Deep Moat Grange Part 7

Still, if he looked for dirt, he found none. No, nor anything else--except in the great barn, empty of everything (for the horse's oats and bedding were kept in the stable). Here Mr. Stennis, tripping along with his tread of a frightened hen, lifted a huge curtain of corn sacks, thick and heavy, made after the pattern of those at church doors abroad, and we went in.

As soon as we stood on the beaten floor of hard earth, we could not take our eyes from what we beheld at the upper end. There was a kind of altar, rudely shaped, with a table and a cross, all as if hewn with an axe out of live wood, and painted black. On the table were the little black coffins, each small as baby's toys, which we had seen the mad women carry through the garden. Each of these had now a candle burning upon it. But the central light, a little larger than the rest, was protected about the flame by a curious contrivance made of red paper glued upon bits of stick which gave it (from where we stood) the appearance of a crimson lantern.

For the first time, I think Elsie was now a little frightened. And no wonder, for suddenly we saw something appear in the dark of the big empty barn, amid a curious pervading smell that I took to be incense, but which might have been c.o.c.kroaches. I liked bravely for Elsie to feel like that. For she had been just all too secure and c.o.c.k-a-hoop up till now.

What we saw was a row of kneeling figures singing a strange wordless chant, something between the wind in a score of keyholes and distant dog kennels on a moon-light night. At any rate, it tried the little girl's stomach. Because, quite suddenly she pitched forward on my shoulder and cried: "O Joe, get me out of this!"

Then the next moment, just like thrusting a stick into a wasp's byke, each of the black kneeling figures had s.n.a.t.c.hed her candle and made after us.

I don't know what might have happened. To me it was like a nightmare till we found ourselves in the open courtyard again. This had seemed creepy enough to me before. But now it was just like our own back green, as homelike and as pleasant, with the open air and the waving woods and all.

Within the barn we heard elricht squeaks and cries, like those of bats.

But outside the door, holding the heavy curtain back, so that we could get out easily, stood a tall, masculine woman with gray, smoothly brushed hair, dressed in a black blouse and skirt that had something under them which looked like the haircloth covering of the chairs in our second best parlour at home--the kind my father sits in and smokes over his books and cash-box. She was the woman with the short skirt we had seen watering the lilies when we looked across the black and oily moat.

"This is Miss Orrin, my housekeeper," said Elsie's grandfather automatically.

"Aphra Orrin!" said the lady, with a prim intonation, tossing her head like one hurt in her pride, "one who hath been raised up to be a mother to the orphan and the shelterless, to avenge the witless and those at whom fools make a mock! _Be quiet, you there!_"

She sent the door of the barn clashing into its place with her foot, and with the click of the well-oiled wards the screeching behind it redoubled.

The tall woman sighed and folded her arms across her breast. There was a certain weary dignity about her, and at first I could not believe that she was really out of her mind, as all in Breckonside averred.

"They are worse than usual to-day," she said, with a careless nod of the head in the direction of the barn, "but that will teach them. They shall stay there till I come and fetch them out! No food for such as they!"

She turned about and called hurriedly: "Jeremy! Jeremy!"

Then the big black man with the ringlets, the onyx eyes and gipsy's skin, came bounding toward us. He seemed to arrive from the direction of the moat, but from much farther round and nearer to the house than the bridge by which we had crossed. He was grinning and holding his hands behind him, like a child who fears to be punished. I soon noticed that he was far more afraid of his sister than he had been of Mr. Stennis and his riding whip.

"Show your hands!" The tall woman spoke in a tone of command. Jeremy stood grinning before her. Then quite suddenly he began to cry. Big tears rolled down his face.

"I haven't--I haven't, indeed, Aphra!" he whimpered. "I have only been sailing boats on the moat! Indeed, I have!"

"_Show your hands!_"

She spoke so shortly that the great, cleanly built powerful giant fairly quaked before her.

"I will--I will!" he repeated. "Yes, Aphra!"

And all the time he was evidently rubbing them together as hard as he could. I could see his shoulders and elbows working. Then the tall woman, losing all patience, s.n.a.t.c.hed at his arms and pulled the hands sharply forward. The marks of earth between the fingers and about the nails were obvious. But Jeremy still continued to rub off the little pellets of mould, raising his fingers and looking at them with an air of surprise, as if he wondered how in the world the dirt had got there.

"You have been digging again!" cried Miss Orrin; "this is the third time, and you are well aware of the penalty!"

"Oh, no, no!" cried the big man, catching her by the skirt, which she swept away from him, the tears fairly rolling down his cheeks. "Whip me, if you like, Aphra, but----"

"Go and shut yourself up in the dark hole," she said firmly; "see you shut the door tight. I shall come round and lock it after a little!"

The great lout went away _boo-hooing_ like a "soft" schoolboy whom a st.u.r.dier comrade has sent home provided with something substantial to tell his mother. Anything more unlike the idea which we, in common with all Breckonside, had formed of the dreaded "mounster" of the Moat Grange, could not well be imagined.

Then his sister turned to us, and in the most conventional way possible she asked us to go into the house "to drink a dish of tea!"

It was hardly the hour for this, but our long morning's jaunt in the open air and varied excitements had not at all taken away our appet.i.tes. We were literally as hungry as hunters.

