"The guidman o" the Grange is safe!" he would cry. "He is at his loom, but never more will he weave, I ken. Jeremy has seen to that. And what for that, quo" ye? Juist to learn him that when Jeremy asks for his ain, he is no to be denied as if he were a beggar wantin" alms!"
Then he took a new tack, and launched into "The Toom Pooch"--which is to say, the "empty pocket"--a very popular ditty in the Scots language, and especially about Breckonside:
"An empty purse is slicht.i.t sair, Gang ye to market, kirk, or fair, Ye"ll no be muckle thocht o" there, Gin ye gang wi" a toom pooch!"
He finished with a shout of derision.
"Ye puir f.e.c.kless lot!" he shouted down to the crowd beneath. "I ken you and Breckonside. Here"s charity for ye! Catch a haud!" And he showered the contents of a pocket-book down upon their heads.
"Here are notes o" ten pound, and notes o" twenty, and notes o" a hundred! What man o" ye ever saw the like? Only Jeremy, Jeremy and his maister. They wan them a", playin" at a wee bit game wi" rich lonely folk. Jeremy was fine company to them. And whiles it ended in a bit jab wi" the knife in the ribs, and whiles in a tug o" the hemp aboot a lad"s neck, if he wasna unco clever. But it was never Jeremy"s neck, nor was the knife ever in Hobby"s back till Jeremy--but that"s tellin"! Oh, Hobby"s a"richt. I saw him sitting screedin" awa" at his windin" sheet, and thinkin" the time no lang."
He rose and danced, singing as he danced--
"There"s nae luck aboot the hoose, There"s nae luck ava----"
The flames shot up like the cracking of a mighty whip. The madman felt the sting, and with a wild yell he launched himself over the parapet into the muddy sludge at the bottom of Deep Moat pond. He must have gone in head foremost, for he never rose. Only the melodeon, with the water trickling in drops off its bell chime in silver gilt, and the glittering tinsel of its keys, rose slowly to the surface among a few air bubbles and floated there among a little brownish mud.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII
CONFESSION
The ruins of Deep Moat Grange were black and cold--almost level with the ground, also. For the folk had pulled the house almost stone from stone, partly in anger, partly in their search for hidden treasure.
Elsie was home again in the white cottage at the Bridge End, and my father was attending to his business quietly, as if nothing had happened.
The authorities, of course, had made a great search among the subterranean pa.s.sages of the monks" storehouses, without, however, discovering more than Elsie and my father could have told them. Mr.
Ablethorpe was still silent. So, being bound by my promise to him, I judged it best to hold my peace also.
But in spite of all this, or perhaps because of it, the country continued in a ferment. The deaths of Mad Jeremy and Mr. Stennis, instead of quieting public clamour, made the mystery still more mysterious. The weird sisters remained at liberty, and the wildest reports flew about. None would venture out of doors after dark.
Children were told impossible tales of Spring-heeled Jacks in petticoats, who (much less judicious than the usual bogie--"Black Man,"
"Hornie Nick," the lord of the utter and middle darkness), confounded the innocent with the guilty, and made off with good children as readily as with children the most advanced in depravity.
Of course, knowing what I knew, I had none of these fears. I understood why Mr. Ablethorpe had arranged for the carrying off of Honorine, Camilla, and Sidonia. They were, I knew, housed with the "Little Sisters of the Weak-Minded." But to me, as to others, Aphra remained the stumbling-block.
But even this was soon to be removed.
On March the sixteenth, one month and five days after the burning of the house of Deep Moat Grange, the sheriff"s court of Bordershire was held in the courthouse at Longtown. My father and I, with many people from Breckonside, were there, and practically all Bewick to a man. For great interest was felt in a case of night-poaching in which these two firm friends, Davie Elshiner and Peter Kemp, officially had repeatedly given each other the lie.
"There is rank perjury somewhere," commented the sheriff, "but as I cannot bring it home to any particular person, I must discharge the accused."
A certain subdued hush of various movement ran along the benches, as the listeners got ready to go. Sheriff Graham Duffus, a red-faced, jolly man, was conferring in hushed tones with the fiscal or public prosecutor, when two tall young men in irreproachable clerical attire pushed their way up the central pa.s.sage, kept clear for witnesses by a couple of burly policemen at either end. A woman walked between them.
She was tall, veiled, angular, and bore herself singularly erect, even with an air of pride.
The murmur of the people changed to an awe-stricken hush, as the woman lifted her veil.
It was Aphra Orrin, and she stood there between Mr. De la Poer and Mr.
Ablethorpe!
