Barbara Lynn Part 11

Easter was over; Peter Fleming had gone back to Oxford; Joel Hart spent much of his time away from home; the lambing season was past; mid-summer had come.

Joel had friends after his own heart scattered through the countryside--young men with small estates and little education like himself. They forgathered in each other's houses, and spent their time c.o.c.k-fighting and gambling, losing one day to gain the next, enjoying and suffering all the excitements of prosperity and failure in quick succession.

Joel began by winning, and saw an easy way of retrieving his fortunes opening out before him. Then he lost, and, growing desperate, lost more and more heavily, till he had little left to lose. He owed money to the village tradesmen, but that did not trouble his conscience. When he could not meet his debts of honour--as he was pleased to call them--he felt disgraced; hurt in his pride. So he came riding home, gave himself up to brooding, sent word to Lucy that he was ill, and kept the house for days.

Ill he most certainly was, but in mind and conscience, not in body. One afternoon he sat alone in the parlour of Forest Hall, his head sunk on his breast, and his eyes burning. The fire had died out, and the hearth was filled with ash, yet, though it was June, he shivered.

Mally Ray, his old nurse and now his housekeeper, had gone off for the day, and left him to fend for himself. On the table lay the remains of a meal, and the atmosphere of the room was heavy, in spite of the sunshine outside, and the chiming of a light wind through the tree-tops of the forest.

He had slept little of late, and his nights had been made hideous by dreams, which belonged neither to the sphere of waking nor sleeping, but beset him when he was only half-conscious; and when reality, instead of being obliterated, was turned into a distortion of the truth.

A vision of old Mistress Lynn and her money-bags haunted him. But he managed to banish it in his clearer moments. No sooner, however, had his will become weakened by weariness, than the vision returned. He spent, or seemed to spend, hours counting the coins, and dropping them into a bag. Through the night, through the day, at unexpected moments, he was possessed by this demon of counting. He felt the cold metal between his fingers, yet his hands were in his empty pockets, or hanging by his side.

He looked round the room, and realised suddenly that the fire was out.

Then he got up.

"Sleep," he muttered, "I must sleep or I shall lose my wits," and he flung himself down on a settle.

He closed his eyes. For a while he felt dizzy, tossed up and down upon a sea of darkness, then his brain became illuminated as with fire; he began again to count. One by one he dropped the coins into a bag. He roused himself with a smothered curse, turned over, and tried to fix his mind upon something else.

He had gone fishing the week before with some of his friends, and they had betted on their probable catch. But he had hooked only two or three little trout, too small to be of any use, so he had flung them back into the mere. Now he heard them fall with a splash, and jingle as they reached the bottom. He seemed to be fishing again, and dropping them over the side of the boat, but sometimes it was a coin he dropped, sometimes a silver-bellied fish. Still he went on counting. The trout and the money were confused in his mind. He knew that he had mixed them up; he knew that he was neither asleep nor awake, and he tried to clear his brain. The effort was painful, he struggled as though fighting with evil powers, but in the end he overcame, yet rose up feeling sick, dazed, and in despair.

The room was dusky. How long had he been lying on the settle? He looked at the clock, and it began to strike the hour of nine. At six he had counted the strokes, since then he had not heard them, yet he had not slept. He must sleep, or he would go mad. He sat staring before him for a minute, then went to the door.

He threaded his way through the deserted pa.s.sages, where draughts blew upon him from unexpected quarters; some of the rooms were shut up; but others were open, disclosing their emptiness. A grey film of dust seemed to lie on everything, and the evening light, glimmering through the cobwebbed windows, gave a green colour to the air, as though it, even, had gone mouldy with long disuse.

He found Mally Ray returned to the kitchen, and preparing their evening meal. But he refused it.

Mally Ray was a dour-faced Scot, honest, clean, yet with a mind that regarded human affection as a wile of the Evil One, who tried by such a means to entrap the honest Christian to his hurt. In her heart of hearts she loved Joel profoundly, she would have sacrificed her life for him, but she would have thought shame to let him know it. As his nurse she had not spared the rod, for she saw his weaknesses; now she used her tongue in much the same way. She had a long, cadaverous face, a thin and well-drawn-down upper lip, grey eyes and a high forehead.

"Tidy your hair, lad," she said, "it makes you look like a wandering w.i.l.l.y."

He smoothed it down with both hands, accustomed to do what she told him, but he pushed the hound aside that had come whimpering to his knees. It was in bad condition, having had the distemper and lost its fine litter of puppies with the same sickness.

"I'm going out," he said curtly, "don't expect me back till you see me."

She tightened her lip, looking at him with stern eyes.

"I hope you're going after no foolishness, Master Joel."

He laughed harshly, turned on his heel, and went away.

Standing by the wall, he gazed down at the trees below him, which were singing in the wind. There was a cool, sweet air, and the scent of damp earth rising from the forest. He thought that he would go and see Timothy Hadwin, and get a sleeping draught. If he were possessed by a devil, as he verily believed he was, Old Camomile would be able to cast it out.

He followed the cart-road for some way, then took the winding path that led to Timothy's cottage. The old man was sitting on the bench by the door, enjoying the calm of the twilight.

"I can't sleep," said Joel.

Timothy looked quietly into his face, saw the lines round his mouth, and the restlessness of his eyes.

"Tell me how you feel," he replied.

