Читать книгу A Man of the Moors - Sutcliffe Halliwell - Страница 8

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They dined in the middle of the day at Marshcotes Manor, and they dined well. Mrs. Lomax, consequently, liked to have a clear hour's sleep in the afternoon—a luxury which Griff made the basis of one of those tender little accusations that were constantly passing between mother and son.

"And now, I suppose, you will want to reflect for awhile," he said, when Thursday's dinner was over and Mrs. Lomax had risen from the table.

"You need not put that ironical emphasis on the 'reflect,' Griff. I want to sleep, and am not ashamed to confess it."

"Yet you grumble when my work takes me away from you. I'm going to be jealous, too: I grudge you that wasted hour."

"Foolish boy! You may kiss me, if you like, just as a bribe to get rid of you. There, there; away you go. Are you going to ride?"

"Yes; for an hour or so."

"Of course. If it is not your ridiculous work that stands in the way, then you must needs rush off to the stable. It is lucky for me, Griff, that I can sleep with such a thankless son on my conscience."

"Talk to Lassie about it, mother: she will have exercise, and no one but I can manage her properly. That's what I like about the mare; she is twice as faithful as any woman I have come across—except my mother."

Mrs. Lomax frowned, a real frown; she did not like Griff's occasional flippancies about women.

"I think, boy, if you had stayed at Marshcotes, your opinions might have kept more wholesome. Your south-country women must be curious, Griff."

He smiled a little at her prejudices, and patted her on her rough grey hair, and went out. But a cloud was on his face as he mounted Lassie, standing saddled at the door.

"I think," he murmured, "that if mother knew about Sybil Ogilvie, and the dance she led me, she would never speak to me again."

The blood rushed hot to his cheeks, and Lassie was surprised by an impatient jerk of the snaffle. She would stand a good deal from Griff, but an unprovoked assault of this kind, before ever they had cleared the garden gravel, was too much for any mare of good breeding. She shook her head just once, and tore through the open gate like a thing bewitched.

"I hope he won't break his neck; it is rather a failing in the family," sighed Mrs. Lomax, patiently, as she watched him down the highroad.

Griff soon brought the mare to reason, and explained to her that, having lately dined, he was in no mood for such violent exercise. Lassie took this as an apology and forgave him; and they ambled contentedly round by Ling Crag, Wynyates, and back again. As they were crossing the moor close to Marshcotes, Griff espied a tall figure making towards them. It proved to be Kate Strangeways, returning from the village grocery with a well-filled basket. He drew rein and slipped off his nag.

"You're looking tired," he said, in his direct way, with a keen glance at her face.

"I am tired, but it can't be helped. I think I'm falling lazy nowadays, Mr. Lomax."

"Lazy? Well, if you like the word. Mother tells me a different tale. You're coming to have tea with us before you walk the three miles back to Peewit."

She coloured slightly.

"Oh, no, thank you! It's time I was home."

"Nonsense!" put in Griff, brusquely. "I say you are coming."

"Up here we are not accustomed to being ordered about," said Kate, between vexation and amusement.

"Except by one of your own kind. Come, Mrs. Strangeways, I'm moor-born, too, and you know what that means. I intend to have my way."

She gave in at last, and it was not until they struck the village that Griff bethought him there was a certain oddity in the situation. When they reached the Manor, he learned from Rebecca that Mrs. Lomax had been called out to see some sick body in the village; and he was rather sorry that he had given his off-hand invitation to Kate Strangeways. He told Becky, however, to bring in the tea, and speedily found himself launched into such a brisk discussion that he entirely forgot his mother's absence. They got, by a round-about route, to literature, and from that to some books which Griff had lately lent her. They were all novels of the day, some of them written by friends of his own, and he had thought them exceedingly good when he had first read them. Griff knew that Kate and his mother had been friends for a long while past, yet it staggered him a little to discover that this wife of a master-quarryman was capable, not only of reading, but of digesting, the novels he had lent her.

"I don't understand story-writing," she explained, with a half-hesitating air. "I only know about the life we live, all of us; and that is a different thing."

He looked hard at her, with a puzzled air.

