Crockett Samuel Rutherford
Deep Moat Grange
CHAPTER XXXII
"THERE'S NAE LUCK ABOOT THE HOOSE"
There's a bit more to tell about this part, though you might not expect it. It always makes me shiver to think of. But I could not help it. Nobody could – and anyway, the thing has got to be told. It is about Mad Jeremy, and what befell him when he fled upward through the smoke and flame, clambering by the balusters, my father says, more like a monkey than any human man.
And, by the way, I am not sure that he really was a man – except that a wild beast would not have been so clever, and the devil ever so much cleverer! Or, at least, he has the credit of being.
Did you ever see the burning of a great house – not in a city, I mean, but far in the country? Well, I have. There is not much to see till one is close by. A few pale, shivering flames, like the fires that boil the tea at a summer picnic – volumes of smoke rising over the parapet, mostly pale, and the sun serene above the scurry of helpless men, running this way and that, like ants when you thrust your stick into an ant hill to see what will happen. Hither and thither they go – all busy, all doing nothing. For one thing, water is lacking. The local fire brigade is always just about to arrive. If, by any chance, it does come, a boy with a garden squirt would do more good.
Well, it was like that on the morning of the eleventh of February. When the day did come at last, there was nothing mean about it – considered as an early spring morning in Scotland. It was of the colour of pale straw, with a glint low down like newly thatched houses before the winter's storm has had a turn at them.
Meanwhile, underneath, and looking so petty and foolish, was the crackling of the timbers, the falling in of the tiles, the smoke puffing and mounting like great strings of onions linked together, blue and stifling from the burning wood, white and steamy as the faggots slid outward into the moat, or fell with a crash into the pond.
All about swarmed a crowd of eager and curious folk. My father, as soon as he was recognized, and before he could condescend to tell his tale, had taken command, all soiled and bleeding as he was. I believe now that most there considered that he had rescued Elsie from the wild tribe after a desperate struggle, in which all the others had been annihilated. And it is characteristic of Breckonside, of the position my father held there, and especially of public sentiment with regard to the folk of the Moat, that no one for a moment dreamed that in so doing he had exceeded his legal right.
There was not much attempt at saving the building. Elsie had come a little to herself. At first she could say little, save that "her grandfather was dead – Mad Jeremy had killed him," which information did not greatly interest the people, save in so far as it detracted from my father's glory in having made a "clean sweep!"
Mr. Ball, whom everybody respected – in spite of the service in which he lived – caused a horse to be put between the shafts, and Elsie was conveyed home to Nance Edgar's by Mr. Ball himself. My father wanted her to go on to "the Mount." But Elsie no sooner heard the word mentioned, than, recovering from her swoon, she declared that "she would never set foot there – so long as – No, indeed, that she would not!"
"So long as what, my girl?" my father asked, gently.
You really can't imagine how gentle my father was with her. It took me by surprise, as I did not, of course, yet know anything about the events which had drawn them together in the deep places underground.
"Because – because – just because!" she answered. "Besides, it is not fitting at present!"
"I understand – perhaps you are right," sighed my father, somewhat disappointed.
For all that, he did not understand a little bit. It was because of Harriet and Constantia Caw – especially Harriet. It is an eternal wonder how women misunderstand each other – the best, the kindest, and especially the prettiest of them.
I would gladly have gone with her, but, of course, that would have been too marked. Besides, I dared not face my mother without my father. There was a little fountain made of the mouths of lions on the terrace, which spouted out thin streams of water into a large oyster shell – the kind they call pecten, I think, only the round part as big as a horseshoe. And once Elsie was away with Mr. Bailiff Ball, I got father to wash his face and hands there, which were black and terrible with matted hair and hardened blood. So that my mother, for all her outcries, did not really see him at his worst, or anything like it.
The fire mounted always, but somehow in the light of day it did not seem real. The faces of all the folk as we returned from the water, were directed to the tower which was called Hobby's Folly. The gabled, crow-stepped mansion of the Moat had nothing very ancient about it – that is, to the common view. You had to know the older secrets of the monks for that. But at the angle overlooking the pond, Mr. Stennis had caused to be built a square tower in the old Robert the Bruce donjon fashion, each chamber opening out of the other. These communicated by ladders, which could be drawn up and all access prevented. At least that was the tale which the masons who were at the building brought back to Breckonside. The tower was square on the top and had low battlements, save at one corner where there was a kind of pepper-pot cupola in which – so they said – Hobby Stennis used to sit and count his gold.
