Deep Moat Grange

"And I never asked him," continued Harriet; "I would scorn such an action. I dare you to say that I did!"

The unhappy Mr. De la Poer was mute, as indeed he might well be, before such treatment of his person and theories.

"And, O Constantia, it's all because we are two simple little London girls," she said, "that they have been playing with our young affections!"

Harriet heaved a sigh, and then swiftly turned on the culprit.

"And how about Peter's wife's mother, lying sick of a fever?" she cried triumphantly. "I suppose that you don't set up to be any better than him? And if he had a wife's mother, surely he had a wife, too? Come on, Stancy, you see he has not a word to say. I have a mother, too, and if she were here, she would not permit her daughter to be thus insulted. She would have his eyes out with her knitting needles – the crochet ones with the hooks on the top!"

"I shall not do any such thing, Harriet," said her sister calmly. "I think you are very absurd. Please don't mind her, Mr. De la Poer. Sit down, and help Mr. Ablethorpe to explain about the Council of Trent, while Harriet gets Grace Rigley waked up to the idea that she is to bring in tea for four."

But Mr. De la Poer had had enough. He had never been so treated in his life before, and somehow, even Mr. Ablethorpe's exposition of the Council of Trent was not quite the same thing with Mr. De la Poer sitting sulking there with his palms pressed between his knees and his eyes noting the pattern on the carpet.

So the two young men went out, and it was not till he was on his bicycle, and mounting the hill toward Over Breckonton, that Mr. De la Poer began to find excuses for that inexcusable girl. After all, brought up as she had been in a Presbyterian household, without any training, even in the catechism, what could one expect, he thought.

Well, as he entered his lonely lodgings, to find the fire out and the smell of the hastily trimmed paraffin lamp turned low on the table, I suppose he thought that it might have done no harm if, after all, he had waited for tea in the comfortable house at "Yarrow's." And as he was pouring the water into a cup of cocoa – which, when tasted, turned out to be lukewarm and tasting of coal oil – maybe Mr. De la Poer began to think that a bright young person in a house to see to things in general would be a decided acquisition – as a sister.

Since, however, owing to the prejudices of society, it would be difficult to propose this arrangement to Miss Harriet Caw and her parents, Mr. De la Poer finished his butterless bread (he was severe with himself in matters of fasting), and arranged a paper shade cut from a church newspaper, so that it fell at the right angle. He then set himself dolefully enough to compose a Sunday's sermon, which, as may be supposed, did not enliven the scanty company of Over Breckontoners who listened to it on Sunday.

After he was gone, Mr. Ablethorpe came round to the office to see me. Our office was at the right of the shop, as it were, connecting the wholesale and the retail departments, having a window looking into each. My father was great on keeping his whole establishment under his own eye.

Now, I had charge of the shop books during the temporary absence of Mr. Brown, who did not, indeed, concern himself much with anything so petty as the retail department. But I felt very grand indeed. You see, I had never given up hope of seeing my father walk in with his sharp, decided tread, and ask to see the ledger. Then he would find everything posted, and that would be my triumph.

"I have come to see you, Joseph," said Mr. Ablethorpe; "I have something to say to you which I have been pondering over for a long time."

I began to wonder if he had changed his mind about marrying, and was actually going to ask me for Constantia's hand. This made me feel more "Head of the House" than ever.

But it was something quite different, and Mr. Ablethorpe brought me down to earth again with a whop, as if I had fallen from the store rafters.

"I have been able to arrange about the three poor creatures, Honorine, Camilla, and Sidonia Orrin. They will be in safety with the Good Sisters of the Weak-minded at Thorsby. There is, therefore, no longer any object in withholding from you my confidence. I am morally certain that carrier Harry Foster has been foully murdered, and his body concealed. Further, my dear, dear boy, I fear that I cannot now give you much hope of a different fate for your father – "

"There I differ from you," said I stoutly.

"I am glad to hear it," he said quietly; "but I should like to know the reason of your confidence."

"Because of the message; because my father is so strong and brave; and because – because I am certain he is not dead! And then Elsie!"

He lifted his hand as if to pray me not to go into that question. At this I fired up.

"I have heard many things," he began; "a man in my position does!"

