Chapter Seven.Dawn.When Geoffrey felt certain that she was sleeping, his next care was to examine the exterior of the Cave, thinking that there might probably be openings between the stones that would admit a draught. The hurdle at the doorway, full of minute interstices, and purposely placed loosely, allowed sufficient air to enter for breathing; what he wished to prevent was a current crossing the chamber, for though warm then, towards the morning the atmosphere is usually cooler. He found that in the course of the centuries the ground had risen materially, so that the floor inside the cave was below the level of the sward without. This partially closed the crevices between the rude slabs, and from the raised turf grasses had grown thickly, and filled the remaining space except in one spot. There the boulder wall, settling under the weight of the capstone, leaned somewhat from the perpendicular and left a wide chink. With his knife he cut a broad sod of turf, and placed it against the aperture, grass side inwards, filling it up completely. Then, stepping lightly that he might not wake her, he sought the horses, and relieved them of their bridles, feeling certain that they would not wander far. A few yards from the copse there was a slight incline of the ground; there he sat down on the sward near enough to hear Margaret in a moment should she call.Now that his labour was over and the excitement had subsided, even his powerful frame felt the effect of unusual exertion—besides riding, he had run and walked many miles that night. Presently he involuntarily reclined almost at full length, leaning on one arm; his weight crushed a thick bunch of wild thyme that emitted a delicious scent. Tall dry bennets and some low bushy heath grew at his side. On the left hand—eastwards—stood a hawthorn bush; in front—southwards—was a deep coombe, and beyond that a steep Down, towards the top of which grew a few gaunt and scattered firs. As the moon swept slowly higher the pale light fell upon the boulders and the dolmen as it had fallen for so many ages past. The darkness in the deep valley became more intense as the shadow of the hill grew more defined; where the moonlight fell upon the slopes they shone with a greenish-grey reflection, which, when looked at intently, vanished.His dreamy eyes gazed far away over vale and hill, and watched a star low down that, little dimmed by the dull moon, still scintillated; for moonbeams check those bright flashes that sparkle over the sky. The pointed top of a fir upon the ridge hid the star a moment, then passing onward with the firmament it again looked down upon him. With the everlasting hills around, his drowsy mind ran back into the Past, when not only men but godsandmen played out their passions on those other distant hills that looked on windy Troy. The star, still calmly pursuing its way, seemed a link between then and now, but the hearts that had throbbed with the warm hope of love, where were they? Oenone wandering disconsolate because of Paris in the shady groves of Ida; the zoned Helen with the face—That launch’d a thousand ships,And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.The nameless graceful maidens with the many-twinkling feet weaving with their steps, as the ears of corn in the breeze weave mystic measures under the summer sun—whose limbs still seem to move in joyful procession, winding round many an antique vase. Where, too, were they? Where the hope and joy of the early days? And Margaret, beautiful Margaret, slumbering—but living—in the massive tomb, where should she be, andhislove? His weary head drooped on the pillow of thyme; with a deep-drawn sigh he slept.The star went on. In the meadows of the vale far away doubtless there were sounds of the night. On the hills it was absolute silence—profound rest. They slept peacefully, and the moon rose to the meridian. The pale white glow on the northern horizon slipped towards the east. After awhile a change came over the night. The hills and coombes became grey and more distinct, the sky lighter, the stars faint, the moon that had been ruddy became yellow, and then almost white.Yet a little while, and one by one the larks arose from the grass, and first twittering and vibrating their brown wings just above the hawthorn bushes, presently breasted the aerial ascent, and sang at “Heaven’s Gate.”Geoffrey awoke and leaned upon his arm; his first thought was of Margaret, and he looked towards the copse. All was still; then in the dawn the strangeness of that hoary relic of the past sheltering so lovely a form came home to him. Next he gazed eastwards.There a great low bank, a black wall of cloud, was rising rapidly, extending on either hand, growing momentarily broader, darker, threatening to cover the sky. He watched it come up swiftly, and saw that as it neared it became lighter in colour, first grey, then white. It was the morning mist driven along before the breeze, whose breath had not reached him yet. In a few minutes the wall of vapour passed over him as the waters rolled over Pharaoh. A puff of wind blew his hair back from his forehead, then another and another; presently a steady breeze, cool and refreshing. The mist drove rapidly along; after awhile gaps appeared overhead, and through these he saw broad spaces of blue sky, the colour growing and deepening. The gaps widened, the mist became thinner; then this, the first wave of vapour, was gone, creeping up the hillside behind him like the rearguard of an army.Out from the last fringe of mist shone a great white globe. Like molten silver, glowing with a lusciousness of light, soft and yet brilliant, so large and bright and seemingly so near—but just above the ridge yonder-shining with heavenly splendour in the very dayspring. He knew Eosphoros, the Light-Bringer, the morning star of hope and joy and love, and his heart went out towards the beauty and the glory of it. Under him the broad bosom of the earth seemed to breathe instinct with life, bearing him up, and from the azure ether came the wind, filling his chest with the vigour of the young day.The azure ether—yes, and more than that! Who that has seen it can forget the wondrous beauty of the summer morning’s sky? It is blue—it is sapphire—it is like the eye of a lovely woman. A rich purple shines through it; no painter ever approached the colour of it, no Titian or other, none from the beginning. Not even the golden flesh of Rubens’ women, through the veins in whose limbs a sunlight pulses in lieu of blood shining behind the tissues, can equal the hues that glow behind the blue.The East flamed out at last. Pencilled streaks of cloud high in the dome shone red. An orange light rose up and spread about the horizon, then turned crimson, and the upper edge of the sun’s disk lifted itself over the hill. A swift beam of light shot like an arrow towards him, and the hawthorn bush obeyed with instant shadow: it passed beyond him over the green plain, up the ridge and away. The great orb, quivering with golden flames, looked forth upon the world.He arose and involuntarily walked a few steps towards it, his heart swelling, the inner voice lifted. The larks sang with all their might, the swallows played high overhead. When he turned, Margaret had risen and came to meet him, blushing, and trying in vain to push back her hair, that had become slightly loosened. The breeze revelled in it.“Is it not beautiful?” she said, as they shook hands, looking round. He gazed into her eyes till the fringes drooped and hid them: then he kissed her hand. Her cheeks burned; she withdrew it quickly. “We must go,” she said, all confused. He would gladly have prolonged that moment, but went loyally to do her bidding. He had no difficulty with the horses, they had wandered but a short distance; the grey’s lameness had nearly gone off, probably it would quite when he warmed to his work. They were soon mounted; but then came the old question, which way to ride? Margaret could not recognise any of the hills. Geoffrey decided to ride direct east, towards the sun, thinking that if they kept in one direction they must cross a road presently. They started along the ridge with a deep valley on the right hand, and keeping a sharp look-out in the expectation of seeing a shepherd soon, for Margaret was naturally anxious to get into a civilised locality.“There is a cloud coming towards us,” she said presently.Another great wave of vapour was sweeping up, and had already hidden the sun. It crept up the slope of the hill on which they rode like a rising tide—the edge clearly marked—and enveloped them. They went slowly, thinking of flint-pits, and not able to see many yards. Presently the breeze opened a gap overhead, and they were between two huge walls of mist. They drew rein, and in a few minutes the dense white vapour insensibly melted and the sun shone. But then as it rolled away and the ridges of the hills appeared the cloud-like mist visibly undulated about their summits, now rising, now falling, like the vast low waves of the ocean after the wind has sunk. Here and there the mist caught and held the sunlight, and seemed lit up from within; then it disappeared, and the bright spot transferred itself to a distant range. A few more minutes and the breeze carried the vapour away, and they rode forward, and after some distance passed through a forest of furze. A rabbit now and then scampered away, and the stone-chats flew from bush to bush and repeated their short note. Suddenly, in following the narrow winding opening between the furze, the grey snorted and stopped short. Geoffrey looked and saw a labouring man asleep upon the sward, his head pillowed on a small boulder stone, or sarsen. He called to him, and the man moved and sat up.“Why!” said Margaret in amazement; “why, it is our shepherd, Jabez!”“Eez, miss, it be I,” rubbing his eyes; “and main stiff I be.”“How ever did you come here?”“Where are we?” said Geoffrey. “What part of the Down is this? Where are Moonlight Firs?”“Aw, doan’tee caddie me zo, measter.”“But we want to get home,” said Margaret. “Now tell us quickly.”“Be you lost too, miss?” The shepherd to save his life could not have answered a question direct.“You don’t mean that you have been lost, Jabez?”“I wur last night. I twisted thuck leg.”“But where are we?”“Aw, you bean’t very fur from th’ Warren.”“Only think,” said Margaret, “all the while we were close where I started from. If May had known we were on the hills! We had better go to Mr Fisher’s. No one will be about, and I can go home later in the day.”“Show me the way to the Warren,” said Geoffrey. “Why don’t you get up?”“I tell ee my leg be twisted. I fell in a vlint-pit.”“Well, point out the road, and I will return and fetch you.”“Aw, you must go away on your left, toward thuck Folly—a’ be about a mile. It bean’t six chain from he to th’ waggon ruts as goes to Warren. But if you goes up the hill by the nut copse that’ll be sharter. Doan’t forget I. Zend Bill wi’ the cart.”By following these directions they found Warren House in about half an hour. Margaret’s chief idea in returning there was because at so lonely a place their appearance at that early hour would attract less attention, and because she was hungry and thirsty, and the distance was much less than the ride to Greene Ferne. They could hear the clack of the mill as they approached; at the house, in front the shutters were not yet down, but Margaret, who knew the ways of the place, rode into the courtyard at the back, where was the dairy.“Good morning, Jenny,” she said. A stout florid woman, who was carrying a bucket of water, looked up, started, and dropped it.“Lor, miss, how you did froughten I! I be all of a jimmy-swiver,” and she visibly trembled, which was what she meant. Then seeing Geoffrey, she dropped a curtsey and began to wipe her naked arms and hands with her apron.“I suppose Mr Fisher is in the barn?” said Margaret, not wishing the inquisitive old man to know the manner of their arrival.“No, a’ bean’t up yet, miss. He be mostly about by four or ha’past; but he freggled (fidgeted) hisself auver thuck paason as come a bit ago, and a’ be a’bed to marning.”“Lucky,” said Margaret, dismounting. “I’ll go and wake May.”She went indoors, knowing the house well. “I’ll put your ’osses in,” said Jenny. “Our volk be in th’ pens, a’ reckon.”“I thought your master was a very aged man,” said Geoffrey, as he went with her to the stable.“He be nigh handy on a hunderd.”“Surely he does not rise at four o’clock?”“Aw, eez a’ do though. He be as hardy as a wood-pile toad!”“Can you tell me where to find a cart? I must go myself and fetch the shepherd,” and he told her briefly how matters stood, trusting in her honest open countenance to keep silence as far as possible. Obviously it was undesirable that the events of the night should be generally known.“What, Jabez lost!” said she. “’Tis amazin’ sure—ly. He said as he could find his way athwert them downs with his head in a sack bag. Wull, to be zure!”With her aid Geoffrey soon had a cart and cart-horse, and taking with him a bottle of brandy, which May sent down, her kindly heart thinking poor Jabez, with his sprained ankle, would require something, set forth to fetch the shepherd, who was indeed in a “parlous case.” He found him without difficulty, for Jabez saw him coming, and shouted directions in a voice famous for its power. But getting him into the cart was another thing, and many applications to the bottle were necessary before he was safely up. As they jogged over the hill, Geoffrey inquired how so experienced a man, who could cross the downs with his head in a bag, ever came to get lost.“Why,” said the shepherd, solemnly shaking his head, “it wur the Ould Un hisself, it wur. He led I by th’ nause round and round—a’ bides in thuck place wur them gurt stwoanes be. Mebbe a’ caddled (bothered) you and miss too?”“Why do you think it was the Dev—, what you call the Old One?”“Cos ’twur he,” dogmatically. “Cos Job, he run away, and nothing but the Ould Un would a’ froughtened he.”“Job?”“He’s my dog. I be as dry as a gicks,”—the withered stem of a plant. He took another swig at the bottle, and, much encouraged thereby, lifted up his ditty in praise of shepherding:“The shepherd he stood on the side of the hill,And he looked main cold and peakèd;Says, ‘If it wurn’t for the sheep and the pore shepherdThe warld would be starved and nakèd!’”“You seem tolerably philosophic,” said Geoffrey, “for a man with a sprained ankle; but you have not told me yet how you got lost.”“Aw, bailee, thuck thur ’Gustus, sent me to Ilsley market wi’ dree-score yeows and lambs, zum on en wur doubles as vine as ever you seed—and I wur a coming whoam at night, doan’tee zee? I never had but one quart anyhow and mebbe a nip a’ summat else. It wur th’ Ould Un and no mistake. But then he goes off—drat th’ varmint, I’ll warm his jacket when a’ shows his face agen. I looks about for he, and misses the path, and then I wur took by the nause and drawed round and round!” (With his finger he described circles in the air to illustrate his meaning.) “Bime-by—whop! I falls into a vlint-pit. The nettles did bite my face terrable! I bided there a main bit and then crawls up to the vuzz (furze). My droat wur zo thick I couldn’t holler; and Lor! how the stars did go spinning round! I seed a fire arter a bit by them stwoanes at th’ Cave, and thenks I thuck be He this time, you—”“So you took us for the Ould Un?”“Wull, I axes your pardin. A’wuver I couldn’t crawl no furder, zo I lays down in the vuzz and thenks a’ Jacob and puts my head on a sarsen stwoan—”“And slept till we found you?”“Eez; this be featish tackle,” meaning the liquor was good.“It strikes me,” said Geoffrey, “the demon that led you astray dwelt in a stone jar, with a wicker-work casing.” After which he suggested to the shepherd the desirability of his remaining silent about the affairs of the night, so far as regarded Margaret and himself, and enforced his argument with the present of half a sovereign. The shepherd’s eye glistened at the coin.“Bless’ee,” said he, “I worked for hur feyther. I sha’n’t know nothing, you med be sure.” Shortly after, they arrived at Warren House. There Geoffrey found that May had got breakfast ready in the parlour, and was made welcome. Jenny brought in a jug of cream for their tea.“You can’t swing it on your finger,” said Margaret, laughing.“Our housekeeper,” explained May to Geoffrey, “I mean Jane, not Jenny, is rather fond of gin, dreadful creature. To get it she has to cross the room in front of grandpa’s chair; so to deceive him and make believe there’s nothing in it, she swings the jug slowly on her finger, when it’s half full all the while. One day, however, he insisted on smelling the jug.”They discussed and laughed over Margaret and Geoffrey’s adventure on the hills, and it was agreed that every effort should be made to conceal it from all but Mrs Estcourt. Margaret had lost one of her earrings, but May said the labourers should be told to look for it, and one or other would very likely find it, if it had been dropped in or near the Cave. After breakfast, between six and seven o’clock, when folks in town were just settling into slumber, May sat down to the ancient piano and began to play. It was one of those antique instruments, found in old houses, which shut up and look like a sideboard, of five octaves only, and small keys, yellow from age, upon which they say our grandmothers played with the backs of their hands level with the keyboard, and without dropping a guinea if one was placed on their white knuckles. Through the open window the warm sunlight entered, tinting Margaret’s brown hair with gold. There came the odour of many flowers, the hum of bees, and the distant sound of rushing water. It was a joyous hour of youth. May and Margaret sang alternately the beautiful old ballad of which they say Sir Walter Raleigh wrote the antistrophe—the reply to the Passionate Shepherd’s desire, “Come live with me, and be my love!”May (the Shepherd):—There will I make thee beds of rosesWith a thousand fragrant posies,A cap of flowers, and a kirtleEmbroidered all with leaves of myrtle.A belt of straw and ivy buds,With coral clasps and amber studs:And if these pleasures may thee move,Then live with me, and be my love!Margaret (the Lady):—If that the World and Love were young,And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,These pretty pleasures might me moveTo live with thee, and be thy love!
