Deep Moat Grange

CHAPTER XXXI

THE HERO PLAYS SECOND FIDDLE

Now, while Elsie was dancing the hours away in desperate danger of her life and to the peril of her reason, Mr. Ablethorpe and I had not been idle. That is, so far as was within our power to act or our knowledge to foresee. He had allowed me to judge of the state of the rings which had been passed through the furnace. I was still uncertain of their portent till he produced an oval plaque with the mark V.R. upon it. It was of brass, and had doubtless formed part of the single leathern sack which Harry Foster kept open so as to take on to Bewick anything which might be committed to his care en route.

There could be no doubt. We had found the murderer of Harry Foster – that is, we had only to find who made the bread at Deep Moat Grange in order to be sure of him. It was, indeed, a known thing that, save on a rare occasion, the Moat Grange people made their own bread – but whether in the shape of griddle-cakes, soda scones, or properly baked oven loaves, no one knew. But Mr. Ablethorpe and I were sure there would be no more difficulty. More than that we meant to find out – the clew was the first one which had really promised well, and we meant to follow it. That very night we got ready to go, even though Mr. Ablethorpe ought now to have been at home, preparing for his Sunday services, instead of doing detective business across country on the strength of a few calcined rings and a brass plate.

It was about this time that my father, with torn and bleeding hands, was working desperately at the bar of iron. His knife was worn to a stump, but the open door of Elsie's cell tempted him with a terrible sense of the unknown which was passing outside. Besides, he could not tell at what moment Jeremy might return, and, shutting the door, shut off at the same time his hopes of escape and of helping Elsie, whom he saw already in the grasp of the midnight assassin.

Now if I were writing this to show what a hero I was, I should, of course, have put my own part in the forefront. But as I was at the time little better than a boy who does what he can, and it really was my father who helped Elsie the most – and had done for some time – I am not going to take away the credit from him. Mine is the proper sort of father, that a fellow can be proud of. I think I would have done all that he did if I had been there and had his chances. But then I wasn't, and I hadn't. So Mr. Ablethorpe and I had just come along as best we might – almost, but not quite, the day after the fair.

It was just before daybreak when my father worked his way through the bar, and the fragments fell outward – stonework, plaster, cut iron – all into the little cupboard. Of course, he had been working by the sense of touch for hours. Many a time he had drawn the rough home-made file raspingly across his wrist and hands. His face was stained with dungeon mud, his hair uncropped and matted, his beard tangled, and, as my mother said afterwards —

"If Mad Jeremy was a waur-looking creature than you, Joseph Yarrow, I am none surprised that he frighted ye a' oot o' your leggings and knee-breeks!"

When my father came out through the chamber which had so long been Elsie's he groped about to find the entrance, his heart thumping – so he owned to me – against his ribs lest the way should have been shut by the madman, and he no better off than he had been before – nay, infinitely worse, for the handiwork of the night would be sure to be discovered. He had worked in the dark – furiously – without thought of covering up his traces. But he had brought with him the iron bar which had been his means of direct communication with Elsie from cell to cell.

It was cold weather, and the first drive of February wind as he stood up in the ivy-covered ruin was, as my father expressed it, "like a dash of water in the face to a man." The next instant he was through the crumbling walls, startling the bats and sparrows with a shower of debris, and lo! there before him he saw the house of Deep Moat Grange – in a blaze!

Now comes out the deep and abiding loyalty of the man who had a name for little else than driving a bargain hardly and keeping it to the death. Perhaps, though, he looked upon it as that. Elsie had supported him, fed him, given him drink, furnished him with tools, and so now, though most men would have gone straight back to Breckonside to seek for assistance, Joseph Yarrow – of whom I am proud to call myself the son – struck right across the bridge and tore across the lawn among the lily clumps straight for the front door of the burning house.

The staircase and hall were already filled with a stifling reek, but my father could hear above him the crackling and dull roar of the flames, hungry – like many wild beasts.

It was not dark, for the chamber door above was open, and the light of the conflagration was reflected through. But plump in the middle of the staircase my father encountered a man. It was Mad Jeremy going out serenely enough, carrying the candle in one hand, and his precious melodeon in the other. He saw my father. My father saw him. With one intent to fight and slay they rushed at each other – Jeremy's wild screech mingling with my father's roar as of a charging bull.

Neither got home. My father's iron bar would doubtless have broken the madman's skull, but that, with his usual agility, he leaped to the side. Jeremy smashed the heavy candle over my father's head, and fled upstairs, not because he was afraid for himself, but in order to protect the melodeon from the blow he saw coming.