"Never anything against Elsie!" I was heated, and shouted.

"Certainly not! Though of another communion she has always – "

"Well, then, say no more" – I stamped my foot – "she has suffered the same fate as my father. That accursed house has something to do with it. As yet I do not know what. But something! She has not gone away from Breckonside without letting her friends know. I will not listen to that from you or any other man, Mr. Ablethorpe!"

"You will not have to listen to it," said he gently, clapping me meanwhile on the far shoulder. "You are a good fellow, Joe, and I am proud to count myself among your friends. You have a sort of sneaking liking for the Old Hayfork, haven't you, Joe?"

That was the way he spoke. A fellow one couldn't be waxy with long. I told him Yes. And I think he knew how much I liked him by what it cost me to get it out.

"Yes, Joe, we do very well," he went on, "and I dare say you have not forgotten the time I sent you up the drain pipe, and the little rings you found?"

The matter had never wholly slipped my memory, though, of course, the losing of my father and Elsie one after the other – mystery piled on mystery, as it were – had made me think less often about it.

I told him so.

"Well," said he, "I know more about it now, though – as you say – not yet all. It is necessary to wait a little before I have all the strings in my hands. This, however, I will tell you. The little rings you found were those of the mail bags which were stolen out of Harry Foster's cart! They had been half fused in a furnace and afterwards hidden in the place where you found them."

"But – but – " I faltered. "Do you think that – that Harry Foster was there too – up there where I went – in the tunnel which led from the Backwater?"

He shook his head.

"No," he said, "the rings had passed through some sort of a furnace. So almost certainly would poor Harry."

He paused for a moment, but I knew full well what he was thinking – it was about my father.

"But why not hand the whole over to the police, if you know all that about the people at Deep Moat Grange?"

He laid his hand on mine and patted it.

"I learned long ago not to confound the innocent with the guilty," he said. "Besides, it is only now that even I begin to see little more clearly. And the police did little enough when they were here. I suppose you would have me deliver the rings to old Codling, and see him crawl up the tunnel as you did?"

I saw that it was no use to contradict Mr. Ablethorpe for the present. He had still the detective fever upon him, and his manoeuvring had been for the purpose of getting the poor "naturals" out of harm's way, when he should be ready to denounce the guilty.

"By the way," he said, "do you know that for the moment I am at a standstill? Old Hobby Stennis has gone off on one of his journeys. And till he comes back I can do nothing. Your friend of the snaky curls is in sole possession of the Grange. Miss Orrin has disappeared. It must be a sweet spot! Hello, what's that?"

And through the window of the retail shop, now bright with the extra lighting of Saturday night, we saw Mad Jeremy. He was bending over several melodeons which Tom Hunt, our first shopman, had handed down to him, picking up one with a knowing air, trying the keys and stops, his ringlets falling about his ears, a cunning smile on his lips, and his little, quick, suspicious eyes darting this way and that to see whether or not he was observed.

At last his choice fell on a most gorgeous instrument, one that had just come in. He asked the price, chaffed a a while for the form, and then, drawing out a fat, well-filled pocket-book, slapped down in payment a Clydesdale bank-note for a hundred pounds!

CHAPTER XXVIII

SATURDAY, THE TENTH OF FEBRUARY

This was on the evening of Saturday, the tenth of February, a day never to be forgotten by me and by many more. I will try to place here in order the events which happened both at Deep Moat Grange and at Breckonside during the succeeding forty-eight hours. Of course, there is some part that can only be guessed at, and part is known solely by the maunderings of a criminal maniac. But still, I think, I have now got the whole pretty straight – as straight as it will ever be known on this side time. At any rate, it is my account or none. For no one else can know what I know.

As Mr. Ablethorpe had informed me, he was at a standstill in his researches. And the reason was that Mr. Hobby Stennis, the "Golden Farmer," as he was called, had departed on one of his frequent journeys.

So much was true. The master of Deep Moat Grange had indeed been absent for three days. But he had returned that same Saturday morning about ten o'clock. He had been disgusted to find the house empty. Probably, also, he was in a very bad temper owing to the failure of some combination or other he had counted upon. He found nothing prepared for his reception. Miss Orrin and her sisters were gone, and Mad Jeremy in one of his maddest and most freakish humours.