At first I could not make out what it was that the folk were craning their necks upward to look at. Evidently it was on the far side, that nearest the small lake, and, of course, invisible from the court out of which my father and I were coming.
But we followed the movement of the people, and there on the utmost pinnacle of the battlements, that outer corner which was higher than the rest and shaped like a miniature dome, his long legs twined about the broken stalk of the weathercock, and his melodeon in his hands, sat Mad Jeremy! Of the gilt weathercock itself nothing remained save the butt. With a single clutch of his great hairy hand, Jeremy had rooted the uneasy fowl out of its socket and hurled it far before him into the pond.
Up till now the flames had hardly reached the tower, and it seemed at least a possible thing that the maniac might be saved. But none of the Breckonsiders were keen about it. Only Mr. Ablethorpe and my father were willing to make any attempt to save him. Indeed, I was absolutely with the majority on this occasion, and could not, for my part, imagine a better solution than that which seemed to be imminent.
Nevertheless, the two tried to get into the tower from behind, but found all a seething mass of flames, which had swept across the whole main body of the building as if to swallow up Hobby's Folly for a last bonne bouche. There was no arguing with such a spate of fire. There remained, however, a little low door, reported to be of iron, but which, being near to the water and exposed to the fury of damp westerly winds and the moist fogs off the pond, had probably rusted half away.
"Come, let us do our duty," said Mr. Ablethorpe; "here is a human life! Let us save it!"
But nobody but Mr. Yarrow, senior, followed him. I was with the majority on this point, as I have said before, and so stayed where I was. Besides, Mad Jeremy was so curious to see and hear. He laughed and sang, his shrill voice carrying well through the crackle of the rafters and the snap and spit of the smaller shredded fragments of flame. As soon as he caught sight of Mr. Ablethorpe and my father he began to hurl down the copings of the battlements upon their heads. So that in the end they had to desist from the attempt, though they had nobly done their best.
And all the while he sang. It was the trampling measure of "There's nae luck" that the madman had chosen for his swan song. Never had been seen or heard such a thing. As he finished each verse he would rise and dance, balancing himself on the utmost point of the cupola, his melodeon swaying in his hand and his voice declaring ironically that —
"There's nae luck aboot the hoose,
There's nae luck ava,
There's little pleasure i' the hoose,
When oor guidman's awa'!"
Then he would laugh, and call out to the people beneath that the luck had come back.
"The guidman o' the Grange is safe!" he would cry. "He is at his loom, but never more will he weave, I ken. Jeremy has seen to that. And what for that, quo' ye? Juist to learn him that when Jeremy asks for his ain, he is no to be denied as if he were a beggar wantin' alms!"
Then he took a new tack, and launched into "The Toom Pooch" – which is to say, the "empty pocket" – a very popular ditty in the Scots language, and especially about Breckonside:
"An empty purse is slichtit sair,
Gang ye to market, kirk, or fair,
Ye'll no be muckle thocht o' there,
Gin ye gang wi' a toom pooch!"
He finished with a shout of derision.
"Ye puir feckless lot!" he shouted down to the crowd beneath. "I ken you and Breckonside. Here's charity for ye! Catch a haud!" And he showered the contents of a pocket-book down upon their heads.
"Here are notes o' ten pound, and notes o' twenty, and notes o' a hundred! What man o' ye ever saw the like? Only Jeremy, Jeremy and his maister. They wan them a', playin' at a wee bit game wi' rich lonely folk. Jeremy was fine company to them. And whiles it ended in a bit jab wi' the knife in the ribs, and whiles in a tug o' the hemp aboot a lad's neck, if he wasna unco clever. But it was never Jeremy's neck, nor was the knife ever in Hobby's back till Jeremy – but that's tellin'! Oh, Hobby's a'richt. I saw him sitting screedin' awa' at his windin' sheet, and thinkin' the time no lang."