"Ye shall na get it," he shouted. "It's nane o' yours. I paid good money for it ower the counter o' your ain shop!"

And he fled upward through the flames, which seemed to wrap him round without doing any harm. They seemed his element.

As I say, Mr. Ablethorpe and I came just too late. We had seen from afar the burning house – at least, we had seen the "skarrow" in the sky – the Grange itself lying (as all the world knows) at the very bottom of Deep Moat Hollow, with the pond on one side and the woods all about.

But once on our way, we had made haste, as indeed had many another. However, we started earlier than the others, though my father, living as it were next door, was far before any of us. Indeed, had it not been for him – Well, I will go on with my tale.

We rushed across the drawbridge, which, just as he had done, we found down. We followed him across the lily plots. Right in the middle Mr. Ablethorpe came a cropper. I was on the look-out. It was not the first time that I had played at hide-and-seek there in difficult circumstances, though never with the windows above crackling and the flames licking the ivy and dry Virginia creeper off the walls, and the smoke so thick that the landscape was almost blotted out by it.

I arrived, a little in front of the Hayfork Parson, on the threshold of the door of Deep Moat Grange. And that is why I was the first to welcome a pair of Lazaruses risen from the dead – one, a girl, apparently truly dead, held in the arms of the wildest and most savage man I had ever beheld, upon whose shoulder her head reclined, and in whose menacing right hand was a rough bar of iron, pointed like a chisel.

I think he did not see well. Or, coming out of all that strangeness of the night, and the smoor and choking swirl of the smoke, he did not know his own son. At any rate, he rushed at me with Elsie still in his arms and the iron bar uplifted.

But Mr. Ablethorpe interposed from the flank, and catching him about the waist, disarmed him.

"Mr. Yarrow!" he cried, "this is Joseph, your own son!"

My father blinked at me a moment, vaguely. Then, quite suddenly, he thrust Elsie into my arms.

"There," he said, "take her. Be good to her. She calls you her 'Dearest Joe.' You will never deserve half your luck – you will never know it. But as sure as my name is Joseph Yarrow, I will take it upon me to see that you behave yourself decently well to that girl."

He was pretty much of a brick – father. At least, though he was only a grocer, I don't know anybody else's father I would change him for. And Elsie says so, too. I think, however – between ourselves – that he's just a bit gone on Elsie himself, and thinks I'm not half good enough for her.

Well, I'm not! I don't deny the fact; and as for Elsie – she encourages us both in the belief.

CHAPTER XXXII

"THERE'S NAE LUCK ABOOT THE HOOSE"

There's a bit more to tell about this part, though you might not expect it. It always makes me shiver to think of. But I could not help it. Nobody could – and anyway, the thing has got to be told. It is about Mad Jeremy, and what befell him when he fled upward through the smoke and flame, clambering by the balusters, my father says, more like a monkey than any human man.

And, by the way, I am not sure that he really was a man – except that a wild beast would not have been so clever, and the devil ever so much cleverer! Or, at least, he has the credit of being.

Did you ever see the burning of a great house – not in a city, I mean, but far in the country? Well, I have. There is not much to see till one is close by. A few pale, shivering flames, like the fires that boil the tea at a summer picnic – volumes of smoke rising over the parapet, mostly pale, and the sun serene above the scurry of helpless men, running this way and that, like ants when you thrust your stick into an ant hill to see what will happen. Hither and thither they go – all busy, all doing nothing. For one thing, water is lacking. The local fire brigade is always just about to arrive. If, by any chance, it does come, a boy with a garden squirt would do more good.

Well, it was like that on the morning of the eleventh of February. When the day did come at last, there was nothing mean about it – considered as an early spring morning in Scotland. It was of the colour of pale straw, with a glint low down like newly thatched houses before the winter's storm has had a turn at them.

Meanwhile, underneath, and looking so petty and foolish, was the crackling of the timbers, the falling in of the tiles, the smoke puffing and mounting like great strings of onions linked together, blue and stifling from the burning wood, white and steamy as the faggots slid outward into the moat, or fell with a crash into the pond.

All about swarmed a crowd of eager and curious folk. My father, as soon as he was recognized, and before he could condescend to tell his tale, had taken command, all soiled and bleeding as he was. I believe now that most there considered that he had rescued Elsie from the wild tribe after a desperate struggle, in which all the others had been annihilated. And it is characteristic of Breckonside, of the position my father held there, and especially of public sentiment with regard to the folk of the Moat, that no one for a moment dreamed that in so doing he had exceeded his legal right.

