Complete works of hall c.., p.84
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 84
“Here they come, bless their innocent hearts!” said Parson Christian, and at that moment the children turned an angle of the road.
The pink and white of their frocks and pinafores were all but hidden by the little forest of green that they carried before and above them.
“‘Till Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane,” muttered Greta, smiling.
When the rush-bearers came up to the front of the church, the lych-gate was thrown open and they filed through.
“How tired he looks, the brave little boy!” said Greta, picking up the foremost of the company, the tiny man in the epaulets, now covered with the dust of the roads.
“The little ones first, and you great girls afterward,” said the parson. “Those with flowers go up to the communion and lay them on the form, and those with mosses put them on the font, and those with rushes and ferns begin under the pulpit and come down the aisle to the porch.”
The stalwart little tramp in Greta’s arms wriggled his way to the ground. He had mosses in his hands and must go first. Then the children trooped into the church, and in an instant the rude old place was alive with the buzz of prattling tongues.
The floor covered many a tomb. Graven on the plain slabs that formed the pathway down the middle of the church were the names of the men and women who had lived and died in the dale generations gone by. In their own day they were children themselves; and now other children — their own children’s children’s children — with never a thought about what lay beneath, with only love in their eyes, and laughter on their lips, and life in their limbs — were strewing rushes down the path above them.
In ten minutes there was not an inch of the flagged aisle visible. All was green from the communion to the porch. Here and there an adventurous lad, turning to account the skill at climbing acquired at birds’-nesting, had clambered over the pews to the rude cross-trees, and hung great bunches of rushes from the roof.
“Now, children, let us sing,” said the parson, and taking up the accordion, he started a hymn.
The leaded windows of the old church stood open, and the sweet young voices floated away, and far away, over the uplands and the dale. And the birds still sung in the blue sky, and the ghylls still rumbled in the distance, and the light wind still souched through the long grass, and the morning sunlight shone over all.
There was a cloud of dust on the road, and presently there came trooping down from the village a company of men, surrounded by a whole circuit of dogs. Snarls, and yaps, and yelps, and squawks, and guffaws, and sometimes the cachinnation and crow of cocks, broke upon the clear air. The roystering set would be as many as a dozen, and all were more or less drunk. First came John Proudfoot, the blacksmith, in his shirt-sleeves, with his leathern apron wrapped in a knot about his waist, and a silver and black game-cock imprisoned under his arm. Lang Geordie Moore, his young helper, carried another fowl. Dick o’ the Syke, the miller, in a brown coat whitened with flour, walked abreast of Geordie and tickled the gills of the fowl with a straw. Job Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, carried a pot of pitch and a brush, and little Tom o’ Dint hobbled along with a handful of iron files. Behind these came the landlord of the Flying Horse, with a basket over one arm, from which peeped the corks of many bottles, and Natt, the stableman at the Ghyll, carried a wicker cage, in which sat a red bantam-cock with spurs that glittered in the light.
There was one other man who walked with the company, and he was the soul of the noisy crew; his voice was the loudest, his laugh the longest, and half of all that was said was addressed to him. He was a lusty man with a florid face; he wore a suit of tweeds plaided in wide stripes of buff and black.
It was Paul Drayton.
“Burn my body, and what’s on now?” he said, as the gang reached the church.
“Rush-bearing, I reckon,” answered Tom o’ Dint.
“And what’s rush-bearing?”
“You know, Mister Paul,” said the postman, “rush-bearing — the barns rush-bearing — St. Peter’s Day, you know.”
“Oh, ay, I know — rush-bearing. Let me see, ain’t it once a year?”
“What, man, but you mind the days when you were a bit boy and went a-rushing yersel’?” said the blacksmith.
“Coorse, coorse, oh, ay, I ain’t forgotten them days. Let me see, it’s a kind of a harvest-home, ain’t it?”
“Nowt o’ the sort,” said Dick, the miller, testily. “Your memory’s failing fast, Mister Ritson.”
“And that’s true, old fence. I’ll never be the same man again after that brain fever I had up in London — not in the head-piece, you know.”
