“As Miss Irma Maitland urgently desires that her brother and she should remain under the care of Mr. William Lyon and his wife at Heathknowes, and as the aforesaid William and Mary Lyon are able and willing to provide for their maintenance, we see no reason why the arrangement should not be an excellent and suitable one, at least until such time as Sir Louis must be sent to school, when the whole question will again come up. And this to hold good whatever may be the outcome of this interview with the person calling himself Wringham Pollixfen Poole,“For Smart, Poole and Smart,”R.Poole.“
“As Miss Irma Maitland urgently desires that her brother and she should remain under the care of Mr. William Lyon and his wife at Heathknowes, and as the aforesaid William and Mary Lyon are able and willing to provide for their maintenance, we see no reason why the arrangement should not be an excellent and suitable one, at least until such time as Sir Louis must be sent to school, when the whole question will again come up. And this to hold good whatever may be the outcome of this interview with the person calling himself Wringham Pollixfen Poole,
“For Smart, Poole and Smart,”R.Poole.“
He handed the paper across to my grandmother, in whom he easily recognized the ruling spirit of the household.
“There, madam,” he said, “that will put matters on a right basis with my firm whatever may happen to me. And now, if you please, I should like to see my double at once. I suspect a kinsman, but do not be afraid of a vendetta. If Master Robin, of whose prowess I have already heard, has crushed in a rib or two, so much the better. Even if he had broken my worthy relative’s back, I fear me few would have worn mourning!”
They found the three young men still in the room, and my grandmother did no more than assure herselfof the presence of the still white-wrapped figure on the shakedown in the corner, before leading Mr. Richard into the parlour.
He went out from us with a jovial nod to my father, a low bow to Miss Irma, and mock salutation to little Sir Louis, his head high in the air, his riding whip swinging by its loop from his arm, and as it seemed, a vigour of blood sufficient for a dozen ordinary people circulating in his veins.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” he said to my uncles, as soon as he had looked at the bed and lifted the kerchief which Mary Lyon had laid wet upon the brow. “I recognize, as I had reason to expect, a scion of my house, however unworthy, with whom it will be necessary for me to communicate privately. But if you will retire to the kitchen, I shall easily signal you should your services become again necessary.”
He stood with the edge of the door in his hand, and with a slight bow ushered each of my uncles out. I was there, too, of course, seeing what was to be seen. His eye lighted on me, and a slinking figure I must have presented in spite of my usual courage, for he only turned one thumb back over his shoulder with a comical smile, and bade me get to bed, because when he was young he, too, knew what keyholes were good for.
The word “too” hurt me, for it meant that he thought I was going to eavesdrop, whereas I was merely, for the sake of Irma and the family, endeavouring to satisfy a perfectly legitimate curiosity.
I did, however, hear him say as he shut and locked the parlour door, “Now, sir, the play is played. Sit up and take off that clout. Let us talk out this affair like men!”
It was now night, and we were gathered in thekitchen. I do not think that even Rob took much supper. I know that but for my grandfather the horses would have had to go without theirs—and this, the most sacred duty of mankind about a farm, would for once have been neglected. We sat, mainly in the dark, with only the red glow of the fire in our faces, listening to the voice of a man that came in stormy gusts. The lamp had been left on the parlour table to give them light, and somehow we were so preoccupied that none of us thought of lighting a candle.
The great voice of Mr. Richard dominated us—so full of contempt and anger it was. We could not in the least distinguish what the impostor said in reply. Indeed, Rob and I could just hear a kind of roopy clattering like that of a hungry hen complaining to the vague Powers which rule the times and seasons of distribution from the “daich” bowl.
There was something very strange in all this—so strange that when my grandfather came back, for the first time in the history of Heathknowes, no chapter was read, no psalm sung or prayer read. Somehow it seemed like an impiety in the face of what was going on down there. Mr. Richard talked far the most. At first his mood was all of stormy anger, and the replies of the other, as I have said, almost inaudible.
But after a while these bursts of bellowing became less frequent. The low replying voice grew, if not louder, more persistent. Mr. Richard seemed to be denying or refusing something in short gruff gasps of breath.
“No, no—no! By heaven, sir, NO!” we heard him cry plainly. And somehow hearing that, Irma crept closer to me, and slid her hand in mine, a thing which she had not done since the night of watching in the Old House of Marnhoul.
Somehow both of us knew that it was a question of herself.
Then suddenly upon this long period of to-and-fro, there fell (as it were) the very calmness of reconciliation. Peace seemed to be made, and I think that all of us were glad of it, for the suspense and an increasing tension of the nerves were telling on us all.
“They are shaking hands,” whispered my grandmother; “Mr. Richard has brought him to his senses. Fine I knew he would.”
