"I wad hae brocht ye a Bible, too, but Aphra micht hae noticed," he said. "There"s mair nor a packet o" candles in the press, forbye a half loaf if ye are hungrysome i" the nicht-time. It"s little likely that ye will ken how to play the fiddle?"
I told him I had no such skill, at which he sighed.
"I was dootin" that," he said. "If ye had I could hae played the seconds to ye fine! But Jeremy can play for twa when the fit is on him. Ye never heard Jeremy. He has a fiddle that is a real--Jeremy forgets the name--but it"s real something awesome grand. And that"s a deal mair than maist braw folk can say o" their fiddles. For they are maistly made i" the Gressmarket o" Edinbory! There"s a melodeon, though, wi" silver keys, that"s better still. But Hobby winna gie Jeremy the siller to buy it. It"s in Lithgow"s window at Langtoon, and some day it will be Jeremy"s ain. Maybe afore ye think. Then he will come and play ye the bonnie music. Ye can dance, Elsie? Eh, that"s weel. Jeremy canna dance, but he can play the bonnie music to dance till, and it"s the finest sicht in the world to see a feat young la.s.s footing it dentily to "The Wind that Shakes the Barley" or "Tullochgorum.""
After Jeremy was gone, I went over many things in my mind. Whatever part my grandfather Stennis had taken in the disappearances of Harry Foster, Ridd.i.c.k of Langbarns, Lang Hutchins the drover, and Joe Yarrow"s father, obviously he had nothing to do with this. Therefore, I could only hope and pray that he was alike innocent of the others.
Not that the justice, or injustice, of the country would in any case hold him guiltless. He it was who had brought this wild crew about the lonely and formidable House of the Grange. Because of them the Deep Moat glimmered through a mist of fear, and the sullen expanse of the Moat Pond had its waters, like once on a time the Nile, turned by the evening sun into blood.
Still, I should be glad, even in my own heart, to be able to think better of my mother"s father, even if no one agreed with me.
Having seen the disturbances which followed the disappearances of Harry Foster and Mr. Yarrow, I pleased myself with the thought that soon my prison house would be broken open, and this foul brood of birds of prey compelled to flee for their lives. But I had not forgotten that it was the return of Harry"s blood-stained mail cart which had awakened suspicion, and in the case of Joe"s father, the coming back of the mare by way of the locked door of the yard. But a girl with half a dozen books under her arm, on her way to teach a few infants in a school, would be in a very different position. Joe and Nance Edgar would ask questions, doubtless. But I had quarrelled with the one, and never really been open or companionable with the other. So it might be said (was indeed said) that I had taken French leave of Breckonside in a fit of temper, and had gone off to meet friends, or to teach in a school for which I had long been applying. Indeed, the postman had brought me an official blue paper that morning, by virtue of which I was informed of my registration as a regular certificated teacher under the Act of 1871.
As a matter of fact, there was even a greater upheaval after my departure, but owing to doubts, and to the want of outward and visible signs to provoke it, the outburst seemed longer in coming. I considered myself, indeed as girls often do, much more friendless than I really was.
Then began in my oven prison a period of great silence and regularity.
In writing the tale, I am following the entries in my diary day by day, and shall endeavour to make a story out of them as best I can. There is really little to tell, romantic as the circ.u.mstances were. As Mad Jeremy had truly said, the place was warm enough. The absence of the light of day was what I felt the most--also the lack of all sound, either of human voice or any living creature. Each alternate weekday I could hear Jeremy raking his fire to its proper heat before thrusting in the pans containing his batch of bread. Thrice every day he would come to bring me something to eat. But never did he offer me the least violence all the time I remained in the vaulted chamber.
Perhaps the moon was in good season. Perhaps the fool had regained a little sanity in the mere act of going contrary to his sister. At any rate his madness showed itself chiefly in his bringing every sort of musical instrument to my prison house. Upon these he played with considerable skill, but with a strange, weird, irresponsible irony running through even the most familiar tunes--something, as one might say, like "G.o.d save the King" played by the host"s own piper, when George the Fourth made his state entrance into his own palace.