When Geoffrey felt certain that she was sleeping, his next care was to examine the exterior of the Cave, thinking that there might probably be openings between the stones that would admit a draught. The hurdle at the doorway, full of minute interstices, and purposely placed loosely, allowed sufficient air to enter for breathing; what he wished to prevent was a current crossing the chamber, for though warm then, towards the morning the atmosphere is usually cooler. He found that in the course of the centuries the ground had risen materially, so that the floor inside the cave was below the level of the sward without. This partially closed the crevices between the rude slabs, and from the raised turf grasses had grown thickly, and filled the remaining space except in one spot. There the boulder wall, settling under the weight of the capstone, leaned somewhat from the perpendicular and left a wide chink. With his knife he cut a broad sod of turf, and placed it against the aperture, grass side inwards, filling it up completely. Then, stepping lightly that he might not wake her, he sought the horses, and relieved them of their bridles, feeling certain that they would not wander far. A few yards from the copse there was a slight incline of the ground; there he sat down on the sward near enough to hear Margaret in a moment should she call.
Now that his labour was over and the excitement had subsided, even his powerful frame felt the effect of unusual exertion—besides riding, he had run and walked many miles that night. Presently he involuntarily reclined almost at full length, leaning on one arm; his weight crushed a thick bunch of wild thyme that emitted a delicious scent. Tall dry bennets and some low bushy heath grew at his side. On the left hand—eastwards—stood a hawthorn bush; in front—southwards—was a deep coombe, and beyond that a steep Down, towards the top of which grew a few gaunt and scattered firs. As the moon swept slowly higher the pale light fell upon the boulders and the dolmen as it had fallen for so many ages past. The darkness in the deep valley became more intense as the shadow of the hill grew more defined; where the moonlight fell upon the slopes they shone with a greenish-grey reflection, which, when looked at intently, vanished.
His dreamy eyes gazed far away over vale and hill, and watched a star low down that, little dimmed by the dull moon, still scintillated; for moonbeams check those bright flashes that sparkle over the sky. The pointed top of a fir upon the ridge hid the star a moment, then passing onward with the firmament it again looked down upon him. With the everlasting hills around, his drowsy mind ran back into the Past, when not only men but godsandmen played out their passions on those other distant hills that looked on windy Troy. The star, still calmly pursuing its way, seemed a link between then and now, but the hearts that had throbbed with the warm hope of love, where were they? Oenone wandering disconsolate because of Paris in the shady groves of Ida; the zoned Helen with the face—
That launch’d a thousand ships,And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.
That launch’d a thousand ships,And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.
The nameless graceful maidens with the many-twinkling feet weaving with their steps, as the ears of corn in the breeze weave mystic measures under the summer sun—whose limbs still seem to move in joyful procession, winding round many an antique vase. Where, too, were they? Where the hope and joy of the early days? And Margaret, beautiful Margaret, slumbering—but living—in the massive tomb, where should she be, andhislove? His weary head drooped on the pillow of thyme; with a deep-drawn sigh he slept.
The star went on. In the meadows of the vale far away doubtless there were sounds of the night. On the hills it was absolute silence—profound rest. They slept peacefully, and the moon rose to the meridian. The pale white glow on the northern horizon slipped towards the east. After awhile a change came over the night. The hills and coombes became grey and more distinct, the sky lighter, the stars faint, the moon that had been ruddy became yellow, and then almost white.
Yet a little while, and one by one the larks arose from the grass, and first twittering and vibrating their brown wings just above the hawthorn bushes, presently breasted the aerial ascent, and sang at “Heaven’s Gate.”
Geoffrey awoke and leaned upon his arm; his first thought was of Margaret, and he looked towards the copse. All was still; then in the dawn the strangeness of that hoary relic of the past sheltering so lovely a form came home to him. Next he gazed eastwards.
There a great low bank, a black wall of cloud, was rising rapidly, extending on either hand, growing momentarily broader, darker, threatening to cover the sky. He watched it come up swiftly, and saw that as it neared it became lighter in colour, first grey, then white. It was the morning mist driven along before the breeze, whose breath had not reached him yet. In a few minutes the wall of vapour passed over him as the waters rolled over Pharaoh. A puff of wind blew his hair back from his forehead, then another and another; presently a steady breeze, cool and refreshing. The mist drove rapidly along; after awhile gaps appeared overhead, and through these he saw broad spaces of blue sky, the colour growing and deepening. The gaps widened, the mist became thinner; then this, the first wave of vapour, was gone, creeping up the hillside behind him like the rearguard of an army.
Out from the last fringe of mist shone a great white globe. Like molten silver, glowing with a lusciousness of light, soft and yet brilliant, so large and bright and seemingly so near—but just above the ridge yonder-shining with heavenly splendour in the very dayspring. He knew Eosphoros, the Light-Bringer, the morning star of hope and joy and love, and his heart went out towards the beauty and the glory of it. Under him the broad bosom of the earth seemed to breathe instinct with life, bearing him up, and from the azure ether came the wind, filling his chest with the vigour of the young day.
The azure ether—yes, and more than that! Who that has seen it can forget the wondrous beauty of the summer morning’s sky? It is blue—it is sapphire—it is like the eye of a lovely woman. A rich purple shines through it; no painter ever approached the colour of it, no Titian or other, none from the beginning. Not even the golden flesh of Rubens’ women, through the veins in whose limbs a sunlight pulses in lieu of blood shining behind the tissues, can equal the hues that glow behind the blue.
The East flamed out at last. Pencilled streaks of cloud high in the dome shone red. An orange light rose up and spread about the horizon, then turned crimson, and the upper edge of the sun’s disk lifted itself over the hill. A swift beam of light shot like an arrow towards him, and the hawthorn bush obeyed with instant shadow: it passed beyond him over the green plain, up the ridge and away. The great orb, quivering with golden flames, looked forth upon the world.
He arose and involuntarily walked a few steps towards it, his heart swelling, the inner voice lifted. The larks sang with all their might, the swallows played high overhead. When he turned, Margaret had risen and came to meet him, blushing, and trying in vain to push back her hair, that had become slightly loosened. The breeze revelled in it.
“Is it not beautiful?” she said, as they shook hands, looking round. He gazed into her eyes till the fringes drooped and hid them: then he kissed her hand. Her cheeks burned; she withdrew it quickly. “We must go,” she said, all confused. He would gladly have prolonged that moment, but went loyally to do her bidding. He had no difficulty with the horses, they had wandered but a short distance; the grey’s lameness had nearly gone off, probably it would quite when he warmed to his work. They were soon mounted; but then came the old question, which way to ride? Margaret could not recognise any of the hills. Geoffrey decided to ride direct east, towards the sun, thinking that if they kept in one direction they must cross a road presently. They started along the ridge with a deep valley on the right hand, and keeping a sharp look-out in the expectation of seeing a shepherd soon, for Margaret was naturally anxious to get into a civilised locality.
“There is a cloud coming towards us,” she said presently.
Another great wave of vapour was sweeping up, and had already hidden the sun. It crept up the slope of the hill on which they rode like a rising tide—the edge clearly marked—and enveloped them. They went slowly, thinking of flint-pits, and not able to see many yards. Presently the breeze opened a gap overhead, and they were between two huge walls of mist. They drew rein, and in a few minutes the dense white vapour insensibly melted and the sun shone. But then as it rolled away and the ridges of the hills appeared the cloud-like mist visibly undulated about their summits, now rising, now falling, like the vast low waves of the ocean after the wind has sunk. Here and there the mist caught and held the sunlight, and seemed lit up from within; then it disappeared, and the bright spot transferred itself to a distant range. A few more minutes and the breeze carried the vapour away, and they rode forward, and after some distance passed through a forest of furze. A rabbit now and then scampered away, and the stone-chats flew from bush to bush and repeated their short note. Suddenly, in following the narrow winding opening between the furze, the grey snorted and stopped short. Geoffrey looked and saw a labouring man asleep upon the sward, his head pillowed on a small boulder stone, or sarsen. He called to him, and the man moved and sat up.
“Why!” said Margaret in amazement; “why, it is our shepherd, Jabez!”
“Eez, miss, it be I,” rubbing his eyes; “and main stiff I be.”
“How ever did you come here?”
“Where are we?” said Geoffrey. “What part of the Down is this? Where are Moonlight Firs?”
“Aw, doan’tee caddie me zo, measter.”
“But we want to get home,” said Margaret. “Now tell us quickly.”
“Be you lost too, miss?” The shepherd to save his life could not have answered a question direct.
“You don’t mean that you have been lost, Jabez?”
“I wur last night. I twisted thuck leg.”
“But where are we?”
“Aw, you bean’t very fur from th’ Warren.”
“Only think,” said Margaret, “all the while we were close where I started from. If May had known we were on the hills! We had better go to Mr Fisher’s. No one will be about, and I can go home later in the day.”
“Show me the way to the Warren,” said Geoffrey. “Why don’t you get up?”
“I tell ee my leg be twisted. I fell in a vlint-pit.”
“Well, point out the road, and I will return and fetch you.”
“Aw, you must go away on your left, toward thuck Folly—a’ be about a mile. It bean’t six chain from he to th’ waggon ruts as goes to Warren. But if you goes up the hill by the nut copse that’ll be sharter. Doan’t forget I. Zend Bill wi’ the cart.”
By following these directions they found Warren House in about half an hour. Margaret’s chief idea in returning there was because at so lonely a place their appearance at that early hour would attract less attention, and because she was hungry and thirsty, and the distance was much less than the ride to Greene Ferne. They could hear the clack of the mill as they approached; at the house, in front the shutters were not yet down, but Margaret, who knew the ways of the place, rode into the courtyard at the back, where was the dairy.
“Good morning, Jenny,” she said. A stout florid woman, who was carrying a bucket of water, looked up, started, and dropped it.
“Lor, miss, how you did froughten I! I be all of a jimmy-swiver,” and she visibly trembled, which was what she meant. Then seeing Geoffrey, she dropped a curtsey and began to wipe her naked arms and hands with her apron.
“I suppose Mr Fisher is in the barn?” said Margaret, not wishing the inquisitive old man to know the manner of their arrival.
“No, a’ bean’t up yet, miss. He be mostly about by four or ha’past; but he freggled (fidgeted) hisself auver thuck paason as come a bit ago, and a’ be a’bed to marning.”
“Lucky,” said Margaret, dismounting. “I’ll go and wake May.”
She went indoors, knowing the house well. “I’ll put your ’osses in,” said Jenny. “Our volk be in th’ pens, a’ reckon.”
“I thought your master was a very aged man,” said Geoffrey, as he went with her to the stable.
“He be nigh handy on a hunderd.”
“Surely he does not rise at four o’clock?”
“Aw, eez a’ do though. He be as hardy as a wood-pile toad!”
“Can you tell me where to find a cart? I must go myself and fetch the shepherd,” and he told her briefly how matters stood, trusting in her honest open countenance to keep silence as far as possible. Obviously it was undesirable that the events of the night should be generally known.
“What, Jabez lost!” said she. “’Tis amazin’ sure—ly. He said as he could find his way athwert them downs with his head in a sack bag. Wull, to be zure!”
With her aid Geoffrey soon had a cart and cart-horse, and taking with him a bottle of brandy, which May sent down, her kindly heart thinking poor Jabez, with his sprained ankle, would require something, set forth to fetch the shepherd, who was indeed in a “parlous case.” He found him without difficulty, for Jabez saw him coming, and shouted directions in a voice famous for its power. But getting him into the cart was another thing, and many applications to the bottle were necessary before he was safely up. As they jogged over the hill, Geoffrey inquired how so experienced a man, who could cross the downs with his head in a bag, ever came to get lost.
