"While we worked Old Caleb ... tightly tairged the 'Apiscopian' on Doctrine and the Scripture.""While we worked Old Caleb ... tightly tairged the 'Apiscopian' on Doctrine and the Scripture."
"While we worked Old Caleb ... tightly tairged the 'Apiscopian' on Doctrine and the Scripture.""While we worked Old Caleb ... tightly tairged the 'Apiscopian' on Doctrine and the Scripture."
But the humility with which he listened to the old elder amazed me. It was not that he agreed with him. He carefully guarded against that. But he accepted many of the old Scot's positions, merely gliding in a saving clause by way of amendment, to salve his conscience, as it were, between two forkfuls of hay. Even these, however, were of no effect. For not only was Caleb a little deaf, but he never waited for a reply, and by the time that Mr. Ablethorpe had added his rider Caleb was far into yet another argument destined to the final destruction of the "rags of Rome, and all sic as put their trust in them!"
When work was over for the day, Mr. Ablethorpe would not stay for tea. He had to go farther, he explained, after dabbling his face in the water of the pump trough and wiping it with the fine white cambric handkerchief which I had so scorned.
Caleb accompanied us to the gate, and I looked for a profusion of grateful thanks. But I did not know my Scotsman. All he said was only, "The neist time ye come to gie a body a half-day fowin' (forking), come at an hour when we will get some wark oot o' ye!"
The curate laughed, and shook him by the hand cordially.
"A good old man," he said, as we walked off, "but dreadfully confirmed in his delusions."
"Why did you not tell him what you told me?" I made bold to ask.
Mr. Ablethorpe turned quickly and clapped me on the shoulder.
"I have not faith enough to remove mountains," he said, "but with a spade I can sometimes make a show at moving a molehill where it ought to go."
We continued on over the moor toward the Brom Water, where was the place that Poacher Davie Elshiner had done his fishing that morning of the loss of poor Harry Foster.
I asked Mr. Ablethorpe what we were to do there, and warned him that I had no wish to go nearer to the house of Deep Moat. So that if he counted on visiting his penitent Miss Aphra Orrin he would have to go alone.
"I am perturbed in my mind, and that's the truth," he said. "There is something strange along the branch of the river which flows into the Moat. I walked home that way yesterday, and I wish for your presence and assistance. Two can do so much more than one. Also, you know the locality, as well I know. I look to you to help me to solve the mystery which, to my mind at least, hangs over Brom Water."
The Hayfork Minister, who had laboured with equal determination to save the crop of a true-blue Presbyterian and to make me a good Churchman, evidently knew his way about the precincts of the Grange. He stepped through a gap in the hedge, jumped a half-dry ditch, and wound his way through the scattering brambles and underbrush as if he had been in his own garden plot.
No coward, the Hayfork! It took me all my time to keep up with him, and I am a good jumper, too—nearly as good as Elsie.
We went down the side of the Moat Backwater. It is a curious place. It is not, you understand, the Brom Water itself. That comes down from the hills and wimples away across the plain, full of good fish, both trout and salmon, according to their season. But the Moat Backwater connects the pond or little loch which lies in front of the windows of the Grange with the Brom. Whether the connection is absolutely natural, or whether it was originally made by the hand of man, I cannot tell. Neither, so far as I know, can anybody else. But in some places it certainly looks like the latter.
At any rate, whenever the Brom is in flood, it "backs up," as it were, into the Backwater, and so runs into the pond. It fills the Moat itself like a tide, and I believe on a few occasions it has even been known to overflow the greensward where the clumps of lilies are, right up to the steps of the front door!
There is, of course, always some water in the Lane, which trenches the meadows and runs canalwise through the fringing woods. But at ordinary times the water in the Lane, as much of it as there is, finds its way toward the Brom, owing to the feeding of the Grange Pond by local streamlets. But in times of rain the current runs the other way. Then the Backwater runs brown and turgid into the pond till the lilies tug at their green anchor chains and the Moat itself is lipping full of black, peaty water from the hills.
To-day as we plunged into the shadow of the woods along the side of the Backwater, it held no more water than a burn in the summer heats—little and still clear, the minnows and troutlets balancing and darting, joggling each other rudely from beneath favourite stones, or shouldering into well-situated holes in the bank, like people scrambling for seats at a play. Then a few yards farther on would come a deep brown pool with a curious greenish opal sheen lying like a scum on the surface, for all the world like two-coloured silk. This was the reflection of the leaves above. Very dense they were, so that the light could hardly filter through between. Along the burnside it was generally lighter. But the trees clustered deep and thick about the pools, as I suppose they do all the world over, whenever they get the chance.