It must have been a strange sight to see us, seated of an evening in a little semicircle, Jeremy with the three younger of his sisters--but always without Aphra, or Euphrasia, as I found her real name to be.
And these occasions were by no means unwelcome. For, mad as the women were, there was about them something of the village "innocent," lit with a certain flame of religious enthusiasm. They were very different from that tall, stern figure of granite--their elder sister. Honorine, who had had some training in dressmaking, was always at work with futile industry, confectioning some garment which, when finished, was more like the dress of a Christmas guiser or carnival clown than a respectable garment for everyday use. Her sisters, Camilla and Sidonia, sat looking listlessly at nothing, or engaging in purposeless infantile controversies with one another. Jeremy at one end of the circle sat strumming fitfully upon his latest instrument, violin or Jew"s harp, his half-savage music breaking in upon Honorine"s ceaseless chatter without prelude or apology. But these interruptions did not in the least put out his sister. She was proud of some remnants of a former short-lived beauty, and loved to recount and magnify the ancient flames she had kindled when "head of a department," dictating the fashions to the good ladies of Thorsby at Hood and Truslove"s long extinct but once celebrated emporium in the High Street there.
It did not occur to me till afterwards that I ought to have been frightened--thus sequestered from the world, and my life hardly worth five minutes" purchase, if I should chance to incur the anger of one of those mad creatures. But at the time I sat with my French grammar on my knees, thinking chiefly how funny it was to see the five of us all seated with the soles of our feet turned to a blank wall. This we did for the warmth of the dividing wall. And indeed it was never cold--for before my side had time to cool, Jeremy was firing up his oven again for the next batch of bread to feed the Deep Moat Grangers and their guests.
That these could be dangerous thieves and murderers, in spite of the gossip I had heard, never crossed my mind. They were to me, as I think to Mr. Ablethorpe, just so many poor things who had lost their senses.
I noticed, however, that all except Jeremy were accustomed to hush their voices when they spoke of their terrible sister Aphra. And little by little I was able to draw from Honorine (who, above all things, loved to talk) the sad history of their wanderings. I will not attempt to reproduce in detail all her babblings. Indeed, she never quite finished a sentence. Nor did she ever continue where she left off. But, so far as I understood her relation, controlled as it was continually by the denials of Sidonia and Camilla, and punctuated by the scornful strains of Mad Jeremy, the story of the Orrin family amounted to this--
Their father had been a teacher in a large Lanarkshire village; but some money having come into his hands by the death of a distant relative, he went to Lancashire and there started a mill. He left a fortune to his children, valued at some 40,000. But what had been quickly gained proved just as easy to lose.
At his death Aphra kept on the spinning mill, and for a time made a brave face to adverse fortune. But a combination among bigger employers froze her out. The mill failed, and with it was engulfed the wealth of her sisters and the portion of her one brother. Hitherto Jeremy had behaved more humanly than any of the others, learning the business of the mill, with the hope that some day he might be able to conduct one of his own. But the sudden failure of all his hopes overthrew an ill-balanced brain. He grew wild and untamable in his habits, only appearing at home at rare intervals, and then only to claim more and more money from his sister.
The others, Honorine, Camilla and Sidonia, mentioned the name of their eldest sister with a kind of awe, but Jeremy never without a sneer or a taunt--except only in her presence, and when taxed with digging in the garden, a habit for which, Honorine whispered, Aphra was accustomed to punish him severely.
After their failure in Wigham, the pa.s.sage of the Orrin family southward through England is marked only by some vague reminiscences of Honorine. She would begin a sentence "When we were at Bristol" and end it with "This happened after Aphra had brought us to Leeds."
Nevertheless the nodded confirmations of the other two sisters, silently listening as they twisted their fingers, together with the "humphs" and denials of Jeremy, let me understand the truth with sufficient clearness.
If Aphra had been alone, unsaddled with her flock of mad folk, whom she treated like grown-up children, yet loved with more than sisterly devotion, she would have had no difficulty in providing for herself.