“Why,” said the shepherd, solemnly shaking his head, “it wur the Ould Un hisself, it wur. He led I by th’ nause round and round—a’ bides in thuck place wur them gurt stwoanes be. Mebbe a’ caddled (bothered) you and miss too?”
“Why do you think it was the Dev—, what you call the Old One?”
“Cos ’twur he,” dogmatically. “Cos Job, he run away, and nothing but the Ould Un would a’ froughtened he.”
“Job?”
“He’s my dog. I be as dry as a gicks,”—the withered stem of a plant. He took another swig at the bottle, and, much encouraged thereby, lifted up his ditty in praise of shepherding:
“The shepherd he stood on the side of the hill,And he looked main cold and peakèd;Says, ‘If it wurn’t for the sheep and the pore shepherdThe warld would be starved and nakèd!’”
“The shepherd he stood on the side of the hill,And he looked main cold and peakèd;Says, ‘If it wurn’t for the sheep and the pore shepherdThe warld would be starved and nakèd!’”
“You seem tolerably philosophic,” said Geoffrey, “for a man with a sprained ankle; but you have not told me yet how you got lost.”
“Aw, bailee, thuck thur ’Gustus, sent me to Ilsley market wi’ dree-score yeows and lambs, zum on en wur doubles as vine as ever you seed—and I wur a coming whoam at night, doan’tee zee? I never had but one quart anyhow and mebbe a nip a’ summat else. It wur th’ Ould Un and no mistake. But then he goes off—drat th’ varmint, I’ll warm his jacket when a’ shows his face agen. I looks about for he, and misses the path, and then I wur took by the nause and drawed round and round!” (With his finger he described circles in the air to illustrate his meaning.) “Bime-by—whop! I falls into a vlint-pit. The nettles did bite my face terrable! I bided there a main bit and then crawls up to the vuzz (furze). My droat wur zo thick I couldn’t holler; and Lor! how the stars did go spinning round! I seed a fire arter a bit by them stwoanes at th’ Cave, and thenks I thuck be He this time, you—”
“So you took us for the Ould Un?”
“Wull, I axes your pardin. A’wuver I couldn’t crawl no furder, zo I lays down in the vuzz and thenks a’ Jacob and puts my head on a sarsen stwoan—”
“And slept till we found you?”
“Eez; this be featish tackle,” meaning the liquor was good.
“It strikes me,” said Geoffrey, “the demon that led you astray dwelt in a stone jar, with a wicker-work casing.” After which he suggested to the shepherd the desirability of his remaining silent about the affairs of the night, so far as regarded Margaret and himself, and enforced his argument with the present of half a sovereign. The shepherd’s eye glistened at the coin.
“Bless’ee,” said he, “I worked for hur feyther. I sha’n’t know nothing, you med be sure.” Shortly after, they arrived at Warren House. There Geoffrey found that May had got breakfast ready in the parlour, and was made welcome. Jenny brought in a jug of cream for their tea.
“You can’t swing it on your finger,” said Margaret, laughing.
“Our housekeeper,” explained May to Geoffrey, “I mean Jane, not Jenny, is rather fond of gin, dreadful creature. To get it she has to cross the room in front of grandpa’s chair; so to deceive him and make believe there’s nothing in it, she swings the jug slowly on her finger, when it’s half full all the while. One day, however, he insisted on smelling the jug.”
They discussed and laughed over Margaret and Geoffrey’s adventure on the hills, and it was agreed that every effort should be made to conceal it from all but Mrs Estcourt. Margaret had lost one of her earrings, but May said the labourers should be told to look for it, and one or other would very likely find it, if it had been dropped in or near the Cave. After breakfast, between six and seven o’clock, when folks in town were just settling into slumber, May sat down to the ancient piano and began to play. It was one of those antique instruments, found in old houses, which shut up and look like a sideboard, of five octaves only, and small keys, yellow from age, upon which they say our grandmothers played with the backs of their hands level with the keyboard, and without dropping a guinea if one was placed on their white knuckles. Through the open window the warm sunlight entered, tinting Margaret’s brown hair with gold. There came the odour of many flowers, the hum of bees, and the distant sound of rushing water. It was a joyous hour of youth. May and Margaret sang alternately the beautiful old ballad of which they say Sir Walter Raleigh wrote the antistrophe—the reply to the Passionate Shepherd’s desire, “Come live with me, and be my love!”
May (the Shepherd):—
There will I make thee beds of rosesWith a thousand fragrant posies,A cap of flowers, and a kirtleEmbroidered all with leaves of myrtle.A belt of straw and ivy buds,With coral clasps and amber studs:And if these pleasures may thee move,Then live with me, and be my love!
There will I make thee beds of rosesWith a thousand fragrant posies,A cap of flowers, and a kirtleEmbroidered all with leaves of myrtle.A belt of straw and ivy buds,With coral clasps and amber studs:And if these pleasures may thee move,Then live with me, and be my love!
Margaret (the Lady):—
If that the World and Love were young,And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,These pretty pleasures might me moveTo live with thee, and be thy love!
If that the World and Love were young,And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,These pretty pleasures might me moveTo live with thee, and be thy love!
Chapter Eight.A-Nutting.“Thistledown for thoughts,” said May Fisher, laughing, as she tried to seize the glossy balls floating by on the idle air of the lane.“Thoughts are of little value, then,” said Felix St. Bees.“Except to the goldfinches,” said Margaret; “see how busy they are.”It was a lovely afternoon: white fleecy clouds lingered in the upper atmosphere, so gauze-like in texture as scarcely to diminish the sun’s rays when they passed over. The golden mist of ripe September filled the hollows and hung over the distant ridges, softening with haze the outlines of the hills. The fierce stress of midsummer heat was gone, leaving instead a luxurious warmth that lured them into the fields. Margaret had succeeded in persuading old Andrew Fisher to let May return to Greene Ferne. Rude as he was, Margaret’s beauty stirred the expiring spirit of gallantry, and he yielded. Although he would not let May go back at once in her company, he fixed a day for her return. Margaret explained to him that St. Bees did not need his money, having plenty; and the old man—prompted too by avarice—sent a gruff kind of apology, and asked Felix to call again. Felix, however, had had his dignity upset by the blackthorn cudgel hurled at his head, and naturally waited awhile before repeating his visit. Geoffrey still stayed at Thorpe Hall, for the shooting now, and Valentine at Hollyock Cottage. They had all started that afternoon to go a-nutting in Thorpe Wood.The wood was approached by a winding thick-hedged lane. As they slowly advanced a bevy of goldfinches went before them, rising from the thistles, for they love the seeds in the down, with a “fink” of remonstrance, settling again to start up once more, and finally, out of patience at the interruption, taking flight to the tall ash-trees, to wait till the intruders had passed on.“We must have some sticks with crooks to pull the boughs down,” said May, “or we shall not reach half the nuts.”So the gentlemen took out their pocket-knives, and searched for suitable sticks. Felix cut one of hazel, twice as long as himself; Valentine another of ash; Geoffrey carelessly slashed off the first willow-bough he came to, and trimmed it.“Yours will not do,” said Margaret to him. “The willow is too weak—it will split.”“Will mine answer?” asked Valentine, showing a stout piece of ash.“Yes, that is tougher. Why don’t you get an ash, Geoffrey?”“I shall trust in my first choice,” said Geoffrey, just a trifle annoyed even by so slight a matter; for when men’s minds are strung with love and jealousy the least thing nettles them.“I think it will do,” said May, anxious to smooth it over.As they went on down the lane the blackbirds every now and then sprang from the bushes with a loud cry; the song-thrushes, less wild, sat on the spray till they came close. Stray blue butterflies wandered wonderingly in and out, with a dainty tripping flight—wonderingly, because they had but lately entered to the summer world, and found so much to see they could not stay long in one place. Bryony leaves, shaped like the shields of ancient Norman knights, trailed a pale buff scarf across the bushes. Bryony berries, some red and some a metallic shining green, clustered in grape-like bunches. Blackberries ripening; haws reddening on the thorn; yellow fronds of brake fern on the tall stems rising beside the brambles. No sound save the dry grasshoppers singing in the grass, and leaping before their footsteps; and the robin’s plaintive notes from the ash. So they went on and into the silence of the wood. The soft warmth brooded over it—the winds were still. High up in the beeches spots of red gold were widening slowly, and the acorns showed thickly on the oaks. Then past narrow “drives,” or tracks going through the woods, bounded on each side with endless walls of ashpoles with branches of pole green; carpeted with dark-green grass and darker moss luxuriating in the dank shade, and roofed with spreading oak-spray. These vistas seemed to lead into unknown depths of forest. They paused and looked down one, feeling an indefinite desire of exploration; and as they looked in the silence a leaf fell, brown and tanned, with a trembling rustle, and they saw its brown oval dot the rank green grass, upon whose blades it was upborne. On again, and out into a broad glade, where the rabbits had been at play, and raced to their hiding-places. Here were clumps of beeches, brown with innumerable nuts; straight-grown Spanish chestnuts, with spiny green balls of fruit; knotted oaks; and tall limes, already yellow and filled by the sunshine with a hazy shimmer of colour. Over the glade a dome of deep-blue sky, and a warm loving sun, whose drowsy shadows lingered and moved slow.After a while they reached the hazel bushes, acres upon acres of them; tall straight rods, with tapering upturned branches, whose leaves fell in a shower when the stem was shaken. Nuts are the cunningest of fruit in their manner of growth; outwardly they show a few clusters fairly enough, especially bunches at an almost inaccessible height; when these are gathered, those who are not aware of the ways of the hazel naturally pass on, leaving at least twice as many unseen. The nuts grow under the bough in such a position that, in pulling it down to reach a visible bunch, the very motion of the bough as it bends hides the rest beneath it. These will stay till they drop from the hoods, till, turning to a dark and polished brown, they fall ratling from branch to branch to the earth. There again the dead brown leaves hide them by similarity of colour. So that, to thoroughly strip a hazel bush requires a knowledge of the likely places and the keenest of eyes.As for May, restless and ever in movement, glinting hither and thither like a sunbeam when the shadows of the branches dance in the breeze, she could never stay long enough to really search the boughs. She went from thicket to thicket, constantly finding one that bore more than that she had just left. This butterfly flight soon carried her away and hid her among the bushes, though her merry laugh came back in answer to Margaret’s call. Felix of course was with her.Like money-getting, nut-gathering grows upon the searcher. When pockets are full and baskets running over, and a heap on the handkerchief spread upon the ground, though the palate is weary with eating, and the arms with working held high above the head, yet still the avarice increases. So Margaret gathered and gathered, and laughed and chatted, and stood on tiptoe, and enjoyed the gipsying. Her hat had fallen back almost upon her shoulder, the impudent snatches of the branches loosened her hair, and the fierce caress of the briars tore her skirt. Her cheek was flushed with the bloom of pure young blood put swiftly in motion by the labour. The grey eyes sparkled, and as she raised her hand the sleeve dropped and gave a glimpse of the white polished wrist glowing among the leaves. The excitement, theabandonof the moment, gave another charm to her beauty. It is where the river ripples that the sunbeams glisten, not on the smooth still flow. She felt along the boughs for the cluster, for what the eyes may miss the hand will often discover; she let the boughs spring up a little way without quite releasing them, to look a second time underneath before quitting hold. The heap of nuts grew larger every moment.Valentine and Geoffrey were there, helping to pull the boughs within reach for her. Without a thought of evil, the very brightness, the carelessness of her enjoyment, raised to a bitter height the smouldering jealousy between them. The smile upon her face when turned towards Geoffrey had the inspiration of love behind it, which he in his rising anger could not see. Towards Valentine it was a smile only, though seemingly as bright; yet he, eager for a sign, interpreted it as something more. She knew that they had been the dearest friends, and in her innocence never dreamed that a smile or a glance could play such havoc with that friendship. Her heart she knew was Geoffrey’s—it was the very knowledge of his love that made her so happy that day. But under the nut-tree, and the laugh, and the sunshine, fierce passions were stirring in their hearts. Both were watching eagerly for a chance of speaking to her privately; Valentine, to say words that had long been as it were upon his lips, to ask her to accept him; Geoffrey, full of reproaches, and yet with a guilty sense of lacking trust. When the great bush was stripped to the uttermost as it seemed, Margaret stood back a little distance to view it the better, and see that not one nut had escaped.“Ah,” she cried, pointing to the topmost bough, “I can see a splendid cluster. Look, Valentine, there must be five or six nuts in one bunch.” There was a fine and tempting cluster where she pointed, the sunlight shining on it, and one side of the nuts rosy, as if ripened more towards the beams. Geoffrey ran to the bush and seized the strong hazel high up with his willow crook. It was an exceptionally large nut-tree stick, stiff and tall, and scarcely yielded to his first attempt.“Pull gently,” said Margaret, all intent, “or you will shake them out, and perhaps lose them.”“Can you reach them now?” he asked; for as the bough came down he could not see well, being under it.“Yes; I’ve got them. O!” For, as the tips of her fingers touched the nuts, there was the sound of splitting wood, and the cluster flew up to its original height. Geoffrey’s willow crook had broken, as she had said it would.“Here are some,” said Valentine, just behind; secretly glad at Geoffrey’s failure. He had gone to an adjacent bush and crooked a laden bough down with his tough ash stick. Margaret turned to go there. Instantly Geoffrey, angry and jealous, sprang at the hazel pole that had baffled him, seized it as far up as possible, and hung with all his weight. It bent; he put his foot against the stole, and with all his great strength wrenched the bough from its juncture. With a loud crack it parted and fell at her feet.“Now take them,” he said savagely. But the force of the fall had shaken the nuts out and scattered them afar, lost among the grass and leaves.