"The water is lower than I have ever seen it!" I said, as it might be, just for something to say. But Mr. Ablethorpe did not answer a word. I could see him looking eagerly about him, evidently searching for something he had seen before, but for the moment could not find again.
I could not for the life of me imagine what it could be, nor yet why he had been so keen to have me with him. It was not that he was afraid. That was plain enough. For he had been this way before, and that quite recently. I knew by his spying this way and that for landmarks. And I knew quite certain that it was not just that I might give him a hand with old Caleb Fergusson's harvest that he had asked me off from my home work, or home play, whichever it might be.
All at once he stopped, sat down on a log, pulled out his knife and began to whittle at a branch of oak. Whatever it was he was looking for, he had either found it, or decided to give up the search.
We were sitting on a fallen tree trunk, close to the edge of the Backwater, and the pool beneath us was almost dry. The Lane ran out of sight, getting smaller and smaller in what I have heard called "perspective"—that is, straight as if ruled on paper with a straight edge.
Then the Hayfork Minister asked me if I saw anything particular about the water. I told him what I have just written, but I could not for the life of me remember the word "perspective." He understood all right, though.
"Good," he said, "and does that suggest nothing else to the bold and inquiring mind of my friend Joseph?"
After looking awhile I answered that it seemed to me as if somebody had cut the canal with spades just as Tim O'Hara and Mike Whelan did the ditching and draining on my father's forage parks the winter before last.
"Right again, Joe!" he said, pleasedlike, and rumpled up my hair in a way I don't let anybody do—except Elsie, who does as she likes, whether I like it or no. I pulled away my head angrily. But the Hayfork Minister never minded.
"I can't tell you whether this has been dug out with a spade or not," he said, putting a point on the oaken cudgel with his big "gully" knife (think of a minister with a knife like that!), "but this I can tell you, that the hand of man has been here or hereabouts!"
And with that he leaned over the edge right among the weeds and began scraping away at the bank. It was coated over pretty regularly with a greyish mud which had come down with the last emptying of the pond. This was done periodically, with the avowed purpose of clearing out the Moat and Backwater. Mr. Ball saw to it, under the personal superintendence of Mr. Stennis. And all that day the mad people at the Grange were kept within doors, and the policies were strictly guarded. For the scour of the water escaping down the channel brought with it multitudes of fish—not very large, it is true, but sufficient to be a temptation to every boy within miles. Such, however, was the terror inspired by the inhabitants of Deep Moat Grange, and especially by Daft Jeremy, that those who were bold enough to come at all, rather braved the dangers of the Duke's keepers at the infall of the Backwater into the Brom, than dared to set a foot within those woodland shadows where they knew not what terrors might lurk.
The Hayfork Minister went on knocking off big flakes of dried mud with the point of his stick. Then, whistling softly, he started to polish something with vigour. At first I could not in the least see what he was after, but soon a good big square of reddish metal was laid bare. It was not upright in the bank, but leaned a little back, was very deep set, and I could see that it had been intended to slide in grooves. At the time I had no idea as to why it had been put there. But now I know that it must have been constructed for purposes of irrigation.
There was, in fact, an old vegetable garden and orchard, still partly enclosed with crumbling walls, not two hundred yards off through the woods. And there is little doubt that it had been the intention of some former travelled master of the Grange to cultivate his table vegetables and fruits on the system of Southern Europe.
All, however, was now desolate.
Yet the iron plate in the bank, though mud-covered and rusty, had not stuck altogether. Indeed, looking at it closely, it was not difficult to see that it had recently been used. With the Hayfork Minister at one end of the oak branch, and myself at the other, we soon made it budge with a smothered heave-ho! and revealed a regularly bricked tunnel leading apparently into the bowels of the earth.
"That is where you are to go, my son!" said Mr. Ablethorpe.
"Me!"
Mr. Ablethorpe nodded, and scraping away some leaves behind the fallen tree on which we had been sitting together, he disinterred a coil of stout cord, not thick, but very strong, with a red thread running through it. "This has served," he said, "for heavier weights in more dangerous places!"
And without more ado he proceeded to knot it about my waist, as if he had been accustomed to nothing else all his life. But I objected. Indeed, I had reason. For suppose Mad Jeremy, or Aphra Orrin, or Mr. Stennis himself were to come while I was up there—what then?
"You leave that to me, Joe," said the Hayfork Minister; "there is not one of them that would dare to touch me—no, nor you—while you are in my company."
This was good enough to hear, and, in its way, comforting. But, somehow, at such a time the mind craves for proofs more absolute. Or to be somewhere else. Particularly the latter.
I think Mr. Ablethorpe saw something of my dismay on my face, for immediately he stopped what he was doing, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, "Joe, would I send you into any danger I would not be ready to share myself?"
