Читать книгу A Man of the Moors - Sutcliffe Halliwell - Страница 6

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The bar of the Dog and Grouse hostelry at Ling Crag was very noisy on Wednesday night. The serving-maid was beginning to show signs of temper, for orders were being hurled at her with confusing rapidity, and with reiterated requests that she should hurry. From the girl's snappishness, and the density of the tobacco-smoke that filled the bar, an habitué of the inn could have guessed the time—close upon ten o'clock—with almost as much certainty as if he had used the ordinary form of chronometer.

The clatter of mugs, the burr of weather-roughened voices, ceased on a sudden. The men took their pipes from their mouths and gaped interrogatories one at the other. For they had heard a horse ridden up to the door at a gallop, and a stamp of feet on the sanded floor, and an abrupt demand on the part of some unknown male to see the landlord.

"Begow, there's summat agate!" said a burly carter. "What dost think it mud be, Jim?"

"Nay, how should I know?" muttered Jim, scratching his head.

"There's summat i' th' wind, for sure, but it's noan for me to say what it mud be."

"Murder, happen, or high treason, an' yon's a constable chap come i' search o' th' fugitive!"

This suggestion, made with an air of wise importance, came from the village cobbler.

A thrill went through the company. Murder was a fearsome thing, yet they knew exactly what it was; but that ingenious touch of the cobbler's set their minds working on an unknown quantity. High treason might mean anything, and, "if it war, so to say, at their own doorstuns, a man mun look to hisseln and not be ower rash wi' his tongue."

So, in wonder and trepidation, they crowded to the door of the bar, the less valiant peeping over the shoulders, or between the arms, of their comrades in front. One and all felt aggrieved when the stranger, who was still standing in the passage, showed himself to be much like other men. He wore no special dress, save the customary one of a gentleman who has reached his destination on horseback, and there was about him no trace of any peculiar odour, such as might have been associated with high treason or other of the black arts. Furthermore, when the landlord at last stepped in from the mistal at the rear of the house, he was met by the commonplace request that he would get ready a room for the night. By dint of setting the serving-maid to sleep on a sofa downstairs—her ruffled temper was not soothed by the inconvenience—the landlord was able to oblige his guest, and the horse was led round to the stables.

The company in the bar returned to their mugs. They felt hurt that the stranger had offered so little excitement, though the cobbler hinted darkly that, when a man fell quiet-like and tried his hardest not to make a fuss, it was a safe thing to suspect him of having some deep-laid project on hand.

Perhaps the cobbler was right; but the stranger's plans, whatever they might be, seemed to be confined just now to the matter of substantial food. "Something hot, landlord, and plenty of it!" he said briskly. "I've ridden twenty miles since my last meal."

"Right, sir; I'll see to it. Will ye have it in this little room here, sir, or in th' kitchen? Th' kitchen is a sight snugger, and it's none ower warm at neets for th' time o' year."

"The kitchen, by all means. This way? Don't be long with the cooking, my friend, or I shall starve."

The stranger, who certainly found the Ling Crag temperature none too high on this night of early September, retired to the ingle-nook after supper, and lit a pipe.

Ten sounded across the valley from Marshcotes parish church, and the occupants of the bar slouched out one by one; each, as he reached the passage, turned his eyes towards the kitchen.

"What's his business, think ye?" murmured Dick the cobbler.

The landlord, with his hand on the street door, grinned pleasantly. "Tha'rt a sight too curious, Dicky. Maybe he's some sort of a land-agent—Squire Daneholme's, happen. I remember, now I come to think, tha wert boasting a neet or two back about a matter of a hare—tha'd best be keeping a quiet tongue in thy heäd, Dick the Cobbler."

"Begow!" said Dick, laying an arm on his host's sleeve. "Dost 'a think that?"

"Out ye get, the lot of ye! Do ye think I want Constable Lee i' my public, an' th' magistrates on Friday?" cried Boniface, not heeding Dick's frightened appeal.

"Constable Lee knows which side on his mug th' beer is, and I'm thinking he'll noan be hard on ye," put in one of the departing crowd.

The landlord joined in the laugh that followed, and locked his door for the night. "He's a bit of a softy, is Cobbler Dick," he observed. "They're a sight too thin-skinned, this younger breed o' poachers. Well, well, I'd like to know, myseln, what the gent's business might be."