“I wonder if they will put him in prison or let him off because of the family?” said Rob, adjusting the bandage about his wounded leg. “Anyway, I am glad of the bit tramp he got from my yard clogs!”
“Wheesht!” whispered my grandfather, inclining his ear in the direction of the parlour door. We all listened, but it was nothing. Not a murmur.
“They will be writing something—some bond or deed, most likely.”
“They are long about it,” said William Lyon uneasily.
The silence endured and still endured till an hour was passed. My grandfather fidgeted in his chair. At last he said in a low tone, “Lads, we have endured long enough. We must see what they are at. If we are wrong, I will bear the weight!”
As one man the four moved towards the door, through the keyhole of which a ray of light was stealing from the lamp that had been left on the table.
“Open!” cried my grandfather suddenly and loudly. But the door remained fast.
“Is all right there, Master Richard?” he shouted. Still there was silence within.
“Put your shoulders to it, lads!” Eben and Tom were at it in a moment, while strong Rob, springingfrom the far side of the passage, burst the lock and sent the door back against the inner wall, the hinges snapped clean through.
Mr. Richard was sitting in a quiet room, his head leaning forward on his hands. His loaded riding whip was flung in a corner. The window was wide open, and the night black and quiet without. Sweet odours of flowers came in from the little garden. The lamp burned peacefully and nothing in the room was disturbed. But Mr. Wringham Pollixfen was not there, and when we touched him, Mr. Richard Poole was dead, his head dropped upon his arms.
CHAPTER XXIIBOYD CONNOWAY’S EVIDENCE
The loop of the riding-whip on Mr. Richard’s wrist was broken, and behind his ear there was a lump the size of a small hen’s egg. There were no signs of a struggle. The two men had been sitting face to face, eye to eye, when by a movement which must have been swift as lightning, one had disarmed and smitten the other.
Tom, Eben and Rob armed themselves and went out. But the branches of Marnhoul wood stood up against the sky, black, serried and silent. The fields beneath spread empty and grey. The sough of the wind and the fleeing cloud of night was all they saw or heard. They were soon within the house again, happy to be there and the door barred stoutly upon them.
Except for little Louis, who was already in bed on the other side of the house where his chamber was, and so knew nothing of the occurrence till the morning, there was no sleep for any that night at Heathknowes. At the first clear break of day Tom and Eben took the cart-horses and rode over to tell Dr. Gillespie, General Johnstone, and Mr. Shepstone Oglethorpe, who were all Justices of the Peace, of what had happened. They came, the General the most imposing, with a great army cloak and a star showing beneath the collar.
In the little detached sitting-room, which till the coming of the Maitlands had been used as acheese-room, Mr. Richard Poole sat, as he had been found, his head still bowed upon his arms, but on his face, when they raised it to look, there was an absolute terror, so that even the General, who had seen many a day of battle, was glad to lay it down again.
They took such testimony as was to be had, which was but little, and all tending to one startling conclusion. Suddenly, swiftly, noiselessly, within hearing of eight or nine people, in a defensible house, with arms at hand, Mr. Richard Poole, of the firm of Smart, Poole and Smart, had been done to death.
Yet he had known something, though perhaps not the full extent of his danger. We recalled his silences, his moodiness as he approached the farm—the manner in which he had at once put aside all claims, even on a market Wednesday, that he might ride and speak with a man who, if he were not a felon, was certainly no honourable acquaintance for such as Mr. Richard.
The three gentlemen looked at each other and took snuff from the Doctor’s gold box.
“Very serious, sir!” said Mr. Shepstone tentatively. For indeed he had not many ideas—a fact which the others charitably put down to his being an Episcopalian. Really he wanted to find out what they thought before committing himself.
“Tempestuous Theophilus!” cried the General, who in the presence of the Doctor always swore by unknown saints—to relieve himself, as was thought—“but ’tis more serious than you think. A fellow like this alive, at large, in our parish——”
“Inmyparish——” corrected the Doctor, who was the only man alive with a legal right to speak of Eden Valley parish as his own.
About noon the Fiscal, responsible law officer of the Crown, arrived from Kirkcudbright escorted byTom and Eben. The evidence was all heard over again, the chamber—ex-cheese room, present parlour—again inspected, but nothing further appeared likely to be discovered, when a shadow fell across the threshold.
For some time, indeed, I had sat quaking in my corner, all cold with the fear of a flitting figure, appearing here and there, seen with the tail of the eye, and then disappearing like the black cat I see in corners when my eyes are overstrained with Greek.