“What a pity! The bough is spoilt too,” said Margaret. “Why don’t you cut a crook like Valentine’s?” She went towards Valentine’s bush, somewhat surprised at the vehemence of Geoffrey’s manner.Geoffrey took his knife and ran into the bushes to cut another crook. Hardly had he disappeared in the thickets when he called to her.“Margaret, Margaret! I have found your glove—you dropped it.”She went towards the voice; the moment she came near he grasped both her hands tightly. There was no glove, it was aruseto speak to her.“You seem to preferhissociety to mine,” he said, in a low, hard tone.“Whatdoyou mean?” Her glance and surprised expression reproached him for his harshness. He hated himself for his next words, and yet he uttered them; jealousy is cruel, and drove him on even against his better mind.“I mean that you play double—first with me and then withhim.”Now this was not only positively untrue, but in the worst possible taste; had he been cool he would never have said it; as it was he instantly repented. She stood before him silent, all the blood gone from her cheek in the extremity of her indignation, unable to speak. Then she drew her hands away, and her breath came in short quick sobs.“No, no, I did not mean it.” He tried to take her hand again, but she fled swiftly among the brake fern and the thickets seeking May. He stood bewildered at his own folly; then his anger was redoubled against Valentine instead of against himself. A minute or two afterwards he heard a slight cry, as if caused by pain, and immediately went towards it, but in a dazed kind of way. Valentine was swifter.As Margaret ran between the bramble bushes and the nut-tree stoles, winding round the tangled masses of fern, and increasing her pace as the full significance of Geoffrey’s insinuation became apparent to her, she was heedless of her footsteps, and so caught her foot in a trailing bine of honeysuckle, and fell on one knee. In falling she instinctively grasped at the nearest bough, and thereby did the mischief; for a briar was twisted round it, and a great hooked thorn ran deep into her thumb. The sharp sudden pain caused her cry. Valentine was at her side in a moment. He saw the thorn, which had broken away from the briar and was fixed in the wound.“I am so sorry,” he said. “Let me take it out.”A tiny red globule of blood oozed from the white and polished skin, contrasting so sweetly in colour that he actually paused half a second to admire before he drew it.“Quick, please,” she said.He drew it tenderly, and another larger crimson drop welled up, and stood on the delicate white thumb. “It is out.”“You are sure the point is not left in?” He bent over to examine more carefully. The sunbeams lit up her beautiful hand; temptation overcame him and he kissed it, and the crimson drop stained his lip.“Sir!” She angrily snatched it away. At the same moment she saw Geoffrey looking through the parted bushes behind Valentine, who did not know he was so near.“A moment!” cried Valentine, in the flood of his passion. “Listen. I love—”But she rushed from him. Valentine followed her. Geoffrey let the bushes come together, and Valentine did not see him. Margaret went towards May’s merry laugh, which she could hear not far off.“May! May!”“Here I am—by the oak.”Then Felix, knowing histête-à-têtewith May was almost at an end, snatched a kiss.“I will go up to the mill again,” said he. “I will succeed this time.”“Beware of the blackthorn,” laughed May, and was very innocently engaged looking at a sprig of oak with three young acorns on it when Margaret came.“I am glad I have found you.”“You have torn your sleeve!”“In the briars—see my thumb.”“Aphrodite has pricked her hand instead of her foot this time,” said Felix. “We shall see a new flower in the spring. Let me bind it up?” and he wrapped May’s handkerchief round it. Then Geoffrey and Valentine came, apart and yet together.“I think it is time to return home,” said May, guessing at once from the expression of their faces and Margaret’s manner that something was wrong.“Yes, I think so too,” said Margaret. “We have plenty of nuts.”The joy of the day was over; so easily can a few jarring words cloud the loveliest sky and darken the sweetest landscape. They left the wood and returned to Greene Ferne. As they approached the house a labouring man advanced and spoke to Margaret.“Be this yourn, miss?” he said, and offered her the lost earring. “I found un on the Down by the Cave, as you and measter here,” (looking at Geoffrey), “thuck night—”“Wait a moment,” said Margaret, in confusion, for the night adventure had been carefully kept secret from all but Mrs Estcourt. “I will come to you in a moment.”Valentine heard the man’s words, and noted his reference to Geoffrey. Instantly his jealousy was aroused—here was something secret. What had they to do with the Cave at night? Nor was Margaret’s halting explanation, that she had dropped it while riding, satisfactory to him. Altogether the situation was constrained. Both Valentine and Geoffrey stayed at the house as late as they could purposely, but neither found an opportunity of speaking alone with Margaret. When they left Greene Ferne the two old friends at once took different roads.Valentine, walking through the village, ascended a slight hill, and overtook an old woman of the working class, who was groaning and mumbling to herself, and bent almost double under a large bundle of gleanings on her shoulder, and a heavy basket in her hand. As he came up, he good-naturedly took the basket to relieve her, and accommodated his pace to hers.“You seem to have a heavy load,” he said. In the dusk the old hag either did not recognise him, or perhaps did not care if she did.“I ain’t got half a bundle,” she grunted. “Thaay won’t let a pore old body glean when a-can’t rip.”“Well, it’s beautiful weather for the harvest.”“Aw, eez—the het (heat) makes um giddy: our ould Bill fell down; the gearden be a-spoiling for rain.”“The farmers pay good wages now, don’t they?”“Um pays what um be obliged to.”“You have a good landlord here—Squire Thorpe.”“He! Drotted ould skinvlint! You go and look at thaay cottages: thaay be his’n. The rain comes drough the thatch, and he won’t mend it. I be forced to put a umberella auver my bed nights when it rains.”“At all events, the farmers like him.”“Do um? Never heard say zo. His rabbits yeats their crops like a flock of sheep.”“The vicar—Mr Basil—is kind to the poor, is he not?” asked Valentine, forgetting for the moment his own ill-temper in the old woman’s bitterness and abuse of everybody and everything. He was most surprised at her venomous spite against the squire, who he knew was of a kindly disposition. She perfectly hissed at the mention of the vicar.“Our paason! ould varmint—a gives all the coals and blankets at Christmas to thaay as goes to church, and narn to thaay as be chapel-volk. What have he done with the widders’ money, I wants to knaw?”“What money was that?”“Why, that as was left to us widders of this yer parish for ever: you med see it stuck up in the chancel. I never seed none of it, nor anybody else as ever I heard tell on.”“But you get wine and luxuries, no doubt, when ill?”“A vine lot: it bean’t for such as we.”“You seem to have some industrious people in the village, however: now, that little grocer’s shop where they sell—”“You means Betsy Warren, what sells tobacco and snuff and lollipops and whipcord. Her buys hares and birds from the poachers—her will get notice to quit zum o’ these yer days.”“But the blacksmith works hard. I always hear his hammer when I go by.”“What—he! The justices fined he a pound a bit ago for fighting Mathew the cobbler. Mathew lives with Thompson’s wife—he as was transported for firing Farmer Ruck’s rick-barken. That be a vine thing—her be as bad as he.”“The new school will set you to rights.”“Aw, will a’? The schoolmaster kissed one of the wenches, and got sent away; but them Timothy wenches bean’t no better than um should be.”“Who’s Timothy?”“Doan’t you knaw ould Timothy? He be a mower—a’ will drink dree gallons a day. That young Sam’l lodges with he: he be a shepherd, a’ be a new chap. I doan’t knaw much about he, but I’ve hearn as a’ had six weeks for stealing lambs.”“H’m!” said Valentine, smiling. “They all seem a bad lot.”“Zo um be.”“But surely Mrs Estcourt is good to the poor: you don’t know anything against her?”“Aw, doan’t I? What be her daughter up to? What wur her a-doing on the Down thuck night with thuck gurt lanky chap from the squire’s as goes arter her? Mebbe you knaws un.”“When was it?” asked Valentine, with sudden interest, all his annoyance and bitterness returning. “What do you mean?”“Miss Margaret—a vine miss she be; zo grand. Lord, I minds when farmers’ daughters was Molly and Marjory, and no vine Miss about it. That ould Jane, the housekeeper at Fisher’s—warn you knaws her?—her tould zum on um, and zum on um told Mathew, as tould Betsy, as tould I.”“Told what?” sharply.“What I ses, to be zure. Miss and he wur out thegither a-main bit thuck night. ’Tain’t no use caddling I—I can’t tell ee no more. What, bean’t you going to carry that basket no furder?”For as they reached the top of the hill, Valentine, angry now, handed it back to her; she barely took it, and made no sign of thanks.“Mebbe you’ll give I a bit of snuff?” she said. He gave her a shilling and strode on swiftly, full of furious thoughts, the more so because all these innuendoes afforded nothing by which an open quarrel could be fixed on Geoffrey.“This is intolerable,” he said to himself, “that he should make Margaret a common talk among these people. What on earth did the old woman allude to, and how came that earring lost?”It was a pity that the Down adventure had been kept secret; and yet it was natural enough that it should be. The old woman, as Valentine walked rapidly on in the dusk, put the shilling in her pocket, readjusted her burden, and tottered on, muttering to herself, “The gurt chattering fool to come a’ hindering I!”
“Thistledown for thoughts,” said May Fisher, laughing, as she tried to seize the glossy balls floating by on the idle air of the lane.
“Thoughts are of little value, then,” said Felix St. Bees.
“Except to the goldfinches,” said Margaret; “see how busy they are.”
It was a lovely afternoon: white fleecy clouds lingered in the upper atmosphere, so gauze-like in texture as scarcely to diminish the sun’s rays when they passed over. The golden mist of ripe September filled the hollows and hung over the distant ridges, softening with haze the outlines of the hills. The fierce stress of midsummer heat was gone, leaving instead a luxurious warmth that lured them into the fields. Margaret had succeeded in persuading old Andrew Fisher to let May return to Greene Ferne. Rude as he was, Margaret’s beauty stirred the expiring spirit of gallantry, and he yielded. Although he would not let May go back at once in her company, he fixed a day for her return. Margaret explained to him that St. Bees did not need his money, having plenty; and the old man—prompted too by avarice—sent a gruff kind of apology, and asked Felix to call again. Felix, however, had had his dignity upset by the blackthorn cudgel hurled at his head, and naturally waited awhile before repeating his visit. Geoffrey still stayed at Thorpe Hall, for the shooting now, and Valentine at Hollyock Cottage. They had all started that afternoon to go a-nutting in Thorpe Wood.
The wood was approached by a winding thick-hedged lane. As they slowly advanced a bevy of goldfinches went before them, rising from the thistles, for they love the seeds in the down, with a “fink” of remonstrance, settling again to start up once more, and finally, out of patience at the interruption, taking flight to the tall ash-trees, to wait till the intruders had passed on.
“We must have some sticks with crooks to pull the boughs down,” said May, “or we shall not reach half the nuts.”
So the gentlemen took out their pocket-knives, and searched for suitable sticks. Felix cut one of hazel, twice as long as himself; Valentine another of ash; Geoffrey carelessly slashed off the first willow-bough he came to, and trimmed it.
“Yours will not do,” said Margaret to him. “The willow is too weak—it will split.”
“Will mine answer?” asked Valentine, showing a stout piece of ash.
“Yes, that is tougher. Why don’t you get an ash, Geoffrey?”
“I shall trust in my first choice,” said Geoffrey, just a trifle annoyed even by so slight a matter; for when men’s minds are strung with love and jealousy the least thing nettles them.
“I think it will do,” said May, anxious to smooth it over.
As they went on down the lane the blackbirds every now and then sprang from the bushes with a loud cry; the song-thrushes, less wild, sat on the spray till they came close. Stray blue butterflies wandered wonderingly in and out, with a dainty tripping flight—wonderingly, because they had but lately entered to the summer world, and found so much to see they could not stay long in one place. Bryony leaves, shaped like the shields of ancient Norman knights, trailed a pale buff scarf across the bushes. Bryony berries, some red and some a metallic shining green, clustered in grape-like bunches. Blackberries ripening; haws reddening on the thorn; yellow fronds of brake fern on the tall stems rising beside the brambles. No sound save the dry grasshoppers singing in the grass, and leaping before their footsteps; and the robin’s plaintive notes from the ash. So they went on and into the silence of the wood. The soft warmth brooded over it—the winds were still. High up in the beeches spots of red gold were widening slowly, and the acorns showed thickly on the oaks. Then past narrow “drives,” or tracks going through the woods, bounded on each side with endless walls of ashpoles with branches of pole green; carpeted with dark-green grass and darker moss luxuriating in the dank shade, and roofed with spreading oak-spray. These vistas seemed to lead into unknown depths of forest. They paused and looked down one, feeling an indefinite desire of exploration; and as they looked in the silence a leaf fell, brown and tanned, with a trembling rustle, and they saw its brown oval dot the rank green grass, upon whose blades it was upborne. On again, and out into a broad glade, where the rabbits had been at play, and raced to their hiding-places. Here were clumps of beeches, brown with innumerable nuts; straight-grown Spanish chestnuts, with spiny green balls of fruit; knotted oaks; and tall limes, already yellow and filled by the sunshine with a hazy shimmer of colour. Over the glade a dome of deep-blue sky, and a warm loving sun, whose drowsy shadows lingered and moved slow.
After a while they reached the hazel bushes, acres upon acres of them; tall straight rods, with tapering upturned branches, whose leaves fell in a shower when the stem was shaken. Nuts are the cunningest of fruit in their manner of growth; outwardly they show a few clusters fairly enough, especially bunches at an almost inaccessible height; when these are gathered, those who are not aware of the ways of the hazel naturally pass on, leaving at least twice as many unseen. The nuts grow under the bough in such a position that, in pulling it down to reach a visible bunch, the very motion of the bough as it bends hides the rest beneath it. These will stay till they drop from the hoods, till, turning to a dark and polished brown, they fall ratling from branch to branch to the earth. There again the dead brown leaves hide them by similarity of colour. So that, to thoroughly strip a hazel bush requires a knowledge of the likely places and the keenest of eyes.
