Читать книгу Deep Moat Grange - Crockett Samuel Rutherford - Страница 4

But that same night we got the full story, so far as she knew it, from Nance Edgar. It did not help us any in finding out what had become of poor Harry the carrier and his mail bags, but because it involved Elsie's father and mother I will admit that it interested me nearly as much.

Nance Edgar was a weather-beaten woman of about fifty. She had lived nearly all her life in the fields, and was tanned like a leather schoolbag for carrying books. She was kindly, but you never could have told it on her. Only I knew because she had been kind to Elsie.

Afterwards I found out that often she would go supperless to bed that Elsie might have something to eat when she came home from school.

But when Nance Edgar talked it was with the curious kind of quiet I have noticed about the speech of gentlefolks. The other field workers said that she kept herself to herself. But in the furrow, or on the rig, she was kind to young ones or feeble folk who were not up to their work. So Nance, in spite of her aloofness, was not at all unpopular. She always had work, too, because she could be trusted with anything.

So that very night I said to Elsie: "Let's have it out with Nance about your people. Your grandfather is as rich as can be. There may be money in it, and my father says you should never let that go a-begging. Besides you ought to know about your father and mother. It is only respectable if you are asked."

"Oh, I know all that," said Elsie, mightily unmoved, "my mother married her cousin and her father was angry. She ran away. My grandfather can keep his old money. Who wants it? Not I! I am happier with Nance."

This was very well, but if Elsie was not curious, I was. So I cooed and besought round Nance Edgar that night, till at last she told us everything in her little kitchen, after the tea dishes had been washed up and the coal fire was beginning to catch – the flame paying bo-peep with the bars, and every now and then coming brightly out in a triumphant jet of light, unexpected like a cuckoo clock, shining on Elsie's yellow hair and Nance's calm, tired face as she told us the story —

"Breckonside was not a big place twenty years ago (she said), even less than it is now, but there is one house that is a-wanting. That was your grandfather's house, Elsie, him they call the Golden Farmer, that lives now at the Grange in Deep Moat Hollow.

"It was up yonder beyond the church, and in the summer mornings the tombstones were blithe to see, glinting rosy-coloured with the dew on them, and the long, well-nourished grass hiding the inscriptions. Now you may go up the burnside to the turn of the road where the kirkburn runs bonnie and clear down the hill. The heather and the breckon grow there together, and that they say gave its name to the village – Breckonside. At any rate, there where stood your grandfather's cottage – he was a poor man then – ye will see a kind of knowe or hillock, greener than the rest. But of the house not one stone is left upon another. The kindly mould is over all. The hemlock and the foxglove, what we used to call 'bloody fingers,' grow tall and red where lovers whispered cannily by the ingle nook, and of all that well-set garden plot where Hobby the Miser – that is now Mr. Howard Stennis – grew his weaving lint and dibbled his cabbages, only a single lilac bush looks over the corner of the broken-down dyke as you pass by!

"But at that time it was a heartsome spot. I mind it well; I was young mysel'." (Here Nance Edgar sighed and was silent awhile, looking at the pouting bo-peep of the little blue flames between the hearth bars.) "A-well, youth comes and youth goes, but at the last the greensward covers it like Miser Hobby's cottage.

"Long they dwelt there, Miser Stennis and his daughter Bell. She had the name of being bonnie to look on in her young days, and many a lover would fain have hung up his hat behind the kitchen door and taken his seat at Hobby Stennis's table as his son-in-law.

"But Hobby was a far-seeing carle and a plain-spoken. He had but one word for all such.

"'When I hae a felt want for ony sons-in-law I will put a notice in Editor Drake's weekly screed, or hae it intimated in the parish kirk!'

"There were ill reports even then about the miser. Lights were seen wandering up the hillsides above the cottage when the nights were mirk and unkindly. Hobby would be found far from home with a basket gathering simples and medical plants – that is, by his way of it. So he grew to be counted a wizard, and had the name of money which is so useful to a man in some ways, but more than all else makes the folk jealous, too.