"No, I believe not, sir!" said I. For though he worried me like fun about being the right sort of Churchman, he was a rare good sort himself, man and Churchman, too. At least I know about the first, and as for the Churchman, I am willing to take that on trust.
"Well, now," said he, "that's settled. In you go!"
"But what am I to do when I get in there?" I asked. For I had thought that he was going to give me a proper explanation of everything—the whys and the wherefores, and all about it.
"You are to crawl, Joe," he said, "because you can get in and I cannot, Joseph! That's the worst of going in for athletics at school, Joe—it makes you grow such a whopping size afterwards when you stop them. So you are to crawl up there for me, and as soon as you find anything, you are to give the rope a tug, and I will pull you out! For it isn't so easy as it looks to crawl backward down a hole of that size."
"But suppose," I faltered, my imagination rampant, and my voice failing me at the same moment, "suppose—that I should come on—on poor Harry Foster—with—with his throat cut—oh, what should I do?"
"You won't—more's the pity," he answered, quite coolly. "If Harry had been in there, and you and I sitting here, we should have known it long ere this. No such luck! Still, what you mayfind, is quite worth the trial. We shall at least learn something!"
Now I don't think that, since the visit Elsie and I paid to Deep Moat Grange, I was quite so eager to "learn something" as I had been. But it was no use being a coward with the Hayfork Minister.
"In you go, Joe," he said, lowering me by the rope to the black mouth of the passage, "in with you, eel! And if you find anything portable, gave a tug, and if you want to come outverysuddenly, give two tugs."
I was halfway in as he said these words, and I instantly gave two tugs, but he only said, "Now, no monkey tricks, Joe. This is serious. Up with you. Remember I am here!"
I was not at all likely to forget it. But I had much rather he had been head foremost up that narrow tunnel, and I out in the green aisles of the forest waiting for him with a rope in my hands.
Now I don't know whether you have ever been up a drain pipe which just takes you, and no more. I suppose you have—in nightmares, after supping on cold boiled pork and greens, or some nice little digestible morsel like that. But really awake, and with the birds singing on the trees, the winds lightly scented with bog myrtle and pine and bracken breathing all about you—to be told to shove yourself up a built rabbit hole, not knowing what you may come on the next time you put out your hand!—Well, Hayfork Minister or no Hayfork—I had the hardest row to hoe that time! I don't think any fellow, even if he has climbed all the mountains that are, has any right to let a boy in for a thing like that without telling him beforehand. And smiling about it all the time, as if he were merely sending you into Miss Payne's to buy butter-scotch!
I felt as if I could have killed him the first half-dozen "creeps" I took. And what was the worst of his cheek, he shoved me behind with the oak branch, which he had sharpened, and said, "Go on!"
If I could have got him then—up a drain—me with that same oak goad, I would have given it to him—cheerful, I would. Cheerful is no name for it!
Inside the tunnel the bricks were not all of the same size. Some had dropped a little and pinched my shoulders. Some were wanting altogether. And that fiend of a Hayfork, at the mouth, all safe outside with the rope's-end in his hand kept singing up to me, "A-a-all right—a-a-right—it will get wider as you get farther in!"
Much he knew! Had he been up, I'd like to know?
However, he was right as it happened—right without knowing anything about it. The passage did widen a bit. I found offshoots—smaller passages leading I don't know where. And I didn't put in my hand to feel, having a dislike to be bitten by water rats—or any other kind of rats. And it was an awful "ratty" place that, by the smell of it.
Also, for all that Mr. Ablethorpe said, I was in mortal fear of coming across poor Harry's leg, or of Mad Jeremy arriving and "settling" Mr. Ablethorpe, without my knowing anything about it. And when I came out—I should find myself face to face with the oily curls, the sneering lip, and—specially, with the knife I had seen gleaming in his teeth when he swam the Moat to make an end of Elsie and me.
I wasn't frightened, of course. Only I just thought what a fool I was to be there. I am not the first, nor will I be the last to think the same thing—when, like me, they are doing something dreadful noble and heroic.
There were curious side passages, as I say, on each side of the tunnel along which I was crawling—oh, so slowly. Some of these were narrow and smooth, where a brick had fallen out, and smelled "rat" yards off. I did not meddle with these. But there were bigger offshoots, too, properly bricked round and as tight as ninepence—no rats there.
Well, it was in one of these that I came on my first treasure-trove. I felt a lot of things all tied together in a rough bag or cloth—heavy, too, and of course all clammy with moisture or mould or something like that. No wonder—I felt all green-mouldy myself, after only a minute or two.
I tugged at the rope, and, almost before I knew it, I was out again in the dancing speckle of the sunshine sifted through the leaves. Blinded by the sudden glare which sent blobs of colour dancing across my eyeballs, as if I had looked at the sun, I did not realize for a moment that I had brought anything with me.
