Barbara Lynn Part 6

Then through the forest came Barbara Lynn, driving her primitive cart home from market. She did not see the figure under the beech-tree, for her eyes were dreaming, neither did Peter try to draw her attention. She sat with her hands lying loosely on her lap, the reins hanging slack as the old pony took its own pace home. Her fine, large features were composed, and she kept her jolting seat with unconcern. There was something patriarchal in the cart, and its rough-cut wooden wheels, and the regal form of Barbara, deep-bosomed, yellow-haired and clear-eyed as the off-spring of shepherd kings should be.

She pa.s.sed on, while the over-arching trees dropped lights and shadows across her face. Peter watched her till the blue distance of the forest closed round the cart, and the creaking of its wheels died into silence.

He came back to a knowledge of himself with a rush. For the time being his mind had been merged in the mind of another. The forest, too, was waking as from a trance. Barbara had seemed to hold it in the spell of her own dreaming. Now the wind blew down the track, trundling dead leaves before it, and drawing a low chiming from the branches overhead.

The birds burst into renewed twittering, and the rabbits leaped among the fern.

CHAPTER IV

THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES

Barbara was driving sheep on the fells above Cringel Forest. She looked down and saw the trees bourgeoning into leaf, and rising out of them, on the top of a jutting crag, the old house belonging to Joel Hart. It was an unpretentious place, but battlemented and loop-holed, made for defence when moss-troopers paid frequent visits, and not for beauty or comfort. It was, in fact, little better than a fortified farm-house; underneath it ran a long dark cellar, where the cattle of the villagers could be driven for safety in times of alarm.

Barbara's keen eyes--keen as an eagle's to scan the broad fellside--noted the air of decay which had settled upon it, the thicket of brambles among the chimneys, and how a pine, growing out of the rocks, encroached upon the doorway. Behind the house the ground swept steeply up, strewn with shattered boulders and weeping with waterfalls.

"Poor Joel," she said to herself. "He's like Paris, in the book Peter gave me--beautiful Paris that Helen loved, whose soul ill-matched his fair form."

She thought of her sister's adoration of this man, and was sad. There could be nothing but disappointment in store for Lucy, she felt sure of it, unless the girl overcame her affection and set her heart upon a more worthy object. But she was attracted by the glamour of fallen greatness, by his handsome presence, and she admired his pride. Barbara, with clearer vision, saw a man tossed about by circ.u.mstance, without a guiding principle in his life, whose pride was as hollow a thing as a soul ever cherished.

She turned away from Forest Hall, and the disquieting thoughts which Joel roused, and looked up the dale. It wound in sun-swept greenness to Thundergay, where Swirtle Tarn glittered like a silver sixpence. For some days clouds had been gathering there, piled one on the other like wool-sacks, white and soft as wool just now, but stained crimson at sunrise, and black as smoke at night. The light was vivid, and had that peculiar quality of deepening the colours of the landscape, often the forerunner of storm; the purple of the distant hills was more intense, the green of the gra.s.s richer, the red of ploughed earth more pa.s.sionate.

The sheep that Barbara was driving were uneasy, making many attempts to break and turn back. Then the leader, recognising the summer heaf to which the flocks return in spring, after having wintered in a more sheltered place, set off at a run, followed by the rest. Shading her eyes from the sun, she watched them leap gladly upwards, bleating their welcome to the well-remembered spot--for the bond binding the sheep to their hill-pasture, is as the bond between man and his own hearthstone.

She turned homewards. As she threaded her way among the rocks of the rough path, she came upon Jan Straw gathering wool, which the sheep had left behind them upon the heath and brambles.

"Her was buried in a linen shift," he said, answering her remark that he was busy at a strange gleaning. "Her was buried in a linen shift, fine and white and soft as snow."

"Who?" asked the girl, for she saw that his mind was wandering.

"Her o' the white fingers, white as Lucy Lynn's, white like the linen she was buried in, white as snow."

"Your wife, Jan?" said Barbara, having in her mind's eye a vision of golden curls and a little pale face, which had been buried long before she was born.

Jan said no more, but, turning away, continued his gleaning.

"What are the wisps for?" she asked.

"I mun be buried in woollen," he muttered, "the law says so--it said so then--but she had a linen shroud, the best linen as ever was wove, shining like snow, like them little white flowers she loved."

He stood up, trying to straighten his crooked back, crooked with the toil and poverty of years.

"I mun be buried in woollen," he repeated, "and I's picking my shroud off the brambles. Yon little la.s.s, Lucy, her o' the white hands, she promised to spin it for me and get it wove. It wunna be white like snow, like her own bonny hands, but it'll match my old grey face. I's'll not be buried by the parish. I's'll lie aside her in the kirk-garth below there."

He wiped a tear from his eye.

"Her should have been buried in woollen too," he added, bringing these memories from the abyss of his mind, where they had long lain in darkness, "but her was so white and soft, white as milk and soft as silk, her couldna abide the touch o' a woollen shift. So her was buried in linen, and I paid the fine."

"It will take a lot of gathering, Jan, before you get enough to make a shroud," said Barbara. "But let it be, let it be; leave it for the birds to build their nests of. You shall have a fleece, and a decent bed, too, when you need it, beside her o' the little white hands."

He looked at the girl slowly, from her feet to the crown of her head.

