BARBARA LYNN
A TALE OF THE DALES AND FELLS
BY EMILY JENKINSON
AUTHOR OF "SILVERWOOL," "THE SOUL OF UNREST."
"An enduring soul have the Fates given unto men."--_ILIAD._
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1914
[_All Rights Reserved_]
CONTENTS
PART I
I. THE LONELY STEADING IN THE DALE 3
II. THE SISTERS 15
III. PETER FLEMING 32
IV. THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES 48
V. THE WAKING OF THE HOLY WELL 62
VI. JOEL'S DARKNESS 77
VII. MIDNIGHT 93
VIII. JOEL GOES AWAY 107
IX. PETER AT OXFORD 117
X. KETEL'S PARLOUR 127
XI. THE BACK-END 139
XII. SIX WHITE HORSES AND A COACH 152
XIII. JOEL TAKES THE LONG TRAIL 165
PART II
XIV. BARBARA AND PETER 175
XV. MORNING AT THE SHEPHERDS' MEET 191
XVI. JOEL'S RETURN TO THE DALE 202
XVII. THE WRESTLING MATCH 214
XVIII. BY THE CRESSET'S LIGHT 225
XIX. THE SHEPHERD'S REST 237
XX. THE SPELL OF THUNDERGAY 248
XXI. THE CALL 257
XXII. THE TRYST AT GIRDLESTONE PASS 266
XXIII. A PATHWAY OF FIRE 277
XXIV. WINTER 287
XXV. BARBARA COUNTS THE GOLD 297
EPILOGUE 309
BARBARA LYNN
PART I
CHAPTER I
THE LONELY STEADING IN THE DALE
Barbara Lynn looked up the dale.
Thundergay glimmered through the green twilight with his hoary head
under the Pole star, and his feet in the wan waters of a tarn. His
breath was the North wind.
Barbara put up the shutters and turned to an old woman, who was propped
against the pillows of a four-post bed. It stood in the full light of a
turf fire, and looked like a ship with its sails furled.
"I'll bid you good-night and good rest, great-granny," said the girl.
The old woman was watching her with keen eyes--eyes so bright that they
glittered under her shaggy brows.
"Do you ever waken o' nights?" she asked.
Barbara laughed and shook her head.
"Nay, I sleep from dark to dawn. But I'd hear you, great-granny, if you
called. I've ears like a mountain hare."
"Aye, aye, rest's for the young, restlessness for the old. I lie awake
thinking o' the days gone by. But you've no memories worth minding yet,
my lass. Wait till you're my age--ninety-six come Michaelmas."
Barbara placed a lighted candle on the bridewain close to the bed, and
stood for a moment looking down at the eagle-eyed old woman.
The Potter had made the new vessel after the pattern of the old, but the
spirit of life which each held was different. The girl and her
great-grandmother had the same wide brows, the same well-chiselled nose,
and their eyes were blue. Barbara was tall beyond the usual height of
her sex, and she carried her body with the grace of one accustomed to
stand on giddy heights and climb perilous places. Her head was finely
moulded, and in proportion to her form. Peter Fleming, the miller's son,
studying classics at Oxford, called her Athene, and said that a glance
into her blue eyes, gave strength to his shoulders and courage to his
heart. So had the old woman in the four-poster looked eighty years ago.
But though the eyes of both were blue, Barbara's were as mild and
meditative, as Mistress Annas Lynn's were hard. They scanned each other
narrowly. The marked difference as well as resemblance between them
seemed to strike the old woman, for she suddenly said:
"You take after me in looks, lass, though your father and his father
were the spitten picture of your great-grandfather, and Lucy favours
them. But you are no more like me in temper than the beck in spate is
like the same beck on a calm summer's morning. At your age I had kenned
the bride-bed, and the birth-bed, and o' but kenned the death-bed. But
you're still a bairn, puzzling over your letters."
There was pride and scorn in her voice.
"It's true, great-granny," replied Barbara, who was slow of tongue. "I's
mazed-like at the world."
"Hoots-toots," said the old woman testily. "There's nowt to maze thee.
Take what's sent and make the best on it. Life was made to be lived, not
questioned. And it's worth living. I tell thee so, Barbara, and thee can
take my word for it--I's that old. Whiles it turns your mouth awry, but
the sweet and the sour are fairly mixed. Lucy's learnt that much--I know
by the light in her eye. She'll get more of real life out of one night,
larking with the lads in Cringel Forest, than you out of a hundred
nights star-gazing on Thundergay."
