Читать книгу A Man of the Moors - Sutcliffe Halliwell - Страница 3

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Joe Strangeways the husband was called; and if roughness could make any man a diamond, then he was emphatically of the purest water. But, apart from his roughness, the untrained eye could detect few good qualities in him; his wife had searched, with tears and prayer, for any redeeming point in his character, and now, at the end of five years, she found herself further than ever from the goal. A harsh man he was, indifferent when not jealous, callous when not actively cruel: his speech was coarse, his voice harsh and raucous, and he was in a perpetual state of growing a beard—a thick, black scrub, as rough as his uncouth tongue. Once a week he got very drunk, and his wife, before she learned to know the signs of the times and to prepare herself accordingly, was apt to suffer physical discomfort.

Kate Strangeways, the wife, was in all things the opposite of her husband: strong, while he was blustering; sensitive, while he was callous; careful of speech and of her personal appearance, while he cared not a pipeful of shag for these things. She was of the fine moor breed, and she had grown up under the eye of the great God who dwells between the hill-summits and the clouds. Why she had married Joe Strangeways, it would have been hard to say; his position as master-quarryman of the works at the edge of the moor was not one to tempt the recognized belle of a country that knew how to rear fine women; his manners did not atone in any way for deficiencies of appearance; her own folk were opposed to the marriage. Perhaps it was just because he had everything against him that the woman in her drove her into his arms.

If you leave the village of Marshcotes behind you, and strike straight across the moor, at the end of three miles or so you will see a biggish house frowning down on you from the top of the ridge which divides the counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire. It had been a roystering spot once on a time, this Peewit House, when a race of sturdy moor squireens held it; but the old breed had died out, and people were not eager, even in those days, to cross three miles of heath in search of a dwelling. Joe Strangeways had obtained a long lease of the place at a nominal rental; he liked to think his wife had no neighbours, for his cur-bred kind of jealousy resented the thought that she was able to hold converse with her fellows while he was away at the quarries.

The tale of Kate Strangeways' life might have run so to the end, had it not been for a certain charitable old lady who lived in the Manor House at the end of Marshcotes village. Mrs. Lomax had the reputation of being mad; but, so long as her madness took the form of distributing money, wine, and food broadcast through the district, no one resented it. She certainly was eccentric, this gaunt old lady: she made a practice of walking at least ten miles every day of her life, winter and summer alike, and the habit had reduced her to an extraordinary leanness of person; her clothes were always too large for her, and her voice was harsh as a man's, through constant exposure to wind and rain. But she was a lady, and a soft-hearted one to boot, despite her gauntness and her shabbiness; and her one consuming pride lay in the fact that the Lomaxes had held the Manor since Marshcotes was a village, a matter of some five hundred odd years.

Kate Strangeways fell ill one spring, and Mrs. Lomax chanced to drop in during one of her lengthy walks.

"H'm," observed the old lady, as she rose to take her leave, "you want fattening. Good red port is the thing for you, and I shall bring you some to-morrow."

"Oh, there is nothing the matter with me!" protested the sick woman. "I won't think of your troubling."

"Now, my dear, you are falling a victim to pride, which is a bane. I have had my own way for sixty-three years, and I shall not submit to dictation from a child of twenty-five. You will see me again to-morrow."

Strangeways looked black when he heard of the visit; he had no pride in the matter of accepting good red port—he was, in fact, already drinking it in anticipation—but it was a shock to him to learn that Mrs. Lomax and his wife had seen as much of each other in the past as Kate admitted, in a thoughtless moment, to have been the case.

"Keep thyseln to thyseln, and let other fowk do th' same!" he growled, betaking himself to the kitchen sink for a wash.

Hannah, the maid-of-all-work, was washing a dishcloth when Strangeways entered; she was no friend of Kate's, because they both happened to be women with wills of their own, and she never wearied of insinuating spokes into her mistress's wheel.

"There's a sight o' fuss an' clatter, to my thinking, when some fowks is poorly," she said, settling her square jaw into firmer lines. "Th' missus, just becos she feels a bit out o' sorts, like, gets a notion that she's going to dee: she mun hev this, an' she mun hev that, an' Mrs. Lummax, th' girt gawk, comes an' fal-lals her to th' top on her bent, till there's no doing nowt wi' her nohow. Gie me a man to live wi', says I, what doesn't sicken becos his little finger hes a pimple on't."