The group of men and dogs had drawn up in front of the church just as Brother Peter crossed the church-yard to the porch, carrying a red paper in his hand.
“Who’s that — the Methodee man?”
“It’s the Methodee, for sure,” said the blacksmith.
“Ey, it’s the parson’s Peter,” added the postman, “and yon paper is a telegraph — it’s like he’s takin’ it to somebody.”
“Hold hard, my boys,” said Drayton; and, leaving his cronies he strode through the lych-gate and down the path, the dogs yapping around him.
Brother Peter had drawn up at the door of the porch; the children were still singing.
“If that telegram is for my wife, you may hand it over to me,” said Drayton, and reached out his hand to take it.
Brother Peter drew back.
“It’ll be all right, old fellow — I’ll see she gets it.”
“Ey, thoo’ll manish that, I’s warn,” said Peter, in a caustic voice.
“Come, don’t you know that what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband?”
“Don’t know as I do. I’se never been larn’t sec daftness,” said Peter.
“Hand it over. Come, be quick!”
“Get ower me ‘at can,” said Peter, with a decisive twinkle.
“Gi’e him a slab ower the lug,” shouted the miller from the road.
“You hear what they say? Come, out with it.”
“Eh, you’ve rowth o’ friends, you’re a teeran crew, but I cares laal for any on you.”
Drayton turned away with a contemptuous snort.
“Damme, what a clatter!” he shouted, and leaped on to the raised mound of a grave to look in at an open window. As he did so he kicked a glass for flowers that lay upon it, and the broken frame tumbled in many pieces. “I’ve done for somebody’s money,” he said with a loud guffaw.
“What, man, but it were thy awn brass as bought it,” said the blacksmith.
“Ey, it’s thy fadder’s grave,” said Job Sheepshanks.
Drayton glanced down at the headstone.
“Why, so it is!” he said; “d’ye see, I hain’t been here since the day I buried him.”
“Nay, that’s all stuff and nonsense,” said Job. “I mind the morning I found ye lying wet and frostit on the top of that grave.”
“D’ye say so? Well, I ain’t for denying it; and now I think of it, I was — yes, I was here that morning.”
“Nay, you warn’t nowt o’ the sort,” said the blacksmith. “That were the varra morning as Giles Raisley saw you at the Pack Horse sleeping. I mind the fratch Job had with laal Gubblum about it long ago.”
“It’s all stuff and nonsense,” replied Job. “He were here.”
“The Pack Horse? Well, now, I remember, I was there, too.”
The singing had ceased, and Greta came out into the porch on tiptoe, carrying in her arms a tiny mite, who was crying. Peter handed her the telegram, and turned up the path.
Drayton had rejoined his companions, and was in the act of knocking the neck off a bottle by striking it against the wall, when Peter walked through the lych-gate.
“Tee a pint o’ yal down the Methodee’s back,” shouted Dick, the miller, and in another moment Brother Peter was covered with the contents of the broken bottle.
A loud, roystering laugh filled the air, and echoed from the hills.
“What a breck!” tittered the postman.
“What a breck!” shouted the blacksmith.
“What a breck!” roared the miller.
“Get ower me ‘at can!” mimicked Natt.
“He’s got a lad’s heart, has Mister Paul,” said the landlord of the Flying Horse.
“Ey, he’s a fair fatch,” echoed little Tom o’ Dint.
Leaving Peter to shake himself dry of the liquor that dripped from him in froth, the noisy gang reeled down the road, the yelping dogs careering about them, and the cocks squawking with the hugs they received from the twitching arms of the men convulsed with laughter.
At the head of the Vale of Newlands there is a clearing that was made by the lead miners of two centuries ago. It lies at the feet of an ampitheater of hills that rise peak above peak, and die off depth beyond depth. Of the old mines nothing remains but the level cuttings in the sides of the fells, and here and there the washing-pits cut out of the rock at your feet. Fragments of stone lie about, glistening with veins of lead, but no sound of pick or hammer breaks the stillness, and no cart or truck trundles over the rough path. It is a solitude in which one might forget that the world is full of noise.