Of course I thought at once of the murderer Wringham Pollixfen lurking catlike among the office-houses in the hope of striking again, perhaps at Miss Irma—perhaps, also, as I now see, at Sir Louis. But indeed I never thought of him, at least not at the time. It was not the pretended Poole, however. It was a presence as quick, as agile, but more perfectly acquainted with the hidie-holes of the farmyard—in fact, Boyd Connoway.
Long before the others I got my eyes on him, and with the joy of a boy when a visitor enters the school at the dreariest hour of lessons, I rushed after him. To my surprise he went round the angle of the barn like a shot. But I had played at that game before. I took one flying leap into the little orchard from the window of the parlour which had been given up to the Maitlands, Louis and Miss Irma. Then I glided among the trees, choosing those I knew would hide me, and leaped on Master Boyd from behind as he was craning his neck to peer round the corner in the direction of the house door.
To my utter amaze he dropped to the ground with a throttled kind of cry as if some one had smitten him unawares. Here was surely something that I did not understand.
“Boyd, Boyd,” I said in his ear, for I began togrow a little concerned myself—not terrified, you know, only anxious—“Boyd, it is only Duncan—Duncan MacAlpine from the school-house.”
He turned a white, bewildered face to me, cold sweats pearling it, and his jaw worked in spasms. “Oh yes,” he muttered, “Agnes Anne’s brother!”
Now I did not see the use of dragging Agnes Anne continually into everything. Also I was one of the boys who had gone with Boyd Connoway oftenest to the fishing in Loch-in-Breck, and he need not have been afraid of me. But I think that he was a little unsettled by fear.
He did not explain, however, only bidding me shudderingly, “not to come at him that way again!” So I promised I would not, all the more readily that I heard him muttering to himself, “I thought he had me that time—yes, sure!”
Then I knew that he too was afraid of the man who called himself Wringham Pollixfen Poole and had killed the real Mr. Richard in our old cheese-room. But I was not a bit afraid, for had I not jumped through the orchard window, and run and clapped my hand on his shoulder without a thought of the creature ever crossing my mind.
At any rate I took him in with me—that is, Boyd Connoway. I cannot say that he wanted very much to go “before them Justices,” as he said. But at least he preferred it to stopping outside. I think he was frightened of my coming out again and slapping down my hand on his shoulder. Lord knows he need not have been, for I promised not to. At any rate he came, which was the main thing.
He did not enjoy the ceremony, but stood before them with his blue coat with the large rolling collar, which had been made for a bigger man, buttoned about his waist, and his rig-and-furrow stockings ofgreen, with home-made shoes called “brogues,” the secret of making which he had brought with him from a place called Killybegs in County Donegal. He was all tashed with bits of straw and moss clinging to him. His knees too were wet where he had knelt in the marsh, and there was a kind of white shaking terror about the man that impressed every one. For Boyd Connoway had ever been the gayest and most reckless fellow in the parish.
When he was asked if he knew anything about the matter he only stammered, “Thank you kindly, Doctor, and you, General, and hoping that I have the honour of seein’ you in good health, and that all is well with you at home and your good ladies and the childer!”
The General, who thought that he spoke in a mood of mockery, cautioned him that they were met there on a business of life and death, and were in no mood to be trifled with. Therefore, he, Boyd Connoway, had better keep his foolery for another time!
But the Doctor, being by his profession accustomed to diagnose the moods of souls, discerned the laboured pant of one who has been breathed by a long run from mortal terror—who has, as my father would have said, “ridden a race with Black Care clinging to the crupper”—and took Boyd in hand with better results. He agreed to tell all he knew, on being promised full and certain protection.
And it was something like this that he told his story, as it proved the only direct evidence in the case, at least for many and many a day.
“Doctor dear,” he began, “ye are a married man yourself, and you will not be misunderstanding me when I ask that anything I may say shall not be used against me?”
The Fiscal looked up quickly.
“I warn you that it will,” he said, “if you have had any hand in this murder!”
“Murder, is it?”—(Boyd Connoway gave a short grunting laugh)—“Aye, maybe, but ’tis not the murder that has been, but the murder that will be, if my wife Bridget gets wind of this! That’s why I ask that it should be kept between ourselves—so that Bridget should not know!”
“Women,” said the Fiscal oracularly, “must not be allowed to interfere with the evenhanded and fearless administration of justice.”
“Then I take it,” said Boyd, with a twinkle of the old mirth flickering up into his white and anxious face, “that your honour is not a married man!”
“No,” said the Fiscal, with a smile.
“Then, if I may make so bould, your honour knows nothing about how it is ’twixt Bridget and me. His riverence the Doctor now——”
“Tell us what you know without digressions,” said the Fiscal; “no use will be made of your evidence save in pursuing and bringing to justice the criminal.”
“He’s gone,” said Boyd Connoway solemnly, “and a good riddance to the parish!”
