Deep Moat Grange Part 19

"This," said Miss Orrin, "is the house of Mr. Stennis, and to him you shall answer. Meantime, I am in charge, and shall defend to the last----"

But a score of voices interrupted her. "Where is your brother? Where is Mad Jeremy? Where is Mr. Stennis?"

"I know not where my brother may be," she answered. "In his bed, most likely. You are at liberty to go and look. But as for my master, to whom you shall answer, he is in the City of Edinburgh in connection with some law business. If you seek him there I warrant he will be easy enough found."

But I remembered the flitting shadow I had seen, and crying out, "Search the house, boys! I will take the blame!" I launched myself behind the black hangings which fell behind me like the curtain in a theatre. A door opened to my hand, and I fell down a flight of steps, the shrill shrieks of the mad women behind me resounding keen and batlike to my ears.

CHAPTER XIX

I HOOK MY FISH

I had not fallen far. As is the wont of boys and cats, I was on my feet again in a moment. Something like a tall Lochaber axe--with the hook but without the axe part--had fallen on me, and the steel fetched me a sound clip over the bridge of the nose. Did you ever get a proper clout there when you were least expecting it? Well, if you have, you know how angry it makes you. I wanted somebody's blood. Hardly that, perhaps, for I had been decently brought up.

But the thought of my mother, of my father's disappearance, and the stupefying clink on my nose, all taken together, made me wild to be at somebody. Oh, it is easy to say "How wicked--yet so young!" and so on; but just try it yourself.

Anyway, this is how it happened to me. I was up again, and tearing like mad down the pa.s.sage, quicker than a wink. I did not care, at that moment, whether it was Jeremy Orrin or Mr. Stennis himself. One of the two I knew it must be. But the iron hook on its six-foot pole gave me confidence. I could feel the point of it sharp even in the darkness. I found out afterwards it was used to pull down the hanging lamps which the mad women and Miss Aphra--who was only half mad--used in their mystic ceremonies. I expect they were trying to raise the devil. Which was quite a work of supererogation--I think that is the word, but Elsie knows--considering that their own brother, Mad Jeremy, was on foot--and healthy, thank'ee kindly!

Well, I grabbed my hook and made after my shadowy man who had darted from behind the big reading desk. I knew some mystic palaver or other had been going on, but what that mummery had to do with the death or disappearance of my father I did not care--only just streaked it down the pa.s.sage. It was dark as pitch, of course, but firm underfoot, and of a uniform height. The walls had been painted recently, I should say, for I felt the bits of plaster come away in my hand as I put it out, and all along the courses of the stones felt ridgy.

Then all of a sudden it dipped down, and the going got wet and soppy.

"Under the moat!" said I to myself, thinking myself no end clever to have hit on it. "We will be going up presently," I added to myself.

Just so it happened. And then Joseph Yarrow thought himself the cleverest fellow in the world; though, come to think of it now, it was really a chance word of Elsie's that set me on the track.

Anyway, there was somebody before me, for I heard a door open, then shut, and, as it seemed, a kind of fumbling as if with a key which wouldn't act.

I was at the door in a trice--indeed, I rather tumbled upon it. For there were two or three steps leading up, pretty sloppy and slippery with green stuff, and the smell of dank earth all about. Also, it got cold, while it had been quite warm below. So I knew we were getting near the surface where the black frost was.

Plung! I darted my long staff with the hook at the end of it between the door and the doorpost. Luckily it caught on the steel part, so the man behind could not get the key to turn. Way there! I used my staff as a lever. The door gave. And in the chill dawn I found myself in a little sham ruin, covered with ivy, quite near the place where Mr.

Stennis got off his pony and came upon us the very first day Elsie and I had ever gone to Deep Moat Grange.

There was n.o.body there. My gentleman had failed to lock the door, but had managed to shoot an outside bolt which my long hook lever had torn away like so much brown paper. I climbed through a gap in the ruin--either a bit of an old cottage, such as shepherds live in, or, more probably, a thing built on purpose to shield the head of the secret pa.s.sage. I had never thought of secret pa.s.sages in connection with the Grange. But, of course--come to think of it--the people there would not have respected themselves if they had not at least one. They saw to it first thing--after the little coffins. "Necessities first, luxuries after," as my poor mother used to say when she confiscated my Sat.u.r.day's penny for the Sunday's church collection.

But in the growing light of the morning--dawn is the proper word, though smelling of poetry--I saw the man who had led me such a chase running through the wood in the direction of Brom Common. Now, I knew that piece. Had not Elsie and I come there, crawling on our stomachs--yes, lifting our four feet one at a time, counting the front ones, and not daring to move hardly! I was sure the fellow would have to cross the road, and I knew where. He would not do it right in front of Mr. Bailiff Ball's house; he would have to turn away to the right, about the place where poor Harry Foster was done to death. Because, you see, he would have to cross Brom Water by the bridge, and he couldn't expect to have secret pa.s.sages everywhere handy. So I made right for that place. It was risky, I own; but then I was in the mood for risks.