"It ought not to be. What these men are striving for, they would tell you, is to get life as it is. They seemed to me to ring true when I read them." Yet he faltered on the words. To what did they ring true, he could not help asking himself? To the falsity he had cherished through ten long years of his life, answered conscience. But he was stubborn: it was one thing for him to ridicule his late acquaintances, and quite another to listen to some one else doing the same; from sheer contrariety he grew warm in defence of the novels.

"But those books—you won't think me silly, Mr. Lomax? you are so much cleverer—they don't describe women, as I know them."

Kate, too, was holding her ground, despite a feeling that this argumentative being must know a hundred times as much as she did about the art of character-drawing.

Griff got up and leaned against the mantelshelf. He was nettled. It was all so true, he felt—and it was bitter to have to admit that this woman, whom he had vaguely patronized as affording a valuable model, should be able to tell him what it had taken him so long to learn.

"I—I thought they did," he said lamely.

"Of course, you know best. Only they seem to me either too good or too bad—and far too clever. There isn't one real heart-sob in all these books—and women, God knows, live by heart-sobs in real life."

She remembered herself at that, and flushed. It was too easy to forget how clever Mr. Lomax was, and she was surely a very silly woman. But Griff knew she was right; he said nothing for that very reason, because he felt so cross.

Then the mother came in, and smothered her surprise at finding the two of them chatting so snugly together, and gave Kate a hearty welcome.

"Mrs. Strangeways has been abusing my judgment of women," laughed Griff, his good temper restored.

Kate tried to expostulate, but Mrs. Lomax cut her short.

"Quite right, my dear, quite right. All Griff's pet women are like dough that has been badly kneaded. I tell him so, often, and he doesn't half like it. Perhaps he took it more kindly from you?"

"I say, two to one! This isn't fair," protested her son.

"You will weather the storm, Griff," retorted the old lady, imperturbably. "After all, you have made a name for yourself; a knowledge of women was not necessary there. The whirr of a gale across the heather carried you through; you forgot your weaknesses sometimes."

"Would you like some tea, mother?" ventured Griff, mildly.

When Kate Strangeways finally rose to go, Lomax insisted on "setting her on her way." "I'll go agatards wi' ye," he laughed, translating his intentions into the language of the country, as he loved to do when talking to Mrs. Strangeways.

Kate, laughing too, congratulated him on his knowledge of the tongue, and they set off in high good spirits. He did not leave her till they reached the top of the last rise that lay between themselves and Peewit House; and when they said good-bye, he had secured a half-promise that she would sit to him for her portrait.

A surly-looking rascal, with a beard an inch long and a cutty pipe rammed tight in one corner of his mouth, was leaning over the fence; Lomax judged him to be a farm-hand, said his farewells to Kate, and set off back across the moor.

"Well, I'm beggared!" muttered Joe Strangeways, removing the cutty pipe from his jaws.

Griff went to look up his friend the preacher on the following afternoon. He found him in a state of wild self-castigation. Gabriel's eyes were far too bright, and his fingers twitched to the tune of each fresh thought. That marvellous straight-forwardness of his came to the front at once.

"Well, Griff, lad, I was drunk the night before last."

"Not quite that, old fellow; a bit bothered by the road, that's all; it's not an easy path through Hazel Dene."

"I was drunk, I tell you. Yes, and I was mortal sick in the night, Griff. But it wasn't the sickness of the carnal body I cared for; the trouble went deeper than that."

"Your head was bad the next morning?" queried Griff, innocently.

"Man, yes! But it's not that I mean. Think of the sin: think of a preacher of God's word showing himself no more than a cutting from the old stock." This was Gabriel's unconquerable pride coming out; he was humble in theory only.

"When you've understood that a little better," said the other gravely, "you'll be fit to preach. Good-bye, old chap; just ponder on that for a while. When are you coming for another ride?"

The preacher looked through and beyond his friend.

"I never thought to come to this. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. Look here," he broke off, with a sudden flash of fury, "they say that the Lord looks after His own. Well, I don't believe it. Why did He bring that girl across my path?"

"To make a man of you," said Griff, and vanished.

Betty Binns was lying in wait for him without. A subdued exultation was visible in her face.