“Wha-a-at?” cried the three magistrates simultaneously. And the Fiscal started to his feet.
“Who has gone?” he cried, and mechanically he drew from his pocket a silver call to summon his constables from the kitchen, where my uncles and they were having as riotous a time as they dared while so many great folk sat pow-wowing in the parlour near at hand.
“Who?” repeated Boyd Connoway, “well, I don’t know for certain, but perhaps this little piece of paper will put you gentlemen on the track.”
And he handed over a letter, much stained with sea-water and sand. The heel of a boot had troddenupon and partly obliterated the writing, the ink having run, and the whole appearance of the document being somewhat draggle-tailed.
But there was no doubt about the address. That was clearly written in a fine flowing English hand, “To His Excellency Lalor Maitland, late Governor of the Meuse, Constable of Dinant, etc., etc.These”—
We all looked at each other, and the Fiscal began to doubt whether the new evidence as to the suspected murderer would prove so valuable after all.
“Your Excellency” (the letter ran), “according to the promise made to you, the luggerBloomendahl, of Walchern, Captain Vandam, has been cleared of cargo and is exclusively reserved for your Excellency’s use. It will be well, therefore, to dispatch your remaining business in Scotland, as it is impossible to send back theGolden Hindor a vessel of similar size without causing remark. At the old place, then, a little after midnight of Thursday the 18th, a boat will be waiting for you at the eastern port or the western of Portowarren according to the wind. The tide is full about one.”
“How came you by this?” the Fiscal demanded.
“Shall I tell ye in bits, sorr?” said Boyd, “or will ye have her from the beginning?”
“From the beginning,” said the Fiscal, “only with as few digressions as possible.”
“Sure,” said Boyd innocently, “I got none o’ them about me. Your honour can saarch me if ye like!”
“The Fiscal means,” said the Doctor, “that you are to tell him the story as straightly and as briefly as possible.”
“Straightly, aye, that I will,” said Boyd, “there was never a crooked word came out of my mouth; but briefly, that’s beyond any Irishman’s power—least of all if he comes from County Donegal!”
“Go on!” cried the Fiscal impatiently.
“As all things do in our house, it began with Bridget,” said Boyd Connoway; “ye see, sorr, she took in a man with a wound—powerful sick he was. The night after the ‘dust-up’ at the Big House was the time, and she nursed him and she cured him, the craitur. But, whatever the better Bridget was, all that I got for it was that I had to go to Portowarren at dead of night, and that letter flung at me like a bone to a dog, when I told him that I might be called in question for the matter of my wife.”
“‘Aye, put it on your wife,’ says he, ‘they will let you off.Youhave not the pluck of a half-drowned flea!’
“But when I insisted that I should have wherewith to clear me and Bridget also, he cast the letter down, dibbling it into the pebbles and sand with his heel just as he was going aboard.
“‘There,’ he cried, ‘now you can put it on me!’”
“Lalor Maitland,” said the Fiscal, ruminating, with his brow knit at the letter in his hand. “Where is that maid? Bring her here!”
I sprang away at once to knock on Irma’s door, and bid her come, because the great folk were wanting her. And it seemed as if she had been expecting the summons too, for she was sitting ready close by little Louis. She cast a white shawl about her shoulders, crossed the kitchen and so into the room where the four gentlemen were sitting about the table—the Fiscal with his papers at the end, and behind the curtains drawn close about the press-bed where lay that which it was not good for young eyes to see.
“Miss Maitland, will you describe to us your cousin, Lalor Maitland, of whom you have already spoken to me?”
It was the Doctor who took her hand, while on theother side Boyd Connoway in his flapping clothes of antique pattern with brass buttons stood waiting his turn. Irma took one look about which I intercepted. And I think my nod together with the presence of my grandmother gave her courage, for she answered—
“Lalor Maitland? What has he to do with us? He shall not have us. We would kill ourselves if we could not run away. You would never think of giving us up to him——?”
“Never while I am alive!” cried my grandmother, but Dr. Gillespie signed to her to be silent.
“Will you describe him to us?” suggested the Doctor suavely, “what sort of a man, dark or fair, stout or spare, how he carries himself, what he came over to this country for, and where he is likely to have gone, if we find that he has left it?”
Irma thought a moment and then said, “Perhaps I shall not be quite just because I hated him so. But he was a man whom most call handsome, though to me there was always something dreadful about his face. His hair was dark brown mixed with grey. His features were cut like those of a statue, and his head small for his height. He was slender, light on his feet, and walked silently—ugh—yes, like a cat.”
The Fiscal looked an interrogation at Boyd Connoway.
