A Book Of Quaker Saints Part 8

But the man was not to be so easily dismissed.

'Hast thou then milk?' he asked.

Moll laughed aloud. A man who did not want ale should not have milk; no money to be made out of that; especially this night of all nights, when every drop would be wanted for her Ladyship's b.u.t.ter.

Lies were part of Moll's regular stock-in-trade. She lied now, with the ease of long habit.

'You will get no shelter here,' she said roughly, 'and as for milk, there is not a drop in the house.'

The Stranger looked at her. He spoke no words for a full minute, but as his eyes pierced her through and through, she knew that he knew that she had lied. The knowledge made her angry. She repeated her words with an oath. The Stranger made as if to turn away; then, almost reluctantly but very tenderly, as if he were being drawn back in spite of himself: 'Hast thou then cream?' he asked. Yet, though his tone was persuasive, his brows were knitted as he stood looking down upon the angry woman.

'Not as if he cared about the cream, but as if he cared about me,'

Moll said herself, long after. But at the time: 'No, nor cream either.

On my soul, there is not a drop in the house,' she repeated, more fiercely than before.

But, even as she spoke, she saw that the Stranger's eyes were fastened on the churn that stood behind her, the churn evidently full and drawn out for use, with drops of rich yellow cream still standing upon the lid and trickling down the sides.

Moll turned her square shoulders upon the churn as if to shut out its witness to her falsehood. Her lies came thick and fast; 'I tell you there is not a single drop of cream in the house.'

The next moment, a loud crash made her look round. She had forgotten Jan! The loud angry voice and the cold blast from the open door had awakened him before he had had time to get sound asleep. Hearing his mother vow that she had not a drop of cream in the house, he left his rug and began playing about again. Then, being ever a restless little mortal, he had crept round to the churn to see if it had really become empty in such a short time. He had tried to pull himself up by one of the legs in order to stand on the rim and see if there was really no cream inside; and in attempting this feat, naturally, he had pulled the whole churn over upon him. And not only the churn,--its contents too! Eighteen quarts of Moll's richest yellow cream were streaming all over the kitchen floor. Pools, lakes, rivers, seas of cream were running over the flagstones and dripping through the crevices into the ground.

With a cry of rage Moll turned, and, seeing the damage, she sprang upon little Jan and beat him soundly; and a beating from Moll's heavy hand was no small matter: then with a curse she flung the child away from her towards the hearth.

'Woman!' The Stranger's voice recalled her. 'Woman! Beware! Thou art full of lies and fury and deceit, yet in the name of the Lord I warn thee. Ere three days have gone by, thou shalt know what is in thine heart; and thou shalt learn the power of that which was, and is, and will be!'

So saying, the unwelcome guest opened the outer door and walked away into the raging storm and darkness,--a less bitter storm it seemed to him now than that created by the violent woman within doors. Some way further on he espied a haystack, under which he lay down, as he had done on many another night before this, and there he slept in the wind and the snow until morning.

Moll, meanwhile, enraged beyond words at the loss of her cream, stalked off for a pail and cloth, and set herself to wash the floor, muttering curses as she did so. Never a glance did she cast at the corner by the fire where little Jan still lay by the hearth-stone, motionless and strangely quiet; he, the restless imp, who was usually so full of life. Never a glance, until, the centre of the floor being at last clean again, Moll, on her knees, came with her pail of soap-suds to the white river that surrounded the corner of the kitchen where Jan lay. A white river? Nay, there was a crimson river that mingled with it; a stream of crimson drops that flowed from the stone under the child's head.

Moll leapt to her feet on the instant. What ailed the boy? She had beaten him, it is true, but then she had beaten him often before this in his father's absence. A beating was nothing new to little Jan. Why had he fallen? What made him lie so still? She turned him over. Ah! it was easy to see the reason. As she flung him from her in her rage, the child in his fall had struck his head against the sharp edge of the hearth-stone, and there he lay now, with the life-blood steadily flowing from his temple.

A feeling that Rough Moll had never been conscious of before gripped her heart at the sight. Was her boy dead? Had she killed him? What would his father say? What would her husband call her? A murderer? Was she that? Was that what the Stranger had meant when he had looked at her with those piercing eyes? He might have called her a liar, at the sight of the churn full of cream, but he had not done so; and little she would have cared if he had. But a murderer! Was murder in her heart?

Lifting Jan as carefully as she could, she carried him upstairs to the small bedroom under the roof, where he usually lay on a tiny pallet by her side. But this night the child's small figure lay in the wide bed, and big Moll, with all her clothes on, hung over him; or if she lay down for a moment or two, it was only on the hard little pallet by his side.