To this spot Drayton and his cronies made their way. At one of the old washing troughs they drew up, and sat in a circle on its rocky sides. They had come for a cock fight. It was to be the bantam (carried by Natt and owned by his master) against all comers. Drayton and the blacksmith were the setters-on. The first bout was between the bantam and Lang Geordie’s ponderous black Spanish. Geordie’s bird soon squawked dolorously, and made off over the heads of the derisive spectators, whereupon Geordie captured it by one of its outstretched wings, and forthwith screwed its neck. Then came John Proudfoot’s silver and black, and straightway steel gaffs were affixed to the spurs. When the cocks felt their feet they crowed, and then pecked the ground from side to side. An exciting struggle ensued. Up and down, over and under, now beating the breast, now trailing the comb, now pecking at the gills. And the two men at opposite sides of the pit — the one in his shirt-sleeves rolled up to the elbows, the other in his sporting plaid — stooped with every lunge and craned their necks at every fall, and bobbed their heads with every peck, their eyes flashing, their teeth set.
At one moment they drew off their birds, called for the files, and sharpened up the spurs. Later on they seized the cocks by the necks, shouted for the pitch-pot and patched up the bleeding combs. The birds were equally matched, and fought long. At last their strength ebbed away. They followed each other feebly, stretching their long, lagging throats languidly, opening their beaks and hanging out their dry, white tongues, turning tail, then twisting about and fighting again, until both lay stretched out on the pit bottom.
As the energy of the cocks subsided, the ardor of the men waxed sensibly. They yelled excitedly, protested, reviled, swore, laughed, jeered, and crowed.
At length, when the bantam fell and gave no signs of speedy resurrection, the anger of Drayton could not be supported. He leaped across the pit, his face red as his cock’s comb, and shouting, “Damme, what for did ye pick up my bird?” he planted a blow full on the blacksmith’s chest.
A fight of yet fiercer kind followed. Amid shouts, and in the thick of a general scuffle, the blacksmith closed with his powerful adversary, gripped him about the waist, twisted him on his loins, and brought him to the ground with a crash. Then he stood over him with fierce eyes.
“I mak’ no doubt you’re not hankerin’ for another of that sort!” he puffed.
“John’s given him the cross-buttock,” said the miller.
“The master’s lost all his wrustling,” said Natt, blinking out of his sleepy eyes.
“I mind the day when he could have put John down same as a bit boy,” said the little postman.
Natt helped Drayton to his feet. He was quiet enough, now, but as black in the face as a thunder-cloud.
“This comes of a gentleman mixing with them as is beneath him,” he muttered, and he mopped his perspiring forehead with a bandanna handkerchief.
The miller snorted, the mason grunted, the little postman laughed in his thin pipe.
Drayton’s eyes flashed.
“I’m a gentleman, I am, if you want to know,” he said, defiantly.
The blacksmith stood by, leisurely rolling down his shirt-sleeves.
“Ey, for fault of wise folk we call you so,” he said, and laughed. “But when I leet of a man, I’s rather have him nor a hundred sec gentlemen as you!”
“Thoo’s reet for once, John!” shouted Dick o’ the Syke, and there was some general laughter.
“Gentleman! Ax the women-folk what they mak’ of sec a gentleman,” continued the blacksmith with contemptuous emphasis. “Him as larn’t folks to fill the public and empty the cupboard.”
There was a murmur among the men as they twisted about.
“Ax them what they mak’ of him ‘at spent four days in Lunnon and came back another man — ax the women-folk; they’re maistly reet, I reckon.”
Another uneasy movement among the men.
“Burn my body! and what’s the women to me?” said Drayton.
“Nay, nowt,” answered the blacksmith. “Your awn wife seems nowdays powerful keen for your company.”
Drayton’s eyes were red, but the fire died out of them in an instant. He stepped up to the blacksmith and held out his hand.
“You’ve licked me,” he said, in another tone, “but I ain’t the man to keep spite, I ain’t; so come along, old fence, and let’s wet it.”