At Bristol, for instance, she had established herself with what remained of their small capital in a ready-made shoe shop in a well-frequented street, while Honorine and Sidonia interpreted the latest London fashions to the dwellers in Clifton. But the latter branch failed because Honorine refused to serve those customers who, on entering the shop, would not consent to bow the knee and worship the statue of the Virgin, which they kept in a wall niche surrounded with ever-burning candles. This did not at all suit the ideas of the Cliftonians, and soon the two sisters were back hanging on as before to the skirts of Aphra. As for Jeremy, he wandered about the docks, finding mysterious means of filling his pockets, but always sharing the proceeds.
But his strength waxed so great, his temper so uncertain, that practically he was allowed to go his way. From this time forward not even Aphra was able to control him. More than once he had threatened her life with his clasp knife. Still she did not insist upon his leaving the house. As the head of the family, she was responsible for all. Jeremy was a prodigal son, but still a son--indeed, the only son of the house. Her father had confided him to Aphra, and she would be faithful to her trust.
It was about this time that the family became touched with that mystic spirit which Mr. Ablethorpe had thought to utilize in leading them to better things. But the attempt was vain from the first.
Even at Bristol an attempt to walk in procession upon the street with white banners and mystic emblems awoke so much mingled hostility and mirth that the police were fain to interfere. And an a.s.sault made by Honorine upon a visiting bishop of Low Church tendencies, who dared to preach in a Geneva gown, led to the closing of the boot shop and their migration once more to the north.
Everywhere they went Honorine was the bane of custodians of High Anglican and Catholic churches. She insisted upon spending the whole day in such buildings, kneeling for hours together before the sacred pictures, especially those representing favourite saints, making her stations of the cross several times a day, and representing to the distressed church officers (who wanted their dinners) that it was no time to think of earthly nourishment here below--because at any moment their brains might be sucked up by a steam engine even as hers had been. She continued, therefore, in spite of gowned Anglican church officers, magnificent Catholic "Suisses," and arrogant parish beadles, to do penance for sins which she had never committed.
"There are enough misdeeds in the family, though, to keep you at penance all your life," grunted Jeremy with a grin, as Honorine finished her confession. "You did quite right, Honor; I always said that you had more sense than Aphra!"
"Aphra is wise," said her sister, "but she does not know that, owing to my prolonged studies in the Book of Nature, I am enabled to cure toothache."
From the date of their leaving Bristol the family had gone where the determined Aphra had led them. Their longest time of refuge was in the service of a German widow named Funkel, who lived in a villa near Surbiton. Devout as Mr. Ablethorpe, this good woman had taken an idea of bringing the Orrins to more settled ways.
Aphra was to be cook and housekeeper, Honorine sewing maid, Camilla waited at table, and Sidonia became laundress. It was a hospitable and kindly arrangement. But the operations of Jeremy, who had charge of the small garden, brought all the dogs of the neighbourhood there to scratch, while within doors the entire service of the household would be interrupted by discussions as to what the exact meaning of a pinch of salt spilled on the right side of the salt cellar, or a tug of war between the younger sisters to decide who was to clean the knives.
As all had foreseen but herself, Madame Funkel had to call in the police before she could get rid of her troop of domestics. It ended in their retreat, after certain threats on Aphra"s part--threats which, but for the opportune vanishing of Jeremy, might not have ended pleasantly for their ex-mistress.
Aphra returned to her diminished shoe shop, this time set up in a suburb of Leeds, and Jeremy was next heard of as the companion of Mr.
Hobby Stennis in the little wayside cottage where he lived before moving into the larger and more retired Deep Moat Grange.
Honorine asked Jeremy more than once how he came to be acquainted with Mr. Stennis. But his only reply was that "there were certain things which it was good for women to know, but how he first came to meet Mr.
Stennis was not one of them."