"I war sure, Mr. Lummax," cried she—"I war sure ye didn't rightly know what war good for th' innards of a man o' God. Th' maister, yester-morn, war as yaller as hen-corn, an' his heäd warked fit to burst. That's what comes along o' strong meät when th' Sperrit hes hold on a man."

"Betty," said Griff, "you mustn't be hard on me. I meant it for the best."

"Ay, ay, them as is for meaning th' best is allus for doing th' worst!" And Betty was retiring in triumph, when the other called her back.

"Just tell your master, will you, that I shall be here at nine sharp to-morrow night, and shall expect him to be ready for a ride. You have no objection to offer, have you, Betty?" he added, with an air of humble deference.

"Get along wi' ye! There's no mak o' shame i' th' young fowk nowadays, no shame at all. It taks a likelier nor ye, Mr. Griff, to trail Betty Binns. Now, will ye let me shut th' door, or willun't ye?"

"Parting, Betty, is such sweet sorrow, that I——?" He found himself talking to the bare oak of the door, and laughed mightily, in his boy's way, as he swung down the garden-path and into the highroad.

Remembering, later in the evening, that his whisky had run out, he slipped across to the Bull to buy a bottle. A crowd of idlers was hanging about the steps, with Joe Strangeways conspicuous in their midst. Joe was in his usual condition of semi-drunkenness, and he scowled on seeing Lomax approach.

"That's him," muttered a companion; "tha wert talking big, Joe, about what tha'd do to him when tha cotched him. Now's thy chance." The tone was ironical, and did not suggest any great confidence in the quarryman's practical bravery.

Strangeways felt that he must make a demonstration of some kind, in view of a few recent utterances of his. He squared his shoulders so as to dispute possession of the doorway, thrust out his lower jaw, and regarded Griff with an air of sullen mockery.

"There's a saying, Griff Lummax, that lang i' th' leg spells soft i' th' heäd," he observed, repeating his favourite little pleasantry.

A chuckle sounded from the bystanders. Griff stopped on the lowest step, took his pipe out of his mouth, and regarded Strangeways with an air of quiet gravity; when he spoke, it was with a good Yorkshire brogue that not one of the bystanders could have bettered.

"There's another saying, mate. Lang i' th' drink spells short i' th' wit."

A big laugh went up at that. They were fond of Griff at Marshcotes, and they liked to find him ready with his tongue. Joe's face grew red, with a dash of purple about the gills. He had nothing to say, so confined himself to filling the doorway a little more completely.

"I want to pass," said Griff.

"Oh, tha dost, dost 'a? Well, it's gooid for young 'uns to want."

"I want to pass," repeated Griff.

"So tha said," responded the quarryman, emboldened by the other's quietness. "And how if tha'rt not going to be let pass?"

Griff said not another word, but took the four steps in one easy bound, twisted Joe round in his hands, set his foot to the man's heel and his right arm to his chest, and lowered him gently to the ground, where he lay with his feet on the threshold and his head on the bottom step. Then he went indoors and did his business.

"It's time tha wert wending home, Joe," suggested one of the crowd. "It taks a likelier nor thee to tackle Griff Lummax."

"Lang i' th' leg, an' strong i' th' arm," laughed another.

Joe, having got to his feet again, shambled off towards the churchyard gate.

"Bide a bit, lads," he growled. "Bide till I've getten my fist round th' heft of a knife, and I'll cut th' bleeding heart out on him."

Lomax, unaware of Joe's delicately-expressed intentions, sketched the adventure to his mother when he got back, and wondered what particular quarrel the man had with him.

"What was he like, Griff?" asked Mrs. Lomax.

"Oh, I don't know. Short and thickset, with a stubbly chin and a beery eye."

"Would you like to know who he is?"

"I should, rather. I don't seem to remember his face a bit, and I prided myself on knowing all the moorside."

"He is Joe Strangeways—your moor woman's husband."

"Nonsense, mother! It can't be."

"Haven't they taught you, Griff, during all those years you have been away, that there is no such word as 'can't'? He is her husband."

Griff kicked the fender, for no apparent reason, and brought down the fire-irons with a rattle.

"But, mother—he was a brute—a drunken beast—a——"