"I can't sleep," reiterated Joel; "give me something to make me sleep."

"Come in," said the old man. His living-room was small, but neat and clean. There were rows upon rows of shelves along the walls, filled with jars and bottles; the place smelled of lavender, rosemary, lad's love, and other sweet herbs. He mixed a powder and gave it to the young man, then he made him lie down.

"You must open your mind, my lad," he said, "and let the sweet influences of the night in. Peace floweth about us like a river."

"Not round me! Nothing has ever flowed round me but black waters, and I'm drowning in 'em."

Already he felt the cold waves of which he spoke pressing upon his eyelids so that he could not see. He heard Timothy's voice; it came to him as through a curtain. The old man was talking of peace. What was peace? Was it but the exhaustion of pa.s.sion, the sinking down of a stormy sea, as waves sink, when the tempest is over? Or was it paralysis of the living soul, which had felt so much that it could feel no more?

Or could it be the inflowing of some holy element, that would mingle with his thoughts and purify them? He longed for it, whatever it was. He longed to be quiet, and as he pondered over the thoughts which Timothy's words had roused, the roaring in his ears subsided, the darkness lightened like the coming of dawn. He imagined that he was lying on golden sand, and gazing up at a river flowing over his head.

Peace! The waters of Peace! Timothy had said that they flowed through the world, and now he was bathed in them. He heard the river's ripple as it pa.s.sed; he felt at rest.

For a few minutes longer the old man talked on, but Joel could not make out what he said, for the words were subdued and mingled with the murmur of the magical river.

"Settled weather has come at last," remarked Timothy, going to the door, and looking at the sky, which was flying with rosy streamers, although so late. But Joel made no reply. He had gone to sleep.

A circle of silence held the cot all through the night. Though the white tails of innumerable rabbits flickered down in the forest, and birds called to each other, and leaves chimed a sylvan chorus, about the purlieus of Timothy Hadwin's abode lay a deep hush. Here nothing stirred; it was as though an enchantment had fallen.

Joel slept profoundly. The evil spirit that haunted him in the meantime had fled, and left his mind a blank. It was swept and garnished--a place for the Holy Ghost to dwell in, or seven devils.

Daylight had hardly died out of the sky when dawn began. It came with a primrose light in the east, and a fresh wind. All things woke at the pa.s.sing of the wind. The silence about Timothy's cot snapped, and from each gra.s.s-blade rose a sibilant whisper, that, united, sounded like women's skirts sweeping by. Mint and thyme, lavender, roses and honeysuckle, filled the garden with perfume.

Joel, too, awoke. He was lying upon the settle covered with rugs, with a cushion under his head. At first he could not remember where he was, but gradually the trouble of last night returned. He lay still for a while, thinking how soon another night would be upon him, and dreading the thought of it. He remembered that to-day was his birthday.

He got up. Timothy was not to be seen, but the fire was burning, the kettle singing as it swung by its iron chain over the flames. His own life was very like the kettle, hung by the iron chain of fate over the fires of the world. He sat down to await Timothy's return. He had not the energy, and he did not know if he had the desire, to go away without speaking to him. Besides, another night was coming on, and he dared not see it approach without having by him the medicine that gave sleep.

Yet, although he was a good deal refreshed, the beauty of the summer morning was not for him, for he refused to accept its bounty. He did not smell the eglantine that climbed up the porch of the cot, and scented the air with the most memory-waking of scents; he did not taste the sweet wind that puffed in his face; he wet his dry lips and tasted bitterness.

Timothy was some time returning, and Joel, for lack of better occupation, began to puzzle over the mystery of the little man--he remained a mystery in High Fold, though the villagers had long ceased to speculate about it, and had probably forgotten, so many years had he lived among them, that his origin was still unknown. He had arrived one spring-tide, forty years ago, and settled down in this cot. Though a young man then, his head was silver-white. He lived quietly, received no letters, paid no visits, save to the sick in the neighbourhood--but spent his time gathering herbs, and, when he found an understanding ear, he talked garrulously about his thoughts, but never alluded to his circ.u.mstances. He was an educated man, knew many foreign languages, had read many strange books, studied the stars, and believed, to some extent, in astrology. Further than that no one knew about him.

Presently the old man came, wet with dew, and carrying a basket of roots, which he had been digging up in Cringel Forest.

"There's a virtue in them at dawn," he said, "that's gone by the time the sun is high. Everybody who rises at dawn has felt the same virtue in his own body."

Timothy talked cheerfully, and prepared their morning meal without ever remarking upon the previous night.

"Take an old man's advice, and a fishing-rod," he said, "and spend the day on Swirtle Tarn. I'll come too. It's a long time since I tempted trout with a bracken clock."

Soon after breakfast they sallied forth, and went up the dale past Greystones. Even on this June day the house seemed to stand aloof from the sunshine. It looked lonely and out in the cold, like a soul that had withdrawn itself from intercourse with its fellows. The heavy green of the sycamores, now in full leaf, hid the barns.

They kept by the beck-side. The bracken all about them was glittering with beetles--bronzy, golden things, that hung like beads to the fronds.

In the distance they saw Barbara; near at hand Jan Straw was weeding a little patch of cultivated ground with slow, slow fingers.

Silence held the inside of the house as well as the outside.

Lucy was baking scones on the griddle, but the curtains of her great-grandmother's bed had not yet been withdrawn.