"It was less than natural that Hobby should always have the best lint wherewith to weave the flowered tablecovers by which he made his fame. Why should he have early potatoes a clear fortnight before the rest of the Breckonsiders? But chiefly it was the ill-will about money that bred bad blood. Over the door of the parish church of Breckonside they had printed the motto, 'We serve the Lord.' But the right words should have been, 'We envy and grieve at the good of our neighbour.' For when the men thought of Miser Stennis's money bags they could have felled him, and when the women saw Bell Stennis's bonnie face smiling over her braw mantle, they set to work and bethought them what lie they could tell about her. All except me, and I was always by her side, as near as might be, loving her more than my own flesh and blood. And Bell told me all that was in her heart, because you see we had been at school together, sitting side by side on the same bench and sharing the same apple and toffee stick.

"So I was the only soul that knew it beforehand, when Bonnie Bell suddenly took matters into her own hand and gave Miser Hobby a son-in-law he had never bargained for – a first cousin of her own, an ensign in a marching regiment. The two foolish ones ran to Gretna to get married – I with them in the coach. But I had to tramp it back on my own feet, with Miser Hobby's malediction on my head as well as on theirs. You see he had spent money on the young fellow's commission hoping to get him out of the road, as soon as he suspected what was in the wind between Bell and him.

"But the regiment stayed on in Longtown just over the borders, and nearly every day Frank Stennis and a company would come through the countryside with feathers waving bravely in their bonnets, drawing in the silly young by the glint of their accoutrements, or wiling them to list by the merry noise of the pipe and drum that went before them and set the pulses jumping even in weak women's hearts.

"But after Bell took the road to Gretna, and the white cat by the Breckonside was left lonely, the miser never uttered word, but sat with shut mouth at the weaving of the wonderful flowered napery, the secret of which he alone possessed. And if he could not weave himself a new daughter with all his skill, at least he kept himself so busy that he seldom minded the one he had lost.

"And then he took to leaving his weaving, which nobody could do as well as he, and trying a new trade – that of cattle dealing and droving. At least, so it was said. At any rate Laird Stennis would shut up the cottage, and the sound of the weary shuttle would cease by the waterside. He would be seen riding to every market, cattle mart, horse fair, lamb sale, wool sale, displenishing-roup within fifty mile, his shoulders bent weaver fashion and his thin shanks legginged in untanned leather.

"But what was the wonder of the folk of Breckonside to see Laird Stennis, who could hardly abide his own kith and kin, suddenly bring a great stalwart colt of a ne'er-do-well, Jeremy Orrin by name, home to his house. For the creature was hardly held accountable for his actions. He had once killed a man in a brawl at a fair and been tried for his life, but had gotten off as being half an idiot, or what the folk about the south of the Cheviots called a 'natural.'

"The two of them brawled together, and drank and carried on to be the scandal of the place, till something happened – it was never known what – but Miser Stennis was laid up with a crack in his skull, and the Mad Jeremy tended him, gentle and tender as a mother they said. But so fierce with any one else that none, even the doctor, ventured near the cottage.

"Still your mother's name was never mentioned, and when others spoke to him of his daughter he would look round for fear of Daft Jeremy, who was jealous of her they said.

"And your father – well, I misdoubt me that he was no better than he should be. And my poor Bell had but a sorrowful time of it, following the regiment, and at last left behind when they embarked for the Indies. Then her father sent her word that having made her bed she might lie on it. She had no rights on him or on his money.

"So a year or two slipped by, and maybe another five or six to the back of that, and still no word of Bell. When, true as I am telling ye, who but Bell brought back word of herself. Faith, and it was strange word! I mind it clear as yesterday, for it was me, Nance Edgar, that am this day old and done, who gat the first glint of her.

"It was a fine summer morn, early in June, and the clouds in the sky to the east were just the colour of the first brier rosebuds in the hedge by the roadside. I came up the brae like a Untie and as free o' care, for my heart was light in those good days. There stood the cot of Breckonside before me, shining white in the sun. For the miser, though he spared most other things, never was a sparer of good whitewash. I was just beginning to listen for the click-clack of Hobby's shuttle, when down by the waterside methought I saw a ferlie.

