Not many fellows get a chance to die n.o.bly, like a young hero, in front of his own father"s house, in defence of his girl--with not only that girl, her own self, but also his second best--I mean another girl friend (of his mother"s) looking out at him from the wall, just like the beautiful Jewess Rebecca, and Rowena the Saxon, and all that lot.
So I charged round, knowing that the eyes of Elsie and the Caw girls were on me. And there in front of the house was a whole mob of Geordies and Paddies, navvies, and all the general riff-raff, with here and there an angry Bewicker who knew no better--all calling for Elsie to be given up to them. My father was up on a flat part of the roof, and was haranguing them, as if he had been brought up to the business.
They were flinging dirt and stones at him, too, and one had clipped him on the side of his head, so that the blood was trickling down his temple, which made me mad to watch. Morning had come by this time, so that was how I could see so well. It comes precious early at Breckonside this time of the year, as you would know if your father started you out as early as mine did. We have lots of winter there, but when the light time does arrive, it comes along early and stays to supper.
Well, you see, ever since my father took so stiffly to Elsie, I had been pretty much gone on the governor. I suppose, even before that, I would not have seen him mishandled without shaking a stick for him.
But now, it just made my blood boil, and I am not one of your furious heroes either. I always think well before I let my courage boil over.
As you may have noticed from this biography, I do not profess to be one of your fetch-a-howl-and-jump-into-the-ring heroes.
But, as father"s spring sale advertis.e.m.e.nts say, this was an opportunity which might never occur again. (It didn"t, as a fact.)
So I got right between the crowd and our varnished front door, over which stood my father with his broken head, still holding forth as to what he would do to every man present. "Twenty years hard" was the least that even the back ranks would get.
There was not a real armed man among them. So, when I stepped up on the stone stoop with the morning sun glinting down my revolver and my warlike eye squinting t"other way along the sights, one hand behind my back as I had seen them do in pictures of duellists in the _Graphic_ (when they do half-page pictures to ill.u.s.trate what father calls "bloodthirsty yarns." I never read the small print, of course, but the pictures are prime for sticking up over a fellow"s bed) and the yellow leather belt and open pouch for cartridges--well, I wouldn"t have taken the fanciest price for myself at that moment--I really wouldn"t. If it had been at Earl"s Court, they would have marked me _Hors Concours_, and set me to judge the other exhibits!
Well, of course, these fellows had never seen the funny round black dot a loaded revolver makes when it is pointed square at your right eye and the fellow behind looks like pulling the trigger. And I tell you they scurried back, fifty yards at least, and some of the less keen even began to sneak off. Pretty soon they all did so. I think they felt that they had been behaving foolishly.
But what they felt was nothing to what _I_ did a moment after.
You see, my father didn"t know what had been happening down below. He couldn"t see, for one thing. The jut of the porch hid my warlike array and bold defence. So he couldn"t understand who the--umph--was down there. To make out he came forward and leaned over the stone cornice at the end of the railings, with Elsie on one side of him and Harriet Caw on the other.
I stood up as n.o.ble as the boy on the burning deck or Fitz-James, when he said--
"Come one, come all, this rock shall fly From its firm base as soon as I!"
Or, at any rate, something like that. But _my_ feet were really on my native doorstep, while as for Fitz-James--my father says that, whether the rock flew or not, he had no t.i.tle to it that could stand the least sniff of law.
Before my father spoke to me, both Elsie and Harriet Caw thought that I looked "just too heroic." This I heard on good authority, and it pleased me, for that was the exact effect I was trying to produce.
Elsie was such a brick as to swear that she thought so even after, and to this day she sticks to it. Girls have some good points.
But it was awful enough at the time.
"Joe," shouted my father, and I could see his face red and threatening above me, with the effort of leaning so far over, "if you do not put up that popgun and come in the house directly, I will come out with a cane and thrash you within an inch of your life!"
He even went on to give particulars, which I think was mean of him in the circ.u.mstances. But no fellow can argue with his father--at least, not with one like mine--so I stepped round to the door. My father met me, took the revolver away from me, and made as if he would box my ears. Last of all, he told me to go into the back kitchen and wash my face--and ears.
I could have forgiven him all but that word.
Then Harriet Caw giggled, and said she would come and see that I did it. But just then the tide turned. For, hearing Harriet say this, Elsie came along, too, and though I was, indeed, pretty grimy with racing and scratching along after these Bewick pit fellows, she took my hands, right under the nose of Harriet Caw, and said, "Joe, I thank you for saving my life!"
Then, loosing one of my hands, she put her palm on my shoulder, and stooped and kissed me on the forehead, ever so stately and n.o.ble, like another of those _Graphic_ pictures.
But evidently Harriet Caw did not think so, for she only sniffed and, turning on her patent india-rubber heels (which she had bought to imitate Elsie), she went right upstairs.
So it was Elsie who helped me to wash away the smoke of battle. That wasn"t so altogether bad. You should have seen her eyes, all you other fellows, when I undid the yellow leather belt from about my war-worn waist, and gave her the pouch of cartridges to put away.