Now, of all times for arriving from a journey the noon is the worst. In the evening one dines. Later, one may have supper. Later still, one sleeps. In the morning everybody is astonished, and says: "How brisk and early you are to-day!" This pleases you, and you step about the place and come in sharp-set for breakfast. But in the forenoon it is a long time till lunch or dinner. Every one is busy. The clothes in which you have attempted to sleep feel as if filled with fine sand. You want to kick somebody, and if there is nobody whom you can reasonably kick, you feel worse.

Well, this is how Hobby felt. He wanted breakfast, and Mad Jeremy informed him that there was no bread. If he wanted any he could act as baker and bake a batch for himself.

"Go and get me something to eat, you rascal!" cried Mr. Stennis threateningly. And as he raised his riding-whip, Jeremy cowered. But it was with his body only. His eyes kept on those of his master, and they were those of a beast that has not been conquered – or, if vanquished, not subdued.

With impish spitefulness he set about gathering together all the orts and scraps of his own various disorganized meals, and brought them in, piled on a plate, to his master. Hobby Stennis was in no mood for amusement. He had his riding-whip still in his hand. He raised it, and, as one would strike a hound, he lashed Jeremy across the face. The madman did not flinch – he only stood, with a certain semblance of meekness, shutting his eyes as the blows descended, as a dog might. Once, twice, thrice, the whip cut across cheek and brow and jaw. Jeremy put up his fingers to feel the weals which rose red and angry. But he said nothing. Only his eyes followed his master as he went out.

Mr. Stennis, still furiously angry, threw plate and contents out of the window. They fell in the muddy, ill-cared-for yard. The plate shivered, and Jeremy, after whimpering a little like a punished child, went outside also, got on his knees, and patiently gathered them together again, swinging his head with the pitiable and impotent vengeance of a child. Only Mad Jeremy was very far indeed from being a child.

Muttering to himself, Mr. Stennis strode away across the drawbridge, which still bore the footmarks of the mob which, in the time of his illness, had crossed and recrossed it. Part of the balustrade had been kicked away, and hung by a tough twisted oak splinter, yawning over the Moat to the swirl of the wet February wind.

He walked forward, never hesitating a moment, his switch still in his hand, cutting at the brownish last year's brackens which, having doubled over halfway up the stem, now trailed their broad leaves in the bleak, black February sop.

Straight for Mr. Ball's the master of the Grange took his way. He followed the narrow path which, skirting the Backwater, crosses a field, and then drops over the high March dike into the road quite close to the cottage of Mr. Bailiff Ball. It was almost dinner-time, and with a word Mr. Stennis explained the situation. Mrs. Ball swept all the too genial horde of children into the kitchen, and set herself to serve a meal to the owner of the Grange and his bailiff.

The first plateful of Scots broth, with its stieve sustenance of peas, broad beans, and carrots, together with curly greens and vegetables almost without number, put some heart into Mr. Stennis – though his anger against Jeremy for the insult offered to him in his own house did not in the least cool.

"I always like broth that a man can eat conveniently with knife and fork," said Mr. Ball, striving to be agreeable. "Let me give you another plateful, sir."

But Mr. Stennis declined. The thought of Jeremy and his plate of orts returned to his mind and he choked anew with anger.

"I will teach him!" he said aloud, frowning and pursing his mouth.

Mr. Ball was far too wise a man to ask a question. He kept his place, worked the out-farms, deserved the confidence of his master, and convinced all the world that he had nothing to do with the ill-doings of the garrison at the "Big Hoose" by carefully guarding his speech. As a matter of fact, he made it his business to know nothing except in which field to sow turnips, and the probable price he would get for the wintering sheep that ate them out of the furrows.

Never was a man better provided with deaf and blind sides than Mr. Bailiff Ball. And, being a man with a family, he had need of them at Deep Moat Grange.

So he did not inquire who it was that Mr. Hobby Stennis meant to teach, nor yet what was the nature of the proposed lesson. If knowledge is power, carefully cultivated ignorance sometimes does not lack a certain power also.