There was not much attempt at saving the building. Elsie had come a little to herself. At first she could say little, save that "her grandfather was dead – Mad Jeremy had killed him," which information did not greatly interest the people, save in so far as it detracted from my father's glory in having made a "clean sweep!"

Mr. Ball, whom everybody respected – in spite of the service in which he lived – caused a horse to be put between the shafts, and Elsie was conveyed home to Nance Edgar's by Mr. Ball himself. My father wanted her to go on to "the Mount." But Elsie no sooner heard the word mentioned, than, recovering from her swoon, she declared that "she would never set foot there – so long as – No, indeed, that she would not!"

"So long as what, my girl?" my father asked, gently.

You really can't imagine how gentle my father was with her. It took me by surprise, as I did not, of course, yet know anything about the events which had drawn them together in the deep places underground.

"Because – because – just because!" she answered. "Besides, it is not fitting at present!"

"I understand – perhaps you are right," sighed my father, somewhat disappointed.

For all that, he did not understand a little bit. It was because of Harriet and Constantia Caw – especially Harriet. It is an eternal wonder how women misunderstand each other – the best, the kindest, and especially the prettiest of them.

I would gladly have gone with her, but, of course, that would have been too marked. Besides, I dared not face my mother without my father. There was a little fountain made of the mouths of lions on the terrace, which spouted out thin streams of water into a large oyster shell – the kind they call pecten, I think, only the round part as big as a horseshoe. And once Elsie was away with Mr. Bailiff Ball, I got father to wash his face and hands there, which were black and terrible with matted hair and hardened blood. So that my mother, for all her outcries, did not really see him at his worst, or anything like it.

The fire mounted always, but somehow in the light of day it did not seem real. The faces of all the folk as we returned from the water, were directed to the tower which was called Hobby's Folly. The gabled, crow-stepped mansion of the Moat had nothing very ancient about it – that is, to the common view. You had to know the older secrets of the monks for that. But at the angle overlooking the pond, Mr. Stennis had caused to be built a square tower in the old Robert the Bruce donjon fashion, each chamber opening out of the other. These communicated by ladders, which could be drawn up and all access prevented. At least that was the tale which the masons who were at the building brought back to Breckonside. The tower was square on the top and had low battlements, save at one corner where there was a kind of pepper-pot cupola in which – so they said – Hobby Stennis used to sit and count his gold.

At first I could not make out what it was that the folk were craning their necks upward to look at. Evidently it was on the far side, that nearest the small lake, and, of course, invisible from the court out of which my father and I were coming.

But we followed the movement of the people, and there on the utmost pinnacle of the battlements, that outer corner which was higher than the rest and shaped like a miniature dome, his long legs twined about the broken stalk of the weathercock, and his melodeon in his hands, sat Mad Jeremy! Of the gilt weathercock itself nothing remained save the butt. With a single clutch of his great hairy hand, Jeremy had rooted the uneasy fowl out of its socket and hurled it far before him into the pond.

Up till now the flames had hardly reached the tower, and it seemed at least a possible thing that the maniac might be saved. But none of the Breckonsiders were keen about it. Only Mr. Ablethorpe and my father were willing to make any attempt to save him. Indeed, I was absolutely with the majority on this occasion, and could not, for my part, imagine a better solution than that which seemed to be imminent.

Nevertheless, the two tried to get into the tower from behind, but found all a seething mass of flames, which had swept across the whole main body of the building as if to swallow up Hobby's Folly for a last bonne bouche. There was no arguing with such a spate of fire. There remained, however, a little low door, reported to be of iron, but which, being near to the water and exposed to the fury of damp westerly winds and the moist fogs off the pond, had probably rusted half away.

"Come, let us do our duty," said Mr. Ablethorpe; "here is a human life! Let us save it!"

But nobody but Mr. Yarrow, senior, followed him. I was with the majority on this point, as I have said before, and so stayed where I was. Besides, Mad Jeremy was so curious to see and hear. He laughed and sang, his shrill voice carrying well through the crackle of the rafters and the snap and spit of the smaller shredded fragments of flame. As soon as he caught sight of Mr. Ablethorpe and my father he began to hurl down the copings of the battlements upon their heads. So that in the end they had to desist from the attempt, though they had nobly done their best.

And all the while he sang. It was the trampling measure of "There's nae luck" that the madman had chosen for his swan song. Never had been seen or heard such a thing. As he finished each verse he would rise and dance, balancing himself on the utmost point of the cupola, his melodeon swaying in his hand and his voice declaring ironically that —

Then he would laugh, and call out to the people beneath that the luck had come back.