As for May, restless and ever in movement, glinting hither and thither like a sunbeam when the shadows of the branches dance in the breeze, she could never stay long enough to really search the boughs. She went from thicket to thicket, constantly finding one that bore more than that she had just left. This butterfly flight soon carried her away and hid her among the bushes, though her merry laugh came back in answer to Margaret’s call. Felix of course was with her.
Like money-getting, nut-gathering grows upon the searcher. When pockets are full and baskets running over, and a heap on the handkerchief spread upon the ground, though the palate is weary with eating, and the arms with working held high above the head, yet still the avarice increases. So Margaret gathered and gathered, and laughed and chatted, and stood on tiptoe, and enjoyed the gipsying. Her hat had fallen back almost upon her shoulder, the impudent snatches of the branches loosened her hair, and the fierce caress of the briars tore her skirt. Her cheek was flushed with the bloom of pure young blood put swiftly in motion by the labour. The grey eyes sparkled, and as she raised her hand the sleeve dropped and gave a glimpse of the white polished wrist glowing among the leaves. The excitement, theabandonof the moment, gave another charm to her beauty. It is where the river ripples that the sunbeams glisten, not on the smooth still flow. She felt along the boughs for the cluster, for what the eyes may miss the hand will often discover; she let the boughs spring up a little way without quite releasing them, to look a second time underneath before quitting hold. The heap of nuts grew larger every moment.
Valentine and Geoffrey were there, helping to pull the boughs within reach for her. Without a thought of evil, the very brightness, the carelessness of her enjoyment, raised to a bitter height the smouldering jealousy between them. The smile upon her face when turned towards Geoffrey had the inspiration of love behind it, which he in his rising anger could not see. Towards Valentine it was a smile only, though seemingly as bright; yet he, eager for a sign, interpreted it as something more. She knew that they had been the dearest friends, and in her innocence never dreamed that a smile or a glance could play such havoc with that friendship. Her heart she knew was Geoffrey’s—it was the very knowledge of his love that made her so happy that day. But under the nut-tree, and the laugh, and the sunshine, fierce passions were stirring in their hearts. Both were watching eagerly for a chance of speaking to her privately; Valentine, to say words that had long been as it were upon his lips, to ask her to accept him; Geoffrey, full of reproaches, and yet with a guilty sense of lacking trust. When the great bush was stripped to the uttermost as it seemed, Margaret stood back a little distance to view it the better, and see that not one nut had escaped.
“Ah,” she cried, pointing to the topmost bough, “I can see a splendid cluster. Look, Valentine, there must be five or six nuts in one bunch.” There was a fine and tempting cluster where she pointed, the sunlight shining on it, and one side of the nuts rosy, as if ripened more towards the beams. Geoffrey ran to the bush and seized the strong hazel high up with his willow crook. It was an exceptionally large nut-tree stick, stiff and tall, and scarcely yielded to his first attempt.
“Pull gently,” said Margaret, all intent, “or you will shake them out, and perhaps lose them.”
“Can you reach them now?” he asked; for as the bough came down he could not see well, being under it.
“Yes; I’ve got them. O!” For, as the tips of her fingers touched the nuts, there was the sound of splitting wood, and the cluster flew up to its original height. Geoffrey’s willow crook had broken, as she had said it would.
“Here are some,” said Valentine, just behind; secretly glad at Geoffrey’s failure. He had gone to an adjacent bush and crooked a laden bough down with his tough ash stick. Margaret turned to go there. Instantly Geoffrey, angry and jealous, sprang at the hazel pole that had baffled him, seized it as far up as possible, and hung with all his weight. It bent; he put his foot against the stole, and with all his great strength wrenched the bough from its juncture. With a loud crack it parted and fell at her feet.
“Now take them,” he said savagely. But the force of the fall had shaken the nuts out and scattered them afar, lost among the grass and leaves.
“What a pity! The bough is spoilt too,” said Margaret. “Why don’t you cut a crook like Valentine’s?” She went towards Valentine’s bush, somewhat surprised at the vehemence of Geoffrey’s manner.
Geoffrey took his knife and ran into the bushes to cut another crook. Hardly had he disappeared in the thickets when he called to her.
“Margaret, Margaret! I have found your glove—you dropped it.”
She went towards the voice; the moment she came near he grasped both her hands tightly. There was no glove, it was aruseto speak to her.
“You seem to preferhissociety to mine,” he said, in a low, hard tone.
“Whatdoyou mean?” Her glance and surprised expression reproached him for his harshness. He hated himself for his next words, and yet he uttered them; jealousy is cruel, and drove him on even against his better mind.
“I mean that you play double—first with me and then withhim.”
Now this was not only positively untrue, but in the worst possible taste; had he been cool he would never have said it; as it was he instantly repented. She stood before him silent, all the blood gone from her cheek in the extremity of her indignation, unable to speak. Then she drew her hands away, and her breath came in short quick sobs.
“No, no, I did not mean it.” He tried to take her hand again, but she fled swiftly among the brake fern and the thickets seeking May. He stood bewildered at his own folly; then his anger was redoubled against Valentine instead of against himself. A minute or two afterwards he heard a slight cry, as if caused by pain, and immediately went towards it, but in a dazed kind of way. Valentine was swifter.
As Margaret ran between the bramble bushes and the nut-tree stoles, winding round the tangled masses of fern, and increasing her pace as the full significance of Geoffrey’s insinuation became apparent to her, she was heedless of her footsteps, and so caught her foot in a trailing bine of honeysuckle, and fell on one knee. In falling she instinctively grasped at the nearest bough, and thereby did the mischief; for a briar was twisted round it, and a great hooked thorn ran deep into her thumb. The sharp sudden pain caused her cry. Valentine was at her side in a moment. He saw the thorn, which had broken away from the briar and was fixed in the wound.
“I am so sorry,” he said. “Let me take it out.”
A tiny red globule of blood oozed from the white and polished skin, contrasting so sweetly in colour that he actually paused half a second to admire before he drew it.
“Quick, please,” she said.
He drew it tenderly, and another larger crimson drop welled up, and stood on the delicate white thumb. “It is out.”
“You are sure the point is not left in?” He bent over to examine more carefully. The sunbeams lit up her beautiful hand; temptation overcame him and he kissed it, and the crimson drop stained his lip.
“Sir!” She angrily snatched it away. At the same moment she saw Geoffrey looking through the parted bushes behind Valentine, who did not know he was so near.
“A moment!” cried Valentine, in the flood of his passion. “Listen. I love—”
But she rushed from him. Valentine followed her. Geoffrey let the bushes come together, and Valentine did not see him. Margaret went towards May’s merry laugh, which she could hear not far off.
“May! May!”
“Here I am—by the oak.”
Then Felix, knowing histête-à-têtewith May was almost at an end, snatched a kiss.
“I will go up to the mill again,” said he. “I will succeed this time.”
“Beware of the blackthorn,” laughed May, and was very innocently engaged looking at a sprig of oak with three young acorns on it when Margaret came.
“I am glad I have found you.”
“You have torn your sleeve!”
“In the briars—see my thumb.”
“Aphrodite has pricked her hand instead of her foot this time,” said Felix. “We shall see a new flower in the spring. Let me bind it up?” and he wrapped May’s handkerchief round it. Then Geoffrey and Valentine came, apart and yet together.
“I think it is time to return home,” said May, guessing at once from the expression of their faces and Margaret’s manner that something was wrong.
“Yes, I think so too,” said Margaret. “We have plenty of nuts.”
The joy of the day was over; so easily can a few jarring words cloud the loveliest sky and darken the sweetest landscape. They left the wood and returned to Greene Ferne. As they approached the house a labouring man advanced and spoke to Margaret.
“Be this yourn, miss?” he said, and offered her the lost earring. “I found un on the Down by the Cave, as you and measter here,” (looking at Geoffrey), “thuck night—”
“Wait a moment,” said Margaret, in confusion, for the night adventure had been carefully kept secret from all but Mrs Estcourt. “I will come to you in a moment.”
Valentine heard the man’s words, and noted his reference to Geoffrey. Instantly his jealousy was aroused—here was something secret. What had they to do with the Cave at night? Nor was Margaret’s halting explanation, that she had dropped it while riding, satisfactory to him. Altogether the situation was constrained. Both Valentine and Geoffrey stayed at the house as late as they could purposely, but neither found an opportunity of speaking alone with Margaret. When they left Greene Ferne the two old friends at once took different roads.
Valentine, walking through the village, ascended a slight hill, and overtook an old woman of the working class, who was groaning and mumbling to herself, and bent almost double under a large bundle of gleanings on her shoulder, and a heavy basket in her hand. As he came up, he good-naturedly took the basket to relieve her, and accommodated his pace to hers.
“You seem to have a heavy load,” he said. In the dusk the old hag either did not recognise him, or perhaps did not care if she did.
“I ain’t got half a bundle,” she grunted. “Thaay won’t let a pore old body glean when a-can’t rip.”
“Well, it’s beautiful weather for the harvest.”
“Aw, eez—the het (heat) makes um giddy: our ould Bill fell down; the gearden be a-spoiling for rain.”
“The farmers pay good wages now, don’t they?”
“Um pays what um be obliged to.”
“You have a good landlord here—Squire Thorpe.”
“He! Drotted ould skinvlint! You go and look at thaay cottages: thaay be his’n. The rain comes drough the thatch, and he won’t mend it. I be forced to put a umberella auver my bed nights when it rains.”
“At all events, the farmers like him.”
“Do um? Never heard say zo. His rabbits yeats their crops like a flock of sheep.”
“The vicar—Mr Basil—is kind to the poor, is he not?” asked Valentine, forgetting for the moment his own ill-temper in the old woman’s bitterness and abuse of everybody and everything. He was most surprised at her venomous spite against the squire, who he knew was of a kindly disposition. She perfectly hissed at the mention of the vicar.
“Our paason! ould varmint—a gives all the coals and blankets at Christmas to thaay as goes to church, and narn to thaay as be chapel-volk. What have he done with the widders’ money, I wants to knaw?”
“What money was that?”
“Why, that as was left to us widders of this yer parish for ever: you med see it stuck up in the chancel. I never seed none of it, nor anybody else as ever I heard tell on.”
“But you get wine and luxuries, no doubt, when ill?”
“A vine lot: it bean’t for such as we.”
“You seem to have some industrious people in the village, however: now, that little grocer’s shop where they sell—”
“You means Betsy Warren, what sells tobacco and snuff and lollipops and whipcord. Her buys hares and birds from the poachers—her will get notice to quit zum o’ these yer days.”
“But the blacksmith works hard. I always hear his hammer when I go by.”
“What—he! The justices fined he a pound a bit ago for fighting Mathew the cobbler. Mathew lives with Thompson’s wife—he as was transported for firing Farmer Ruck’s rick-barken. That be a vine thing—her be as bad as he.”
“The new school will set you to rights.”
“Aw, will a’? The schoolmaster kissed one of the wenches, and got sent away; but them Timothy wenches bean’t no better than um should be.”
“Who’s Timothy?”
“Doan’t you knaw ould Timothy? He be a mower—a’ will drink dree gallons a day. That young Sam’l lodges with he: he be a shepherd, a’ be a new chap. I doan’t knaw much about he, but I’ve hearn as a’ had six weeks for stealing lambs.”
“H’m!” said Valentine, smiling. “They all seem a bad lot.”
“Zo um be.”
“But surely Mrs Estcourt is good to the poor: you don’t know anything against her?”
“Aw, doan’t I? What be her daughter up to? What wur her a-doing on the Down thuck night with thuck gurt lanky chap from the squire’s as goes arter her? Mebbe you knaws un.”
“When was it?” asked Valentine, with sudden interest, all his annoyance and bitterness returning. “What do you mean?”
“Miss Margaret—a vine miss she be; zo grand. Lord, I minds when farmers’ daughters was Molly and Marjory, and no vine Miss about it. That ould Jane, the housekeeper at Fisher’s—warn you knaws her?—her tould zum on um, and zum on um told Mathew, as tould Betsy, as tould I.”
“Told what?” sharply.
“What I ses, to be zure. Miss and he wur out thegither a-main bit thuck night. ’Tain’t no use caddling I—I can’t tell ee no more. What, bean’t you going to carry that basket no furder?”
For as they reached the top of the hill, Valentine, angry now, handed it back to her; she barely took it, and made no sign of thanks.
“Mebbe you’ll give I a bit of snuff?” she said. He gave her a shilling and strode on swiftly, full of furious thoughts, the more so because all these innuendoes afforded nothing by which an open quarrel could be fixed on Geoffrey.
“This is intolerable,” he said to himself, “that he should make Margaret a common talk among these people. What on earth did the old woman allude to, and how came that earring lost?”
It was a pity that the Down adventure had been kept secret; and yet it was natural enough that it should be. The old woman, as Valentine walked rapidly on in the dusk, put the shilling in her pocket, readjusted her burden, and tottered on, muttering to herself, “The gurt chattering fool to come a’ hindering I!”