All that night Moll watched. But all that night Jan never moved. All the next day he lay unconscious, while Moll did her clumsy utmost to staunch the wound in his forehead. Long before it was light, she tried to send one of her maids for the doctor; but the storm was now so violent that none could leave or enter the house.

Her Ladyship's order went unheeded. The thirty pounds of b.u.t.ter were never made. But My Lady, who was a mother herself, not only forgave Moll for spoiling her Yuletide festivities, but even told her, when she heard of the disaster, that she need not trouble about the rent until her boy was better.

Until he was better! But would Jan ever be better? Moll had no thought now for either the b.u.t.ter or the rent. The yellow cream might turn sour in every single one of her pans for all she cared, if only she could get rid of this new unbearable pain.

At length, on the evening of the second day, faint with the want of sleep, she fell into an uneasy doze: and still Jan had neither moved nor stirred. Presently a faint sound woke her. Was he calling? No; it was but the Christmas bells ringing across the snow. What were those bells saying? 'MUR-DER-ER' 'MUR-DERER'--was that it? Over and over again. Did even the bells know what she had done and what she had in her heart? For a moment black despair seized her.

The next moment there followed the shuffling sound of many feet padding through the snow. The storm had ceased by this time, and all the world was wrapped in a white silence, broken only by the sound of the distant bells. And now the Christmas waits had followed the bells'

music, and were singing carols outside the ale-house door. Fiercely, Moll stuck her fingers in her ears. She would not listen, lest even the waits should sing of her sin, and shew her the blackness of her heart. But the song stole up into the room, and, in spite of herself, something forced Moll to attend to the words:

'Babe Jesus lay in Mary's lap, The sun shone on his hair-- And that was how she saw, mayhap, The crown already there.'

That was how good mothers sang to their children. They saw crowns upon their hair. What sort of a crown had Moll given to her child? She looked across and saw the chaplet of white bandages lying on the white pillow. No; she, Moll, had never been a good mother, would never be one now, unless her boy came back to life again. She was a murderer, and her husband when he returned from the wars would tell her so, and little Jan would never know that his mother had a heart after all.

At that moment the carol died away, and the waits' feet, heavy with clinging snow, shuffled off into the darkness; but looking down again at the head with its crown of white bandages upon the white pillow, Moll saw that this time Jan's eyes were open and shining up at her.

'Mother,' he said, in his little weak voice, as he opened his arms and smiled. Moll had seen him smile like that at his father; she had never known before that she wanted to share that smile. She knew it now.

Only three short days had pa.s.sed since she turned the Stranger from her doors, but little Jan and his mother entered a new world of love and tenderness together that Christmas morning. As Rough Moll gathered her little son up into her arms and held him closely to her breast, she knew for the first time the power of 'that which was, and is, and will be.'

VI. THE SHEPHERD OF PENDLE HILL

_'On Pendle G.F. saw people as thick as motes in the sun, that should in time be brought home to the Lord, that there might be but one Shepherd and one Sheepfold in all the earth. There his eye was directed Northward beholding a great people that should receive him and his message in those parts.'--W. PENN'S Testimony to George Fox._

_'In Adam, in the fall are all the inward foul weather, storms, tempests, winds, strifes, the whole family of it is in confusion, being all gone from the spirit and witness of G.o.d in themselves, and the power and the light, in which power and light and spirit, is the fellowship with G.o.d and with one another, through which they come ... into the quickener, who awakens (them) and brings (them) up unto Himself, the way, Christ; and out of and off from the teachers and priests, and shepherds that change and fall, to the PRIEST, SHEPHERD and PROPHET, that never fell or changed, nor ever will fail or change, nor leave the flock in the cold weather nor in the winter, nor in storms or tempests; nor doth the voice of the wolf frighten him from his flock. For the Light, the Power, the Truth, the Righteousness, did it ever leave you in any weather, or in any storms or tempests? And so his sheep know his voice and follow Him, who gives them life eternal abundantly.'--GEORGE FOX._

VI. THE SHEPHERD OF PENDLE HILL

'Ingleborough, Pendle and Pen-y-Ghent Are the highest hills 'twixt Scotland and Trent.' So sing I, the Shepherd of Pendle, to myself, and so have I sung, on summer days, these many years, lying out atop of old Pendle Hill, keeping watch over my flock.

In good sooth, a shepherd's life is a hard one, on our Lancashire fells, for nine months out of the twelve. The nights begin to be sharp with frost towards the back-end of the year, for all the days are sunny and warm at times. Bitter cold it is in winter and worse in spring, albeit the daylight is longer.