CHAPTER XXIV
THE BREAKING DAM
(_The Narrative continued by Joe Yarrow._)
I have given this part of Elsie"s diary in full, as she wrote it out, both because she was so far from the truth as to what was happening above ground, and because her style of writing is so literary--far before mine, with words that I should have to look out in the dictionary.
Why, of course, there was no end of a rumpage. The whole country rose.
It is the third time that tells. You never saw anything like it.
Farmers and their men flocked in from the field, and took shot guns and hay forks, or tied scythes to poles, making ugly enough weapons. The village of Breckonside emptied itself. It chanced that a little boy, Frankie Leslie, on his way to school, had seen "eour teacha," as he called Elsie, in the company of a tall woman in black going through the pastures towards the woods of the Deep Moat.
That was enough. That was evidence at last. There was to be no pausing this time. The place was to be ransacked, if not sacked. And what would have happened to the poor mad sisters if it had not been for the presence of mind of Mr. Ablethorpe, it is better not surmising. I don"t believe that the idea of compelling witches by torture to release their victims is extinct--at least, not in such a place as Breckonside.
That mob of angry men and furious women which flocked out towards the house of the Golden Farmer would have taken to the red-hot knitting needle and the flat-irons as naturally as their ancestors two hundred years ago on Witches" Hill, a little beyond the Bridge End. They would have burned, too, only that they were afraid of the police--I don"t mean old Codling, but the real police, who would come up from East Dene and Longtown.
I had seen the first surprise about the empty mail gig which had been escaladed by the murderers of poor Harry Foster. I had seen the midnight levy when my father"s mare came home without him. But far beyond either was the sight of that silent flood of people, at the noon of a winter"s day, when in the ordinary course of things they would have been sitting down to dinner: breaking barriers, throwing down gates, and spreading over the fields in the direction of Deep Moat Grange! It fairly took the breath from me.
Once I had even been a leader at that sort of thing. I had found the traces of the crime that had been committed in the case of poor Harry.
I had been my father"s son on the second occasion. People had deferred to me. Even Ebie the blacksmith, with his fore-hammer over his shoulder, had asked my advice. But now I was n.o.body. No one was anybody. A force which no one could control had been set in motion. I understood better what is that Democracy of which they speak. It is the setting in motion of destructive forces, always most dangerous when most silent.
The idea in the hearts of all was that this must end. There was no saying whose turn might come next. So the rush was made in the direction of that sinister house in the depths of the woods, surrounded by its moat, and looking out upon the gloomy pond, dark grey under the shadow of the pines.
But those of Breckonside who had imagined that there was nothing but processioning and incensing about Mr. Ablethorpe had their opinions considerably altered that day. Mr. De la Poer was with him. They had been--I forget the word--confessing or cross-examining each other. Oh, no, spiritually directing each other--that is the correct phrase. And when the roar of the village rising _en ma.s.se_ against its formidable neighbours of the Grange came to their ears, they had just got the job done for the month, and were sitting down to a good cup of tea, which Miss Ablethorpe, the Hayfork"s sister, had brewed for them.
Immediately divining the cause, Mr. Ablethorpe dashed across the fields, leaving Mr. De la Poer to act as a drag to the armed villagers.
It was evident that he had been successful in his mission; for when the mob poured over the drawbridge, which was hospitably down as if to invite them across, they found at Deep Moat Grange a house empty, swept, and garnished.
In the house they found spotless chambers, which testified to the good housekeeping of Miss Aphra Orrin--full pantries, well-filled larders, the milk standing to cream on the stone slabs of the dairy, b.u.t.ter in lordly dishes on great squares of Parton slate, the quietest, the most innocent house in all the parish of Breckonside.
Nor did they find anything suspicious in all the chambers of the house, though they went everywhere--into Mr. Stennis"s workroom, which had the windows tightly barred, but which, when thrown open, revealed nothing but a spare wooden settle in a corner, and on a wonderful hand loom a half-worked pattern, such as only Hobby could weave, with crowns of flowers, roses and lilies, and on a scroll the words: "To Elsie Stennis, on her marriage. The gift of her affectionate grandfather."