He rose and danced, singing as he danced —
"There's nae luck aboot the hoose,
There's nae luck ava – "
The flames shot up like the cracking of a mighty whip. The madman felt the sting, and with a wild yell he launched himself over the parapet into the muddy sludge at the bottom of Deep Moat pond. He must have gone in head foremost, for he never rose. Only the melodeon, with the water trickling in drops off its bell chime in silver gilt, and the glittering tinsel of its keys, rose slowly to the surface among a few air bubbles and floated there among a little brownish mud.
CHAPTER XXXIII
CONFESSION
The ruins of Deep Moat Grange were black and cold – almost level with the ground, also. For the folk had pulled the house almost stone from stone, partly in anger, partly in their search for hidden treasure. Elsie was home again in the white cottage at the Bridge End, and my father was attending to his business quietly, as if nothing had happened.
The authorities, of course, had made a great search among the subterranean passages of the monks' storehouses, without, however, discovering more than Elsie and my father could have told them. Mr. Ablethorpe was still silent. So, being bound by my promise to him, I judged it best to hold my peace also.
But in spite of all this, or perhaps because of it, the country continued in a ferment. The deaths of Mad Jeremy and Mr. Stennis, instead of quieting public clamour, made the mystery still more mysterious. The weird sisters remained at liberty, and the wildest reports flew about. None would venture out of doors after dark. Children were told impossible tales of Spring-heeled Jacks in petticoats, who (much less judicious than the usual bogie – "Black Man," "Hornie Nick," the lord of the utter and middle darkness), confounded the innocent with the guilty, and made off with good children as readily as with children the most advanced in depravity.
Of course, knowing what I knew, I had none of these fears. I understood why Mr. Ablethorpe had arranged for the carrying off of Honorine, Camilla, and Sidonia. They were, I knew, housed with the "Little Sisters of the Weak-Minded." But to me, as to others, Aphra remained the stumbling-block.
But even this was soon to be removed.
On March the sixteenth, one month and five days after the burning of the house of Deep Moat Grange, the sheriff's court of Bordershire was held in the courthouse at Longtown. My father and I, with many people from Breckonside, were there, and practically all Bewick to a man. For great interest was felt in a case of night-poaching in which these two firm friends, Davie Elshiner and Peter Kemp, officially had repeatedly given each other the lie.
"There is rank perjury somewhere," commented the sheriff, "but as I cannot bring it home to any particular person, I must discharge the accused."
A certain subdued hush of various movement ran along the benches, as the listeners got ready to go. Sheriff Graham Duffus, a red-faced, jolly man, was conferring in hushed tones with the fiscal or public prosecutor, when two tall young men in irreproachable clerical attire pushed their way up the central passage, kept clear for witnesses by a couple of burly policemen at either end. A woman walked between them. She was tall, veiled, angular, and bore herself singularly erect, even with an air of pride.
The murmur of the people changed to an awe-stricken hush, as the woman lifted her veil.
It was Aphra Orrin, and she stood there between Mr. De la Poer and Mr. Ablethorpe!
"My lord," said Mr. Ablethorpe, in a clear and dominating voice, "I and my friend, Mr. De la Poer, are ordained clergymen of the Church of Scotland, Episcopal. We are not aware of the formula with which we ought to approach you, seated as a judge in a court of justice. But we are here because we know of no way more direct to carry out the wishes of this poor woman, whose conscience has been touched, and who by full confession, by condemnation, and by the suffering of punishment, desires to make what amends she can for the dreadful iniquities in which, for many years, she has been involved."
In a moment all present knew that it was a matter of the mysteries of Deep Moat Grange.
"Who is this woman?" asked Sheriff Graham Duffus, the jovial air suddenly stricken from his face. The fiscal had subsided into the depths of an official armchair. He reclined in it, apparently seated upon his shoulder blades, and with half-shut eyes watched proceedings from under the twitching penthouse of his brows.
"Her name is Aphra or Euphrasia Orrin," said Mr. Ablethorpe, "and she comes to make full confession before men, of what she has already confessed to me concerning the murders in which she has been implicated at Deep Moat Grange."
"And why," said the sheriff, "did not you yourself immediately inform the justice of your country?"
Mr. Ablethorpe turned upon Sheriff Duffus with a pitying look.
"I was bound," he said simply, "by the secret of the confessional!"
