"I meant no harm," said the boy doggedly. "It wor he towd me about t" witch--it wor he as put it into our yeds--Louie an me."
Margaret exclaimed. So it was he that got "Lias talking about the Pool in the spring! Some one had been "cankin wi him about things they didn"t owt"--that she knew--"and she might ha thowt it wor"
Davy. For that one day"s "worritin ov him" she had had him on her hands for weeks--off his sleep, and off his feed, and like a blighted thing. "Aye, it"s aw play to yo," she said, trembling all through in her pa.s.sion, as she held the boy--"it"s aw play to yo and your minx of a sister. An if it means deein to the old man hissel, _yo_ don"t care! "Margaret," says the doctor to me last week, "if you can keep his mind quiet he may hang on a bit.
But you munna let him excite hissel about owt--he mun tak things varra easy. He"s like a wilted leaf--n.o.bbut t"least thing will bring it down. He"s worn varra thin like, heart an lungs, and aw t"
rest of him." An d" yo think I"st sit still an see yo _murder_ him--the poor lamb--afore my eyes--me as ha got nowt else but him i" t" wide warld? No--yo yoong varlet--goo an ast soom one else about Jenny Crum if yo "re just set on meddlin wi divil"s wark--but yo"ll no trouble my "Lias."
She took her hands off him, and the boy was going away in a half-sullen silence, when she caught him again.
"Who towd yo about "Lias an t" Pool, n.o.bbut "Lias hissel?"
"Uncle Reuben towd me summat."
"Aye, Reuben Grieve--he put him in t" carrier"s cart, an behaved moor like a Christian nor his wife--I allus mind that o" Reuben Grieve, when foak coe him a foo. Wal, I"st tell yo, Davy, an if iver yo want to say a word about Jenny Crum in our house afterwards, yo mun ha a gritstone whar your heart owt to be--that"s aw."
And she leant over the wall of the little garden, twisting her ap.r.o.n in her old, tremulous hands, and choking down the tears which had begun to rise. Then, looking straight before her, and in a low, plaintive voice, which seemed to float on hidden depths of grief, she told her story.
It appeared that "Lias had been "queer" a good while before the adventure of the Pool. But, according to his wife, "he wor that cliver on his good days, foak could mak shift wi him on his bad days;" the school still prospered, and money was still plentiful.
Then, all of a sudden, the moorland villages round were overtaken by an epidemic of spirit-rapping and table-turning. "It wor sperrits here, sperrits there, sperrits everywhere--t" warld wor gradely swarmin wi "em," said Margaret bitterly. It was all started, apparently, by a worthless "felly" from Castleton, who had a great reputation as a medium, and would come over on summer evenings to conduct seances at Frimley and the places near. "Lias, already in an excitable, overworked state, was bitten by the new mania, and could think of nothing else.
One night he and the Castleton medium fell talking about Jenny Crum, the witch of Kinder Scout, and her Easter Eve performances.
The medium bet "Lias a handsome sum that he would not dare face her. "Lias, piqued and wrathful, and "wi moor yell on board nor he could reetly stan," took the bet. Margaret heard nothing of it. He announced on Easter Eve that he was going to a brother in Edale for the Sunday, and gave her the slip. She saw no more of him till the carrier brought home to her, on the Sunday morning, a starved and pallid object--"gone clean silly, an hutched thegither like an owd man o" seventy--he bein fifty-six by his reet years." With woe and terror she helped him to his bed, and in that bed he stayed for more than a year, while everything went from them--school and savings, and all the joys of life.
"An yo"ll be wantin to know, like t" rest o" "em, what he saw!"
cried Margaret angrily, facing round upon the boy, whose face was, indeed, one question." "Margaret, did he tell tha what t" witch said to un?"--every blatherin idiot i" th" parish asked me that, wi his mouth open, till I cud ha stopped my ears an run wheniver I seed a livin creetur. What do I keer?--what doos it matter to me what he saw? I doan"t bleeve he saw owt, if yo ast _me_. He wor skeert wi his own thinkins, an th" cowd gripped him i" th"
in"ards, an twisted him as yo may twist a withe of hay--Aye! it wor a _cruel_ neet. When I opened t" door i" t" early mornin, t"
garden wor aw black--th" ice on t" reservoir wor inches thick. Mony a year afterwards t" foak round here ud talk o" that for an April frost. An my poor "Lias--lost on that fearfu Scout--sleepin out wi"out a rag to cover him, an skeert soomhow--t"Lord or t"Devil knows how! And then foak ud have me mak a good tale out o"
it--soomthin to gie "em a ticklin down their backbane--soomthin to pa.s.s an evenin--_Lord!"_
The wife"s voice paused abruptly on this word of imprecation, or appeal, as though her own pa.s.sion choked her. David stood beside her awkwardly, his eyes fixed on the gravel, wherewith one foot was playing. There was no more sullenness in his expression.