"Hod thy din, woman, an' let me wash myseln!" muttered Joe, thrusting her aside, and taking his place at the sink. Hannah's little speech, however, had had its effect, and Strangeways already found himself doubly aggrieved at the intrusion of Mrs. Lomax into his home. "There'll no good come on it," he said, as he buried his brawny arms in the soapsuds: "what does she, a lady born, want to mak free an' easy wi' my wife for? Comes here for a cup o' tea now an' then, does she, when she gets tired o' trapesing about th' moor? Well, I'll be heving summat to say to that i' a while."

Mrs. Lomax, however, true to her word, brought a basket of good things to Peewit House on the following morning; and the sight of two cobwebby bottles did much to put Strangeways in a better humour, when he came home at the end of the day's work. After the tea-things had been removed, he settled himself in the ingle nook, lit his pipe, and took one of the bottles in his hand.

"Tha needs summat sustaining, lass," he observed, knocking the bottle-neck against the mantel-shelf; "an' happen I'll join thee, for fear tha should feel lonely, like."

"You're not to drink it, Joe; it was only meant just for a glass now and then, and I won't have Mrs. Lomax put on."

"Oh, tha willun't, willun't tha? We'll see about that," retorted Joe, with grim levity.

He reached down a pewter mug from the wall, filled it to the brim, and took a long gulp: then he passed it across to his wife, but she refused to touch it. As the evening wore on, Joe grew mellow with the unaccustomed vintage; he opened the second bottle, and Kate, having exhausted entreaty and abuse alike, left him in disgust. She locked the bedroom door, as her custom was at such times, and left her husband to pass the night as best he could.

A few days later Mrs. Lomax dropped in again.

"Now, my dear, are you feeling any better for the wine?" she asked, in a voice that was more suited to a battle-field than to an invalid's room. "You're not looking one scrap better, at any rate. Come, have you obeyed my orders?"

Kate flushed.

"I—I don't care to drink it," she stammered.

Mrs. Lomax glanced sharply at her; she had some acquaintance with Joe Strangeways' habits, and she read the situation aright.

"You must. Bring out a bottle this moment, and I shall watch you drink two glasses at the least."

Again the younger woman flushed, then grew pale with shame; she could answer nothing, with those two hawk-like eyes looking through and through her. The old lady's lips took to themselves a grim smile.

"About what time does your husband return from his work?" she demanded.

"He leaves the quarries at the half after five—but—you wouldn't be thinking of saying anything, Mrs. Lomax?"

"That is just what I am thinking of, my dear; it is five o'clock now, and I have not walked as much as I should like to-day. I will go towards the quarries and give your husband a straightforward piece of my mind. No, you need offer no excuses for him; when I make up my mind to a thing, I make it up, and there is an end of it." And with this the old lady marched out at the door, her back stiffened, her right hand flourishing the belligerent-looking stick which was her inseparable companion.

Strangeways, crossing the dip in the moor this side the quarries, was aware of a bony figure, three inches his master in point of height, standing across his path.

"Joe Strangeways, I want a word with you."

Joe thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and tried to assume an air of ease; but he did not feel at home with the situation.

"Well, here I stand, my masterful lady; I'm hearkening."

"You have a wife who is a hundred times too good for you; she falls ill through no cause whatever but your treatment of her, and then—you drink the wine which I brought to strengthen her."

"It's a lie!" cried Joe, his face blackening.

"Is it a lie, Joe Strangeways?" said the old lady, that merciless eye of hers driving his own under shelter.

There was a pause; then, "Who telled ye?" he blurted out. "War it Kate?"

"No, it was not Kate. You think me mad, you people hereabouts—oh yes, I know all about it—but, let me tell you, I can see as far as my neighbours into the heart of a stone wall. I am not a fool, my man, and I guessed well enough what would happen if a drunkard and a bottle came together."

Joe's face grew blacker than ever. He half removed one hairy fist from his pocket.

"An' who are ye, I'd like to know, to come telling a man he's a drunkard?"

Mrs. Lomax straightened herself and grasped her stick by the middle.

"I am a woman who can support her own opinions. Joe Strangeways, I'm in two minds whether to give you a sound thrashing or not."

Strangeways became limp. His mind was not quick of movement, and this reversal of a natural law dazed his perceptions; the gaunt figure seemed to tower above him in a way that was uncanny—even terrifying.

"I will let you go this time, for your wife's sake," went on the old lady, with grim pleasantry. "I will give you another chance; but, mark my words—if you touch the next bottle of port I bring, you will have to account to me for it."

Away she strode through the heather with that, and left the man agape with wonder.

"Begow," he muttered, "she's a limb of the devil, yon, an' proper." By the time he gained Peewit House he had realized fully that he had been beaten by a woman, and a consuming hatred took him by the throat. "I'll be even wi' her yet—by God, I will!" he cried, as he stamped into the kitchen. But he left all succeeding bottles of port severely alone.

