Barbara Lynn Part 42

"You've had a nice sleep, great-granny. Do you feel better?"

"Better! I's well." She stretched out a lean hand, and drew the girl nearer to her. "Someone's watching us from the corner," she whispered.

"That's the clock."

"Oh, aye, the clock, the moony-faced critter! Many's the time it's given me the creeps. What time is it?"

"Four."

"Four in the morning! I hear a queer sound in the room, la.s.s."

"It's only the rain coming down and the beck running. There's been a thaw through the night."

"Ah, that's the reason I slept so long! I's been wondering for weeks back what it was I missed. When I wakened whiles I thought I was dead, the place felt so quiet-like."

She listened with a smile on her drawn face. Then she asked once more if they were alone.

"Not a soul is near," Barbara rea.s.sured her.

Mistress Lynn leaned over the edge of the bed, and tried to insert the key in the lock of the bridewain. But she could not manage it, and fell back.

"Open it," she said.

The girl took the key, and opened the cupboard. She knew what the old woman wanted and, bringing out the money-bags, she laid them in her lap.

The trembling hands closed over them, and for a while she lay and did not speak.

Barbara stood silently by, till a sudden suspicious look from the sunken eyes made her move away to tidy up her own disordered couch. She shook the rug, hung it over the back of the settle, and smoothed the cushion upon which her head had lain. Then a call brought her back to the four-poster. The old woman was plucking at the leather thongs to untie them.

Barbara was stirred at this strange action of the dying woman, whose thoughts should have been elsewhere than lingering round the earthly treasures which moth and rust corrupt. Yet the action did not surprise her. For she could understand the heart, which would cling to its idol to the end. She had inherited the same intensity of character. And to save herself from becoming worse than a miser gloating over his gold, she had had to cut off her right hand, and pluck out her right eye. For a lawless heart was worse than a gluttonous one, however gorgeously it might array itself in the garments of love.

Barbara untied the bags, which the useless old fingers were fumbling at, and poured out their contents upon the bed, where they lay--a heap of silver and gold coins, glistening in the light of the candle.

Mistress Lynn handled the pile lingeringly, loath to let a coin go when she had grasped it, and she seemed to draw energy out of its cold touch.

"Count it," she said, "but count it slow, so that I can follow you. It's a bonny sight, a bonny sight, la.s.s, and worth an old woman's gathering, eh? It shall be yours some day, yours and Lucy's. You'll divide it equally, Barbara, between yourself and Lucy when I'm gone. Joel Hart doesn't need his share now. I never loved Lucy much; still, she's blood of my blood, and bone of my bone. I'll deal fair by her. How much was that, Barbara? One hundred pounds! One hundred pounds! Put it in this bag and tie it up tightly."

Barbara counted the money. She was not able to repress a feeling of regret when she thought of the difference it would have made to her sister's life and her own, if it had been used, instead of h.o.a.rded up in the bridewain, and only taken out at night for a bedridden old woman to gloat over. Now Lucy did not want it, and Barbara had no desire to possess more than her needs demanded.

The tinkle of the coins was heard in the kitchen for some time. When they were all counted they were restored to their bags, and put away.

The bridewain was locked, and Mistress Lynn again hid the key in the bed beside her.

"You'll find it when I's gone, Barbara," she said, and, with a satisfied smile, shut her eyes. The exertion had tired her, but her mind was at rest, for she was dying a rich woman.

It was nearly dawn, and, though it was wet and cold, there was a feeling of spring in the air. The uplands were still white with snow, but it had begun to vanish from the dale, and green gra.s.s showed here and there, a welcome sight after the weary weeks of winter. A few venturesome birds sang in the copse.

Jess came stealing into the kitchen, wondering if death had yet s.n.a.t.c.hed away the imperious spirit from its withered body. But Mistress Lynn was asleep or unconscious, Barbara was not sure which. So the work of the day begun, which must continue, come life or death. The cows were milked, the fowls fed, and the hinds went out to look after the sheep.

But Barbara did not leave the kitchen.

The grey day pa.s.sed monotonously. The song of the beck grew louder, as it was fed by the melting snows, and the cliffs behind the house ran with water. Rain poured steadily down, washing bare the fells, and streaking them with thin white lines, where the waking cataracts began to leap. Barbara brought a chair to the bedside, and sat down, her hands clasped idly on her knee. Mistress Lynn did not stir.

Barbara was alone at Greystones. Jess had gone to the village, but the girl was not afraid, although she was becoming conscious of another presence there. The personality of the old house awoke, and took form.

She had often seen it before, a gaunt, grim figure--older far than the great-grandmother--whose eyes were haunted by memories, whose features were stricken by sorrow, whose cheeks were lined with the marks of a wild yet lonely life. Such was the grey spirit of Greystones. This afternoon it seemed to rise out of the flags at her feet, and stand waiting, waiting as it had waited again and again through the centuries while a Lynn died.

From each soul that pa.s.sed under its roof it took the memories, the tragedies, the pa.s.sions, and made them its own. There was no sorrow known to human beings that it had not suffered, no joy it had not tasted, but it tasted sparingly, for joy was not the common lot of those who slept in its shelter. No Lynn was a stranger to it or unconscious of its reality; it lived with each one intimately, was present at both bed and board, and linked the generations together with its worn hands, giving to the new the blessing or curse of the old.