Margaret"s hand still played restlessly with the handkerchief. Her eyes were far away, her mind absorbed by the story of her own fate.
Round the moorside, on which the cottage was built, there bent a circling edge of wood, now aflame with all the colour of late autumn. Against its deep reds and browns, Margaret"s small profile was thrown out--the profile already of the old woman, with the meeting nose and chin, the hollow cheek, the maze of wrinkles round the eyes. Into that face, worn by the labour and the grief of the poor--into that bending figure, with the peasant shawl folded round the head and shoulders--there had pa.s.sed all the tragic dignity which belongs to the simple and heartfelt things of human life, to the pain of helpless affection, to the yearning of irremediable loss.
The boy beside her was too young to feel this. But he felt more, perhaps, than any other lad of the moorside could have felt. There was, at all times, a natural responsiveness in him of a strange kind, vibrating rather to pain than joy. He stood by her, embarra.s.sed, yet drawn to her--waiting, too, as it seemed to him, for something more that must be coming.
"An then," said Margaret at last, turning to him, and speaking more quietly, but still in a kind of tense way, "then, when "Lias wor took bad, yo know, Davy, I had my boys. Did yo ever hear tell o"
what came to "em, Davy?"
The boy shook his head.
"Ah!" she said, catching her breath painfully, "they"re moast forgotten, is my boys. "Lias had been seven weeks i" his bed, an I wor noan so mich cast down--i" those days I had a sperrit more "n most. I thowt th" boys ud keer for us--we"d gien em a good bringin up, an they wor boath on "em larnin trades i" Manchester. Yan evenin--it wor that hot we had aw t" doors an windows open--theer came a man runnin up fro t" railway. An my boys were kilt, Davy--boath on "em--i" Duley Moor Tunnel. They wor coomin to spend Sunday wi us, an it wor an excursion train--I niver knew t" reets on "t!"
She paused and gently wiped away her tears. Her pa.s.sion had all ebbed.
"An I thowt if I cud ha got "em home an buried "em, Davy, I could ha borne it better. But they wor aw crushed, an cut about, an riddlet to bits--they wudna let me ha em. And so we kep it fro "Lias. Soomtimes I think he knows t" boys are dead--an then soomtimes he frets "at they doan"t coom an see him. Fourteen year ago! An I goo on tellin him they"ll coom soon. An last week, when I towd him it, I thowt to mysel it wor just th" naked truth!"
David leant over the gate, pulling at some withered hollyhocks beside it. But when, after a minute of choking silence, Margaret caught his look, she saw, though he tried to hide it, that his black eyes were swimming. Her full heart melted altogether.
"Oh, Davy, I meant naw offence!" she said, catching him by the arm again. "Yo"re a good lad, an yo"re allus a welcome seet to that poor creetur. But yo"ll not say owt to trouble him again, laddie--will yo? If he"d yeerd yo just now--but, by t" Lord"s blessin, he did na--he"d ha worked himsel up fearfu"! I"d ha had naw sleep wi him for neets--like it wor i" th" spring. Yo munna--yo munna! He"s all I ha--his livin "s my livin, Davy--an when he"s took away--why, I"ll mak shift soomhow to dee too!"
She let him go, and, with a long sigh, she lifted her trembling hands to her head, put her frilled cap straight and her shawl. She was just moving away, when something of a different sort struck her sensitive soul, and she turned again. She lived for "Lias, but she lived for her religion too, and it seemed to her she had been sinning in her piteous talk.
"Dinna think, Davy," she said hurriedly, "as I"m complainin o" th"
Lord"s judgments. They"re aw mercies, if we did but know. An He tempers th" wind--He sends us help when we"re droppin for sorrow.
