Barbara Lynn Part 33

Joel raised himself with an effort.

"I'm not sure," he replied, attempting a laugh, "that the kirk-garth wouldn't be a better place for me. This sickness has taken all the sap out of my limbs. I feel like a rotten tree, just waiting for the first wind that blows to fling it down."

"You're needing a cherry cordial to put new life into you," said the dame, and she bustled to her press, bringing out a bottle that shone like a ruby in the genial fire-glow.

"Cherry cordial," he answered, "it's something stronger than cherry cordial that I need."

"Take my advice, young master, and don't drink any more wine to-day.

You've had as much as is good for you. Now sup this up. It'll put a little colour into your white whisht-face, without addling your brains."

Joel drank, then set the gla.s.s on the bench beside him. For a while longer he remained in a state of gloomy silence, but a glow began to steal over his body, and soon loosened his tongue.

"I once heard of a man," he said, "that strained himself as I did, but he died. For a twelve month and a day afterwards he came out of his grave every night, and sucked the veins of living folk until he had gained what he'd lost. Then he slept quietly."

"An uncanny tale," replied the good wife. "I wouldn't think of it if I was you. There's a long life and a merry one before you yet. Be cheery now."

"It was only one man whose blood he sucked," he said as though it were an afterthought. Then he flung back his head and turned to Timothy.

"Shall we have a game at chess?" he asked. "You were going to teach me a new move. Chess is a game worth playing, though I used to despise it. I thought it slow. Do you know, I get great amus.e.m.e.nt out of giving all the pieces the names of my friends, and seeing how they check-mate one another."

The old man got up with alacrity. He was always glad to interest Joel in anything that would take the spleen from his voice and the dis-spirited look from his face. As a physician of the soul as well as the body, he desired to pour a healing balm on the hidden wound, which he saw was causing suffering of an intense nature. Timothy had found the thread which led him through the gloomy, cavernlike mind of the young man. He saw that which was seated in the innermost depths of his being. But, so far, all his efforts had been unable to dispel it.

He got out the chess board, drew the table to the fire, and began to give his pupil a lesson. Joel's interest seemed to be centred upon one particular piece, and he watched all its movements with the eagerness of a child.

"It was a good idea of yours, Timothy, to teach me the game," he said once or twice. "On beastly days like this, when no one is likely to pay us a visit, it pa.s.ses the time--eh?"

"I used to be a great chess-player when I was a young man," replied Timothy, "but I was afraid I had forgotten a great deal until I began to show you the way. It's pleasant to sit in the fire-glow, when the storms of life are over and revive old habits. It makes one feel young again."

While they were thus absorbed, the sound of many hoofs drew near.

"List," said the good-wife, "there's Red Geordie and the pack horses.

He'll cheer us up a bit. He's better than a town-crier any day for telling the news."

Joel looked through the fire-window under which he sat--it was a little window in the chimney--and saw, coming out of the mist, a string of horses led by a black stallion. At the end of the trail rode a man on a stout little galloway. His coat collar was pulled up to his eyes, and a fur cap, with a sprig of bog myrtle in it, was drawn well down upon his brows. The black stallion stopped of its own accord at the inn door, and its train of followers halted also, and began to nibble the turf by the road side.

Their master stirred his pony, and, in a few moments, entered the kitchen, shaking the dew from his cap. He was a man of medium height, squarely built, with a bald head, and a fringe of red hair and whiskers, that framed his face in a fearsome manner.

"Come to the fire," said the good-wife, pushing up a chair, "come and warm thyself."

"That I will, mistress, and thank you kindly. It's a raw day, masters, better in than out. And how goes the world with all of you?"

He nodded to Joel and Timothy with a friendly laugh.

"How goes the world?" exclaimed the dame. "Sometimes this way, sometimes that; whiles it runs straight, whiles agee; whiles smooth, and whiles like a clog wheel. But we've been lively lately, for this time o' year.

We've had a wheen visitors since the Meet, folk coming and going to see Master Joel Hart yonder. He's been ill. You'll have heard of it, Geordie, on your way up the country."

"Master Hart, of course!" the new comer bent forward, peering into Joel's face with his little sharp eyes. "Sakes! man, how thoo's changed.

I shouldn't have knowed tha. But welcome, welcome back, my hearty. Twice welcome since thoo comes with well-feathered pockets."

He shook hands with zest.

"And how fend tha noo, Master Joel?" he asked.

"Gaily," replied Joel in an off-hand manner.

"He's n.o.bbut very sweemish," interposed the good-wife, with just a touch of malice in her tones. "He wants cheering up a bit."

Red Geordie slapped his thigh and laughed.

"It's the la.s.sies he's missing," he said, "mistress, mistress, thoo should have 'ticed up a posey o' bonny faces for him to look at."

"To the Girdlestone in this weather!" she replied.

"If thoo said, 'Here's a fine bird worth the picking,' they'd have come like a flock of starlings after a bone, aye, would they."

Joel turned away with a haughty shrug of his shoulders, and Red Geordie sn.i.g.g.e.red, in no way disconcerted.

"Well, what's been adoing down-by?" asked the dame, anxious not to offend her lordly guest.

"Marrying, kersening, and burying--just the day's work o' common folk."

"Day's work, says you! It's little we sees o' such goings on in the Girdlestone, saving the mating o' wind and rain, the birth o'

snow-storm, and the death o' summer on the fells. Be canny now and tell us o' the news. Whose married? whose been kirsened? and whose dead down-by?"

"Well," replied Red Geordie, sipping his mulled ale with satisfaction, "there's triplets in Troutbeck, and they's been called Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego."

"Sakes alive! it's enough to make Anabaptists o' them; they'll be wanting to be rekirstened when they're grown up. Whatever was their mother thinking o' to lay such a saddle on the lad-bairns's backs?"

Red Geordie tossed off his ale and handed the mug back to be filled again.

"Pack horses, pack horses," he cried, "hey, mistress, we're all pack horses on the road. Some on us carries one thing, some on us carries another; some has his mother's follies, and some his dadda's sins, forbye the sins and follies of his own getting."

"Aye, it's a wonder when you come to think o' it--the cross-bred sheep we be!" said the good-wife.

Red Geordie again handed back his mug.

"I'll have another gla.s.s, mistress, with a dash more nutmeg in it to warm the thrapple. Now, Master Camomile, what kind o' fate would you foretell for the three lad bairns, born at a birth? They ought to turn out something by-ordinary."

Timothy shook his head.

"Doubtless they will suffer the common lot of man," he replied, "and pa.s.s through the fiery furnace of tribulation like other folks. Happy will they be if they can sing with the Hebrew children, 'Oh, ye fire and heat, bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever.'"

Joel looked up quickly.

"I never believed the story," he said, "men don't praise G.o.d in the midst of the fiery furnace. They're more likely to curse Him."

Ever since the pack-master's rollicking personality had entered the inn kitchen, Joel had kept a moody silence. He disliked the quizzical glance of the man; and the bald head, with its upstanding fringe of red hair, raised an unreasonable antipathy in his mind. If the weather had not been so cold and damp, he would have left his seat in the ingle-nook and gone out, preferring the mist to becoming the target for Red Geordie's eyes.

His sudden outburst caused an uneasy pause, not so much because of the words, but the intensity with which they were spoken. They seemed to have been thrown off from the man's mind as smoke is thrown up from a volcano. They were the sign of the fires burning within him.