“That is the man,” he answered unhesitatingly, “though most of the time while he stayed with Bridget and me he kept his bed. Only from the way he got along the cliff by Portowarren, I judge he was only keeping out of sight and by no means so weak with his wound as he would have had us believe.”
“And tell us what you saw of him yesterday, Wednesday?”
It was the Fiscal who asked the question, but I think all of us held our breaths to catch Boyd Connoway’sanswer. He shook his head with a disconcerted air like a boy who is set too hard a problem.
“I was from home most of the day, and when I came in, with a hunger sharp-set with half-a-dozen hours struggling with the wind, Bridget bade me be off at once to the Dutchman’s Howff, which is in Colvend, just where the Boreland march dyke comes down to the edge of the cliff. I was to wait there on the edge of the heugh till one came and called me by name. When I complained of hunger, she put some dry bread into my hand, crying out that I might seek meat where I had worked my work.
“I saw that the ‘ben’ room was empty, and the blankets thrown over the three chair backs. But when I asked where the sick man was, Bridget stamped her foot and bade me attend to my business and she would take care of hers. But Jerry, my oldest boy, had a word with me before I left for the march dyke. He told me that the man ‘down-the-house’ had gone that morning as soon as my back was turned, after paying his mother in gold sovereigns, which she had immediately hidden.
“So I went and waited by the Boreland march dyke—a wild place where even the heather is laid flat by the wind. The gulls and corbies were calling down the cliff, and at the foot the sea was roaring through a narrow gully and spreading out fan-shaped along the sands of the Dutchman’s Howff.
“I waited long, having nought to eat except the sheaf of loaf bread I gat with such an ill grace from Bridget, and at the end I was beginning to lose patience, when from the other side of the gully I heard a crying and a voice bade me follow the dyke upwards and stand by to help.
“So upon the top of the wall I got, and there beneath me was the man I had last seen lying inBridget’s best bed, cossetted and cared for as if he were a prince. But for all that he was short and angry, bidding me dispatch and help him or he would lose his tide.”
“And did he wear the same clothes as when last you saw him?” said Shepstone Oglethorpe, with a shrewd air.
At which Boyd Connoway laughed for the first time since he had come into the presence of his betters.
“No,” he said, “for the last time I saw him he was under the sheets with one of my sarks on, and Bridget’s best linen sheet tied in ribbons about his head.”
“And how, then, was he dressed?” said the Fiscal, with a glance of scorn at Shepstone.
“Oh,” answered Boyd Connoway, “just like you or me. I took no particular notice. More than that, it was an ill time for seeing patterns, being nigh on to pit mirk. He bade me lead the way. And this, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I did. But the track is not canny even in the broad of the day. Mickle worse is it when the light of the stars and the glimmer o’ the sea three hunder feet below are all that ye hae to guide ye! But the man that had been hidden in our ‘ben’ room was aye for going on faster and faster. He stopped only to look down now and then for a riding light of some boat. And I made so bold, seeing him that anxious, as to tell him that if it were a canny cargo for the Co’en lads, waiting to be run into Portowarren, never a glim would he see.”
“‘You trust a man that kens,’ I said to him, ‘never a skarrow will wink, nor a lantern swing. The Isle o’ Man chaps and the Dutchmen out yonder have their business better at their fingers’ ends than that. But I will tell ye what ye may hear when we get downthe hill by the joiner’s shop—and that’s the clink o’ the saddle irons, and the waff o’ their horses’ lugs as they shake their necks—them no liking their heads tied up in bags.’
“‘Get on,’ he said, ‘I wish your head were tied up in a bag!’ And he tugged at my tail-coat like to rive it off me, your honour. ‘Set me on the shore there at Portowarren before the hour of two, or maybe ye will get something for your guerdon ye will like but ill.’
“This was but indifferent talk to a man whose bread you have been eating (it is mostly porridge and saps, but no matter) for weeks and weeks!
“We climbed down by the steep road over the rocks—the same that Will of the Cloak Moss and Muckle Sandy o’ Auchenhay once held for two hours again the gaugers, till the loaded boats got off clear again into deep water. And when we had tramped down through the round stones that were so hard on the feet after the heather, we came to the edge of the sea water. There it is deep right in. For the tide never leaves Portowarren—no, not the shot of a pebble thrown by the hand. Bending low I could see something like the sail of a ship rise black against the paler edge of the sea.
“Then it was that I asked the man for something that might clear me if I was held in suspicion for this night’s work—as also my wife Bridget.
“After at first denying me with oaths and curses, he threw down this bit paper that I have communicated to your worship, and in a pet trampled it into the pebbles among which the sea was churning and lappering. He pushed off into the boat, sending it out by his weight.