The landlord felt that he had a right to be the first recipient of any news whatsoever; for was he not named Jack o' Ling Crag, and had he not the reputation of being able to see further into the heart of a haystack than any man in the parish? They are much given, these dwellers on the uplands, to naming a man after the house or cottage in which he lives; and since the Dog and Grouse was in a sense—the most cheerful possible sense—the representative building of the village, Jack was accredited with the proudest surname a man could have up there.

And before another hour had passed, Jack did become partially enlightened as to the stranger's object in coming to Ling Crag. His visitor asked him to join him in a pipe, and he sat down on the other side of the hearth. They talked of indifferent topics for awhile—the crops, the grouse shooting, the fishing in Scartop Water—until the stranger turned abruptly in his seat.

"Do you know of a house to let anywhere near? I want to be out on the moors, and yet not too far from a village like this of yours."

"It's a bit o' shooiting, likely, ye'd be after?" insinuated the host.

The stranger paused a moment before replying, and smiled a little to himself. "Yes, that's just what I want—some good shooting. Any house will do, but it must have shooting attached to it."

The landlord already had his eye on exactly the place required, but he was not disposed to give away the situation too lightly; he felt that Ling Crag ought to uphold its motto of "keeping itseln to itseln."

"There's none too many houses hereabouts," he observed slowly; "and what there is is fearful sought after."

"Are they, now? I should have thought, being so far away from a town, and——"

"Ay, sir, but—begging your pardon—it's a fine thing to be able to say ye come fro' Ling Crag: there's a sort o' respect goes with th' name in fowks's minds, an' we stay on here fro' generation to generation, seeing as how we could nobbut exchange for th' war. An' that maks houses scarce, like."

The stranger, beginning to understand his man better, laughed easily. "I shall try to be worthy of the honour, landlord, if you'll only find me the house."

The host rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then slapped his thigh with a great show of impromptu delight.

"Now that's queer; all th' time ye've been talking I niver once thought o' Wynyates Hall. Why, it's just th' place for ye, sir; two score acre o' shooiting, an' a regular old-fashioned sort o' house—just such as th' painter chaps come for to paint."

"That sounds all right. How far is it from here?"

"A mile an' a bittock; an' a good highroad from there to here. First ye pass Scartop Water—as I was telling ye about—an' then ye come right to Wynyates Hall, standing i' a bit o' wood of its own, wi' th' moors just aboon. Oh, ay, it's a grand place, is Wynyates!"

"Any houses near?"

"Well, there's what we call Wynyates hamlet a quarter-mile away, but it's nowt mich to crack on—just a two or three cottages an' a farm or so."

"It is to let, is it, this Wynyates Hall?"

"Ay, it's to let right enow, sir. But I mind me there's some queer tales abroad; happen ye're not feared o' ghosts?"

A shadow passed over the stranger's face, and seemed more at home there than his previous air of cheery carelessness. "Ghosts?" he muttered. "I've got too many of my own to be afraid of other people's." His face cleared again, and he laughed a denial at his host.

But the grizzled old man shook his head doubtfully.

"Best not laugh at 'em, sir, an' that's my belief," he said gravely. "There's been some fearful goings-on up at Wynyates. Two brothers there war lived up at th' Hall, an' they'd been trained in a school ye don't find i' these ower-eddicated days. Ay, they war of th' owd breed, for sure; as lusty an' devil-paced limbs as ye'd light on th' countryside through."

"You seem to be rather proud of them, if one may judge from the look in your eyes," said the stranger, breaking into a reflective pause on the part of his host.

Boniface chuckled.

"Well, the fact is, sir, they war a tidy pair at th' poaching, an' my heart allus did go out to a poacher, God bless 'em! I war fifty, an' they war nobbut a bit th' wrang side o' thirty i' those days, but I could teach 'em nowt—nowt at all. Sakes alive, they hadn't no call to poach! They'd plenty o' brass an' land o' their own; but it war just i' th' blood, so to say, an' they did it for plain love o' sport. Ay, they war likely chaps, them two."

"And what was the end of them? End there must have been, or Wynyates would not be to let."