"In Scotland," said the sheriff severely, "we do not acknowledge any such obligation. But no matter for that, if now, even though discreditably late, you have by your influence brought this woman to make public confession!"
"I take my friend by my side to witness – I take Euphrasia Orrin – I take Him who hears all confessions which come from the heart, to witness that never have I put the least pressure on this poor woman's conscience! What she is now doing is by her own desire!"
The sheriff shrugged his shoulders, and the ghost of a smile flickered among the crafty wrinkles about the corner of the fiscal's mouth. His work was being done for him.
"You refuse the crumb of credit I was willing to allow you," said the sheriff. "Well, I put no limit to what any man's conscience may prescribe to itself, when once it begins to set up rules for its own guidance. Let us get to business. What has the woman to say?"
The woman had much to say. It was the early afternoon of mid-March when Aphra began to speak, and long before she had finished the court-keeper and his temporary assistant were lighting the dim gas jets arranged at wide distances along the wall.
Her crape veil thrown back over a bonnet showing a face, as it were, carven in grey granite, Aphra Orrin stood before her country's justice fingering a brown rosary. Every time she paused, even for a second, one could hear the click of the beads mechanically dropped from nervous fingers. Strong men's ears sang. It was as if the terrible things her lips were relating had been some history of old, long-punished crimes, the record of which she was recalling as a warning. Yet within what of soul she had, doubtless the woman was at her prayers.
Not once did she manifest the least emotion or contrition, still less fear. And she made her recital in the calmest manner, with some occasional rhapsodical language certainly, but with none of the madness which I should have expected.
She stood up, most like some formal, old-fashioned schoolmistress reciting a piece of prose learned by heart, without animation and without interest. The dry click of the beads alone marked the emphasis. The young Anglican priests towered one on either side, and the quivering silence of the crowded courthouse alone evidenced the terrible nature of the disclosures.
CHAPTER XXXIV
JEREMY ORRIN, BREADWINNER
"I had a younger brother, dear to me far above my life" (this was Aphra Orrin's beginning). "He was the youngest of all – left to me in guard by a father who feared in him the wild blood of my mother. For my father had married a gipsy girl whose beauty had taken him at a village merrymaking. In the Upper Ward they do not understand that kind of mésalliance in a schoolmaster. And so, for my mother's sake, he had to leave his schoolhouse, after fighting the battle against odds for many years.
"He died rich in his new occupation of cotton spinner, but he knew that the blood of my mother ran in all of us. Once, in a great snowstorm when the schoolhouse was cut off from all other houses – it was in the days soon after Jeremy (the youngest of us all) was born, my father awakened to find my mother leaning over him, the wood axe in her hand, murder in her eye. He had only time to roll beneath the bed, and seize her by the feet, pulling her down and so mastering her. He had to keep his mad wife, my mother, six days in the schoolhouse, with only himself for guard, till she could be taken to the asylum, where she died.
"After this shock my father soon followed her to the grave, and I was left with three poor girls on my hands, who could do nothing for themselves in the world – hardly even what I told them – and with Jeremy my brother. If it had not been for Jeremy, I might have managed better. But he spoiled it all. He was wild from his youth. The least opposition would arouse him to ungovernable fury. He would, like my mother, take up a knife, an axe, or whatever was at hand, and strike with incredible swiftness and strength.
"After we had lost our money – after I had lost it, that is – my own and my family's – it became my duty to provide for them more than ever. I had lost it, because richer people had revenged on me and on these four helpless ones my poor father's too rapid success. So I had no right to be squeamish as to means of vengeance on the rich.
"But while we were in the midst of some sad dreamy days at Bristol, Jeremy began to bring home money, for which he either would or could give no account. Nevertheless, I could not be sure which of the two it was. He was so wayward that if I ventured to ask for an explanation that would be a sufficient reason for his refusing it.
"I began, however, to notice that within a day or two after Jeremy's flush periods, there was always a hue and cry in the papers – a sailor robbed and his body found floating in the dock, a 'long course' captain knocked on the head, and the ship's money missing. Now Jeremy could never be kept away from the docks. Jeremy had plenty of money. Jeremy only laughed when I asked him how he earned so much without a trade.
"'I can play the fiddle!' he would answer, jeering at me.