“‘There,’ he cried back, ‘let them make what they will of that if ye be called in question. And, hear ye,Boyd Connoway, this I do for the sake of that hard-working woman, your wife, and not for you, that are but a careless, idle good-for-nothing!’”
“Deil or man,” broke in my grandmother, who thought she had kept silence long enough, “never was a truer word spoken!”
Boyd Connoway looked pathetically about. He seemed to implore some one to stand up in his defence. I would have liked to do it, because of his kindness to me, but dared not before such an assembly and on so solemn an occasion.
“I put it to the honourable gentlemen now assembled,” said Boyd Connoway, “if a man can rightly be called a lazy good-for-nothing when he rose at four of the morning to cut his wife’s firewood——”
“Should have done it the night before,” interrupted my grandmother.
“And was at Urr kirkyard at ten to help dig a grave, handed the service of cake and wine at twelve, rung the bell, covered in the corp, and sodded him down as snug as you, Mr. Fiscal, will sleep in your bed this night——!”
“That will do,” said the Fiscal, who thought Boyd Connoway had had quite enough rope. “Tell us what happened after that—and briefly, as I said before.”
“Why, I went over to Widow McVinnie’s to milk her cow. It calved only last Wednesday, and I am fond of ‘beesten cheese.’ Besides, the scripture says, ‘Help the widows in their afflictions’—or words to that effect.”
“After this man Lalor Maitland had got into the boat, what happened?”
The Fiscal spoke sharply. He thought he was being played with, when, in fact, Boyd was only letting his tongue run on naturally.
“Nothing at all, your honour,” said Boyd promptly. “The men in the boat just set their oars to the work and were round the corner in a jiffey. I ran to the point by the narrow square opening into the soft sandstone rock, and lying low on my face I could see a lugger close in under the heugh of Boreland, where she would never have dared to go, save that the wind was off shore and steady. But after the noise of the oars in the rowlocks died away I heard no more, and look as I would, I never saw the lugger slip out of the deep shadow of the heughs. So, there being nothing further to be done, I filled my pockets with the dulse that grows there, thin and sweet. For nowhere along the Solway shore does one get the right purple colour and the clean taste of the dulse as in that of Portowarren, towards the right-hand nook as you stand looking up the brae face.”
Having tendered this very precise indication to whom it might concern, Boyd bowed to the company and took his leave.
The Fiscal was for holding him in ward lest he should escape, being such a principal witness. But the three Justices knew well that there was no danger of this, and indeed all of them expressed their willingness to go bail for the appearance of Boyd Connoway whenever he should be wanted.
“And a great many times when he is not!” added my grandmother, with tart frankness.
CHAPTER XXIIITHE SHARP SPUR
Though, therefore, the mystery remained as impenetrable as ever, I think that the fact of the absence of Lalor Maitland put new vigour into all of us. Richard Poole was buried in Dumfries, where all the “good jovial fellows” of a dozen parishes gathered to give him an impressive funeral. The firm closed up its ranks and became merely Messrs. Smart and Smart. There was a new and loquacious tablet in St. Michael’s relating in detail (with omissions) the virtues and attainments of the deceased Mr. Richard. But of the other Mr. Poole, calling himself Wringham Pollixfen, not a trace, not a suggestion, not a suspicion of his whereabouts had he left behind since he stepped out of our window into the dark.
But, nevertheless, in Eden Valley the air was clearer, the summer day longer and brighter, and the land had rest. It was an impressive day when Irma brought Louis to my father’s school. The Academy remembers it yet.
The morning had opened rather desolately. With the dawn the slate-grey fingers of the rain clouds had reached down, spanning from Criffel to Screel. The sea mist did what faith also can do. It removed mountains. One after another they faded and were not. A chillish wind began to blow up from the Solway, and even in Eden Valley was heard the distant roar of the surf, through the low pass which is called the Nick of Benarick. The long grass first stood in beads and then began to trickle. Flowersdrooped their heads if of the harebell sort, or stood spikily defiant like the yellow whin and the pink thistle.
I had got ready cloaks and hoods, you may be sure. I was on the spot at my grandmother’s door a full hour before the time. Within I found Mary Lyon raging. Neither of the bairns should go out of her house on such a day! What for could they not be content to take their learning from Duncan and Agnes Anne? Miss Irma, she was sure, was well able to teach the bairn. It was all a foolishness, and very likely would end in something uncanny. If it did—well, let nobody blame her. She had lifted up her testimony, and thrown away her wisdom on deaf ears.
Which, indeed, was something not unlike the case.