"Let go!" I heard Mr. Ablethorpe say, and I was quite unconscious what I was holding on to. Yet what I had found was little enough to the eye—a piece of rough sacking, roughly sewn about a quantity of metallic objects which jingled as Mr. Ablethorpe cut the outer covering open with his big "gully" knife.
"Money!" the thought came natural to a boy; "have I disinterred a treasure?"
And for the moment I was all ready to go back again to look for more.
But the blade went on cutting, and presently the contents tinkled out upon the bank—about a dozen and a half of copper rings, rather thick, and each made with a hook at the bottom. I could not imagine what they were for.
But Mr. Ablethorpe bounded upon them, examining each one before putting it in his pocket. Lastly he looked at the piece of canvas in which they had been wrapped, long and carefully.
"Ah!" he said, "that, I think, will do!"
And he closed the iron sliding door carefully, as it had been before, and thrusting his fingers into the shallow pool, he lifted up double handfuls of oozy mud and plastered it all over the entrance.
"When that is dry," he said, "it will take a clever man to tell where you have poked your nose this afternoon, Joseph!"
This seemed likely enough and satisfactory, from his point of view. But, as for me, I wanted very much to be told what it was all about.
So I asked him what it was I had found, and why he wanted me to crawl up there, at any rate.
"You found some copper rings and a piece of dirty canvas," he said, "neither more nor less. And I asked you to go up there because I was too fat to go myself. Were you nearly at the end, think you?"
I told him no—that the passage seemed to widen as it went farther on. I think that at these words he was nearly replacing the rope, which he had begun to coil, round my waist again.
But he looked at his watch, and shook his head.
"We have not the time to do it safely," he said; "but—let us see—if it widens as you say, Joseph, it is very likely that it has another opening."
He took a small plan out of his pocket, a tiny little measuring scale, nodded once or twice, and then began slowly to pace through the wood at right angles to the course of the Backwater.
All at once he dropped to the ground as if shot. I judged it best to efface myself, too, and that promptly. So I crawled behind a big pine tree, about whose roots the male ferns were growing tall, and, putting their thick scaly stems aside with my hand, I lay watching the heels of the boots which Mr. Ablethorpe wore.
He kept quite still, apparently intent upon something I could not see. Now, of course (you will not have noticed it), but I am very curious about things that don't concern me in the least—not to talk about, you understand, but just toknow. So, as the ferns grew pretty continuously, and the pines held close together, shooting their indigo-blue umbrellas into the sky, I wriggled along till I could lay my hand on one of the minister's boot heels.
It was a foolish thing to do, for it nearly made him cry out. I saw him set his teeth to shut in the sound. He had a nerve, the Hayfork Minister, but I could see from his look that he would give it to me after for coming on him like that. However, it was some fun to see him in a funk.
And, indeed, with reason! For not more than a dozen yards down the slope, between us and the wall of the old orchard, I saw Mad Jeremy, on his knees, digging with his fingers, eager as a terrier at a rat hole.
Then I called to mind the mysterious crime of which Miss Aphra had found him guilty, and her stern accusation, "You've been digging again!" the day Elsie and I were at the Grange. Last of all, his repeated denial, his attempts to rub off the earth pellets, his sentence, tears, and punishment. Yes, I saw him digging with his fingers just as his sister had said.
Jiminy, how I wished I was at home!
I might wish, indeed, but there we were stuck and had to wait—Mr. Ablethorpe and I—till Mad Jeremy, having finished his task, stamped down the sods he had edged up at either side, and set with care a great square flagstone in its place.
Then he stood rubbing his hands together and grinning for some minutes, evidently well pleased with himself. A voice far away called:
"Jeremy! Jeremy!"
At the sound the smile was stricken from his face. The madman looked guiltily at his hands, and seeing the condition in which they were, he made straight for the Backwater, passing us within (I declare) four yards. But the bracken was thick and tall, and we lay close, so that Jeremy failed to see us. Besides, his mind was evidently ill at ease.
The voice from the direction of Deep Moat Grange continued to call: "Jeremy! Jeremy!" He did not reply, and we could hear him mutter, "What shall I say? What shall I say if she finds out?"
Then, having pulled round the long tails of his coat, one after the other, he dried his hands carefully, held them up to see that they were clean, and took his way up the side of the Backwater toward the drawbridge, whistling as he went.
For me, I was scared out of a year's growth. But the Hayfork Minister, lifting himself out of the ferns, and dusting lightly the knees of his black cord trousers, pointed to the great flagstone on which the turf showed ragged edges, and said gravely: "The secret is there. That is the other end of the tunnel!"