“That’s weel said,” put in Tommy Lowthwaite, the landlord.
“It’s no’but fair,” said Dick, the miller.
“He’s a reet sort, after all,” said Job, the mason.
“He’s his awn fadder’s son, is Paul Ritson,” said Tom o’ Dint.
In two minutes more the soiled company were trampling knee-deep through rank beds of rushes on their way to the other side of the dale. They stopped a few yards from a pit shaft with its headgear and wheel.
“Let’s take my brother’s ken for it,” said Drayton, and they turned into a one-story house that stood near.
It was a single capacious chamber, furnished more like a library than an office; carpets, rugs, a cabinet, easychairs, and a solid table in the middle of the floor. The cock-fighters filed in and sat down on every available chair, on the table, and at last on the floor.
“Squat and whiff,” said Drayton, “and, Tommy, you out with the corks, quick.”
“It must be a bonny money-making consarn to keep up the likes of this,” said the miller, settling himself uneasily in an easy-chair.
Dick was telling himself what a fool he had been not to ask more than the fifty pounds he received for the damage once done by fire to his mill.
“Have you never heard as it ain’t all gold as glitters?” said Drayton; and he struck a lucifer match on the top of the mahogany table.
“What, man, dusta mean as the pit’s not paying?” said the blacksmith.
Drayton gave his head a sidelong shake of combined astuteness and reserve.
“I mak’ no doubt now as you have to lend Master Hugh many a gay penny,” said Tom o’ Dint in an insinuating tone.
“Least said, soonest mended,” said Drayton, sententiously, and smiled a mighty knowing smile.
Then the men laughed, and the landlord handed the bottles round, and all drank out of the necks, and puffed dense volumes of smoke from their pipes, and spat on the carpet.
And still the birds sung in the clear air without, and still the ghylls rumbled, and still the light wind souched through the grass, and still the morning sunlight shone over all.
The door opened, and Hugh Ritson entered, followed by the lawyer, Mr. Bonnithorne. There was a steely glimmer in his eyes as he stood just inside the threshold and looked round.
“Come, get out of this!” he said.
The men shuffled to their feet and were elbowing their way out. Drayton, who sat on the table, removed his pipe from between his teeth and called on them to remain.
Hugh Ritson stepped up to Drayton and touched him on the shoulder.
“I want to speak with you,” he said.
“What is it?” demanded Drayton.
“I want to speak with you,” repeated Hugh.
“What is it? Out with it. You’ve got the gift of the gab, hain’t ye? Don’t mind my friends.”
Hugh Ritson’s face whitened, and a cold smile passed over it.
“Your time is near,” he muttered, and he turned on his heel.
As he stepped out of the noisesome chamber, a loud, hoarse laugh followed him. He drew a long breath.
“Thank God it will soon be over!” he said.
Bonnithorne was at his side.
“Is it to be to-morrow?” asked the lawyer.
“To-morrow,” said Hugh Ritson.
“Have you told him?”
“Tell him yourself, Bonnithorne. I can bear with the man no longer. I shall be doing something that I may repent.”
“Have you apprised Parson Christian?”
Hugh Ritson bent his head.
“And Greta?”
“She won’t come,” said Hugh. “The girl could never breathe the same air as that scoundrel for five minutes together.”
“And yet he’s her half-brother,” said the lawyer, softly; and then he added, with the conventional smile: “Odd, isn’t it?”
CHAPTER II.
When the procession of children had passed the little cottage at the angle of the roads, the old man who leaned on his staff at the gate turned about and stepped to the porch.
“Did the boy see them? — did he see the children?” said the young woman who held the child by the hand.
“I mak’ na doot,” said the old man.
He stooped to the little one and held out one long, withered finger. The soft baby hand closed on it instantly.
“Did he laugh? I thought he laughed,” said the young woman.
A bright smile played on her lips.
“Maybe so, lass.”
“Ralphie has never seen the children before, father. Didn’t he look frightened — just a little frightened — at first, you know? I thought he crept behind my gown.”
