Barbara Lynn Part 1

Barbara Lynn.

by Emily J. Jenkinson.

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE LONELY STEADING IN THE DALE

Barbara Lynn looked up the dale.

Thundergay glimmered through the green twilight with his h.o.a.ry head under the Pole star, and his feet in the wan waters of a tarn. His breath was the North wind.

Barbara put up the shutters and turned to an old woman, who was propped against the pillows of a four-post bed. It stood in the full light of a turf fire, and looked like a ship with its sails furled.

"I'll bid you good-night and good rest, great-granny," said the girl.

The old woman was watching her with keen eyes--eyes so bright that they glittered under her s.h.a.ggy brows.

"Do you ever waken o' nights?" she asked.

Barbara laughed and shook her head.

"Nay, I sleep from dark to dawn. But I'd hear you, great-granny, if you called. I've ears like a mountain hare."

"Aye, aye, rest's for the young, restlessness for the old. I lie awake thinking o' the days gone by. But you've no memories worth minding yet, my la.s.s. Wait till you're my age--ninety-six come Michaelmas."

Barbara placed a lighted candle on the bridewain close to the bed, and stood for a moment looking down at the eagle-eyed old woman.

The Potter had made the new vessel after the pattern of the old, but the spirit of life which each held was different. The girl and her great-grandmother had the same wide brows, the same well-chiselled nose, and their eyes were blue. Barbara was tall beyond the usual height of her s.e.x, and she carried her body with the grace of one accustomed to stand on giddy heights and climb perilous places. Her head was finely moulded, and in proportion to her form. Peter Fleming, the miller's son, studying cla.s.sics at Oxford, called her Athene, and said that a glance into her blue eyes, gave strength to his shoulders and courage to his heart. So had the old woman in the four-poster looked eighty years ago.

But though the eyes of both were blue, Barbara's were as mild and meditative, as Mistress Annas Lynn's were hard. They scanned each other narrowly. The marked difference as well as resemblance between them seemed to strike the old woman, for she suddenly said:

"You take after me in looks, la.s.s, though your father and his father were the spitten picture of your great-grandfather, and Lucy favours them. But you are no more like me in temper than the beck in spate is like the same beck on a calm summer's morning. At your age I had kenned the bride-bed, and the birth-bed, and o' but kenned the death-bed. But you're still a bairn, puzzling over your letters."

There was pride and scorn in her voice.

"It's true, great-granny," replied Barbara, who was slow of tongue. "I's mazed-like at the world."

"Hoots-toots," said the old woman testily. "There's nowt to maze thee.

Take what's sent and make the best on it. Life was made to be lived, not questioned. And it's worth living. I tell thee so, Barbara, and thee can take my word for it--I's that old. Whiles it turns your mouth awry, but the sweet and the sour are fairly mixed. Lucy's learnt that much--I know by the light in her eye. She'll get more of real life out of one night, larking with the lads in Cringel Forest, than you out of a hundred nights star-gazing on Thundergay."

"M'appen you're right," answered the girl, "but who would see to the farm, the sheep, and the lambs, and the kye, if I spent my time larking with the lads?"

Mistress Lynn's expression changed quickly. A crafty look displaced the open scorn of her eyes.

"Aye, aye, keep to the sheep-paths, Barbara. Keep to the sheep-paths and your star-gazing. See thou keep to the sheep-paths, great-granddaughter.

They're safer for a young la.s.s than Cringel Forest. Get thee gone now.

It's time you were in bed. The dawn comes earlier every day."

"Earlier still I'll have to be up," replied Barbara, giving the old woman good-night.

"G.o.d bless thee, Barbara, thee's a good la.s.s, although I do get my knife into thee whiles. Sleep well."

The girl drew the blue and white homespun curtains round the bed, put out the candle and went away. The wooden soles of her clogs rang with a measured sound upon the stone stairs and then across the rafters overhead. After that there was silence save for the chatter of the beck, running by the door. Its voice had an insistent, familiar tone, as though it were talking to someone within. No movement came from old Mistress Lynn. Either she was asleep, or she busied her mind with thoughts of other days. For a long time the room was in darkness. Then the turf on the fire slipped, the light leaped forth, and the four-poster glided out of shadow like a ship in full sail. The curtains were noiselessly drawn back, and a long, lean hand relit the candle.

Mistress Lynn looked slowly and searchingly about her. She left no dim corner unscanned, and there were many dim corners in the great kitchen, for it ran the length of the front part of the house.

It was a low room with a flagged and sanded floor. The walls were white-washed, making a fine contrast to the beams overhead, and the doors of the carved oak cupboards, all alike, black with age. Along one side ran three windows. The hearth was a slab of blue slate, and, as the chimney flue descended no further into the room than the ceiling, the fire made a great show on occasions, with its flames and smoke; as though one end of the house were burning from floor to rafters. A bar of wood, called the rannel-balk, spanned the fireplace, and from it depended the rattan-crook, a long hook on which the kettle hung. There was a carved oak settle in the ingle, and near it a spinning wheel; and under the windows a narrow but heavy table with all its corners sharp but one, which was rounded off in a curious manner following the shape of the solid tree trunk from which it had been made. Against the opposite wall stood a dresser, holding a varied array of wooden and pewter platters, piggins for drinking out of, and two or three china cups. Next to it came the bridewain, and then the great bed. Between the windows was the door, bound with iron, studded with large nails, and bolted by two ma.s.sive iron bolts. Another door at the far end led into a little pa.s.sage, which gave access to the wool-barn, cow-house and dairy, all at the back of the building. In the chimney, curing in the smoke, hung flitches of bacon and a sheep by the heels. Upon the shelves along the walls were hammers and lanterns, pattens for horses to wear in snowy weather, sticks and staves and an old gun. An oak cupboard, with Mistress Lynn's initials carved upon it, held the oat-cake, and a kist, near the fire, held meal.