"My lord," said Mr. Ablethorpe, in a clear and dominating voice, "I and my friend, Mr. De la Poer, are ordained clergymen of the Church of Scotland, Episcopal. We are not aware of the formula with which we ought to approach you, seated as a judge in a court of justice. But we are here because we know of no way more direct to carry out the wishes of this poor woman, whose conscience has been touched, and who by full confession, by condemnation, and by the suffering of punishment, desires to make what amends she can for the dreadful iniquities in which, for many years, she has been involved."
In a moment all present knew that it was a matter of the mysteries of Deep Moat Grange.
"Who is this woman?" asked Sheriff Graham Duffus, the jovial air suddenly stricken from his face. The fiscal had subsided into the depths of an official armchair. He reclined in it, apparently seated upon his shoulder blades, and with half-shut eyes watched proceedings from under the twitching penthouse of his brows.
"Her name is Aphra or Euphrasia Orrin," said Mr. Ablethorpe, "and she comes to make full confession before men, of what she has already confessed to me concerning the murders in which she has been implicated at Deep Moat Grange."
"And why," said the sheriff, "did not you yourself immediately inform the justice of your country?"
Mr. Ablethorpe turned upon Sheriff Duffus with a pitying look.
"I was bound," he said simply, "by the secret of the confessional!"
"In Scotland," said the sheriff severely, "we do not acknowledge any such obligation. But no matter for that, if now, even though discreditably late, you have by your influence brought this woman to make public confession!"
"I take my friend by my side to witness--I take Euphrasia Orrin--I take Him who hears all confessions which come from the heart, to witness that never have I put the least pressure on this poor woman"s conscience! What she is now doing is by her own desire!"
The sheriff shrugged his shoulders, and the ghost of a smile flickered among the crafty wrinkles about the corner of the fiscal"s mouth. His work was being done for him.
"You refuse the crumb of credit I was willing to allow you," said the sheriff. "Well, I put no limit to what any man"s conscience may prescribe to itself, when once it begins to set up rules for its own guidance. Let us get to business. What has the woman to say?"
The woman had much to say. It was the early afternoon of mid-March when Aphra began to speak, and long before she had finished the court-keeper and his temporary a.s.sistant were lighting the dim gas jets arranged at wide distances along the wall.
Her c.r.a.pe veil thrown back over a bonnet showing a face, as it were, carven in grey granite, Aphra Orrin stood before her country"s justice fingering a brown rosary. Every time she paused, even for a second, one could hear the click of the beads mechanically dropped from nervous fingers. Strong men"s ears sang. It was as if the terrible things her lips were relating had been some history of old, long-punished crimes, the record of which she was recalling as a warning. Yet within what of soul she had, doubtless the woman was at her prayers.
Not once did she manifest the least emotion or contrition, still less fear. And she made her recital in the calmest manner, with some occasional rhapsodical language certainly, but with none of the madness which I should have expected.
She stood up, most like some formal, old-fashioned schoolmistress reciting a piece of prose learned by heart, without animation and without interest. The dry click of the beads alone marked the emphasis. The young Anglican priests towered one on either side, and the quivering silence of the crowded courthouse alone evidenced the terrible nature of the disclosures.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
JEREMY ORRIN, BREADWINNER
"I had a younger brother, dear to me far above my life" (this was Aphra Orrin"s beginning). "He was the youngest of all--left to me in guard by a father who feared in him the wild blood of my mother. For my father had married a gipsy girl whose beauty had taken him at a village merrymaking. In the Upper Ward they do not understand that kind of _mesalliance_ in a schoolmaster. And so, for my mother"s sake, he had to leave his schoolhouse, after fighting the battle against odds for many years.
"He died rich in his new occupation of cotton spinner, but he knew that the blood of my mother ran in all of us. Once, in a great snowstorm when the schoolhouse was cut off from all other houses--it was in the days soon after Jeremy (the youngest of us all) was born, my father awakened to find my mother leaning over him, the wood axe in her hand, murder in her eye. He had only time to roll beneath the bed, and seize her by the feet, pulling her down and so mastering her. He had to keep his mad wife, my mother, six days in the schoolhouse, with only himself for guard, till she could be taken to the asylum, where she died.
"After this shock my father soon followed her to the grave, and I was left with three poor girls on my hands, who could do nothing for themselves in the world--hardly even what I told them--and with Jeremy my brother. If it had not been for Jeremy, I might have managed better. But he spoiled it all. He was wild from his youth. The least opposition would arouse him to ungovernable fury. He would, like my mother, take up a knife, an axe, or whatever was at hand, and strike with incredible swiftness and strength.
"After we had lost our money--after _I_ had lost it, that is--my own and my family"s--it became my duty to provide for them more than ever.
I had lost it, because richer people had revenged on me and on these four helpless ones my poor father"s too rapid success. So I had no right to be squeamish as to means of vengeance on the rich.