"To tell ye t' truth, sir, I doan't like to speak on it. They war i' drink one neet—summat about a woman, for young 'uns will be youngs 'uns th' world ower——"

"You're right there," interrupted the stranger, and shut his lips down on his tell-tale mouth.

His companion glanced shrewdly at him, but made no comment.

"As I war saying, they war i' their cups, an' they fell a-fighting. Th' younger he shied a brandy-bottle, an' caught t' other fair on th' forehead, an' killed him deäd as a door-nail. Then he hanged hisseln to one o' th' parlour rafters, an' that war th' end of th' owd family. Ay, sad, sad, for sure; but they war bonny lads at a bit o' poaching."

"And their ghosts haunt the old Hall?"

"So fowks say, an' I've no reason to doubt it. Dirt cheap th' owd place is going; for them two brothers, being Ling Crag born, doan't part in a hurry, an' they mak it fair too hot to bide in for them as comes to live there."

"They won't trouble me, at any rate. It will be a little excitement. What sort of ghosts are they?"

The landlord frowned on the other's levity, and dropped his voice to a whisper.

"They do say—and what am I to deny it?—that th' ghost o' th' brandy-bottle is th' hardest to bear; it shooits up i' th' air, an' dithers around, an' then strikes t' other ghost so as to bring a bloody stream from his forehead.—But idle chaps will allus be telling idle tales," he finished, replenishing his pipe.

The discrepancy between the opening of his speech and the finish was easily accounted for. Pride in the village ghost had led him on to wax eloquent in description, but monetary interest induced him not to put hindrances in the way of a good bargain. Doubtless there would be pickings for himself if his guest took Wynyates Hall.

A long silence followed.

"Ye come fro' th' low country, I'm thinking?" said Boniface at length.

"From—from the low country?" repeated the stranger.

"Ay—from t' South, as some fowk call it."

"Oh, yes, I'm from the South."

"I thowt as mich fro' your spache. Happen, then, ye'll know Miller Rotherson, what's ta'en th' mill i' Hazel Dene?"

"No, I don't know him."

The stranger was trying to realize a new point of view. Evidently the people of Ling Crag regarded themselves as one village, and the rest of England as another. They expected all South-country people to know each other, just as the landlord here knew Betty Binns, or Gabriel Hirst, or Dick the Cobbler. Such isolation took the stranger's breath away.

Another silence.

"I mind me that th' agent what looks after Wynyates Hall—an' a sight more property, too—comes here to-morrow to collect th' rents," said the landlord. "Him an' ye might come to an agreement."

"I think we might. What time is he due?"

"Fro' nooin onwards to six o' th' clock."

"Very well. Call me at nine, will you, and give me bacon and eggs for breakfast. It's high time we turned in."

The stranger took his candle and slowly mounted the stairs. As he went, he muttered softly to himself, "Such isolation—it is fatuous—it is magnificent. I have come to the right kind of place. Gossips, of course; but so there are everywhere. Do I know Miller Rotherson from the low country? Ha, ha!"

A draught at the stair-head blew out his candle, but the door of his room stood open, and a flood of moonlight came across the landing to show the way. He did not trouble to relight the candle, but clashed the door to after him and went to the uncurtained window. He had a clear view across the moors; one after another the dark rises swept to the broken sky-line, striding the misty hollows, till his eye caught that queer sense of endlessness which the moor people know from their birth. His face went grey as he watched, and through the greyness leaped a wild expectancy. Like a boy this man of forty stretched out his arms to the heath, and talked as if it had ears to hear him. "Janet—I wonder if you're there. In the heart of the moor, you told me—it must be down in one of those white hollows." Then he paused, and his voice went out again in one yearning cry of "Janet!"

The stranger pulled himself together. He laughed bitterly, as men do who have once safely passed these things and find it hard to have to go back again. Then he kicked off his boots, undressed, and lay for an hour on his back, watching the moon through the window. One boomed from Marshcotes church, and every hollow of the moors seemed to catch the sound, to pass it on, till the heath was to the already dozing man one everlasting succession of striking clocks.

"Get to sleep, you fool!" he muttered drowsily. "Curse the bells—they sound uncanny; it'll be long before they ring for that wedding. God knows she's taken the heart clean out of my body—one, one, one; curse the bells!"