Kate Strangeways got a little better when the summer came; but it was utter loss of heart from which she was suffering, and there are few cures for that complaint. Joe had been gentler in his treatment of her since the interview with Mrs. Lomax, for the old lady was in and out of the house a great deal, and a superstitious awe of her was gaining on Strangeways; the more he thought of her appearance on that memorable evening, the more was he disposed to accredit her with Satanic powers—and Joe, for all his bluster, was sorely afraid of the devil.

They were cutting the aftermath in the upland meadows, and the heather was losing its purple, when Mrs. Lomax's son came home to Marshcotes. Griff Lomax had made his way in the world by this time, as the hill-men are bound to do, once they can persuade themselves to seek the valleys. He had painted a score of pictures that had brought him popularity, and two which had earned him something more: kindly elders, whose opinions had not hardened into the grooves of their own little techniques, said great things of his future, and regarded even present performances with an instinctive laying-by of critical acumen; devoted youngsters, who kicked at the graver and loved the lighter paintings, urged him to bid for the Academy and creep into the easy-chairs reserved for Society pets. And these same easy-chairs had shown an alluring softness for awhile. After the rough-and-tumble fellowship of moor gales, there was a plausible imitation of comfort to Griff in the tinkle of dainty tea-cups, the scent of delicate draperies, the mincing mock-profundity of clever young men and women who pelted their deepest passions with the mud of paradoxical phrasing.

It was ten years now since he had set off for London, with a portfolio of crude moor sketches in his bag, and in his heart a measureless yearning to conquer something. What the something was, he neither knew nor cared to realize; perhaps he would win fame, perhaps love, or the gold that spelt "power"—but, whatever direction his more settled desires might take, he meant to conquer. The glare of the city-bound life, the eager running to and fro in a laden atmosphere, the desperate, thin-lipped eagerness to shut down a trap-door on all that made for dignity, or purpose, or enthusiasm—these things had dazzled him for awhile; he had learned the strange tongue with a quickness native to him, and he told himself from time to time that the wider life had opened before him.

But deep under all this there was a still, small voice that would insist on a hearing now and then; it was a voice more powerful than conscience—the voice of an instinct—and it cursed him for a fool when he babbled of the wider life. For five hundred years the Lomaxes, generation after generation, had grown to manhood with the taste of the peat in their mouths, and the quickening heath-winds in their vein; his London folly was the folly of those who build their houses on the lava of a sleeping volcano, and think themselves secure. It was this underlying sense of honesty that roused Lomax, from time to time, to endeavours which were worthy of him; that made him expose rough edges, sudden elemental passions, to the startled gaze of the friends who thought they knew him.

There was a little hothouse woman, named Sybil Ogilvie, who had chained him with silk, and who enjoyed what was to her merely a prudent flirtation with the tremulous zest of one who is teaching a half-tamed bear to dance. To Lomax the affair was not a flirtation—and, if it were not love, it hurt him just as much as if it had been. Mrs. Ogilvie had a talent for drawing out all that was paltry in a man, and a genius for making him believe that she had touched his strongest passions.

But the end had come at last. Griff Lomax began to be restless under his yoke, contemptuous of the butterfly canvases that won him flattery. The still, small voice of the moor grew louder; he yearned for the wide-eyed hill-spaces, where the heather was free to stretch away and away till it gained the far sky-line; the streets, the houses, the hurry and empty bustle of chattering crowds, grew nauseous. He had dwelt among the flesh-pots and loved them for a space, and had learned, once for all, the sorry wisdom they had at command. He saw at last—what his friends had seen from the first—that his passion for Sybil Ogilvie was a pitiful chase after moonbeams. Without a word of good-bye to her, he packed up his things and set off for the North, and every swing of the coach set his heart beating faster, because it carried him nearer home.

People had wondered at those two moor pictures of his, which had shown him capable of depth. They could not understand that indefinable something about them which set people's veins tingling as if they had been out in a gale from the fresh north-west. The painter knew, though, what that "something" was; he had come to the heath that had mothered him for more of it. And here he was, home again at the old Manor House, aglow with the deep under-love of his own moor folk and his old moor life.

He rushed into the Manor hall like a whirlwind, and took that gaunt five-foot-ten of motherhood into his arms, and made just as much of her as his heart prompted.

"Yes, Griff, you will do; you will do very well. I am proud of you," said Mrs. Lomax, standing away from him, and revelling in the sight of a son who found it necessary to stoop to the level of her lips.