"The guidman o' the Grange is safe!" he would cry. "He is at his loom, but never more will he weave, I ken. Jeremy has seen to that. And what for that, quo' ye? Juist to learn him that when Jeremy asks for his ain, he is no to be denied as if he were a beggar wantin' alms!"

Then he took a new tack, and launched into "The Toom Pooch" – which is to say, the "empty pocket" – a very popular ditty in the Scots language, and especially about Breckonside:

"Ye puir feckless lot!" he shouted down to the crowd beneath. "I ken you and Breckonside. Here's charity for ye! Catch a haud!" And he showered the contents of a pocket-book down upon their heads.

"Here are notes o' ten pound, and notes o' twenty, and notes o' a hundred! What man o' ye ever saw the like? Only Jeremy, Jeremy and his maister. They wan them a', playin' at a wee bit game wi' rich lonely folk. Jeremy was fine company to them. And whiles it ended in a bit jab wi' the knife in the ribs, and whiles in a tug o' the hemp aboot a lad's neck, if he wasna unco clever. But it was never Jeremy's neck, nor was the knife ever in Hobby's back till Jeremy – but that's tellin'! Oh, Hobby's a'richt. I saw him sitting screedin' awa' at his windin' sheet, and thinkin' the time no lang."

He rose and danced, singing as he danced —

The flames shot up like the cracking of a mighty whip. The madman felt the sting, and with a wild yell he launched himself over the parapet into the muddy sludge at the bottom of Deep Moat pond. He must have gone in head foremost, for he never rose. Only the melodeon, with the water trickling in drops off its bell chime in silver gilt, and the glittering tinsel of its keys, rose slowly to the surface among a few air bubbles and floated there among a little brownish mud.

CHAPTER XXXIII

CONFESSION

The ruins of Deep Moat Grange were black and cold – almost level with the ground, also. For the folk had pulled the house almost stone from stone, partly in anger, partly in their search for hidden treasure. Elsie was home again in the white cottage at the Bridge End, and my father was attending to his business quietly, as if nothing had happened.

The authorities, of course, had made a great search among the subterranean passages of the monks' storehouses, without, however, discovering more than Elsie and my father could have told them. Mr. Ablethorpe was still silent. So, being bound by my promise to him, I judged it best to hold my peace also.

But in spite of all this, or perhaps because of it, the country continued in a ferment. The deaths of Mad Jeremy and Mr. Stennis, instead of quieting public clamour, made the mystery still more mysterious. The weird sisters remained at liberty, and the wildest reports flew about. None would venture out of doors after dark. Children were told impossible tales of Spring-heeled Jacks in petticoats, who (much less judicious than the usual bogie – "Black Man," "Hornie Nick," the lord of the utter and middle darkness), confounded the innocent with the guilty, and made off with good children as readily as with children the most advanced in depravity.

Of course, knowing what I knew, I had none of these fears. I understood why Mr. Ablethorpe had arranged for the carrying off of Honorine, Camilla, and Sidonia. They were, I knew, housed with the "Little Sisters of the Weak-Minded." But to me, as to others, Aphra remained the stumbling-block.

But even this was soon to be removed.

On March the sixteenth, one month and five days after the burning of the house of Deep Moat Grange, the sheriff's court of Bordershire was held in the courthouse at Longtown. My father and I, with many people from Breckonside, were there, and practically all Bewick to a man. For great interest was felt in a case of night-poaching in which these two firm friends, Davie Elshiner and Peter Kemp, officially had repeatedly given each other the lie.

"There is rank perjury somewhere," commented the sheriff, "but as I cannot bring it home to any particular person, I must discharge the accused."

A certain subdued hush of various movement ran along the benches, as the listeners got ready to go. Sheriff Graham Duffus, a red-faced, jolly man, was conferring in hushed tones with the fiscal or public prosecutor, when two tall young men in irreproachable clerical attire pushed their way up the central passage, kept clear for witnesses by a couple of burly policemen at either end. A woman walked between them. She was tall, veiled, angular, and bore herself singularly erect, even with an air of pride.

The murmur of the people changed to an awe-stricken hush, as the woman lifted her veil.

It was Aphra Orrin, and she stood there between Mr. De la Poer and Mr. Ablethorpe!

"My lord," said Mr. Ablethorpe, in a clear and dominating voice, "I and my friend, Mr. De la Poer, are ordained clergymen of the Church of Scotland, Episcopal. We are not aware of the formula with which we ought to approach you, seated as a judge in a court of justice. But we are here because we know of no way more direct to carry out the wishes of this poor woman, whose conscience has been touched, and who by full confession, by condemnation, and by the suffering of punishment, desires to make what amends she can for the dreadful iniquities in which, for many years, she has been involved."