"Fegs, I said to myself that surely the old times had come back again, and that the wee folk were disporting themselves once more in broad daylight. For, on the grass by the burn a bonnie bit bairn ran hither and thither waving its hands and laughing to the heavens for very gladness. The night had been calm, a 'gossamer night,' as the gipsy folk call it, and from hedge to hemlock, and from lowly bracken to tall Queen o' the Meadow, the silver threads were stretched taut like the cordage of some sea-going ship. The dew shone silver clear on ilka silken strand, and the blobs o' it were like pearls and diamonds in the morning sun.

"And aye the longer I stood the wilder the bairn ran and skipped lightfoot as a fairy herself. 'Bonnie – bonnie – oh, bonnie!' she cried, clapping her hands and laughing, 'see mither, mither, are they no unco bonnie?'

"Then, by the side of the beck, as if, being wearied with travel, she had set her down to take a drink of the caller burn water, I saw a woman sit. She was beneath a bush of hazel, and her head was resting tired-like on her hand. So, being back there in the shadow, I had not noticed her at the first, being taken up, as was small wonder, with the sight of that bonnie yellow-haired bairn flichtering here and there like a butterfly in the sun.

"Then the wee lass saw me and ran whatever she could to me. She took my hand and syne looked up in my face as trustful-like as if she ha' kenned me all her days.

"'Here woman,' she cried, 'come and wake my minnie to me, for I canna. She winna hearken when her wee Elsie speaks to her.'

"Hand in hand we went up to the poor thing, and even as I went a great fear gripped me by the heart. For the woman sat still, even when my step must have sounded in her ear. I laid my hand on her, and, as I am a living woman, she was clay cauld. The bairn looked ever up into my face.

"'Can you no waken my mither, either?' she said wistfully.

"'No,' said I. 'No, my puir, wee lassie!' For truth to tell, I kenned not what to say.

"'Will minnie never waken?' she asked again, bright as a button.

"'I fear not, bonnie lassie,' said I, and the tear was in my eye.

"Then the elf clapped her hands and danced like a yellow butterfly over the lea.

"'Then she willna greet any more! She willna be hungry any more. She will never need bite o' meat nor thread o' claes for ever and ever mair.' She lilted the words almost as if she had been singing a tune. 'She will be richt pleased, my minnie. For, oh, she grat sair and often! She carried me in her arms till her ain feet were hurted and she could gang nae farther. Late yestreen she sat doon here to wash them, and I sat, too, and after that she cuddled me in her airms. Are ye no richt glad for my minnie?'

"I telled her that I was glad, for naught less would satisfy her, though even as I spak the words the sob rose in my throat.

"And as we stood there, looking at the woman sitting with her face on her hands, what should happen but that the auld miser should come hirpling to the door, and there, too, looking over his shoulder, was Daft Jeremy, that the village bairns were wont to cry at and call the 'Mounster.'

"'What hae ye there, Nance Edgar?' the old man cried, shaking his stick at me; 'keep away from my door with your doxies and changeling bairns.'"

"But I was civil to him for his age's sake, and also because of the witless man that was looking over his shoulder. For it is not good to cross such as the Lord has smitten in their understanding, and so do my own folk never.

"'It is a woman, Laird Stennis,' quoth I, 'that hath set herself down to die by your burnside.'

"'Die,' cried he, with a queer scream most like a frighted hen flying down off the baulks, 'what word is that to speak? A woman dead by my burnside – what richt had she there? Who has taken such a liberty with Hobby Stennis?'

"'Nay, that you can come and see for yourself,' said I, a little nettled at the carle's hardness of heart. So the auld miser, bent and stiff, came hirpling barehead down the path, and behind him, looking most uncanny, danced Daft Jeremy, combing his hair with a weaver's heckle and muttering to himself. The morning sunshine fell fair on this strange couple, and when she saw him the little maid let go my hand and ran to Laird Stennis. She would have taken his hand, but he pushed her off. Whereat, she being affronted, the witch caught at his stick and pulled it away from him before he could resist. Then she gat astride and played horses with it on the green grass of the burnside dell. It was like an incantation.

"But without heeding her the old man went to the woman, and, lifting up her head, looked steadfastly in her face.

"'God in his heaven be merciful,' he cried, 'it is my daughter Bell!'