I think, if Elsie and I had kept all our wits about us, that we should have refused such an invitation. But children often do very bold things through sheer thoughtlessness and curiosity. And we were little more than children, for all our age.

But it all turned out well for us--indeed, even better than that. We had supped so full of surprises that day, that at this point I think hardly anything would have sufficed us or come up to our demands!

Perhaps an introduction to a company of sheeted ghosts, or an invitation to take afternoon tea with blood-boltered Banquo, might have filled the bill of our expectation.

As it fell out, nothing was ever more dull and orderly, Miss Orrin showed us into a neatly arranged parlour, with the usual stuffy smell from unopened windows. She left us a minute alone to examine the knick-knacks, while she went elsewhere, doubtless to arrange matters with her erring brother Jeremy. We were still in the dark as to the crime he had committed, and, each remaining seated on the edge of a chair, looked about us curiously, with our ears at a permanent full c.o.c.k.

Miss Orrin had pulled up the blinds, and through them we could see the wide green lawn, broken here and there by the dense plots of lilies, which almost formed groves in some places. The parlour was a large room, covered with faded yellow paper, bearing traces of a blue flower, perhaps wreaths of forget-me-nots, but all so faint that it was only a strong imagination which could again body them forth. The furniture was chiefly of old black oak, with an extraordinary number of chests with various ornamental work round the walls. These had been covered, presumably by Miss Orrin, with bright-coloured chintz of a salmon-pink edged with frills and furbelows which somehow cheapened the high, antique mantelpiece, the quaint corner cupboards, and the tall, high-backed open chairs ranged at equal intervals about the room.

I am not sure if I have described all this aright. For, indeed, the vague stuffy smell took us by the throats. Both Elsie and I were glad when Mr. Stennis came back and bustled about, sniffing, growling, and opening windows and doors.

One of these, that to the left of the wide fireplace, gave into a small room full of curious wooden machinery to which our eyes were instantly attracted.

"The old weaver's hand does not forget its cunning--the trade by which he made his siller!" said Mr. Stennis, with a faint shadow of a smile, the first we had seen cross his anxious face.

He showed us beautiful pieces of ornamental fabric, upon one of which he was at present engaged, and even entered into a long explanation as to his methods of working. Finally he sat down before the intricate spider's web, and with a skilled click and wheeze sent the shuttle flying for our benefit. I stood back a good way, but Elsie remained close beside him. And I could not have believed it, if I had not seen it--how in the joy of work the "laird" died out of the man, and the little bow-backed weaver came again plain to the eye.

I turned about, conscious of some unknown interruption. There was a faint creaking of the door, and through it I could see Miss Orrin, a tray with tea dishes in her hands, glaring speechlessly at Elsie. The young girl had laid an unconscious hand on her grandfather's arm. She was asking him to explain something in the manipulation. But on the face of the woman who stood without, watching, I surprised cold Death, and as it were, h.e.l.l following after.

I felt that we had no real business in that house, neither Elsie nor I, and that the sooner I got her safe back to Nance Edgar's, the better pleased I should be. But Elsie was a difficult girl to shift till she took it into her own head. Then with a beaming smile Miss Orrin came into the parlour and began to lay the cloth.

"Ye will be hungry, bairns," she said, with a curious nervous laugh, which reminded us unpleasantly of her sisters.

"Yes!" we answered together. But somehow I wasn't. The hunger had left me.

CHAPTER VIII

MISS APHRA'S CURATE

We had scarcely started our tea, and hunger was still keen upon Elsie, when there came a noise of calling, quite different from the howling of mad folk, or the mocking laughter or ugly whine of Jeremy. Miss Orrin poured out tea with a kind of grim _aplomb_. If I had been afraid that she meant to poison us--or at least Elsie, I was soon undeceived. The amount of tea that she poured down her own throat was astonishing in the extreme. There were, however, certainly several sorts of cake that she would not allow her master, Mr. Stennis, to touch, on pretext of indigestion, but which she pressed upon us. And it was all that I could do, by kicking her shins beneath the table, to keep Elsie from accepting.

I managed it all right, though. They might have been as harmless as my father's acid drops. But after all there was only one Elsie, and I was not going to run any risks.

There was a distant sound of calling across the moat, and at the noise, Mr. Stennis frowned, an ugly look coming over his face, while on the contrary the sound had a still more extraordinary effect upon Miss Orrin. Her eyes gleamed more softly, losing for a moment their iron-gray expression. Her hands went up instinctively to the thin little corkscrew curls which bobbed at either side of her face.

In ten seconds the fierce, angular old maid looked ten years younger.

Love, vanity, self-consciousness--ye are wondrous things.

"If it's that interfering curate from Over Breckonton, I'll throw him into the moat! I'll have the dogs on him," growled Mr. Stennis, "always poking his nose in when he is least wanted!"

Then he turned to his housekeeper, and detecting her busy fingers, he said with a sneer--

"What, prinking again! I see. Only the beneficed clergy have any chance with you, Miss Aphra!"

"Beneficed!" she cried. "Ah! poor lad, I wish he were! If I had my will it would not all go to that lazy vicar, who never does a ha'pworth of good, but rides to hounds and preaches his father's sermons, because he cannot make one for himself."