"Thee's a girt la.s.s," he said, "as big as the mistress, and they used to call her daughter o' the giant that lived at Ketel's Parlour. But thee's got a kind, soft voice, Barbara Lynn, like the cooin' o' wood-doves.

Wilta gie me a fleece?"

She nodded, and the pale watery eyes brightened.

"The birds is welcome to my gatherin'," he replied scattering his bundle of wool. "I's'll go and pull rushes. We's gettin' short o' candles down-by," and he shuffled away.

Barbara watched him go. She thought how hard it was to be old and lonely and poor. Jan had bed and whittle-gate at the farm--decency could do no other after a life of honest service--but, as the old man was past work, what use had he for wages? Such was her great-grandmother's argument for refusing to part with a penny of her h.o.a.rd.

Barbara went slowly down-hill. She had an hour to spare before milking-time, and it was too precious to be lost. She pa.s.sed along a ledge of the Mickle Crags, found a sheltered spot, and sat down. She could not see Greystones, as it lay right below her, but she could smell the turf-smoke from its fire.

There, with her hands clasped upon her knees, surrounded by a wilderness of grey rocks, she gave wings to her mind. All through this Easter-tide she had walked as in a dream; but it was the dream and not the actual that had life. She came and went, rose before dawn, and pa.s.sed the day toiling upon the fells, but now and again she culled an hour to spend with her book--Pope's "Homer"--at the cave. Sometimes Peter came there and read to her, often the old herbalist Timothy Hadwin accompanied him, and the two men would talk, while she listened, weaving withy baskets, but weaving into her own mind many a wonderful thought. Thus she learned to know the old stories of Achilles and Hector and Helen, of Ulysses and Penelope; she was thrilled with the beauty, pathos and madness of them.

The natural objects about her began to take on a new meaning; she was able to feel the freshness of the early world, when men's hearts were fuller of the mystery of things, less sure of their own place in the Universe, and stricken with fear before the veiled faces of the G.o.ds.

She likened her mind to the shield of Achilles, which Vulcan forged for him; she thought of it as a great disc engraved with strange pictures--emblems of all that she thought and knew and felt. But as the ocean encompa.s.sed the shield--

"In living silver seemed the waves to roll, And beat the buckler's verge, and bound the whole,"

so about her beat the waves of a mystery, which shut in a part of her life, that her inward eye might concentrate upon it, and yet be conscious of the depths surging round.

The human mind is stupendous, she thought, beyond the power of man to understand. When she considered her own mind, and all that was written upon it--its ideas of life, of men and women, of religion and destiny, she was awed with wonder that a thing so mighty should have been forged for her by the hand which gave her life.

Her own existence was too uneventful, too full of commonplaces, too mean, to provide a satisfying food for her strong intellect. But in "Homer" she found a feast spread. His men and women lived down to the depths of their being, and she lived in them. Hecuba and Andromache! the greatness and bitterness of their lives appalled and stirred her. When she stood upon the heights and saw the mists rise like smoke from the dale, or roll from ledge to ledge down the fellside, when she saw the beck in spate, when she looked through the gloaming at the ruined outlines of the crags, then she partic.i.p.ated in the very thoughts of these great women; then she felt the presence of G.o.ds in the mist; then she saw Achilles flee before the angry River; then she saw Troy and the long black ships, and the lines of glittering warriors, and in her own heart she heard the cry of defeated hosts, of exultation, of death, of resignation.

Barbara roused herself from these thoughts. She was lingering too long in idleness. She must go and call the cattle, for milking-time was near.

So she came swiftly down the crags behind the house. They were rough and steep, rotten in many places, and drilled with springs. But a little sheep-path led in and out, bordered with blueberries and parsley ferns.

In one cleft a thorn had taken root, and baffled the wind and storms of years; in another grew a holly; but for the most part the place was bare of vegetation. Soon she saw the chimneys of Greystones below her.

Lucy stood in the dairy churning. The door was open, and she could see into the cow-house, and through it, framed as in a picture, the fellside aglow with the afternoon sunshine. She was tired, her hair was ruffled, and her cheeks were flecked with cream. Her eyes, at times, were almost blinded with tears, and she saw the distant glories through mist. The good green earth called to her, but she was doomed to toil at the churn in the semi-gloom of the dairy while the day fled, while life fled.

She longed to be out in the sunshine; she wanted to plait rush-baskets as she had done as a child, to fish for minnows in the beck, to wander down the dale and smell the aromatic scent of the springing bracken. She looked at Jan Straw, who sat on the doorstep peeling rushes. He was like a worn-out garment; she, too, would be like a worn-out garment before long. Life was hurrying, hurrying by; not long ago she had been a child, to-day she was a woman, soon she would be old with life behind her. Lucy dreaded growing old. Each morning when she woke she thought that the day must surely bring some change, but it pa.s.sed as the day before had done, pa.s.sed in monotonous labour, leaving her a little older, a little sadder, a little less hopeful. Now and then she cherished the thought that she was a woman grown, and whispered to herself of love and home and husband. But to-day she wanted to cast off all responsibility, to have the mind and outlook of a child.

She paused for a moment to wipe the splashes of cream from her cheeks, and rest her arms. Then her great-grandmother called:

"Lucy!"

It was no use pretending that she had not heard; the tones of the old voice demanded a reply.

"Yes," she answered, reluctantly.

"Has the b.u.t.ter come yet, Lucy?"

"Nay."