He meant, I felt sure, to send me in again, in spite of all that we had seen.
As for me, however, I resolved to keep very clear of the Hayfork Minister. He was a nice man, Mr. Ablethorpe, and a pleasure to know. But to be in a drain pipe for his sake, with the fear of Mad Jeremy meeting one face to face half-way up, put too high a price on his friendship. I resolved, therefore, in future to cut Mr. Ablethorpe's acquaintance.
At the time I had no idea how difficult this would be. But at any rate I wanted to find out for certain what it was that I had found. He could give me no other answer than that I would know in good time, and that in the meantime we were going to old Caleb Fergusson's for tea.
Now I make no objections to tea at any time—that is, a proper sit-down, spread-table, country tea—not one of those agonies at which you do tricks with a cup of tea, a plate, the edge of a chair, and a snippet of bread. I knew that at the Fergusson's I would find plenty to eat and drink.
We slid back through the woods, rising higher all the time as the land trended toward the moor. Then out and away across the road I could see far away to the right the roofs of Breckonside, shining like silver after a shower which must have passed over them, the winding Brom Water, the threaded roads, pale pink in colour, the dry stone dykes dividing the fields. Never had my native village seemed so small to me. Perhaps because I had just been in some considerable danger, a thing which enlarges the mental horizon. I looked for Elsie's house down there. But though I could see the silver glint of the water, I could not make out the cottage at the Bridge End. There was a mist, however, creeping up from the sea, so that in a little while, even as I looked, the whole valley became a pearl-grey lake, with only the tall ash trees and the solitary church spire standing up out of the smother.
We found old Caleb, an infrequent smile on his face, leaning over the bars of his yard gate.
"Them that hasna their hay weel covered," he chuckled, "runs a chance o' gettin' it sprinkled a wee!"
"Then," said Mr. Ablethorpe, "you owe me something for the afternoon's work I gave you!"
"Yon!" cried the old man, ungratefully, "caa ye that half a day's wark? But I'm far frae denyin' that, sic as it was, it helped. Ow, ay, it was aye a help! And at ony rate the hay's under cover—some thack-and-rape, and some in the new-fangled shed. But what's your wull? Ye are no seekin' wages, I'm thinkin'. Maybe ye want me to turn my coat and come doon to your bit tabernacle? Aweel, ye may want."
"Oh, no," said Mr. Ablethorpe, smiling. "I was just hoping that perhaps your good wife would brew us a cup of tea. I think both Joe and I would be the better of it."
You should have seen how the old farmer's face lit up. Hospitality was a beautiful thing to him. He rejoiced in that, at least. And if, as some folk say—not Mr. Ablethorpe—an elder is the same as a bishop, then the old Free Kirker had at least one of the necessary qualities. He was "given to hospitality." Whether he was, as is also required, "no striker," I would not just like to say, or to try.
But Caleb took us indoors out of the slight oncoming drizzle, which was beginning to spray down from the clouds, or creep up from the valleys—I am not sure which. At any rate, it was there, close-serried, wetting.
Now heretofore I had only seen Mrs. Caleb when she was ordered down from the long stack under the zinc-roofed shed, which her husband was never tired of declaiming against as "new-fangled," yet to which he owed that night the safety of his crop.
Mrs. Caleb was a good twenty years younger than her lord, still, indeed, bearing traces of that special kind of good looks which the Scots call "sonsiness." Susan Fergusson at five-and-forty was sonsy to the last degree. Her husband, twenty years older, was sun-dried and wind-dried and frost-bitten till he had become sapless as a leaf blown along the highway on a bask March day, when the fields are full of sowers, and the roads cloudy with "stoor."
"Come ben! This way, sir—and you, too, Joe," she cried, opening a door into an inner room, "ye will no hae seen Meysie's bairns?"
As I had never even heard of Meysie, I certainly had not.
But the goodwife's next words enlightened me.
"Caleb, ye see, was marriet afore he took up wi' me. 'Deed, his lassie Meysie is maybe aulder than I am mysel'—and a solit, sensible woman. But this is the first time her bairns hae comed sae far to see me!"
She flung the door open, and there, sitting one on a sofa, and the other on a footstool by the fire, I saw two grown-up young ladies—so at least they appeared to me. And I began to fear that my tea was going to cost me dear. For at that time conversation was a difficult art to me with anyone whom I could neither fight nor call names.
The girls—twenty or twenty-two they seemed—oh, ever so old—looked just as if they had been doing nothing. That is, the one with the straight-cut face, very dignified, who made a kind of long droopy picture of herself on the sofa, was reading a book, or pretending to, while the other on the stool did nothing but nurse her knees and look out at the window.