"And I am proud of you, mother—proud, too, of the moors that reared us both. You can't tell how lifted I felt as I came up the rickety main street, with the old Black Bull at the top. Mother, what fools people are! They wonder where I get my inspiration, and they would never believe if I told them."

"It doesn't signify, Griff; you and I know, don't we? Now, how long are you going to give me? I don't mean to let you go under a month."

"I want to winter here, if you will let me; a whole year I have been away, and now I am to have a spell of home."

"Thank you for that word home, dear. You are sound at the core, I think, Griff."

"But rotten in the rind, eh, mother? It sounds rather as if you meant that."

Again the old lady surveyed him critically. "No, you are moor-oak from bark to heart—in spite of the feeble women you have been painting lately. I wish your father were alive to see you, Griff."

"You'll turn my head, foolish mother. Give me something to eat, instead of naming me in the same breath with father; it is a long stride to that."

He followed her into the kitchen, with its polished dish-covers on the wall, its sand on the floor, its glorious old fireplace, big enough for ten ordinary fires. He teased Rebecca, the cook, into mock indignation, as he had done time and again in years gone by. He tickled the tail of the tom-cat that lay dozing on the hearth, and laughed like a boy when the grizzled old fellow awoke and spat at him.

"Now, Becky, I want a really square meal—a downright, Yorkshire meal," he cried. "You have a remarkably fine ham there; down with it, and cut me some slices. As many eggs as you like. Oat-cake, too—yes, I must have oat-cake and cheese to finish with. Phew, mother, it's good to be back!"

When the meal was over, and Griff had smoked a couple of pipes in the ingle-nook; when the mother and he had fired off questions and answers at each other, and had taken joy of their being together once more, Griff rose and bent over the old lady.

"May I go out and have a chat with the moors? I won't be long away," he laughed.

"Of course, Griff. I have no say in the matter, really, have I?" responded the mother, with a lover-like affectation of pique.

"In that case I won't go."

"Nonsense, boy! Off with you, and don't stay longer than you can help. Will I come with you? Certainly not! You want to have your chat in private; two's company, and I shall have my revenge when you return. Away with you!"

Yes, Griff did want his talk with the moor to be a private one. As he crossed the churchyard, and followed the path through a couple of pasture fields, and up the narrow lane that led to the first of the heather, he was full of anxious eagerness. Would the old holy places be holy still? Would that changeless, everlasting sweep of brown and grey speak to his heart as it once had done? He had been blind; he had roved among lighter allegiances—how if the moor were sick of his inconstancy, and would stretch out no hand of fellowship?

But all that passed. The heath admits few to its friendship, but it never falters in its choice.

As Griff swung over the rise, past the rubble heaps thrown out by the quarries; as he saw the well-remembered undulations of heather and marsh-land and peat, he knew that he was taken home again. The old swift thrill ran through him: strength restrained, pathos that scorned to voice itself, roughness that hid a mighty, yearning tenderness—he understood it all, felt it all, as he had done in the days of his freedom.

No words can touch this feeling a moor man has for his country; it is a religion he never seeks to express—a vitality that helps him to do his work in the world.

Up against the furthest sky-line, showing gallows-black athwart the sunset, stood the threefold timbers of a rotting crane, dismantled long ago when the quarry ceased working. Perhaps no other details of the landscape seem more to express the whole than these gaunt creatures of wood: wherever a Marshcotes man sets eye on a quarry-crane climbing into the sky, he thinks of the Marshcotes moor and the soughing of wind through the heather.

A fat old grouse got up as Lomax approached, and winged its way towards the sunset. Griff, wondering if he had forgotten his ancient cunning, dropped into a clump of crowberry bushes and imitated the call of the hen. Soon a second cock grouse came whirring across the moor—but towards him this time, not away from him—and responded in a hoarse bass. Griff tried his voice at all the signals—warning and invitation, desperate love and the preliminaries of a mere flirtation; and the cock bird was taken in by them all.

Griff laughed, in a round, wholesome way, as he rose to his feet again. It was only the London life that had passed away. He stood for a long while gazing into the wonderful sunset flames: from south to north the sweep of colour stretched itself, and a little north of west the half of a ruddy sun was taking its farewell of the heath. He watched till the red sun-rim had altogether gone, till the orange had faded to yellow, and the yellow to grey; till the dips in the moor plateau were filled with a mystical gloom which seemed to well upward from the peat, rather than downward from the sky; till the rotting crane, that stood on the verge of the under-world, grew ghostlike and dim as the twilight deepened to the hue of its own black timbers.

And still the old love was the new. Still the moor reached out a lover's arms to Griff, and held him close to her breast. He was a moor man again.