It worn"t for nothin He made us all o" a piece. Theer"s good foak i" th" warld--aye, theer is! An what"s moor, theer"s soom o" th"
best mak o" foak gooin about dressed i" th" worst mak o" clothes.
Yo"ll find it out when yo want "em."
And with a clearing face, as of one who takes up a burden again and adjusts it anew more easily, she walked back to the house.
David went down the lane homewards, whistling hard. But once, as he climbed a stile and sat dangling his legs a moment on the top, he felt his eyes wet again. He dashed his hand impatiently across them. At this stage of youth he was constantly falling out with and resenting his own faculty of pity, of emotion. The att.i.tude of mind had in it a sort of secret half-conscious terror of what feeling might do with him did he but give it head. He did not want to feel--feeling only hurt and stabbed--he wanted to enjoy, to take in, to discover--to fling the wild energies of mind and body into some action worthy of them. And because he had no knowledge to show him how, and a wavering will, he suffered and deteriorated.
The Dawsons, indeed, became his close friends. In Margaret there had sprung up a motherly affection for the handsome lonely lad; and he was grateful. He took her "cuts" down to the Clough End office for her; when the snow was deep on the Scout, and Reuben and David and the dogs were out after their sheep night and day, the boy still found time to shovel the snow from Margaret"s roof and cut a pa.s.sage for her to the road. The hours he spent this winter by her kitchen fire, chatting with "Lias, or eating havercakes, or helping Margaret with some household work, supplied him for the first time with something of what his youth was, in truth, thirsting for--the common kindliness of natural affection.
But certainly, to most observers, he seemed to deteriorate. Mr.
Ancrum could make nothing of him. David held the minister at arm"s-length, and meanwhile rumours reached him that "Reuben Grieve"s nevvy" was beginning to be much seen in the public-houses; he had ceased entirely to go to chapel or Sunday school; and the local gossips, starting perhaps from a natural prejudice against the sons of unknown and probably disreputable mothers, prophesied freely that the tall, queer-looking lad would go to the bad.
All this troubled Mr. Ancrum sincerely. Even in the midst of some rising troubles of his own he found the energy to b.u.t.tonhole Reuben again, and torment him afresh on the subject of a trade for the lad.
Reuben, flushed and tremulous, went straight from the minister to his wife--with the impetus of Mr. Ancrum"s shove, as it were, fresh upon him. Sitting opposite to her in the back kitchen, while she peeled her potatoes with a fierce competence and energy which made his heart sick within him, Reuben told her, with incoherent repet.i.tions of every phrase, that in his opinion the time had come when Mr. Gurney should be written to, and some of Sandy"s savings applied to the starting of Sandy"s son in the world.
There was an ominous silence. Hannah"s knife flashed, and the potato-peelings fell with a rapidity which fairly paralysed Reuben.
In his nervousness, he let fall the name of Mr. Ancrum. Then Hannah broke out. "_Some_ foo"," she knew, had been meddling, and she might have guessed that fool was Mr. Ancrum. Instead of defending her own position, she fell upon Reuben and his supporter with a rhetoric whereof the moral flavour was positively astounding.
Standing with the potato-bowl on one hip and a hand holding the knife on the other, she delivered her views as to David"s laziness, temper, and general good-for-nothingness. If Reuben chose to incur the risks of throwing such a young lout into town-wickedness, with no one to look after him, let him; she"d be glad enough to be shut on him. But, as to writing to Mr. Gurney and that sort of talk, she wasn"t going to bandy words--not she; but n.o.body had ever meddled with Hannah Grieve"s affairs yet and found they had done well for themselves.
"An I wouldna advise yo, Reuben Grieve, to begin now--no, I wouldna. I gie yo fair noatice. Soa theer"s not enough for t" lad to do, Mr. Ancrum, he thinks? Perhaps he"ll tak th" place an try?
I"d not gie him as mich wage as ud fill his stomach i" th"
week--noa, I"d not, not if yo wor to ask _me_--a bletherin windy chap as iver I saw. I"d as soon hear a bird-clapper preach as him--theer"d be more sense an less noise! An they"re findin it out down theer--we"st see th" back on him soon."
And to Reuben, looking across the little scullery at his wife, at the harsh face shaken with the rage which these new and intolerable attempts of her husband to dislodge the yoke of years excited in her, it was as though like Christian and Hopeful he were trying to get back into the Way, and found that the floods had risen over it.