"Then the 'mounster' laughed loud and long, and wrapping his 'heckle' in a wisp of paper, he played a tune upon it with his mouth, dancing round and crying, 'There's her right for ye – ye said she hadna a right, Laird Stennis! Ye were that hard ye refused the woman room to die at your dykeside. But Bell has come hame to claim her own. Coffin and clay – coffin and clay! Sax foot of clean kirkyard sods! Faith, I wish a' Daft Jeremy's enemies had the same, nae mair and nae less. But it's as weel as it is, Laird Stennis – for Jeremy cannot be doing with grown women about the noose o' Breckonside. And it's him that has the say now, ye ken!'

"But the old man answered nothing, good or ill. He only stood and looked down at his daughter, muttering to himself words that sounded like 'Bell has comed hame… My bairn has comed back to me at the last!'

"So in time the miser buried his daughter decently, and took the little lass hame to him to bring up. But when this came to be talked of in the countryside, there was a well-to-do woman in Dumfries toon, a Mistress Comly or Comline, that was some kin to Bell Stennis through her mother, and when she heard o' the bit bairn shut up in that lonesome house with only a miser and a daft man, she had heart pity on her, and as soon as she had shut her shop one Saturday afternoon, off she set to Breckonside in a pony cart that she used to bring her goods up from the port quay.

"It was but a coldrife welcome she gat at the white house of Breckonside, but sorrow a bit Margaret Comline cared for that. She tied up her sonsy beast, that was, like herself, fat as pats of butter, to the yettpost of the miser's garden. And when he came to the door himself, she did not take a couple of minutes in telling the auld runt her business, plump and plain.

"'I hae comed to ask ye to put away that daft man,' she said, 'and get a decent woman for a house-keeper, Laird Stennis.'

"'Meanin' yourself, Margar't Comline,' interrupted the miser, with a cunning smirk. He had shut the door in her face, and was conducting negotiations through a crack.

"'Me be your housekeeper!' cried the visitor, 'me that is a ratepayer and a well-considered indweller in the burgh o' Dumfries. Man, I would not cross your doorstep though ye were Provost. But I hear that ye hae this bit bairn in the hoose, and a lassie bairn, too (that's full cousin's daughter to myself). I have come to tell ye that it is neither Christian nor decent to bring up the wee thing but and ben wi' a kenned ill-doer like Daft Jeremy, that has twice been tried for his life for the shedding of blood!'

"From behind the closed inner door of the cothouse there came a high-pitched angry cry that garred the very blood run chill as ice in Margaret Comline's veins. I mean that the thought of it did afterwards. For at the time she just looked about her to see that Donald, her pony, was not far away, and that the road was clear to the light market cart in case that she had to make a break for it. She had eke a sturdy staff in her hand, that the loons of the port kenned bravely the weight of.

"It was the voice of the man-wanting-wit, crying out to be at her, that she heard.

"'She has ta'en from me my guid name,' his words reached her through the very stone and lime of the house, 'and she wad take the bonnie siller oot of the black chest that you and Jeremy keep so carefully. Gie the woman the bit lassie bairn, Laird Stennis, and let her travel. For less will not serve her, and forbye a bairn is only an expense and an eating up o' good meat in any man's house!'

"And while the din was at its height in the cot, there came a sound to Mistress Comline's ear that garred her kind heart loup within her. It was like the whimpering of a bairn that is ill used and dares not cry out loud. And with that she for gat her fear of the strange fool, Daft Jeremy, and with her naked hands she shook the door of the cothouse of Breckonside till the iron stinchel clattered in its ring.

"'The magistrates o' Dumfries shall ken o' this or I am a day aulder!' she cried in to them. 'Gie me the lassie or the preventive men shall hear of the barrels ye hae hidden in the yard. Supervisor Imrie shall be here and search every inch high and low if ye lay as much as a finger on the innocent bairn!'

"And even as she cried out threatenings and shook the stout oaken door so that the leaves almost fell asunder, Margaret Comline heard a noise behind her, and whipped about quickly with her heart in her mouth, for she thought it was Daft Jeremy come out to slay her.