But the princ.i.p.al feature of the place was the four-post bed, with its curtains of blue and white homespun, so placed that it commanded a full view of the room. Nothing could happen there unseen by the old woman.

Shadows shot up and sank with the flickering light. The clock peered down like a white-faced watcher, the dresser and the high-backed chairs were endowed with movement if not with life. Mistress Lynn laid her fingers upon the bridewain, as though she would rea.s.sure herself that it, too, was not a fantastic creation of firelight and shadow, but the solid piece of oak which she had brought with her to this house of Greystones, when she married David Lynn four generations ago.

She listened for any sound in the sleeping house. But all was quiet. No stealthy steps crossed the rafters overhead, where Barbara and Lucy slept. The windows were shuttered and the doors were closed. Jan Straw, the shepherd, grown old and blind and deaf in her service, had a bed along with the hind above the cow-house. There was none to spy upon her, save the shadows and the firelight, and the bob-tailed sheep-dog, lying with his nose between his paws, dreaming of the flocks upon Thundergay.

Mistress Lynn moved the candle nearer to her, and, taking from its hiding-place in the bed a large iron key, she leaned over and unlocked the middle cupboard of the bridewain.

The light was full upon her face, revealing the fine network of lines about mouth and eyes, the parchment-like texture of the skin, and the whiteness of the hair, that escaped from under her frilled nightcap.

Hers was a face bearing the imprint of age in every lineament, and of an abiding craftiness, which all the greatness of her nature had not managed to efface.

The bridewain was apparently stocked with carded wool. This she pushed aside, however, and drawing out a bundle of silver spoons and a gold locket, she laid them on the bed. She counted the spoons one by one, and fingered the locket absently, as though the thoughts which it roused carried her mind back to some experience long past. The expression of her face changed from grim satisfaction to great weariness. Her lips moved, but the words were lost in the chatter of the beck.

When Mistress Lynn was a girl, over three-quarters of a century ago, she had loved Joel Hart, a young gentleman of quality, whose home was not far off, and the locket had been a gift from him. But he married Mary Priestly, the heiress of Forest Hall, in Cringel Forest, and she married David Lynn, of Greystones. Neither marriage was very happy. Joel took part in the rebellion of 1745, and was shot, losing all his lands save the old house of Forest Hall, which his descendant owned and lived in at this time. But between the rebel's outlawry and his capture, what memories were crowded for the village girl he had once made love to! She had hidden him from pursuit among the wool-sacks, unknown to her dour, loyal husband. The tale had once been a favourite one for a winter night's telling. But now it had ceased to rouse enthusiasm in the dale.

Only to this old woman was it a vital memory.

She turned the locket over, then she dropped it, putting such melancholy thoughts as it drew forth resolutely away. She searched in the back of the bridewain and brought out some bags of blue linen, each one tied with a leather thong. They were full of money.

It was for the winking yellow coins which she poured into her lap, that Annas Lynn, at ninety-five, still found life worth living. She, the relic of a past age, with son and grandsons dead, and only two young girls left of all her kindred, whose heart had shrivelled with the death of Joel Hart long ago, still hoped that many years would pa.s.s before she was laid to sleep by the mouldering bones of her husband in the kirk-garth. She was proud of her age, proud of her right to be called great-grandmother, proud of her keen wits. She ruled the steading and the flocks, and the ploughed lands, and the pastures with regal authority from her bed in the kitchen. No one disputed her sway. Lucy, younger than Barbara by a year, had been known to defy her; but she rued her rashness in tears for many days afterwards. Neither her son, nor her grandsons, middle-aged men when they died, had ever opposed her will.

She broke if she could not bend.

Mistress Lynn stooped over her money-bags. She counted the coins, letting them fall into her hand with a merry tinkle. She counted them below her breath, as though she were afraid to utter the toll of her wealth openly. She was a rich woman. The toil of years lay in her lap; and Barbara's care of the lambs, Lucy's light hand with the b.u.t.ter, the faithful service of old Jan Straw still added many a sovereign to the pile. Gold! gold! it warmed the life blood that otherwise would have run cold at the fountain. To get richer was the ambition of this old woman.

She set about compa.s.sing it with all the craft of a daughter of Jacob.

The sheep-dog heard the faint jingle, and, getting up, came sniffing to the bedside. He buried his nose in the quilt, causing a coin to slip unnoticed upon the floor. Like all his kind he owed a willing obedience to a strong hand, and though he slunk in terror from his mistress's anger, he returned trustfully to eat the crumbs which she sometimes gave him.

She patted his head.

"There's no cream-cakes hid among the blankets, Toss, my lad," she said.

"Get awa back, and take thy sleep."

The dog returned to his bed by the fire, but the coin lay shining upon the sheepskin beside the four-poster. She did not miss it.

Midnight; and the hour of twelve rang out, overcoming for a brief while the ceaseless chattering of the beck. Mistress Lynn put away her money-bags, and relocked the bridewain. She bent her head, listening intently, but to a clock striking twelve far back in her memory. On such a night as this, at the same hour, she had hidden Joel Hart among the wool-sacks, while David Lynn, goodman, slept peacefully in his bed. That night summed up for Annas all the sweetness and bitterness of life. She had lived then to the utmost fibre of her being.

She drew the curtains and lay down. The four-poster once more took on its likeness to a ship in full sail.