I could see him running--or rather gliding--a big portfolio thing under his arm, from tree to tree. And it came to me with a sudden certainty that this man knew the fate of my father, and that he was carrying off the booty under his armpits. Then somehow I got very angry all at once, and vowed I would put the steel hook into him or burst. I stretched across for the stile where he would have to cross the big march-d.y.k.e that bordered the Deep Moat property. He had not arrived, though I could hear him coming--in a precious hurry, too, and crashing like a steer through the underbrush. I crouched behind a bush of laurel--for we were in the pheasant shrubbery behind Bailiff Ball's--and waited with my hook at the "Ready."

He pa.s.sed me, running--a tall, gliding shadow, with something familiar in the back of it. I did not see him clearly, for he was all crouched up because of the low branches of the evergreens and the leather case he carried under his arm. He was breathing heavily. So was I, but I would have died before I would have let myself make so much noise about it.

He looked about him for the stile. Evidently he knew the way well enough. I thought I recognized, as he bent, momentarily lower, the oily glitter of black ringlets which distinguished Mad Jeremy. But though I knew there would be a tussle, I determined that I would not let him off. Besides, we were pretty near old Ball's at any rate, and I meant to call for help like a steam whistle--that is, if it should prove to be Mad Jeremy, or even Mr. Stennis.

Whoever he might be, not finding the stile, he began to climb the high d.y.k.e mighty actively--nearly six foot, I should say, was the height of that march-d.y.k.e--and he had just his leg over when I hooked my steel into his collar and pulled him back. He fell unhandily, several of the stones following him, and the leather portfolio going all abroad. He came down on his face with a whop like a bag of wet salt.

As I turned the fellow over, I was full as I could hold of everything stuck-up--as arrogant as a jack sparrow after his first fight. He had hurt his head rather, hitting it hard as he fell. The dawn had come up clear by that time. I tell you I gasped. I give you a hundred guesses to tell me whose face it was I saw.

It was that of Mr. Ablethorpe, the Hayfork Parson.

Well, I know now how it feels when the world comes suddenly to an end; when all that you had counted upon turns out just nothing; when what you believed true, and would have staked your life upon, is proven all in a minute the falsest of lies.

It was enough to drive any one mad. And indeed I think I could have stuck the steel hook into Mr. Ralph Ablethorpe, as he lay there in his High Church parson's coat with the tails nearly to his feet, his stiff white collar and the big gold cross--real for true gold--swinging as low as his hair watch chain. Yes, I would--but for one thing. The Hayfork Minister lay with his mouth open, his temples bleeding a little where he had hit a piece of stone, and he looked dead--painfully dead.

If he had looked a bit alive, I wouldn't have minded sticking the hook into him. Just think of all that chase, and his pretending to hunt the murderers of poor Harry, and sending me up that drain pipe--and all in the interests, as was now proven, of the murderers themselves. It was enough to make a Quaker kick his mother.

There was also, though I had not noticed it at first, one thing more.

The portfolio that I had supposed to contain my father's stolen papers and the proofs of the crime--well, there it lay, with the lock broken, and ready for me to find all about the foul treachery of the Hayfork Minister.

I was sure I should trap him now. I tell you I was so mad that I began to think of his being hung. And how glad I would be to see the black flag go up over the jail at Longtown. I meant to go there to see and cry "Hooray!"--I was so mad at his taking us all in. But, at any rate, I had a right to look, if only to search for my father's papers. It was I who had caught him, as it were, in the act.

I argued that it must be something very precious for the Hayfork Minister to keep it all the time by him, even when he was striking out his hardest, and knowing himself closely pursued. He had heard the roar as the people of Breckonside burst the barred door and came tumbling into the Grange barn. And that was a good deal worse than Mad Jeremy's howls--at least, to hear. Yet he had never let go, nor tried any other way of getting rid of his burden, not even in the sham ruin, where there were bound to be pints of hidie-holes among the ivy. But no; Mr. Ablethorpe held on to his leather case and just shanked it the faster. I believe if it had not been for that and my knowing the country better, I would not have nabbed him as I did. It must, therefore, as I made sure, be something worth having, when he was so set on getting safe off with it as all that.

So I took the case and cautiously opened the leather top. It folded over like a square cap. I found no papers! "Well, I'm blowed!"--yes, I said that! Mother said I might, so as to keep me from worse expressions. Father didn't care so much, so that I was a straight boy and told no lies--except when "jollying" somebody--making fun of them, that is--or just getting them to believe something because they were green.