That was the one I liked best, though, of course, not like Elsie—I should think not, indeed. But she was little, she had a merry face, and I am sure she had been laughing just before we came in. Indeed, I am none so sure that she had not been listening at the keyhole and made a rush for the footstool.
"Bairns," said Mrs. Caleb the Second, "this is the Englishy minister, and a kind friend o' us auld folk. Though Caleb, your gran'dad, gies him awfu' spells o' argumentincation aboot things I ken nocht aboot! 'Deed, I wonder whiles that Maister Ablethorpe ever looks near us again!"
"Oh, no," said the Hayfork Minister, smiling, "it takes two to make an argument, and I never argue with Mr. Fergusson. I only receive instruction, as a younger from an elder!"
"Hear to him," cried the goodwife, "he doesna mean a word he is sayin'—I can aye tell by the glint in his e'e."
Then she introduced the girls in due form. One, the tall tired-looking girl on the sofa, was Constantia, and the little merry one was named Harriet. To my great astonishment they were of the same age, being twins.
It seemed as if I were to be left out altogether, but Harriet looked across at me and asked demurely if I were going to be a minister, too.
She was making fun of me, of course, and that is what I do not allow any girl to do. Only Elsie, and she is really too serious to abuse the privilege—not like this Harriet. I could see in a minute that she was a regular magpie—a "clip," as they say in Breckonside.
Meanwhile, Constantia did not say very much. She gave Mr. Ablethorpe her hand as if she were doing him a valuable kindness. And at this I could hear her sister gurgle. The next minute, Harriet was on her feet, and, taking me by the shoulder, she said: "Come on, Joe—Joe is your name, isn't it? That's good, for it's just the name I like best of all boys' names. Come on and help Susan Fergusson to get tea." That was the way she spoke of her grandmother—off-hand and kindly, with a glint of fun more in the manner than in the words.
"What's your other name?" I asked, because I did not like to call her Harriet so suddenly. Besides, I did not know how Elsie might take to all this. I was sure they would like one another no end. Because they were both the same kind of girl—jolly, so that almost any boy could get on with them. At least, that was what I thought at the time, not knowing any better.
"Caw," she said; "that is my name; same as a crow says 'Caw—Caw—Caw!' You needn't be surprised, I couldn't help it being my father's name. But it's short, and if you should forget it, you have only to go out and stand beneath a rookery, and you'll remember it in a minute. That is, unless you are deaf."
Then I told Harriet Caw my name, Joseph Yarrow, which she thought funny. And she gave me bread to cut while she stood by me and buttered it—doing everything so quickly, and talking all the time, that indeed it was very nice. And I wished Elsie had been there to laugh at Harriet's jokes, which seemed very funny to me then. But, oh, how stupid and feeble they seemed when I came to tell them to Elsie after! And Elsie wasn't a bit amused, as I had hoped. Girls hardly ever seem to get on with other girls as a fellow thinks they will. It is different with men. Now I got on first-class with Mr. Ablethorpe, even when I thought—but it's no matter about that now.
Well, it was a tea! The table was loaded from one end to the other. There were soda scones, light and hove up so as to make your teeth water. There were farrels of oat-cake, crisp and curly, with just the proper amount of browning on the side where the red ashes of the fire had toasted it. Four or five kinds of jams there were, all better one than the other. Old Caleb came in and ate quickly, sermonizing Mr. Ablethorpe all the time, and as long as he was there we were all as quiet as mice. But I am sure everyone was glad when he rose, tumbled things about on the window seat in search of his blue bonnet (which only he of all the countryside still wore), and finally went out to the hill. Before going he warned us to behave and to remember that,such as he was, we had one who deemed himself a minister among us.
But as soon as we were alone, up jumped Harriet Caw, and catching me round the waist, she cried, "Dance, Joseph—dance, Joe! He's gone. Never mind Granny Susan. She does not count!"
That was actually the way she spoke of her grandmother—or step-grandmother, rather. And, indeed, that good lady only laughed, and, shaking her head at the minister, repeated, what I afterwards found to be her favourite maxim—that "young folk would be young folk." The philosophy of which was that they would get over it all too soon.
The Hayfork Minister nodded back to Susan, and I was not sorry to see him (as I thought) much taken up with the picture-book girl, as in my heart I called Constantia. For in our house at home, up in the attic, there are a lot of old "Annuals" and "Keepsakes"—oh, I don't know how old, all in faded watered-silk covers loose at the back—some faded and some where the colour has run, but choke full of pictures of scenery, all camels and spiky palms and humpy camels, with "Palmyra" and "Carthage" written beneath time about. But these are not half bad, though deadly alike. The weary parts are the pictures of girls—leaning out of windows before they have done their washing and hair-brushing in the morning. I should just like to see my father catch them at it. That was called "Dreaming of Thee." And there were lots of others. "Sensibility" was a particularly bad one. She was spread all over a sofa, and had a canary on her finger. She had saved it from a little snappy-yappy spaniel—only just, for two tail feathers were floating down. And there were two big dewdrops of tears on her cheeks to show how sorry she was for the canary bird—or, perhaps, for the spaniel.