Chapter Nine.Gleaning.Once more Andrew Fisher, aged ninety years, sat in his beehive chair facing the western window in Warren House. The sun was sinking, and seemed to hang over the distant vale, towards which the old man’s countenance was turned. Once more the sickle had done its work, and the golden grain was garnered. For the shadow of the days had gone forward upon the dial, whose ancient graven circles, dimmed with green rust, timed the equinox and the march of the firmament. The merry barley was laid low; and the acorns—first green, then faintly yellow—were ripening brown in their cups upon the oaks.On the ledge of the chimney, where the level rays came warmest, and stone and tile radiated heat, the last lingering swallows twittered a long farewell. For the oxen had already felt the drag of the heavy plough. The ivy flowered on the wall, blossoming for winter, and there was a buzz of flies gathering on the pane towards the sun. As a ripe pear that waited but the rude shock of the wind, the full year was bending to its fall. Overhead the rooks were floating idly home down towards Thorpe Wood. The long files of the black army streaked the sky with streaming thousands far as the eye could see, and filled the air with the strange rush and creaking of their wings and the goblin chuckle of the noisy jackdaws. The feathery heads of the reeds by the mill-pool bowed mournfully; and in the hush of the dying day came the monotonous chaunt of the mill-wheel, ever round and round, without haste and without rest; and with it mingled the sounding rush of the race, of its foam and bubble and spray as of human life.The sunbeam on the chamber-wall—stained azure and purple by the painted escutcheon of “Fischere” on the pane—travelled slowly as the sun sank lower. There was a picture almost opposite the beehive chair—a picture old and darkened by the thickening of the oil and varnish. It was the portrait by a rude hand of a sturdy boy in breeches and buckles, and with bare head, fishing in the brook. The portrait was that of Andrew himself in his boyhood, painted to please a doting mother. Was there a tear in his dull eyeball at the thought of her—heartbroken by his evil so many, many weary years ago? Was he wiser, happier, now in the fullness of his days, than when, with peeled white willow wand, a thread and crooked pin, he angled in the bend of the brook where the eddy scooped out a deeper hollow?“Caer-wit! caer-weet!” It was the call of the partridge yonder, in the mead at the foot of the hill; and a distant answer came from the stubble lower down. Ah, the joy of the brown twist barrel and the eager dogs. His sight is dull and sinews stiff; never again will Andrew Fisher mark a covey down as they skim across the uplands.The blue-stained sunbeam moved onward, the sun declined, and the wearyful women came homeward from the gleaning and the labour of the field. Their path passed close beneath the great window, and their stooping shadows for a moment shut out the sunshine. Such paths used by the workers, and going right through the grounds of the house, may be found still, where the ancient usage has not yet succumbed to modern privacy, and were once the general custom. It was the season of the harvest, the time of joy and gladness. Do you suppose these women moved in rhythmic measures to Bacchanalian song and pastoral pipe, as the women came home from the field with corn and grape:In Tempé and the dales of Arcady?Do you suppose their brows were wreathed with the honeysuckle’s second autumn bloom, with streaked convolvulus and bronzed ears of wheat?Their backs were bowed beneath great bundles of gleanings, or faggots of dead sticks carefully sought for fuel, and they carried weary infants, restless and fretful. Their forms had lost all semblance to the graceful curve of woman; their faces were hard, wrinkled, and angular, drawn with pain and labour. Save by their garments none could distinguish them from men. Yet they were not penned in narrow walls, but all things green and lovely were spread around them. The fresh breezes filled their nostrils in the spring with the delicate odour of the flowering bean-field and the clover scent; the very ground was gilded with sunshine beneath their feet. But the magic of it touched them not, for their hearts were pinched with poverty. These are they to whom the old, old promise bears its full significance: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”They trooped past the window, and saw the old man sitting in his chair; and one said to another, “Thur be thuck ould varmint. He never done nought all his time, and have got more vittels than a’ can yeat. Thaay says a’ drinks a’ main drop of gin moast days. He wur a bad un, he wur, time ago. What be the matter with thuck you? How he do howl—it sounds main unkid!”“Come on, you,” said another; “I be terrable tired, bean’t you? Wonder how long it wull be to the Judgment Daay?”So they went by the window, and each as she passed dropped a lowly curtsey to “Measter” in the beehive chair. Then at last the great blood-red rim of the sun went down, and a wondrous glory of light rushed over the earth. A fiery blaze surged up into the sky, shooting from the west to the zenith, and thence to the east in the twinkling of an eye; like the glow of a grand aurora, but ninefold more brilliant, a deep-tinted crimson. Men stayed and looked up, amazed at the beauty and the awe of it; for the world was changed, as if it were on fire, and the flames like a flood sweeping up from the western edge. Into the chamber came the reflection—as of the last conflagration that we dare not think of, when the sky shall roll away as parchment—and the place was filled with a luminous glamour. Listen! faintly up from the silence of the ages comes the chaunt of the monks:Dies irae, dies illa,Solvet saeclum in favilla.The day of wrath seemed nigh at hand. Away down in the vale, and yonder, over the everlasting hills, flowed the wonder of the light; but the old man’s face gave no sign, dazed, maybe, by the grandeur of it. But Felix St. Bees, riding towards Warren House once more, as he reached the first slopes of the hills, was suddenly bathed in the glory, and drew rein and gazed about him. A dome of fire above reflected by the dull earth—a faint, phosphoric, shimmering rosiness among the grass blades. Upon the margin of the world a thicker vapour swelling upward with a deeper red, as of smoke tinted by the furnace under. On the sunset side of the tree-trunks a streak of crimson, and every leaf gleaming on its shiny smoothness; through the thickets a warm haze pouring, and the whiteness of the road before him reddened, as by the breath of flame. He paused, rapt in the deep marvelling which is prayer, and watched till it passed away. Then he pushed on among the hills.Coming slowly up a steep ascent, where on the summit, among the thorn thickets and the gnarled ashes, was a little lonely inn, he saw a dozen or more men, labouring hard and shouting by the side of the road. The highway had worn itself a gully or hollow, lessening the pull of the hill somewhat, and leaving a low but steep bank of coarse chalky rubble. On the sward a tinker’s donkey was peacefully grazing, heedless of the excitement.“We’ve got un!”“Heave un out, you!”“Lay on, Jim!”“Let I try!”“Peach un up!”“What is it you are trying to do?” asked Felix, guiding his horse up to the group.“Aw, I seed his toes a’ sticking out,” cried a plough-boy, eager lest his share of the discovery should be forgotten.“It wur thuck heavy rain as washed the rubble away,” said a man with a leathern apron, doubtless a blacksmith. Nothing ever happens without a blacksmith being in it.“Mebbe a rabbit a-scratching, doan’t ee zee?” said the landlord of the inn, leaning on his spade and wiping his forehead; for much ale is a shortener of the breath.“Well, but what is it, after all—a treasure?”“Us doan’t ’zactly knaw what it be,” said the man nearest the bank, pausing, after swinging his pickaxe with some effect. “But us means to zee. Jim, shove thuck pole in.”Jim picked up a long stout ash-pole, and thrust one end, as directed, into a cavity the pickaxe had made under a large sarsen boulder, the earth above which had been previously dug away.“Zumbody be buried thur, paason,” said the landlord. “Mebbe you knaws un? Thur never wur nar a church here as we heard tell on.”“Hang on, you chaps!” cried the blacksmith, throwing the weight of his body on the pole. The landlord, the plough-boy, and the tinker did the same; Jim and an aged man on the bank heaved at the great stone from above.“Peach un up!” (i.e. lever it)“He be goin’.” Felix saw the boulder move.“One, two, dree!”“War out!”They spread right and left. Felix, who did not for the instant comprehend that “war out” meant “clear away,” had much ado to save his horse; for the boulder came with a rush, bringing with it half a ton of rubble, thud on the ground, which trembled.“Aw, here a’ be!”“This be uz yod!” (head.) “Warn this be uz chine!” holding up a part of the vertebrae.“He wur a whopper, you!”“The gyeaunt Goliar’, I’ll warn,” said the aged man on the bank.“Don’t disturb the skeleton!” cried Felix, anxious to make scientific notes of the interment; whether the grave was “orientated,” or the knees drawn up to the chin; but in the scramble for the bones his voice was unheeded, and the skeleton was disjointed in an instant. The bones were as light as pith, ready to crumble to pieces and little better than dust, yet still retaining, as it were, a sketch of human shape.“Drow um in this here,” said the landlord, as the buzz subsided, and holding out a stable-bucket which he had fetched. So skull and femur, radius and ulna—all the relics of poor humanity—were “chucked” indiscriminately into the stable-bucket.“A’ warn a’ wur buried in th’ time o’ Judges,” said Jim. “Um set up stwuns for memorials, doan’t you mind? Thuck sarsen be all five hunderd weight.”“Mebbe a’ fowght Julius Caesar,” said the aged man on the bank above. “I’ve heard tell as Julius wur a famous hand a’ back-swording. You med see as uz skull wur cracked with a pistol-bullet—one of thaay ould vlint-locks—and here be th’ trigger-guard.”From the disturbed earth above he picked up a small crooked piece of brass, which might or might not have been connected with the interment. It passed from hand to hand, till the landlord, rubbing it on his sleeve, found some letters.“Paason ull tell uz what it means,” said he, giving it to Felix, who spelt out slowly, as he removed the clinging particles of earth.“G.a.u.d.e.a.m.u.s.”“What be thuck?”“‘Let us rejoice.’”“Sartinly.”“My friends,” said Felix solemnly, “this is a fragment from an ancient Roman trumpet—a trumpet sounding to us from the tomb. Let us rejoice in the certainty of the life to come.”“I be main dry,” said the blacksmith.“Mebbe you’ll stand us a quart, paason?” said Jim, touching his forelock.“Will you sell me this little piece of brass?” said Felix.“Aw, you med take un; he bean’t no vallee to we.”Felix gave them half-a-crown for the relic, and rode on slowly, while the group adjourned to the inn to drink it, leaving the donkey, their tools, and the bucket by the roadside among the thistles.“I knaws it bean’t nothing but the trigger-guard of one of them ould hoss-pistols,” the patriarch persisted, “them vlint-locks with brass-barrels—I minds um.”Felix, as he rode away saddened, thought to himself: “That we should come to this—made in the Divine image, and thrown at last into a stable-bucket! The limbs that bounded over the sward, the nostrils that scented the clover, and the eyes that watched and pondered, perhaps as mine did but now, over the sunset! Ah, the tinker’s ass, browsing on the thistles, is thrusting his nose into the bucket, I see, to sniff contemptuously at it! ‘Let us rejoice’—what a satire—”“Hi, there! Hoi, you, measter!”He looked back, saw the landlord panting after him, and drew rein and waited till he came up. What he wanted was to know whether Felix could tell him any further particulars respecting the sudden death of Valentine’s dark horse that had taken place very early that morning, during a private trial upon the downs. One of the men at the inn had recognised Felix as a friend of Valentine, and the landlord said everybody about there was so mixed up and interested in the horse that he had made bold to ask. Felix was quite taken by surprise. The news had not reached Greene Ferne when he called; probably Valentine, after the accident, had been too occupied to come down from the training-stables some miles up among the hills.“What was the cause?” he asked, after explaining that he knew nothing of it.“A’ believe a’ broke a blood-vessel. A’ wur auver trained, bless ee, and auver rode. Zum thenks it wur done a purpose by thuck black chap, the trainer.”“Why should you suspect him?”“Aw, a’ be a bad un; a’ can’t look ’ee straight in the face; a’ sort of slyers (looks askance) at ee. Thur be a main lot of money gone auver thuck job.”“Well, this is news,” said Felix. “Good evening.”The landlord touched his hat, and went back, much delighted to have been the first to tell the “paason” the story. Felix was much concerned at the event, because he knew that Valentine’s disappointment, apart from pecuniary loss, would be extreme; besides which almost all their circle had more or less backed the horse—Geoffrey, Squire Thorpe, and all. He had done his best to persuade them not to bet; but now they had lost he was deeply disturbed. He felt half inclined to turn back, thinking the event would very likely put the irascible old man Fisher into a furious state, as he was believed to have “invested” largely. These delays, too, had brought on the twilight, and already the new moon was gleaming in the west; but, unwilling to return, he finally resolved to go through with his journey.When he rode into the outskirts of the little scattered hamlet at the Warren, it was dark, and lights were shining in the cottage-windows. He looked for a boy to hold his horse, but, seeing none, dismounted at the bridge over the mill-pool, and threw the reins across the palings. As he crossed the bridge, which vibrated beneath him, he saw the stars and crescent-moon reflected in the pool, and heard the rush of the falling water. A dog howled mournfully as he approached the porch, and knocked with the butt of his riding-whip on the door, which stood ajar. There was no answer. He knocked again, and the dog chained in the courtyard set up his woeful howl.“Be quiet, Jip,” he said. He had heard the name of the dog from May, and love remembers trifles. Hearing his voice, the dog howled again, and another at a distance caught up and prolonged the cry.“This is a dismal place,” he thought. “No wonder May prefers to be with Margaret. How gloomy the shadowy hill looks, and the black mass of the mill yonder, and the tall trees over the white ricks!” He knocked a third time, and his blow echoed in the hall. “They must be out,” he thought, giving the heavy door, studded with broad-headed nails, a push. It creaked like the gate of those dark regions which Dante explored, and swung slowly back. He listened on the threshold; there was no sound save the ponderous halting tick of the stair-clock. He called “Jane!” recollecting the housekeeper’s name; his voice wandered in hollow spaces, and was lost. It occurred to him that perhaps she and the servants had taken advantage of the old man’s helplessness and May’s absence to go out for a gossip, and he became indignant. He stepped into the hall, and felt his way along a stone-paved passage, which he knew led to the great parlour; then reflected that he was intruding, and called again.“Mr Fisher!” The words came back to him, distorted by a broken echo from the hall. The dog without howled piteously. Felix, in the dark passage, felt a strange creeping sensation come over him. He shook it off, and groped his way to the door of the parlour. The great apartment was full of shadows, gloomy, cavernous; but a dim light, from the faint glow still lingering in the west and the moon, came through the window enabling him to see the beehive chair, with the back towards him.“Excuse me, sir; but I could not make any one hear,” he said, advancing. He looked into the hollow recess of the chair, and saw the old man sitting there with the glint of the crescent-moon upon his eyeball.