Anyway, I opened the parson's case and saw no papers. It was lined with a kind of purple velvet--no end swell--and had a gold cross worked inside, like girls do things so as to waste their time. And inside a crystal globe there were a lot of round, wafer-looking things that looked good to eat, and a little silver dish beneath them--all figured over in raised work. Then, in a little compartment all by itself, there was a kind of vase or jug, closed with a stopper--all of silver.

Everything smelled good. I was just going to try the little wafery things, when all of a sudden the Hayfork Parson sat up, looking all dazed and nohow. He put his hand to his brow.

So I thought "Now for the revelation!" But he only said--

"Joseph, put that down this instant--you have not been confirmed! And at any rate the Communion in both kinds is the privilege of the ordained clergy!"

Of course, I thought he had simply gone moony with the whack he had got when I pulled him down from the d.y.k.e, as the Hielant Donalds did the mailed knights at the Red Harlaw, as I had read in the history book.

But in this I was mistaken.

Mr. Ablethorpe got a bit better when he had a.s.sured himself that I had not touched the contents of his leather case. He even tried to snib it again, but the catch had been broken in the fall, and the best he could do was to fasten it up with a bit of twine I lent him out of my pocket.

It is a strange thing about grown-ups who set up for knowing everything that they never carry things that are really useful in their pockets; only watches and money, which people try to steal. Now, every boy has twine and knives, and fish-hooks and marbles, and a catapult, and yet n.o.body ever thinks of stopping him with a levelled pistol on the King's highway, saying, "Your pockets or your life!" They would need to have regular Pickford vans to carry off the plunder, anyway, if they cleaned out very many boys. Why, I should think it a shame if I had less than sixty things in my pockets, all different, and all of the kind that you never knew when you were going to need them. And me going on for eighteen, too, and not a real schoolboy any longer, but a man!

Then, after a while, I began to explain to Mr. Ablethorpe all about everything. He just sat open-mouthed as I told him about father and about the mare coming into our yard through a locked door. I was watching him. He turned a bit paler, but his face was not the face of a guilty man.

"Of course, I see now, Joe," he said, "it looked bad. And I don't wonder the mob acted as they did, seeing me leave the barn so hurriedly."

Now, though I did not say so, I thought that pretty good, just about as good as a dozen gla.s.s marbles for a halfpenny. "Leave the barn hurriedly!" says he. My respectable Aunt Sally! Why, he simply scooted like the wind! What is it? He "stood not on the order of his going, but--went?" I bet he did! There wasn't anybody in Mr.

Mustard's school--no, nor yet in Breckonside, who could have caught the Hayfork Parson but me. He had legs like a whacking pair of compa.s.ses, and went along like the wild a.s.s that sniffeth up the wind.

"Yes," he repeated, tying a white handkerchief about the size of a tablecloth round his brow--I kept mum about what had given him the headache; pretended that I had brought out the hook to fish with--"yes, Joe, I did leave the barn in a hurry. But it was for the sake of those poor, foolish women, for whose souls none cares but myself. I know well that in going there at all I am taking my life in my hands. But the eldest, Miss Aphra Orrin, shows a little more stability than the others. And it was borne in upon me as a duty that I should try and make them put away their mad vanities, no better than stocks and stones, by subst.i.tuting a real worship in a real chapel. I found out by chance that the barn of Deep Moat Grange had been an oratory in the days of the ancient Cistercian Abbey, which had been built on that site about 1460. It was, therefore, in my opinion, duly and properly consecrated. True, I have not obtained the authorization of my bishop, and for that, Joseph, you may blame me."

I told him that it was all right as far as I was concerned. I did not think of doing so. His dread secret, if that were all, was quite safe with me.

"I thank you, Joseph," he said, with the solemn air he always had when engaged in making me a good Churchman. "I admit that the action is, on the face of it, irregular. But then the saving of these poor souls, Joseph! Consider! None to give them a thought but me! And I have already induced them to subst.i.tute a crucifix for their foolish gauds, which had only a meaning in their own deranged brains, Joseph. And this very night, after confession such as the poor things could make, I had determined to administer the sacrament of the Holy Communion to them. I was in the act of doing so when the noise outside, and the crowd breaking in the doors, caused me to retire, in the belief that my presence and the act in which I was engaged might be misunderstood by an incensed rabble. You agree that I was right, Joseph? Yes? Then--I own it--I am much relieved in my mind--still more to find that all the elements are safe. It would have been terrible--a disastrous loss--if any part of them had been injured. Even now, Joseph, when I came a little to myself, it seemed to me that when I awoke I found you--you, Joseph, the son of a Churchman, who ought to have known better, in the act----"

"No, Mr. Ablethorpe," said I; "but something was necessary to arouse you, and it seemed to me that nothing else would have the desired effect."

"Quite right, Joseph! You judged well," he said, nodding his head.