Anyway, it was the only time I ever really liked a spaniel.
Well, I needn't describe the others. At any rate, if you've ever seen the "Keepsake" kind of young women, you won't have forgotten them. You will cherish a spite, especially if you have had to stay in one room and choose between looking at them and flattening your nose against the window-panes, down which the water is running in big blobs, during a week of wet holiday weather.
Constantia was a "Keepsake" girl.
I suppose it must be, as it is with snakes. Some like them and some not. I don't. But I will never deny (not being, like Elsie, a girl) that Constantia was good looking. If (and the Lord have mercy on your soul!) you really liked that sort of thing, Constantia was just the sort of thing you would like.
We had a merry afternoon and laughed—eh, how we laughed! I heard all about the girls, how they had just been at school, and how Constantia had just come home, full up of all the perfections, and deportment, and the 'ologies, and how many men wanted to marry her—were dying to, in fact! That might be all right. It was Harriet who told me—though that does not make it any the more likely to be true (I am sorry to say). For I can see that that young woman was trying to take me in all the time.
"But for the parson, we would have a dance!" whispered Harriet; "but as he will sit there and tell Stancy about her 'azure' eyes till all's blue, you and I can go for a walk instead—shall we?"
I didn't want to, you may imagine. The difficulty was how to say No. Indeed, Harriet never asked me. She had put on a smart little summer hat, and we were out on the moor quicker than I can write it.
"Mind you," she said, laying her hand confidingly (as I then thought) on my arm, "don't you ever dare to tell Stancy that her eyes are like to the vault of heaven, or like forget-me-nots wet with dew, or like turquoises, or the very colour of her sky-blue silk scarf. For, first of all, it's not true, and it is wrong to tell lies. More than that, she will tellme. And I like—well" (she added this bit softly, taking a long look at me) "never mind what I like. Perhaps it's as well that you shouldn't know."
Then she kicked away a pebble with the toe of one tiny boot and appeared to be embarrassed. I think, now, that she knew she had a pretty foot.
Anyway I began to be conscious she was a nice girl, and to be sorry for her—a way men have. Men are such wise things, and not vain at all.
Don't think I forgot. I was always just going to tell her about Elsie, when she darted off into something else. She was constantly doing that—a most ill-regulated and disconcerting girl. I knew she would certainly have been interested in Elsie. The two had so much in common.
We were going through some straggling trees on the edge of Brom Common, when Harriet stopped and turned her eyes on me, as if she would have drowned me in them. I didn't know before that they were so big and dark and shiny—especially in dusky places. Harriet Caw knew, however.
"What colour are my eyes," she demanded. "Quick, now, don't cheat!"
"I don't know!" I said truthfully. "I never noticed."
Then she got mad. You see, I had no experience and didn't know enough to make a shot at it. For girls always notice eyes—or think they do. And when they go to see a man condemned in court for extra special murder, they sigh and say, "What very nice eyes he has—who would have thought it?"
And if he had been tried by a jury of girls, he would have got off every time—because of these same nice eyes. That is why the justice of a country is conducted by men. One reason, at least.
"Well, then, look!" she cried, making them the size of billiard balls right under my nose. It was, I own, rather nice, but trying. I had a feeling that Elsie would not have liked it, really.
So I said, "Come out where a fellow can see them then!" And made as if to go out on the moor. But Harriet Caw didn't care about the moor, being a town girl, as I suppose.
"No, here—tell me now!" she said.
So as I had to say something, I told her they were the colour of brown paint.
That was true. They were, but she was quite mad, and gave my arm a fling. This surprised me, and I said—
"Why, I thought that you were the kind of girl who never cared to be told about her eyes, and stuff of that kind. You said just now about Miss Constantia's——"
"Never mind about M—iss Con-stan-ti-a's," she said, making the word as long as she could—she was mad now and patting the short, stiff heather with her little bronze boot; "attend to me, if you please. And so you think my eyes are the colour of brown paint; is that the best you can do?"
I thought a while, and she kept glaring up at me till I felt like a hen with its beak to a chalk line—I forget the word—something you are when you go on a platform and do silly things the man tells you.
So, hoping she would stop, I said at last, "Well, perhaps they are more shiny, like brown paint—varnished."
But this didn't please her either. Indeed, it was difficult to please Harriet Caw at all. She said that I was twice as stupid as a cow, and asked where I had lived all my life.