"But instead it was the wee lass herself that had escaped by a kind of a miracle through the window of the 'aumry' or pantry closet. For Laird Stennis had it closed with a board, grudging the expense of glass. The lass was greeting and laughing at the same time, feared to the marrow of her bits of bones, but yet crouse withal. Mistress Comline marvelled to see her.

"'I hae left the stead of my teeth in his hand, I wot!' she said, as Mistress Comline helped her into the light cart at the roadside.

"'And see what I brought with me,' she added as they drove away. It was a shagreen leather pocketbook like those which well-to-do farmers carry, or rich English drovers that come to the cattle trysts to buy for the English market. And Mistress Comline, struck with fear lest she should be taken for a thief, would have turned back, but that at that very moment, out of the door of the cot, there burst a terrifying figure – even Daft Jeremy himself, a great flesher's knife uplifted in his hand. He was scraiching out words without meaning, and looked so fleysome that the decent woman e'en slipped the shagreen purse into her reticule basket and laid whiplash to Donald till that pampered beast must have thought that the punishment of all his sins had overtaken him at once.

"The 'mounster' pursued after them with these and such like affrighting outcries to the very entering in of Longtown. And never had Margaret Comline, decent woman, been so glad to recognize Her Majesty's authority as when she saw Supervisor Imrie with two-three of his men come riding up from the Brig-End and out upon the green grass of the Terreggles Braes. But she said nothing, only gave them a good day in passing, and bade them 'beware o' the puir "naiteral," Daft Jeremy, that was in one o' his fits o' anger that day!'

"'Sic a fierce craitur should be in the Towbooth. He is a danger to the lieges,' said Supervisor Imrie, adding more cautiously, 'That is, were it no that he would be a cess on the burgh and pairish!"

"When Mistress Comline gat to her own door she first delivered Donald into the hands of her serving prentice, Robin Carmorie, as stout and blythe a lad as ever walked the Plainstanes. But the wee lass she took by the hand up to her own chamber, and there she stripped her to the skin and washed her and put fine raiment on her, new from the shop – aye, and did not rest from her labours till she had gathered every auld rag that she found on her and committed them to the flames, as if they had been art and part in the wizardry of Laird Stennis, her grandfather, and the coming ill-repute of the white cothouse on the brae-face of Breckonside.

"But, fearing she knew not clearly what, she sealed the shagreen pocket-book up in a clean white wrapper and laid it aside in her drawer, saying to herself, 'If this be honestly come by the laird is no the man to forget to ca' in for his ain. And if no – " Here a shake of the head and a shrewd smile intimated that the contents of the pocket-book might one day be useful to its finder, little Elsie Comline, as she was now to be named.

"'And wha has a better richt!' the shopkeeper would add, perhaps to salve her conscience in the matter.

"But, indeed, it was but seldom, the pocket-book once safe in the drawer, that she thought about the matter at all. For Margaret Comline was a busy woman of affairs, having under her serving lassies and prentice loons, a shop on the ground floor of a house in the Vennel, and a well-patronized stall in the market. All day she went to and fro, busily commending her goods and reproving her underlings with equal earnestness and point. Sunday and Saturday the wrinkle was never off her brow. Like Martha in the Scripture, she was careful and troubled about many things. She read but seldom, and when she did her memory retained not long the imprint of what she read. So that our young monkey, Elsie, being fresh from the mischief-making of the grammar school, where she was drilled with a class of boys, used to shift the marker of woven silk back ten pages or so in the godly book over which her foster mother fell asleep on Sabbath afternoons. By which means Mistress Comline was induced to peruse the same improving passage at least fifty times in the course of a year, yet without once discovering, or for a moment suspecting the fact.

"For all that, she saw to it that Elsie did her nightly school tasks, recommending the master to 'palmie' her well if she should ever come to school unprepared. But, being a quick and ready learner, the young lass needed the less encouragement of that kind.

"As she grew older, too, Elsie would upon occasions serve a customer in the shop, though Margaret Comline never allowed her to stand on the street among the babble of tongues at the market stalls. In a little time she could distinguish the hanks of yarn and thread, the webs of wincey, and bolts of linen as well as her mistress, and was counted a shrewd and capable hand at a bargain before she was fifteen.