Mr. Stennis ate of the boiled mutton which followed, and of the boiled cabbage withal – of potatoes, mealy and white, such as became the bailiff of several large unlet farms, and a man whose accounts had never been called in question by so much as a farthing.

Mr. Stennis ate of pancakes with jam rolled inside, and of pancakes on which the butter fairly danced upon the saffron and russet surfaces, so hot were they from the pan. He drank pure water. He refused to smoke, which Mr. Ball did every day and all day long. Mr. Stennis was an example – a man without vices.

Then these two, master and man – though by no means "like master, like man" – strolled about the fields discussing what was to be done with this parcel of bullocks, or what line of crops would do best on the Nether Laggan Hill, or the Broomy Knowe. Mr. Bailiff Ball wished heartily that his master would be gone. But he was not in a position to tell him so. At last, after two o'clock, Mr. Stennis suddenly, and without any preliminaries, bade him "good-day" and so betook himself through the misty willow copses along the Backwater, on which the haze of spring was greening already, towards the house of Deep Moat Grange.

*****

It was not the least of Elsie's troubles to keep herself "nice" in the back half of the monks' oven, near the bakehouse. Soap she had – a whole bar of it. And with the water which she dipped up from the trap-door behind her bed, she washed her single turn-over collar again and again – as well as her handkerchiefs and other "white things" – drying them rapidly and well in front of the dividing wall of the oven.

Starch, however, was beyond her, and ironing also. Still she was clean, which to Elsie Stennis was very near indeed to being godly. Jeremy had been idle for several days, but it chanced that that very Saturday morning he had set the furnace a-going, and had begun to prepare a batch of bread. Notwithstanding, he had been strangely unsettled. He had looked in several times on Elsie, even bringing in a little washing soda for her laundry work, but had departed always without saying anything of his intentions. Never on any occasion had he mentioned her fellow-prisoner, my father. And he, on his part, had strictly forbidden Elsie to say anything of their converse one with another. Not that Elsie would have done that in any case. She had too much the instinct of playing the game.

Usually when Jeremy came in, he would bring with him a Jew's-harp, and, curling himself up in one corner of the settle, he would extract tunes from that limited instrument with a strange weird combination of voice and twang of the metallic tongue.

Or with a mandolin, of which he had somehow become possessed, he would lean against the table, stretch his long legs, shake back his snaky curls, swinging his body to and fro, and improvise such music as never has been heard on earth before.

But ever and anon, between bursts of strange melody – for there was a certain attraction in every sound he produced – he would return to the subject of the new cargo of melodeons which had just been received at Yarrow's, down in the village. He would have one he declared, whatever old Hobby might say, the skinflint – who would not let poor Jeremy have a single goldpiece of all he had won for him by his own strong hands.

He would let him see, however, when he came back, who was master. And if he would not, then he, Jeremy Orrin, knew somebody – perhaps not so far away – who would give him not only one, but many melodeons, for one smell of the fresh air.

Elsie had the presence of mind not to appear to understand that he meant my father. It was, evidently, one of Jeremy's worst days. And Elsie wished that she had been able to get her knife back from my father, who had borrowed it the night before for a special piece of filing. The work was approaching completion, but just at the last moment he had come upon a bar of iron, buried, for what purpose he could not imagine, in the thickness of the wall. It ran diagonally, and would need to be cut in two places before there was any chance of the passage being finished between their prison chambers.

But the bar once cut, and the passage clear, my father, who, as part of his business, was learned in locks, did not anticipate from Elsie's description any serious trouble. The iron door and patent safety lock of his own prison house, recently arranged for by Mr. Stennis – he remembered the transaction – was, of course, beyond him. But if all was as he had been given to expect, the fastenings of Elsie's door – which communicated with the oven corridor – were of quite another type, and need not detain him long.

It was a little after eleven of the day, as Elsie judged by the light, when Jeremy came back after a somewhat prolonged absence. He brought her a piece of made bread – by which he meant bread bought from one of the vans that passed along the highway, but none of which came up to the Moat Grange.

"Hae," he said, smiling curiously, "there's for you! I hae nae time to be baking to-day. The maister's hame. Guid luck, an' lang life to him!"