"Yet, because there was no other money, and I could not let my sisters (who at least had done no wrong) suffer, I used what he brought. For neither, I was sure (and the thought comforted me), had Jeremy done wrong, because the mad can do no crime. The worst the law can do, is only to shut them up. And in the meantime the money was most convenient."
Here she paused, and a sort of groan ran all round the courthouse, as the meaning and scope of the woman's revelation began to dawn upon the packed audience. Aphra Orrin, being in her senses, had employed the madman, her brother, to murder right and left that the wants of her brood might be met!
There arose a hoarse mingled shout: "Tear her to pieces!" before which, however, Aphra never blanched. But the sheriff was on his feet in a moment. The fiscal commanded silence, ordering the court officer to apprehend all who disobeyed. For the wise lawyer could see well ahead, and knew that as yet they were only at the beginning of mysteries.
When silence was restored Euphrasia Orrin continued without losing a moment, neither amazed nor alarmed at the manifestation.
"At Bristol I perceived that all this would certainly end in an unpleasant discovery – yes, unpleasant" (she repeated the word as if in response to the threatening murmurs!). "I was not responsible for my poor brother, but I thought it would be well to remove him to a place where there were no docks and fewer temptations. I bethought myself of Leeds. We went there, but somehow Jeremy never took to Leeds. He wandered off by himself to London, associating with horse-coupers and gipsies by the way. Suddenly he disappeared. I heard no more of him till at our famine-bare garret a letter arrived containing a hundred pounds in Bank of England notes – and an address." Miss Orrin put her hand into a trim little reticule which was attached to her waist, and drew out a single sheet of paper, on which was written in a sprawling hand: "H. Stennis, Pattern Designer and Weaver, Burnside Cottage, Breckonside, Bordershire, N.B."
At this moment I noticed that Mr. Ablethorpe had for the first time left the side of the speaker – though Mr. De la Poer continued to stand on attention, his shoulder almost touching the dark veil which fell away to one side of Aphra's face, and threw into relief her determined chin. Mr. Ablethorpe was speaking to my father. My astonishment was still greater when I saw my father rise quietly and leave the courthouse. With a crook of his finger he summoned Rob Kingsman, and, without either of them paying the least attention to me, both left the room. Then I was certain that my father did not wish to attract attention by calling me away. Perhaps, also, he wanted first-hand evidence of what happened after he was gone. Anyway, he did not put himself at all out of the way at the thought of leaving me in the lurch at Longtown with the night falling. It was, of course, different from what it had been before the burning of Deep Moat Grange. People began to go the roads freely again.
Once more Mr. Ablethorpe took up his position. The sheriff had stopped taking notes, so absorbed was he in what he heard. As for the fiscal, he had never attempted to take any. He was enjoying the situation. This confession in open court was a thing unknown in his experience, and he was chiefly afraid lest the sheriff, little accustomed to this sort of thing, and probably anxious to get home for dinner, should cut short the sederunt.
"At this point," said Mr. Ablethorpe, who in a way assumed the position of counsel for his strange penitent. "I would put into your lordship's hands papers of some importance. They came from Dr. Hector, some of them, and some out of the safe in the cellar of the Grange."
The sheriff was not in the best of humours.
"I consider all this most irregular," he growled – "a court of justice is not a scene in a theatre!"
But Fiscal McMath, who was infinitely the stronger man of the two in character and conduct, turned upon him with a kind of snarl.
"Don't sink the ship for the extra happorth of tar, skipper," he said, in a low voice (which, however, sitting near, I could just catch), "give them rope – give them rope! We have been a long time at the job without hanging them!"
At this the sheriff was silent, only motioning Mr. Ablethorpe to give the papers to Mr. McMath.
Our fiscal, next to my father the best-known man in the county, was a greyish, grave man with twinkling eyes, mutton-chop side whiskers, a little, sly, tip-titled nose, with a dry bloom on the top of it, as if he liked his spirits neat. He never smiled, yet he was always smiling. His mouth, when about his duties, would be grave as that of Rhadamanthus, while within an inch of it a wrinkle twitched merrily away. His eyes could reprove a too light-hearted witness, or frown down an improperly jovial defendant, all the while that a mischief-loving sprite, hovering within, held his sides at the unseasonable jesting.
On this occasion, however, it was gravely enough that Mr. McMath adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles and proceeded to read.