“I am afraid I have been rude,” he began; but suddenly stopped, stretched forth his arm, and touched the old man’s hands, which were folded upon his knee. Cold as a stone—he was dead!Felix recoiled, awe-struck, shuddering. It was, indeed, a terrible moment in that empty gloomy house; the dog howling; the moonlight glittering on the glassy eye. He was a brave man; he had faced disease and danger in the exercise of his office, yet never before had the presence of death so awed him. The atmosphere of the room suddenly seemed stifling—his first instinct was to get out. He did get out, and the cool night air in the porch revived him. Then he unchained the dog, who whined and fawned upon him. His natural impulse was to run for assistance; but the thought came to him that perhaps Fisher was not really dead—quick attention might save him, and he possessed considerable medical and surgical skill. He went back to the parlour—the dog sniffed at the threshold, but would not enter. He struck a match, and lit a large wax candle on the mantelpiece. With this he approached the beehive chair, felt the wrist, looked in the face, and knew that Andrew Fisher had gone to his account. On the carpet by his feet was a crumpled piece of pinkish paper. Felix picked it up, and found that the telegram referred to betting transactions. Then he understood that the shock of the loss he had sustained by the death of Valentine’s horse had extinguished the flickering light of life in the old man.Felix took off his hat reverently, went to the great window—unconsciously drawn towards the light—knelt and prayed earnestly. Then he covered the face with a bandana handkerchief which was lying on the knee of the deceased, and asked himself why the countenances of the very aged are so repellent in death, as if they had outlived the hope of immortality. To send for a doctor was evidently useless, nor was there one within several miles, but it was necessary that some one should be called. He went out and walked to the nearest cottage; a shepherd, with a pipe in his mouth, answered the door.It was some time before his slow intellect could grasp the idea.“Dead! behedead? Missis (to his wife within), missis! The Ould Un have got measter at last.”“Hush!” said Felix angrily. “Have you no respect?”By the light of the candle his wife brought to the door, the man saw it was a clergyman, and asked pardon.“But nobody won’t misshe,” he added, nevertheless; and thought Felix, as they walked back to the house, feeling the little piece of brass in his pocket, “‘Let us rejoice’—they are actually glad that he is gone. But how comes it that no one knew of this?”Fisher had, indeed, been dead many hours. He had been ailing, as aged persons often are, in the fall of the year; but May had not suspected any danger, nor would there have been, in all probability, under ordinary circumstances. Jane, the snuff-taking old hag, whom May so detested, with low cunning kept the event secret from the household, excepting a crony who acted as nurse, and was glad enough to assist in plunder. Jenny, the dairy-maid, was despatched to visit her friends at Millbourne, and a kitchen-maid had a similar permission. They were easily prevented from entering the great parlour by Jane’s report that “Measter be in a passion, and nobody best go a-nigh un!” This was readily believed, as they knew his illness had made him exceptionally snappish. Something very much like this has been practised at the death of greater men than Andrew Fisher—monarchs, if history tell truth, have been robbed before the breath had hardly left their nostrils. So the two old crones ransacked the house undisturbed. They took the heavy seal-ring from his finger—it was of solid gold, weighing three times as much as modern work. From his fob—for to the last he wore breeches and gaiters—they removed his chain and watch, which last, being of ancient make, would have been worth a considerable sum.“Thur be a chest under uz bed,” said Jane; “a’ be vull of parchmint stuff—I’ll warn thur be zum guineas in un. This be the key on him.” The chest was of black oak, rudely carved, and strongly protected by bands of iron. It was completely filled with yellow deeds, leases, etc, going back as far as Elizabeth, but mainly of the eighteenth century. These they scattered over the floor, and, as Jane had anticipated, at the bottom, in one corner, was a large bag of guineas. Then they added the great silver ladle, four heavy silver candlesticks, and a number of teaspoons to their guilty bundle, and chopped the gold handle off a cane with the billhook. With this tool they hacked open an inlaid cabinet, of which they could not find the key; but there was nothing within, except old letters faded from age, and a miniature on enamel—a portrait of May’s grandmother.“Ay, poor theng,” said Jane, “thuck ould varmint ground the life out of her. A’wuver the picter be zet in gould; we med as well have un.”“A’ wish us could take zum on these yer veather beds,” said the other. “Couldn’t you and I car um zumhow?”“Us could shove one in a box,” said Jane, “and tell the miller to zend un in his cart. He wouldn’t knaw, doan’t ee zee?” They actually carried this idea into execution, and sent the miller’s cart off with the feather bed. Probably, in all their days, the two old hags had never so thoroughly enjoyed themselves as when thus turning everything upside-down, and rioting at their will. It was a curious fact that not for one moment did they reflect that detection must of necessity quickly follow. They had lived all their lives in the narrow boundary of the lonely hill-parish, and the force of habit made all beyond seem so distant that, if they could but once escape out of the hamlet, they did not doubt they would be safe. At last, seeing nothing else they could lay hands on, they came down into the great parlour just before sunset, and heard the tramp of the wearyful women approaching.“We’d better go now,” said the nurse. “What had us better do withhe?” jerking her thumb towards the senseless clay in the beehive chair.“Aw, thur bean’t no call to move un,” said Jane; “let un bide. Nobody won’t knaw as a’ be dead vor a day or two. Come on, you,”—making for the back-door.The wearyful women as they passed the window had curtseyed to the dead. The luminous sunset, filling the chamber with its magical glamour, had lit up the cold, drawn features with a rosy glow. But the dimmed eyeball had not seen the flames of that conflagration sweeping up from the west:—Dies irae, dies illa.The wrath, long withheld, must come at last.“I fear there has been robbery here,” said Felix, as, with the shepherd, he re-entered the gloomy house.“It do seem zo; the things be drowed about mainly. A’wuver it sarves un right.”“Hush!” said Felix, and thought to himself, “How terrible it is to be hated even when dead! We will go over the house,” he added aloud, “and see if anything has been taken.”In the bedchamber they found ample evidence of looting. Felix, even in his indignation, could not resist his antiquarian tastes. He took up an ancient deed, and while he glanced over it, the shepherd pretended to tie his shoe-lace, and pocketed a spade-guinea which the crones had dropped on the floor.“Who is there that could take charge of the place?” asked Felix presently.“Thur be the bailie.”“Go and bring him.”The shepherd went; and Felix, to pass the time, took a book from an old black chest of drawers, with brass rings and lions’ heads for handles. It was a small quarto, a.d. 1650, a kind of calendar of astrology, medicine, and agriculture, telling the farmer when the conjunction of the planets was favourable for purchasing stock or sowing seed. When, presently, the bailiff came—a respectable man enough for his station—Felix, in his presence, locked the upper rooms and took the keys with him. Then, leaving the house in the bailiff’s charge, he rode through the starlit night, by the lonely highway, homeward.
Once more Andrew Fisher, aged ninety years, sat in his beehive chair facing the western window in Warren House. The sun was sinking, and seemed to hang over the distant vale, towards which the old man’s countenance was turned. Once more the sickle had done its work, and the golden grain was garnered. For the shadow of the days had gone forward upon the dial, whose ancient graven circles, dimmed with green rust, timed the equinox and the march of the firmament. The merry barley was laid low; and the acorns—first green, then faintly yellow—were ripening brown in their cups upon the oaks.
On the ledge of the chimney, where the level rays came warmest, and stone and tile radiated heat, the last lingering swallows twittered a long farewell. For the oxen had already felt the drag of the heavy plough. The ivy flowered on the wall, blossoming for winter, and there was a buzz of flies gathering on the pane towards the sun. As a ripe pear that waited but the rude shock of the wind, the full year was bending to its fall. Overhead the rooks were floating idly home down towards Thorpe Wood. The long files of the black army streaked the sky with streaming thousands far as the eye could see, and filled the air with the strange rush and creaking of their wings and the goblin chuckle of the noisy jackdaws. The feathery heads of the reeds by the mill-pool bowed mournfully; and in the hush of the dying day came the monotonous chaunt of the mill-wheel, ever round and round, without haste and without rest; and with it mingled the sounding rush of the race, of its foam and bubble and spray as of human life.
The sunbeam on the chamber-wall—stained azure and purple by the painted escutcheon of “Fischere” on the pane—travelled slowly as the sun sank lower. There was a picture almost opposite the beehive chair—a picture old and darkened by the thickening of the oil and varnish. It was the portrait by a rude hand of a sturdy boy in breeches and buckles, and with bare head, fishing in the brook. The portrait was that of Andrew himself in his boyhood, painted to please a doting mother. Was there a tear in his dull eyeball at the thought of her—heartbroken by his evil so many, many weary years ago? Was he wiser, happier, now in the fullness of his days, than when, with peeled white willow wand, a thread and crooked pin, he angled in the bend of the brook where the eddy scooped out a deeper hollow?
“Caer-wit! caer-weet!” It was the call of the partridge yonder, in the mead at the foot of the hill; and a distant answer came from the stubble lower down. Ah, the joy of the brown twist barrel and the eager dogs. His sight is dull and sinews stiff; never again will Andrew Fisher mark a covey down as they skim across the uplands.
The blue-stained sunbeam moved onward, the sun declined, and the wearyful women came homeward from the gleaning and the labour of the field. Their path passed close beneath the great window, and their stooping shadows for a moment shut out the sunshine. Such paths used by the workers, and going right through the grounds of the house, may be found still, where the ancient usage has not yet succumbed to modern privacy, and were once the general custom. It was the season of the harvest, the time of joy and gladness. Do you suppose these women moved in rhythmic measures to Bacchanalian song and pastoral pipe, as the women came home from the field with corn and grape:
In Tempé and the dales of Arcady?
In Tempé and the dales of Arcady?
Do you suppose their brows were wreathed with the honeysuckle’s second autumn bloom, with streaked convolvulus and bronzed ears of wheat?
Their backs were bowed beneath great bundles of gleanings, or faggots of dead sticks carefully sought for fuel, and they carried weary infants, restless and fretful. Their forms had lost all semblance to the graceful curve of woman; their faces were hard, wrinkled, and angular, drawn with pain and labour. Save by their garments none could distinguish them from men. Yet they were not penned in narrow walls, but all things green and lovely were spread around them. The fresh breezes filled their nostrils in the spring with the delicate odour of the flowering bean-field and the clover scent; the very ground was gilded with sunshine beneath their feet. But the magic of it touched them not, for their hearts were pinched with poverty. These are they to whom the old, old promise bears its full significance: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
They trooped past the window, and saw the old man sitting in his chair; and one said to another, “Thur be thuck ould varmint. He never done nought all his time, and have got more vittels than a’ can yeat. Thaay says a’ drinks a’ main drop of gin moast days. He wur a bad un, he wur, time ago. What be the matter with thuck you? How he do howl—it sounds main unkid!”
“Come on, you,” said another; “I be terrable tired, bean’t you? Wonder how long it wull be to the Judgment Daay?”
So they went by the window, and each as she passed dropped a lowly curtsey to “Measter” in the beehive chair. Then at last the great blood-red rim of the sun went down, and a wondrous glory of light rushed over the earth. A fiery blaze surged up into the sky, shooting from the west to the zenith, and thence to the east in the twinkling of an eye; like the glow of a grand aurora, but ninefold more brilliant, a deep-tinted crimson. Men stayed and looked up, amazed at the beauty and the awe of it; for the world was changed, as if it were on fire, and the flames like a flood sweeping up from the western edge. Into the chamber came the reflection—as of the last conflagration that we dare not think of, when the sky shall roll away as parchment—and the place was filled with a luminous glamour. Listen! faintly up from the silence of the ages comes the chaunt of the monks:
Dies irae, dies illa,Solvet saeclum in favilla.
Dies irae, dies illa,Solvet saeclum in favilla.
The day of wrath seemed nigh at hand. Away down in the vale, and yonder, over the everlasting hills, flowed the wonder of the light; but the old man’s face gave no sign, dazed, maybe, by the grandeur of it. But Felix St. Bees, riding towards Warren House once more, as he reached the first slopes of the hills, was suddenly bathed in the glory, and drew rein and gazed about him. A dome of fire above reflected by the dull earth—a faint, phosphoric, shimmering rosiness among the grass blades. Upon the margin of the world a thicker vapour swelling upward with a deeper red, as of smoke tinted by the furnace under. On the sunset side of the tree-trunks a streak of crimson, and every leaf gleaming on its shiny smoothness; through the thickets a warm haze pouring, and the whiteness of the road before him reddened, as by the breath of flame. He paused, rapt in the deep marvelling which is prayer, and watched till it passed away. Then he pushed on among the hills.
Coming slowly up a steep ascent, where on the summit, among the thorn thickets and the gnarled ashes, was a little lonely inn, he saw a dozen or more men, labouring hard and shouting by the side of the road. The highway had worn itself a gully or hollow, lessening the pull of the hill somewhat, and leaving a low but steep bank of coarse chalky rubble. On the sward a tinker’s donkey was peacefully grazing, heedless of the excitement.
“We’ve got un!”
“Heave un out, you!”
“Lay on, Jim!”
“Let I try!”
“Peach un up!”
“What is it you are trying to do?” asked Felix, guiding his horse up to the group.
“Aw, I seed his toes a’ sticking out,” cried a plough-boy, eager lest his share of the discovery should be forgotten.
“It wur thuck heavy rain as washed the rubble away,” said a man with a leathern apron, doubtless a blacksmith. Nothing ever happens without a blacksmith being in it.
“Mebbe a rabbit a-scratching, doan’t ee zee?” said the landlord of the inn, leaning on his spade and wiping his forehead; for much ale is a shortener of the breath.
“Well, but what is it, after all—a treasure?”
“Us doan’t ’zactly knaw what it be,” said the man nearest the bank, pausing, after swinging his pickaxe with some effect. “But us means to zee. Jim, shove thuck pole in.”
Jim picked up a long stout ash-pole, and thrust one end, as directed, into a cavity the pickaxe had made under a large sarsen boulder, the earth above which had been previously dug away.
“Zumbody be buried thur, paason,” said the landlord. “Mebbe you knaws un? Thur never wur nar a church here as we heard tell on.”
“Hang on, you chaps!” cried the blacksmith, throwing the weight of his body on the pole. The landlord, the plough-boy, and the tinker did the same; Jim and an aged man on the bank heaved at the great stone from above.