For just then the sun shone out. The clouds divided to right and left, following the steep purpling ridges on either side of Eden Valley—and in the middle opening out a long sweet stream of brightness. Little Louis clapped his hands. He ached for the company of his kind. He talked “boys.” He dreamed “boys”—not grown-up boys like me, but children of his own age. He despised Irma because she was a girl. Only Agnes Anne could anyways satisfy him, when she put on over her dress a pair of her grandfather’s corduroy trousers, buttoned them above her shoulder, and pretended to give orders as in the pirn-mill. Even then, after a happy hour with the toys which Agnes Anne contrived for him, all at once Louis grew whimpering disappointedly, stared at her and said, “You are not a real little boy.”
And I, who had the pick of the Eden Valley boys on my hand every time I went near my father’s (and knew them for little beasts), wondered at his taste, when he could have Irma’s company, not to speakof Agnes Anne’s. But I resolved that I should keep a bright look-out and make the little villains behave. For at an early age our Eden Valley boys were just savages, ready to mock and rend any one of themselves who was a little better dressed, who wore boots instead of clogs with birch-wood soles, or dared to speak without battering the King’s English out of all recognition.
My father and Miss Huntingdon would, of course, be ready to protect our small man as far as was in their power. But they, especially my father, were often far removed in higher spheres of work, while Miss Huntingdon was never in the boys’ playground at all. But I had none of these disabilities. I was instructed, sharp-eyed, always on the spot, with fists in good repair—armed, too, with a certain authority and the habit of using it to the full.
So little Louis found himself among his boys. I picked him out half-a-dozen of the most peaceable to play with, after he had received his first lesson from a very proud and smiling Miss Huntingdon. Miss Irma, after being formally introduced to the school, left the sort of throne which had been set for her beside my father, to go and sit beside Agnes Anne at the top of the highest form of girls.
Her presence made a hush among the elder boys, and such of the young men as happened to be there that day. For though we had scholars up to the age of twenty, most of these were at work during the summer and came only in the winter season—though in the interval betwixt sowing and hay-harvest and between that again and the ripening of the corn we would receive stray visits from them, especially in the long wet spells of weather.
It was at noon and the girls were walking in theirplayground talking with linked arms, apart from the noisy sportings of the boys, when I caught my first glimpse of Uncle Rob. He was standing right opposite the school in the big door of the Eden Valley Mill. I wondered what he was doing there, for it was not the season for grinding much corn. Besides, it would have been handier to send it down and call for it again during such a busy season on the farm.
So I ran across and asked him what he was doing there. I could hardly hear his answer, for the loudplash-plashof the buckets of water as they fell into the great pool underneath the wheel.
I understood him, however, to say that it was open to me to attend to my own business and leave him to look after his.
In a moment the demon of jealousy entered into my soul. Could it be that he came there to be near Irma—Irma, whom I had fought for and saved half-a-dozen times over all by myself—for it is not worth while going back to what Agnes Anne did, as it were, accidentally. I was so angry at the mere thought that there and then I charged him with his perfidy. He laughed a short, contemptuous laugh.
“And what for no,” he answered; “at leastIhave a trade at my finger-ends. I can drive a plough. I can thresh a mow. At a pinch I can even shoe a horse. But you—you have quit even the school-mastering!”
I do not know whether or not he said it unwittingly or with intent to sting me. But at any rate the thrust went home. I could hardly wait till my father had got through with his work that night, and was stretched in his easy-chair, his long pipe in one hand and a volume of Martial in the other. I brokein upon him with the words, “Father, I want to go to college with Freddie Esquillant!”
My father looked at me in surprise. I can see him still staring at me bemazed with his pipe half-way to his mouth, and the open book laid face downward upon his knee.
“Go to college—you?” His surprise was more cutting than Uncle Rob’s mockery. Because, you see, my father knew. That is, he knew my scholarship. What he did not know was how much of my grandmother’s spirit there was in me, and how I could keep working on and on if I had the chance.
“You have thought of this long?” he asked.
“No, father!”
“Ah, well, what put it into your head?” he asked kindly.
This I could hardly tell him without entering into my furious foolish jealousy of Uncle Rob, his waiting at the mill, and our exchange of words. So I only said, “It just came to me that I would like to get learning, father!”
“Ah, yes,” he meditated, “that is mostly the way. It is like heavenly grace. It comes to a man when he least expects it—the desire for learning. We seek it diligently with tears. It comes not. We wake in the morning and lo! it is there!”
It is characteristic of my father that even then he did not concern himself about ways and means. For at the colleges of our land are “bursaries” provided by pious patrons, once poor themselves, and often with a thirst for knowledge unquenched—boys put too early to the bench or the counter. Now my father had the way of winning these for his pupils. He did not teach them directly how to gain them, but he supplied the inspiration.