'As the day lengthens, so the cold strengthens,' runs the rhyme, and well do men know the truth of it in these parts. Many a time a man must be ready to give his own life for his sheep, aye and do it too, to save them in a snow-drift or from the biting frost. It is an anxious season for the shepherd, until he sees the lambs safely at play and able to stand upon their weak legs and run after their mothers. But it is not until the dams are clipped that a shepherd has an easy mind and can let his thoughts dwell on other things. Then, at last, in the summer, his time runs gently for a while; and I, for one, was always ready to enjoy myself, when once the bitter weather was over.

So there I was, one day many years ago, nigh upon Midsummer, lying out on the gra.s.sy slopes atop of old Pendle Hill, and singing to myself--

'Ingleborough, Pendle and Pen-y-Ghent Are the highest hills 'twixt Scotland and Trent.'

But for all I sang of the hills, my thoughts were in the valleys. I lay there, watching till the sun should catch the steep roof of a certain cot I know. It stands by the side of a stream, so hidden among the bushes that even my eye cannot find it, unless the sunlight finds it first, and flashes back at me from roof and window-pane. That was the cot I had never lived in then, but I hoped to live in it before the summer was over, and to bring the bonniest la.s.s in all yon broad Yorkshire there with me as my bride. That was to be if things went well with me and with the sheep; for my master had promised to give me a full wage (seeing I had now reached man's estate), if so be I came through the spring and early summer without losing a single lamb.

Thinking of these things, and dreaming dreams as a lad will, the hours trod swiftly over Pendle Hill that day; for all the sun was going down the sky but slowly, seeing it was Midsummer-tide.

Suddenly, as I lay there looking down over the slope, I saw a strange sight, for travellers are scarce on Pendle Hill even at Midsummer. But it was a traveller surely, or was it a shepherd? At first I could not be sure; for he carried a lamb in his arms and trod warily with it, in the way that shepherds do. Yet I never met a shepherd clad in clothes like his; nor with a face like his either, as I saw it, when he came nearer. Weary he looked, and with a pale countenance, as if he had much ado to come up the hill, and in good sooth 'tis full steep just there; or else, may be, he was fasting and faint for lack of food. But all this I only thought of later. At the time, I looked not much at him, but only at the lamb he carried in his arms. How came such a man to be carrying a lamb, and carrying it full gently and carefully too, supporting one leg with both hands, although he was enc.u.mbered with a staff? Then, when he had come yet nearer, I saw that it was not only a lamb--it was one of my master's lambs, my own lambs that I was set to watch; for there on its wool was the brand carried by our flocks and by none others on all those fells. One of my lambs, lying in a stranger's arms! A careless shepherd I! I must have been asleep or dreaming ... dreaming foolish dreams about that cottage, on which the sun might shine unheeded now, I cared not for it, being full of other thoughts. No sooner did I espy the brand on the lamb than I rose to my feet, and, even as I ran nimbly down the slope towards the stranger, my eyes roamed over the hillside to discover which of my lambs had strayed:--Rosamond, Cowslip, Eglantine and Gillyflower--I could see them all safe with their dams, and many more besides. All the lambs that springtime I had named after the flowers that I hoped to plant another year in the garden of that cot beside the stream. And all the flowers I could see and name were safe beside their dams, as I leapt down the hillside. Nay, Periwinkle was missing! Periwinkle was ever a strayer, and Periwinkle's dam was bleating at the edge of the steep cliff up which the stranger toiled. It was Periwinkle and none other that he was carrying in his arms! Seeing it was Periwinkle, I halloed to him to halt. Hearing my cry, he stopped, and waited till I reached him, all the time holding the lamb carefully, tending it and speaking to it in the tone a shepherd is wont to use.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'DREAMING OF THE COT IN THE VALE']

'Thanks to you, Good Stranger,' I said, as I came nearer, 'Periwinkle is ever a strayer. Did you see her fall?'

'Nay,' said the Stranger, giving the lamb tenderly into my arms, and halting upon his staff; speaking warily and weightily as I never heard a man speak before or since. 'Nay; the lambkin must have fallen before I came by. But I heard the mother bleat, and I knew, by the sound, that she was in distress. Therefore I turned towards the crag upon which she stood, and, looking down, I perceived the lamb fallen among the brambles beneath a high ledge.'

'And went down over for her yourself and brought her up again! 'Twas bravely done, Good Stranger,' I answered, and then, thinking to encourage him, I said, 'Better you could not have done it, had you been a shepherd yourself, for I see your hands are torn.'