Some had fled from it, afraid as of a ghost. Lucy had been afraid.

Others, like Barbara, might shiver in its shadow, yet felt for it something which they could not justify, nor explain. But the ghost of Greystones--call it what you will--was not immortal. It must die with the fabric that was its body, and already there were signs that that body was sinking into ruin. Barbara thought of the doom which had been spoken over it long ago, spoken, no one knew by whom, but perhaps by a Lynn, who had feared its personality, that some day it would fall, and then would end the race of strenuous souls, who had inhabited it for three hundred years.

Thus these two--Barbara and the old house--watched and waited while the spirit of the great-grandmother struggled to be free, and leave for ever the place it had known for generations, which it had upheld by its own force of will, because it was determined to live there to the end.

Otherwise, Greystones would have been deserted long ago, have become the home of bats and owls, till the fall of its roof-tree buried all its memories in a ruinous heap.

The day was drawing to its close, the fire had died down, and the room was dim. Dim looked the clock, dim the empty arm-chair, and the four-poster was already vanishing into night. Barbara heard a rattle on the roof, but did not heed it. She thought that the weather had changed again, and hail was falling instead of rain. The short shower died away as abruptly as it had begun.

The girl stood looking down at her great-grandmother with tears in her eyes. The loneliness of her own lot suddenly appalled her. Soon she would be left solitary in a vast, overwhelming world, with the dominant factor gone from her life, and all the ties which bound her to her fellows broken. For what had she in common with any woman in the dale but her s.e.x? And what had she in common with the men but her height and strength? They did not understand her. The only soul which had been able to enter into her mind was slowly vanishing away from her sight.

Mixed up with her thoughts and her grief was the consciousness of a louder hail on the roof. Then earth and stones poured down the chimney, and she ran to the door.

A fear, which she had not time to put into words, got hold of her. She thought of the crags behind the house. The winter had been severe; for weeks the ground had been held in the grip of an iron frost, and, now that the thaw had come, there was likely to be some landslips in the neighbourhood. When she opened the door, she saw the hind running down the opposite fellside, waving his arms to her, but she could not hear what he was shouting for the growling, crackling noises overhead. Then a rock crashed past the house and plunged into the beck.

Barbara ran into the garden and looked up. A sound like distant thunder began to roll. She saw, as it were, the whole mountain move. Horror, for a moment, robbed her of understanding, but she recovered herself. The vast ma.s.s of Mickle Crags was heaving, and splitting apart, sending before it showers of stones and soil, while around stood the grey hills, looking on with calm features. She must flee if she would save her life. But she could not flee, for her great-grandmother was still living.

She went back to the house, knowing that she was going to destruction.

Fear did not rob her step of its firmness, nor her eyes of their steady glow. In a few seconds more, she, and the old woman, and the older house, would go down to a common grave. They who had dwelt together so long could not be separated in death. She bent over her great-grandmother and slipped her arm under the worn head.

The crash and tumble of falling rocks roused Mistress Lynn. She opened her eyes and smiled.

"Thee's a good la.s.s, Barbara," she said.

And thus they died.

EPILOGUE

In the kirk-garth of High Fold, among the mouldering head-stones, there lies, half hidden by the matted gra.s.ses, a fallen pillar.

It is hewn out of native granite, polished to so fine a grain that even yet it looks like a piece of marble. But it has lain there for many years, and will continue to lie, unless some kindly soul, knowing its history, sets it again upon its pedestal, to defy the storms of that wild region.

The church is rarely used now, for the village has sunk into ruins.

Among the roofless cottages the stonechats may be seen flitting in and out all through the long spring and summer days, and they build their nests in the whin-bushes that grow in the old house-places. The sheep come there to crop the gra.s.s, for it has a greener tinge, and tastes sweeter than that but a few steps away on the fellside; and a great grey mountain fox once made its home in a chimney. But the Brownriggs, the Yewdales, the Idles, the Flemings--those worthy families who had lived there for many grandfathers back, as they used to say, are all gone from the old homesteads, allured by that will-o'-the-wisp which shines so brightly and persistently in the streets of our great cities, and yet rarely brings the traveller to anything better than the peat-pots, and marsh mosses of Quaking Hag.

The change had come quickly, within two generations. It came with the power loom and the whirling of wheels, with the dying down of the old industries, and the introduction of the new, which screamed out, like a mad midwife, that they were bringing in the Golden Age.

Forty years ago, smoke could still be seen issuing from the chimneys of High Fold. The old folk left behind, used to meet at the well of a summer's morning, and gossip about the days gone by. At that time the pillar was still standing in the kirk-garth--a tall, finely-formed column resting upon a Greek pedestal, but broken off roughly across the top to show that it commemorated a life untimely ended. Travellers rarely came that way, but those who did would stop to read the words engraved upon it, and enquire further about Barbara Lynn, and ask who Peter and Lucy Fleming were, that had raised the monument to her memory.