"In Breckonside," I said, but I added that I had often been with my father at East Dene. And once I had crossed the ferry all by myself and spent Easter Monday at Thoisby itself.
"Humph," she said, wrinkling up her nose with great contempt. "I suppose that you have never even heard of London."
I told her "Yes, of course." And that I could tell her the number of its inhabitants.
But this she didn't seem to think clever, or, indeed, to care about at all.
She only said, "Are all country boys as stupid as you are?"
To be called a boy like that made me angry, and I ran after her, determined to pay her out. I was going to show her that country boys could just be as sharp as there was any need for.
But quick as I was, this city girl was quicker, and she slipped across the road almost at the very place where we had found the last traces of poor Harry Foster. She dived among the underbrush by the stile, and I lost sight of her altogether.
But the next moment I heard a cry. You had better believe I wasted no time till I got there. I ran, opening a good, stout clasp knife that father had given me—or, if not "given" exactly, had seen me with, and not taken away from me. It comes to the same thing.
Well, just a little away across a green glade, all pine needles and sun dapplings, stood Mad Jeremy, and he had Harriet Caw by the arm. I went at him as fast as I could—which was a silly thing to do, for, of course, with his strength he could have done me up in two ticks of a clock. Only, as mostly happens when one does fine things, it was all over before I thought.
"Just a little way across a green glade--stood Mad Jeremy--he had Harriett Caw by the hand.""Just a little way across a green glade—stood Mad Jeremy—he had Harriett Caw by the hand."
"Just a little way across a green glade--stood Mad Jeremy--he had Harriett Caw by the hand.""Just a little way across a green glade—stood Mad Jeremy—he had Harriett Caw by the hand."
But when Mad Jeremy saw me, or, perhaps, before (I do not want to take credit for anything that isn't my due), he let go of Harriet Caw, saying just "She isn't the pretty one! What is she doing here?" And with a skip and a jump he was gone. That is, so far as I could see.
Then Harriet swooned away in my arms, toppling over like a ladder slipping off the side of a house. At least, I suppose that is what they call it. But at that time I had had no experience of swoons. For Elsie never went on like that. At all events, Harriet Caw clutched me about the neck, her fingers working as if they would claw off my collar, and she laughing and crying both at once. Funny it was, but though it made a fellow squirm—not altogether so horrid as you might think. But I did not know what to do. I tried hard to think whether it was the palms of her hands or the backs of her ears that you ought to rub, or whether I should lay her down or stand her up against a tree. I knew there was something. Then I got in a funk lest, after all, it should be the soles of her feet.
But Mad Jeremy had not altogether gone away. He had been watching, and now popped his head and shiny ringlets round a tree trunk, which brought me to myself.
"Ah—ha!" he cried, "I'll tell the pretty one about these goings on!"
And, quick as a flash, that brought Harriet Caw to herself, also. It did better than splashing water or rubbing hands. The moment before she had been all rigid like a lump of wood in my arms. But as soon as the words were out of Mad Jeremy's mouth, she was standing before me, her eyes flashing lightning, and her elbows drawn a little in to her sides.
Mad? Well, rather. She was hopping, just.
"SoI'mnot the pretty one," she said—whispered it, rather, with a husky sound, like frying bacon in her voice. "Oh, I see—that's why my eyes are like brown paint—varnished! Well, who's the pretty one? Answer me that!"
"I think he must mean Elsie!" I said, telling the truth just as briefly as I could.
"Elsie—oh, indeed! Elsie is the pretty one, is she, Master Joe?"
"Yes," I said, "she is!"
I was going on to tell her how much she would like Elsie, and how Elsie would love her, when suddenly Harriet Caw turned and marched off. I was going to follow her—indeed, I had to. For I wasn't going to be left in that gloomy glade with only the great tits and Mad Jeremy hiding among the trees.
But Harriet Caw turned round, and called out, "Go to Elsie, I don't want you! I dare you to speak to me! I will kill you, if you touch me!"
I told Harriet quite reasonably that I would not touch her for mints of money, and that all I wanted was just to find Mr. Ablethorpe, and pick up the parcel I had left at her grandfather's before going home.
It must have looked funny enough if any one had seen us. Well, Mad Jeremy did. For we could hear peal upon peal of wicked, sneering laughter pursue us, as we went in single file across the road, over the stile, and across the moor.
At the stile over the highroad I came up closer to Harriet, owing to a slight hesitation on her part, and the switch she gave her skirts to escape the contagion of my touch, was something to see. I had always thought I was something of a favourite wherever I went. So I took the worse with such treatment.
However, I put it down to Harriet Caw's having been brought up in London. My father always told me to watch out for London folk—you never could tell what they would be up to. Certainly not with Harriet.