur to me at the time. I thought solely about getting home, arming a band, and coming to watch for the scratcher of the lily beds, the swimmer of the Backwater, the creature which had opened and shut the iron door—no easy task, as we knew, Mr. Ablethorpe and I.
So I skirted the water edge of the old orchard hastily. Some stones had rolled down from the coping, and the walking was difficult. But there was still a good deal of light, as soon as I had turned the corner. For the west was bright with a late golden afterglow. Quite useful it was.
I was just about the middle, just where the gates with their broken blazons had stood, for it had been a swell place once. Also there was a short cut across to the Bewick road. I passed between the damaged stone posts, which, however, still stood upright. As I did so, something sprang at me with the growl of a hungry tiger. I had hardly time to glance up, and even then I could see no more than a vaguely shining head, and an arm uplifted to strike, with something glittering in it like a crescent moon.
There was no time for defence. There was no time for escape. The Thing, beast, or man—more beast-like now than human—was upon me and bore me down. But even while the danger was in the air, I heard a sound which appeared to me not at all like a shot—more like a spit of fire when a log sparks on the hearth. And in a moment I was prone on my face, bruised and beaten down by the weight. I heard a jangle of steel. I supposed that I was wounded—that this was the end. And with the Thing heavy on the top of me, I fainted away.