"All this time her grandfather, the old miser Hobby, lived on in the little white house up among the fir-woods of Breckonside, growing ever harder and richer, at least according to the clashes of the country folk. By day, and sometimes far into the night, the click of his shuttle was never silent, and, being an old man, it was thought a marvel how he could sit so long at his loom. And still Daft Jeremy abode with him and filled his pirns. Sometimes the 'naiteral' would sit on the dyke top at the end of the cottage and laugh at the farmers as they rode by, crying names and unco words after them, so that many shunned to pass that way in the gloaming, for fear of the half-witted, strong creature that mopped and mowed and danced at the lonely gable end. And they were of excellent judgment who did so.

"For Riddick of Langbarns disappeared frae the face o' the earth, being last seen within half a mile of Laird Stennis's loaning, and, less than a month after that, Lang Hutchins, who came to Longtown with all his gains frae a year's trading padded inside his coat, so folks said, started out of Longtown at dusk and was never seen in Breckonside again. There were those who began to whisper fearsome things about the innocent-appearing white cot at the top of the Lang Wood o' Breckonside.

"Yet there were others again, and they a stout-hearted majority, who scoffed, and told how Riddick had been seen in market carrying more than his load of whisky, and that as for Lang Hutchins, had he not dared his Maker that very day to strike him dead if he spoke not the truth – all that heard him well knowing that even as he uplifted his hand he lied in his throat.

"Nor was Elsie wholly forgotten by her only near of kin. Twice or thrice a year there came from the cottage a web of fine cloth, woven as only Laird Stennis could weave it, with the inscription written plainly thereon, 'To be sold for the benefit of the upkeep of my granddaughter, Elsie Stennis.'

"After his accident, which nobody could explain and, indeed, few dared to ask about, Laird Stennis took a disgust at the Weaver's Cot by the burnside. He got his miserly money out, and with it he bought the estate of Deep Moat Hollow, that had been in the market for long – and they say that he got it for a song, the late owner's need being great and money terrible scarce. Then he and Daft Jeremy removed thither, and they had Jeremy's sister, a queer old maid (madder, they said, than himself), to keep house for the pair of them. Then the Laird Stennis rode ever the more to market and tryst, and waxed ever the richer, laying field to field, as is forbidden in the Holy Book. Then good Mrs. Comline died, and, though I was no better than a field worker, I posted off to Dumfries, and took ye home to dwell with me in this house which is my very own. All for fear that your grandfather would claim you and take you to bide in the same house as Mad Jeremy and his sisters. Oh, yes, there are more of them, and, indeed, by what I can see and hear the place is like an asylum. Such antics were never heard tell of, and the poor creatures going dressed like zanies out of a booth at the Thorsby wakes."

Then we both cried out to Nance to know if she had seen these strange people, and to tell us what they were like.

"Seen them? Of course," she answered. "Do not I work there week in, week out for Bailiff Ball, who is a good man and honest in his payments."

"Tell us about Daft Jeremy," we said, both speaking together, in a fashion we had.

"Jeremy Orrin," said Nance, thoughtfully, giving the fire a poke with her clog; "well, at times the creature is fairly sensible. They say he will talk of wonders he has seen on the deep, and in foreign parts – evil deeds and worse talk that makes the blood run cold to listen. To look at – oh, he is a wild-looking fellow, with long black hair all any way under his broad bonnet – something between a gipsy and a black-corked minstrel at a fair."

"And his sister?"

"Oh," said Nance shortly, "I know little of her. She is old enough to be the mother of the lot, and if any of them have any sense it is Aphra Orrin – or Miss Orrin, as Mr. Stennis makes all call her. She is sixty, if she is a day. But she plays with her brood of antic lunatics all about the gardens, singing and making a mock of religion. Grown women they all are, but like so many scarecrows in their dress. Laird Stennis, they say, wanted their sister to send them to a home for such like. But she would not, and Jeremy was against it, too, so there they bide, a disgrace to all the countryside, though harmless enough, God knows."

Then Elsie's eyes met mine. We nodded as Nance finished her tale. Both of us knew that we meant to go and see for ourselves to-morrow what mysteries were contained within the Deep Moat in the Grange Hollow.