“Peach un up!” (i.e. lever it)
“He be goin’.” Felix saw the boulder move.
“One, two, dree!”
“War out!”
They spread right and left. Felix, who did not for the instant comprehend that “war out” meant “clear away,” had much ado to save his horse; for the boulder came with a rush, bringing with it half a ton of rubble, thud on the ground, which trembled.
“Aw, here a’ be!”
“This be uz yod!” (head.) “Warn this be uz chine!” holding up a part of the vertebrae.
“He wur a whopper, you!”
“The gyeaunt Goliar’, I’ll warn,” said the aged man on the bank.
“Don’t disturb the skeleton!” cried Felix, anxious to make scientific notes of the interment; whether the grave was “orientated,” or the knees drawn up to the chin; but in the scramble for the bones his voice was unheeded, and the skeleton was disjointed in an instant. The bones were as light as pith, ready to crumble to pieces and little better than dust, yet still retaining, as it were, a sketch of human shape.
“Drow um in this here,” said the landlord, as the buzz subsided, and holding out a stable-bucket which he had fetched. So skull and femur, radius and ulna—all the relics of poor humanity—were “chucked” indiscriminately into the stable-bucket.
“A’ warn a’ wur buried in th’ time o’ Judges,” said Jim. “Um set up stwuns for memorials, doan’t you mind? Thuck sarsen be all five hunderd weight.”
“Mebbe a’ fowght Julius Caesar,” said the aged man on the bank above. “I’ve heard tell as Julius wur a famous hand a’ back-swording. You med see as uz skull wur cracked with a pistol-bullet—one of thaay ould vlint-locks—and here be th’ trigger-guard.”
From the disturbed earth above he picked up a small crooked piece of brass, which might or might not have been connected with the interment. It passed from hand to hand, till the landlord, rubbing it on his sleeve, found some letters.
“Paason ull tell uz what it means,” said he, giving it to Felix, who spelt out slowly, as he removed the clinging particles of earth.
“G.a.u.d.e.a.m.u.s.”
“What be thuck?”
“‘Let us rejoice.’”
“Sartinly.”
“My friends,” said Felix solemnly, “this is a fragment from an ancient Roman trumpet—a trumpet sounding to us from the tomb. Let us rejoice in the certainty of the life to come.”
“I be main dry,” said the blacksmith.
“Mebbe you’ll stand us a quart, paason?” said Jim, touching his forelock.
“Will you sell me this little piece of brass?” said Felix.
“Aw, you med take un; he bean’t no vallee to we.”
Felix gave them half-a-crown for the relic, and rode on slowly, while the group adjourned to the inn to drink it, leaving the donkey, their tools, and the bucket by the roadside among the thistles.
“I knaws it bean’t nothing but the trigger-guard of one of them ould hoss-pistols,” the patriarch persisted, “them vlint-locks with brass-barrels—I minds um.”
Felix, as he rode away saddened, thought to himself: “That we should come to this—made in the Divine image, and thrown at last into a stable-bucket! The limbs that bounded over the sward, the nostrils that scented the clover, and the eyes that watched and pondered, perhaps as mine did but now, over the sunset! Ah, the tinker’s ass, browsing on the thistles, is thrusting his nose into the bucket, I see, to sniff contemptuously at it! ‘Let us rejoice’—what a satire—”
“Hi, there! Hoi, you, measter!”
He looked back, saw the landlord panting after him, and drew rein and waited till he came up. What he wanted was to know whether Felix could tell him any further particulars respecting the sudden death of Valentine’s dark horse that had taken place very early that morning, during a private trial upon the downs. One of the men at the inn had recognised Felix as a friend of Valentine, and the landlord said everybody about there was so mixed up and interested in the horse that he had made bold to ask. Felix was quite taken by surprise. The news had not reached Greene Ferne when he called; probably Valentine, after the accident, had been too occupied to come down from the training-stables some miles up among the hills.
“What was the cause?” he asked, after explaining that he knew nothing of it.
“A’ believe a’ broke a blood-vessel. A’ wur auver trained, bless ee, and auver rode. Zum thenks it wur done a purpose by thuck black chap, the trainer.”
“Why should you suspect him?”
“Aw, a’ be a bad un; a’ can’t look ’ee straight in the face; a’ sort of slyers (looks askance) at ee. Thur be a main lot of money gone auver thuck job.”
“Well, this is news,” said Felix. “Good evening.”
The landlord touched his hat, and went back, much delighted to have been the first to tell the “paason” the story. Felix was much concerned at the event, because he knew that Valentine’s disappointment, apart from pecuniary loss, would be extreme; besides which almost all their circle had more or less backed the horse—Geoffrey, Squire Thorpe, and all. He had done his best to persuade them not to bet; but now they had lost he was deeply disturbed. He felt half inclined to turn back, thinking the event would very likely put the irascible old man Fisher into a furious state, as he was believed to have “invested” largely. These delays, too, had brought on the twilight, and already the new moon was gleaming in the west; but, unwilling to return, he finally resolved to go through with his journey.
When he rode into the outskirts of the little scattered hamlet at the Warren, it was dark, and lights were shining in the cottage-windows. He looked for a boy to hold his horse, but, seeing none, dismounted at the bridge over the mill-pool, and threw the reins across the palings. As he crossed the bridge, which vibrated beneath him, he saw the stars and crescent-moon reflected in the pool, and heard the rush of the falling water. A dog howled mournfully as he approached the porch, and knocked with the butt of his riding-whip on the door, which stood ajar. There was no answer. He knocked again, and the dog chained in the courtyard set up his woeful howl.
“Be quiet, Jip,” he said. He had heard the name of the dog from May, and love remembers trifles. Hearing his voice, the dog howled again, and another at a distance caught up and prolonged the cry.
“This is a dismal place,” he thought. “No wonder May prefers to be with Margaret. How gloomy the shadowy hill looks, and the black mass of the mill yonder, and the tall trees over the white ricks!” He knocked a third time, and his blow echoed in the hall. “They must be out,” he thought, giving the heavy door, studded with broad-headed nails, a push. It creaked like the gate of those dark regions which Dante explored, and swung slowly back. He listened on the threshold; there was no sound save the ponderous halting tick of the stair-clock. He called “Jane!” recollecting the housekeeper’s name; his voice wandered in hollow spaces, and was lost. It occurred to him that perhaps she and the servants had taken advantage of the old man’s helplessness and May’s absence to go out for a gossip, and he became indignant. He stepped into the hall, and felt his way along a stone-paved passage, which he knew led to the great parlour; then reflected that he was intruding, and called again.
“Mr Fisher!” The words came back to him, distorted by a broken echo from the hall. The dog without howled piteously. Felix, in the dark passage, felt a strange creeping sensation come over him. He shook it off, and groped his way to the door of the parlour. The great apartment was full of shadows, gloomy, cavernous; but a dim light, from the faint glow still lingering in the west and the moon, came through the window enabling him to see the beehive chair, with the back towards him.
“Excuse me, sir; but I could not make any one hear,” he said, advancing. He looked into the hollow recess of the chair, and saw the old man sitting there with the glint of the crescent-moon upon his eyeball.
“I am afraid I have been rude,” he began; but suddenly stopped, stretched forth his arm, and touched the old man’s hands, which were folded upon his knee. Cold as a stone—he was dead!
Felix recoiled, awe-struck, shuddering. It was, indeed, a terrible moment in that empty gloomy house; the dog howling; the moonlight glittering on the glassy eye. He was a brave man; he had faced disease and danger in the exercise of his office, yet never before had the presence of death so awed him. The atmosphere of the room suddenly seemed stifling—his first instinct was to get out. He did get out, and the cool night air in the porch revived him. Then he unchained the dog, who whined and fawned upon him. His natural impulse was to run for assistance; but the thought came to him that perhaps Fisher was not really dead—quick attention might save him, and he possessed considerable medical and surgical skill. He went back to the parlour—the dog sniffed at the threshold, but would not enter. He struck a match, and lit a large wax candle on the mantelpiece. With this he approached the beehive chair, felt the wrist, looked in the face, and knew that Andrew Fisher had gone to his account. On the carpet by his feet was a crumpled piece of pinkish paper. Felix picked it up, and found that the telegram referred to betting transactions. Then he understood that the shock of the loss he had sustained by the death of Valentine’s horse had extinguished the flickering light of life in the old man.
Felix took off his hat reverently, went to the great window—unconsciously drawn towards the light—knelt and prayed earnestly. Then he covered the face with a bandana handkerchief which was lying on the knee of the deceased, and asked himself why the countenances of the very aged are so repellent in death, as if they had outlived the hope of immortality. To send for a doctor was evidently useless, nor was there one within several miles, but it was necessary that some one should be called. He went out and walked to the nearest cottage; a shepherd, with a pipe in his mouth, answered the door.
It was some time before his slow intellect could grasp the idea.
“Dead! behedead? Missis (to his wife within), missis! The Ould Un have got measter at last.”
“Hush!” said Felix angrily. “Have you no respect?”
By the light of the candle his wife brought to the door, the man saw it was a clergyman, and asked pardon.
“But nobody won’t misshe,” he added, nevertheless; and thought Felix, as they walked back to the house, feeling the little piece of brass in his pocket, “‘Let us rejoice’—they are actually glad that he is gone. But how comes it that no one knew of this?”
Fisher had, indeed, been dead many hours. He had been ailing, as aged persons often are, in the fall of the year; but May had not suspected any danger, nor would there have been, in all probability, under ordinary circumstances. Jane, the snuff-taking old hag, whom May so detested, with low cunning kept the event secret from the household, excepting a crony who acted as nurse, and was glad enough to assist in plunder. Jenny, the dairy-maid, was despatched to visit her friends at Millbourne, and a kitchen-maid had a similar permission. They were easily prevented from entering the great parlour by Jane’s report that “Measter be in a passion, and nobody best go a-nigh un!” This was readily believed, as they knew his illness had made him exceptionally snappish. Something very much like this has been practised at the death of greater men than Andrew Fisher—monarchs, if history tell truth, have been robbed before the breath had hardly left their nostrils. So the two old crones ransacked the house undisturbed. They took the heavy seal-ring from his finger—it was of solid gold, weighing three times as much as modern work. From his fob—for to the last he wore breeches and gaiters—they removed his chain and watch, which last, being of ancient make, would have been worth a considerable sum.
“Thur be a chest under uz bed,” said Jane; “a’ be vull of parchmint stuff—I’ll warn thur be zum guineas in un. This be the key on him.” The chest was of black oak, rudely carved, and strongly protected by bands of iron. It was completely filled with yellow deeds, leases, etc, going back as far as Elizabeth, but mainly of the eighteenth century. These they scattered over the floor, and, as Jane had anticipated, at the bottom, in one corner, was a large bag of guineas. Then they added the great silver ladle, four heavy silver candlesticks, and a number of teaspoons to their guilty bundle, and chopped the gold handle off a cane with the billhook. With this tool they hacked open an inlaid cabinet, of which they could not find the key; but there was nothing within, except old letters faded from age, and a miniature on enamel—a portrait of May’s grandmother.
“Ay, poor theng,” said Jane, “thuck ould varmint ground the life out of her. A’wuver the picter be zet in gould; we med as well have un.”
“A’ wish us could take zum on these yer veather beds,” said the other. “Couldn’t you and I car um zumhow?”
“Us could shove one in a box,” said Jane, “and tell the miller to zend un in his cart. He wouldn’t knaw, doan’t ee zee?” They actually carried this idea into execution, and sent the miller’s cart off with the feather bed. Probably, in all their days, the two old hags had never so thoroughly enjoyed themselves as when thus turning everything upside-down, and rioting at their will. It was a curious fact that not for one moment did they reflect that detection must of necessity quickly follow. They had lived all their lives in the narrow boundary of the lonely hill-parish, and the force of habit made all beyond seem so distant that, if they could but once escape out of the hamlet, they did not doubt they would be safe. At last, seeing nothing else they could lay hands on, they came down into the great parlour just before sunset, and heard the tramp of the wearyful women approaching.
“We’d better go now,” said the nurse. “What had us better do withhe?” jerking her thumb towards the senseless clay in the beehive chair.
“Aw, thur bean’t no call to move un,” said Jane; “let un bide. Nobody won’t knaw as a’ be dead vor a day or two. Come on, you,”—making for the back-door.
The wearyful women as they passed the window had curtseyed to the dead. The luminous sunset, filling the chamber with its magical glamour, had lit up the cold, drawn features with a rosy glow. But the dimmed eyeball had not seen the flames of that conflagration sweeping up from the west:—
Dies irae, dies illa.
The wrath, long withheld, must come at last.
“I fear there has been robbery here,” said Felix, as, with the shepherd, he re-entered the gloomy house.
“It do seem zo; the things be drowed about mainly. A’wuver it sarves un right.”
“Hush!” said Felix, and thought to himself, “How terrible it is to be hated even when dead! We will go over the house,” he added aloud, “and see if anything has been taken.”
In the bedchamber they found ample evidence of looting. Felix, even in his indignation, could not resist his antiquarian tastes. He took up an ancient deed, and while he glanced over it, the shepherd pretended to tie his shoe-lace, and pocketed a spade-guinea which the crones had dropped on the floor.
“Who is there that could take charge of the place?” asked Felix presently.
“Thur be the bailie.”
“Go and bring him.”
The shepherd went; and Felix, to pass the time, took a book from an old black chest of drawers, with brass rings and lions’ heads for handles. It was a small quarto, a.d. 1650, a kind of calendar of astrology, medicine, and agriculture, telling the farmer when the conjunction of the planets was favourable for purchasing stock or sowing seed. When, presently, the bailiff came—a respectable man enough for his station—Felix, in his presence, locked the upper rooms and took the keys with him. Then, leaving the house in the bailiff’s charge, he rode through the starlit night, by the lonely highway, homeward.