“Read much and well. Get the spirit. Learn the grammar, certainly. But read Latin—till you can speak Latin, think Latin. It is more difficult to think Greek. Our stiff-necked, stubborn Lowland nature, produce of half-a-score of conquering nations, has not the right suppleness. But if there is any poetry in you, it will find you out when you read Euripides.”
So though certainly I never got so far—the verbs irregular giving me a distaste for the business—at least I fell into line, and in due time—but there I am anticipating. I am writing of the day, the wonderful day when the sharp spur of Uncle Rob’s reproach entered into my soul and I resolved to be—I hardly knew what. A band of little boys, all eager to see the pirn-mill in the Marnhoul wood, volunteered to accompany Louis home. They went on ahead, gambolling and shouting. Agnes Anne would have come also, but I suggested to her that she had better stay and help her mother.
She gave me one look—not by any means of anger. Rather if Agnes Anne had ever permitted herself to make fun of me, I should have set it down to that. But I knew well that could not be. She stayed at home, contentedly enough, however.
I went home with Irma. I did so because I had the cloaks and hoods to carry. Also I had something to tell her. It seemed something so terrible, so mighty, so full of risk and danger that my heart failed me in the mere thinking of it. I was to go away and leave her, for many years, seeing her only at intervals. It seemed a thing more and more impossible to be thought upon.
At the least I resolved to make myself out a martyr. It would be a blow to Irma also, and the thought that she would feel it so almost made up to me for myown pain, an ache which at the first moment had been of the nature of a sudden and deadly fear.
Yet I might have saved myself the trouble. Irma looked upon the matter in a very different light. She was not moved in the least.
“Yes, of course,” she said, “you are only wasting your time here. Men must go out and see things in the world, that afterwards they may do things there. Here it is very well for us who have no friends and nowhere else to go. But as soon as Louis is at school or has to leave me—oh, it will happen in time, and I like looking forward—I shall go too.”
“But what could you do?” I cried in amazement, for such a thing as a girl of her rank finding a place for herself was not dreamed of then. Only such as my grandmother and Aunt Jen worked “in the sphere in which Providence had placed them,” as the minister said in his prayer.
“Never trouble your head,” said Irma, “there never was a Maitland yet but gat his own will till he met with a Maitland to counter him!”
“Lalor!” I suggested. At the name she twisted her face into an expression of great scorn.
“Lalor!” she said; “well, and have I not countered him?”
She had, of course, but as far as I remembered there was something to be said about another person who had at least helped. Now that is the worst of girls. They are always for taking all the credit to themselves.
It was a grave day when I quitted Eden Valley for the first time. Every one was affected, the women folk, my mother, my grandmother, even Aunt Jen, went the length of tears. That is, all with only two exceptions, my father and Miss Irma. My father wasglad and triumphant—confident that, though never the scholar Freddie Esquillant was bound to be, I was yet stronger in the more material parts of learning—those which most pleased the ordinary run of regents and professors.
I had already seen Irma early in the morning in that clump of trees beyond the well where the flowering currants made a scented wall, and in the midst the lilac bushes grow up into a cavern of delicately tinted, constantly tremulous shade.
I told her of my fears, whereat she scorned them and me, bidding me go forward bravely.
“I have never promised to be anybody’s friend before,” she said; “I shall not break my word!”
“But, Irma,” I urged, for indeed I could not keep the words back, they being on the tip of my tongue, “what if in the meantime, when I am away so far and seeing you so little, you should promise somebody else to be more than a friend!”
She stood a moment with the severe look I had grown to fear upon her face. Then she smiled at me, at once amused and forgiving.
“You are a silly boy,” she said; “but after all, you are but a boy. You will learn that I do not say one thing one day and another the next. There—I promised you a guerdon, did I not? That is the picture of my mother. You can open the back if you like!”
I set my thumb-nail to it, and there, freshly cut and tied with a piece of the very blue ribbon she was wearing, lay a lock of her hair, a curl curiously and as it seemed wilfully twisted back upon itself, as if it had refused to be so imprisoned—just, in fact, like Irma herself.
I should have kissed her hand if I had known how,but instead I kissed the lock of hair. When I looked up I am afraid that there was most unknightly water in my eyes.
“Come,” she said, “this will never do. There must be none of that if you are to carry Irma Sobieski’s pledge. Stand up—smile—ah, that is better. Look at me as if I were Lalor Maitland himself, rather than cry about it. You have my pledge, have you not—signed, sealed, and delivered? There!”
But how the legal formula was carried out by Miss Irma is nobody’s business except our own—hers and mine, I mean. But at all events I went forth from the lilac clump by the well, and picked up my full water cans with a heart wondrously strengthened, and so up the path to Heathknowes with a back straight as a ramrod, because of the eyes that I knew were watching me through the chinks in the wall of summer blossom.