When he was out of her sight, he fell into a boundless perplexity.
Perhaps she was right, after all. Mr. Ancrum was a meddler and he an a.s.s. When next he saw David, he spoke to the boy harshly, and demanded to know where he went loafing every afternoon. Then, as the days went on, he discovered that Hannah meant to visit his insubordination upon him in various unpleasant ways. There were certain little creature comforts, making but small show on the surface of a life of general abstinence and frugality, but which, in the course of years, had grown very important to Reuben, and which Hannah had never denied him. They were now withdrawn. In her present state of temper with her better half, Hannah could not be "fashed" with providing them. And no one could force her to brew him his toddy at night, or put his slippers to warm, or keep his meals hot and tasty for him, if some emergency among the animals made him late for his usual hours--certainly not the weak and stammering Reuben. He was at her mercy, and he chafed indescribably under her unaccustomed neglect.
As for Mr. Ancrum, his own affairs, poor soul, soon became so absorbing that he had no thoughts left for David. There were dissensions growing between him and the "Christian Brethren." He spoke often at the Sunday meetings--too often, by a great deal, for the other shining lights of the congregation. But his much speaking seemed to come rather of restlessness than of a fall "experience,"
so torn, subtle, and difficult were the things he said. Grave doubts of his doctrine were rising among some of the "Brethren"; a mean intrigue against him was just starting among others, and he himself was tempest-tossed, not knowing from week to week whether to go or stay.
Meanwhile, as the winter went on, he soon perceived that Reuben Grieve"s formidable wife was added to the ranks of his enemies. She came to chapel, because for a Christian Brother or Sister to go anywhere else would have been a confession of weakness in the face of other critical and observant communities--such, for instance, as the Calvinistic Methodists, or the Particular Baptists--not to be thought of for a moment. But when he pa.s.sed her, he got no greeting from her; she drew her skirts aside, and her stony eye looked beyond him, as though there were nothing on the road. And the sharp-tongued things she said of him came round to him one by one.
Reuben, too, avoided the minister, who, a year or two before, had brought fountains of refreshing to his soul, and in the business of the chapel, of which he was still an elder, showed himself more inarticulate and confused than ever. While David, who had won a corner in Mr. Ancrum"s heart since the days of their first acquaintance at Sunday-school--David fled him altogether, and would have none of his counsel or his friendship. The alienation of the Grieves made another and a bitter drop in the minister"s rising cup of failure.
So the little web of motives and cross-motives, for the most part of the commonest earthiest hue, yet shot every here and there by a thread or two of heavenlier stuff, went spinning itself the winter through round the unknowing children. The reports which had reached Mr. Ancrum were true enough. David was, in his measure, endeavouring to "see life." On a good many winter evenings the lad, now nearly fifteen, and shooting up fast to man"s stature, might have been seen among the topers at the "Crooked Cow," nay, even lending an excited ear to the Secularist speakers, who did their best to keep things lively at a certain low public kept by one Jerry Timmins, a Radical wag, who had often measured himself both in the meeting-houses and in the streets against the local preachers, and, according to his own following, with no small success. There was a covered skittle-ground attached to this house in which, to the horrid scandal of church and chapel, Sunday dances were sometimes held. A certain fastidious pride, and no doubt a certain conscience towards Reuben, kept David from experimenting in these performances, which were made as demonstratively offensive to the pious as they well could be without attracting the attention of the police.
But at the disputations between Timmins and a succession of religious enthusiasts, ministers and others, which took place on the same spot during the winter and spring, David was frequently present.
Neither here, however, nor at the "Crooked Cow" did the company feel the moody growing youth to be one of themselves. He would sit with his pint before him, silent, his great black eyes roving round the persons present. His tongue was sharp on occasion, and his fists ready, so that after various attempts to make a b.u.t.t of him he was generally let alone. He got what he wanted--he learnt to know what smoking and drinking might be like, and the jokes of the taproom. And all by the help of a few shillings dealt out to him this winter for the first time by Reuben, who gave them to him with a queer deprecating look and an injunction to keep the matter secret from Hannah. As to the use the lad made of them, Reuben was as ignorant as he was of all other practical affairs outside his own few acres.