"Are they Dum-Dum?" she said reverently.
And I said they were.
I didn"t really know about the cartridges, but at least _I_ was--and Elsie liked it very well. The fellows who talk a lot at such times never get on with girls.
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII
A FIT OF THE SULKS
Jove, wasn"t it just ripping to think that at last a chap could go where he liked, and do what he liked--all that horrid lot at the Grange being either dead or with the locksmith"s fingers between them and the outside world! Ripping? Rather! It was like a new earth.
All the same, you have no idea what a show place the ruined Grange became. Old Bailiff Ball stayed on and made a pretty penny by showing the people over. Especially the weaving-room, and where old Hobby sat, and the keyhole through which Elsie peeped to see her grandfather as if praying over the loom, with Jeremy"s knife hafted between his shoulder blades! I think they would have had a magic lantern next! But finally this was stopped by the police people. For Miss Orrin was still to be tried, and all the money that could be got out of the grounds of Deep Moat Grange was to be given back to the friends and relatives of the people who had been "arranged for." But the mischief was, n.o.body wanted to buy, and the whole place was in danger of going to rack and ruin.
As for me, I took to wandering about a good deal there. Maybe I was love-sick--though I hope not, for my good name"s sake. At least, it was about this time father said that we were far too young for any thought of marriage, but that Elsie could stay on in our house. Then Elsie was not happy, and was all the time wanting to go back to Nance Edgar"s and her teaching at Mr. Mustard"s--because my mother had got accustomed to the Caw girls, Harriet and Constantia, by this time, and could not bear the thought of parting with them. So Elsie, of course, would not stay, and go she did, as you shall hear.
We could have had some pretty good times, she and I, but for this worry. Father was about as fond of Elsie as I was (owing to the time behind the Monks" Oven). But, of course, he would not go openly against mother--that is, not in the house. It was not to be expected.
If it had been anything to do with the shop or business, he would simply have told mother to mind her own affairs. And mother would have done it, too. But with the house it was different.
Well, all this made me pretty melancholy--with no more stand-up in me than a piece of chewed string. I read poetry, too, on the sly--such rot, as I now see--never anything written plain out, but all the words twisted, the grammar all tail foremost, and no sense at all mostly. I don"t wonder nowadays people only use it in church to sing--and even then never think of bringing away their hymn books with them.
So what with the poetry, and the melancholy brought on by the thought of Elsie going back to have that old bristly weasel-faced Mustard breathe down her neck when she was doing sums, I brought myself to a pretty low ebb. Elsie was sorry for me, I think, but said nothing.
She had aches of her own under the old blue serge blouse (left side front) when Harriet Caw went past her on our stairs rustling in silk underthings and an impudent little nose in the air as if she smelt a drain.
At any rate I spent a good deal of time in the woods that summer.
Woods are most sympathetic places when you are young and just desperately sad, but can"t for the life of you tell why. Doctors, I believe, know. But when mother asked old Doc McPhail, he only grinned and said she had better "let the kail-pot simmer a while longer. The broth would be none the worse!"
But my mother could make nothing out of that, nor I either for that matter. Yet through the gla.s.s of the office door I actually saw the doctor grin at my father, and my father--yes, he actually winked back!
Old brutes, both of them--fifth commandment or no fifth commandment!
"No books--no office!" said old McPhail, "not for a while. Let the colt run till he tires!"
So the colt was, as it were, turned out to gra.s.s. The official explanation was that between nineteen and twenty there occurred a dangerous period--twenty-one was a yet more dangerous age. _And I had overgrown my strength!_
I liked that--_I_ who could vault the counter twenty-five times back and forth, leaning only on the fingers of one hand!
Something during the long summer days drew me persistently to the Deep Moat Woods. Some magnet of danger past and gone for ever--something, too, of nearness to the little schoolhouse, to which, spite of my father and myself, Elsie had carried her point and returned. I was sulky and jealous about this--much to Elsie"s indignation.
"Mr. Mustard--Mr. Mustard!" she said, with her eyes cold and contemptuous; "I can keep Mr. Mustard in his place--ay, or ten of him--you too, Joseph Yarrow, mopping about the woods like a sick cat!
You are not half the man your father is!"
And, indeed, I never set myself up to be.
The day I am telling about was a Sat.u.r.day. Elsie was to have gone for a walk with me; I expected it. But, instead, she informed me in the morning, when I met her setting out to go to the school-house for an extra lesson, that she had arranged to spend the afternoon with father in his office, going into her grandfather"s affairs.
"Mr. Yarrow," she said, "thinks that everything which my grandfather possessed _before_ he began to kill people is quite rightly mine. He had weaved hard for that. It would have been my mother"s, and it ought to be mine, too. Even a bad man, your father says, ought to be allowed to do a little good after he is dead, if it can be arranged honestly.
That is what your father says."
"My father!" I repeated after her bitterly, "it is always my father now."