He was speaking very curiously, laughing all the time – not offering threats and complaints as he had been doing before.

"And see!" he cried out, suddenly. "He has brought Jeremy a present wi' his ain hand – ay, wi' his ain hand he gied it him!"

And, lifting his finger, he drew it along three red weals on his brow and cheek, one after the other, ending at the corner of the jaw beneath the ear, from which a drop of blood trickled. And he laughed – all the time he laughed.

"A bonnie present," he repeated, "think ye not so, bonnie birdie? Ye never gat the like, and him your ain grandfather. Ah, but he's kind to Jeremy! And Jeremy will never forget it. Na – Jeremy followed him, like pussy cat after a plate of cream, to the March dyke, to the very door o' Bailiff Ball's house. Jeremy wadna let ony ill befall his maister this day. If a wulf, or a lion, or a bear had leaped upon Hobby Stennis, Jeremy wad hae strangled them like this —chirt– wi' his hands, as easy as ony thing. Ay, he wad that! For the kind kind present he fetched his faithfu' servant, naebody shall lay a hand on Hobby Stennis this day – except, maybe, Jeremy himsel' – ay, maybe, juist Jeremy himsel'. Ow, ay, but a' in the way o' kindness! the same as Hobby himsel'!"

And with that he picked up his Jew's-harp and breathed a fierce anger and scorn into the familiar words that was positively shocking to listen to —

Be it ever so humble,There's no place like ho-o-o-me.

And he stopped to laugh between the lines. Elsie says that it fairly turned her cold to hear him. Though at that time she had, as she remembers, no fear for herself – which, when you come to think of it, was a very curious circumstance indeed. But then her turn was yet to come.

In Jeremy's absence, Elsie tried to tell my father all about it. But the coming and going of the madman that day were so uncertain, and his moods so dangerous, that she could not get matters half explained; nor yet any advice from my father, except not to cross the maniac, save in the last extremity. He offered to pass her back the knife, but Elsie, hearing that one end of the bar was already severed, and the other well through, refused, like the little brick she was, to take it.

Now, this part which follows can only be known imperfectly, because it concerns what happened when Hobby Stennis went back to his own house of the Moat Grange. There were two other sources of information – Jeremy's wild talk afterwards to Elsie, and certain signs and marks not easy of interpretation, which, however, tend to confirm in most points the madman's version.

After Mad Jeremy had come back from watching his master carefully into the house of the bailiff, he visited Elsie, and spoke the words, little reassuring, which I have already written down.

Then going up to the great parlour, out of which opened Mr. Stennis's weaving-room, he lit a lire of wood, which burned with much cheerful blaze. In front of this he sat down, with his fiddle in his hand. He had only drawn the bow across it, and began to tune up when his master walked in.

Possibly the noise irritated Hobby Stennis's none too steady nerves. Possibly, also, he was nettled at Jeremy's insistent request for the loan of a couple of sovereigns in order to go down and "price" the new cargo of melodeons received at Yarrow's, in the village. They had been ordered by my father before his disappearance, to satisfy a temporary local musical fever, and had only just arrived.

How exactly the thing happened is not known, but, at any rate, it is certain that Mr. Stennis refused to give Jeremy a farthing for any such purpose, and at the first sullen retort of the madman, turned fiercely upon him, wrenched from his hands the violin on which he had been fitfully playing and threw it on the fire. As the light dry wood caught and the varnish crackled, Mr. Stennis strode off, fuming, to his weaving-room to calm himself with a turn at the famous hand-loom. He sat down before it, and as the shuttle began to pass back and forth, his passion fell away in proportion as the fascination of the perfect handicraft gained on him.

But Jeremy stood gazing fixedly at the burning fiddle till the last clear flame died out, and in the great fireplace only a double couch of red ashes preserved the shape of a violin.

But, meantime, in the weaving-room the shuttle said click-clack in the great silence which seemed to have fallen all of a sudden upon Deep Moat Grange. In the red light, Jeremy stood erect, gazing entranced at the shape of his beloved instrument outlined on the hearth, and following one by one with his forefinger the ridged weals, from his cheek to his forehead and back again. And all about the twilight fell suddenly dim.

CHAPTER XXIX