"M'appen you're right," answered the girl, "but who would see to the
farm, the sheep, and the lambs, and the kye, if I spent my time larking
with the lads?"
Mistress Lynn's expression changed quickly. A crafty look displaced the
open scorn of her eyes.
"Aye, aye, keep to the sheep-paths, Barbara. Keep to the sheep-paths and
your star-gazing. See thou keep to the sheep-paths, great-granddaughter.
They're safer for a young lass than Cringel Forest. Get thee gone now.
It's time you were in bed. The dawn comes earlier every day."
"Earlier still I'll have to be up," replied Barbara, giving the old
woman good-night.
"God bless thee, Barbara, thee's a good lass, although I do get my knife
into thee whiles. Sleep well."
The girl drew the blue and white homespun curtains round the bed, put
out the candle and went away. The wooden soles of her clogs rang with a
measured sound upon the stone stairs and then across the rafters
overhead. After that there was silence save for the chatter of the beck,
running by the door. Its voice had an insistent, familiar tone, as
though it were talking to someone within. No movement came from old
Mistress Lynn. Either she was asleep, or she busied her mind with
thoughts of other days. For a long time the room was in darkness. Then
the turf on the fire slipped, the light leaped forth, and the
four-poster glided out of shadow like a ship in full sail. The curtains
were noiselessly drawn back, and a long, lean hand relit the candle.
Mistress Lynn looked slowly and searchingly about her. She left no dim
corner unscanned, and there were many dim corners in the great kitchen,
for it ran the length of the front part of the house.
It was a low room with a flagged and sanded floor. The walls were
white-washed, making a fine contrast to the beams overhead, and the
doors of the carved oak cupboards, all alike, black with age. Along one
side ran three windows. The hearth was a slab of blue slate, and, as the
chimney flue descended no further into the room than the ceiling, the
fire made a great show on occasions, with its flames and smoke; as
though one end of the house were burning from floor to rafters. A bar of
wood, called the rannel-balk, spanned the fireplace, and from it
depended the rattan-crook, a long hook on which the kettle hung. There
was a carved oak settle in the ingle, and near it a spinning wheel; and
under the windows a narrow but heavy table with all its corners sharp
but one, which was rounded off in a curious manner following the shape
of the solid tree trunk from which it had been made. Against the
opposite wall stood a dresser, holding a varied array of wooden and
pewter platters, piggins for drinking out of, and two or three china
cups. Next to it came the bridewain, and then the great bed. Between the
windows was the door, bound with iron, studded with large nails, and
bolted by two massive iron bolts. Another door at the far end led into a
little passage, which gave access to the wool-barn, cow-house and dairy,
all at the back of the building. In the chimney, curing in the smoke,
hung flitches of bacon and a sheep by the heels. Upon the shelves along
the walls were hammers and lanterns, pattens for horses to wear in snowy
weather, sticks and staves and an old gun. An oak cupboard, with
Mistress Lynn's initials carved upon it, held the oat-cake, and a kist,
near the fire, held meal.
But the principal feature of the place was the four-post bed, with its
curtains of blue and white homespun, so placed that it commanded a full
view of the room. Nothing could happen there unseen by the old woman.
Shadows shot up and sank with the flickering light. The clock peered
down like a white-faced watcher, the dresser and the high-backed chairs
were endowed with movement if not with life. Mistress Lynn laid her
fingers upon the bridewain, as though she would reassure herself that
it, too, was not a fantastic creation of firelight and shadow, but the
solid piece of oak which she had brought with her to this house of
Greystones, when she married David Lynn four generations ago.
She listened for any sound in the sleeping house. But all was quiet. No
stealthy steps crossed the rafters overhead, where Barbara and Lucy
slept. The windows were shuttered and the doors were closed. Jan Straw,
the shepherd, grown old and blind and deaf in her service, had a bed
along with the hind above the cow-house. There was none to spy upon her,
save the shadows and the firelight, and the bob-tailed sheep-dog, lying
with his nose between his paws, dreaming of the flocks upon Thundergay.
Mistress Lynn moved the candle nearer to her, and, taking from its
hiding-place in the bed a large iron key, she leaned over and unlocked
the middle cupboard of the bridewain.
The light was full upon her face, revealing the fine network of lines
about mouth and eyes, the parchment-like texture of the skin, and the
whiteness of the hair, that escaped from under her frilled nightcap.
Hers was a face bearing the imprint of age in every lineament, and of an
abiding craftiness, which all the greatness of her nature had not
managed to efface.
The bridewain was apparently stocked with carded wool. This she pushed
aside, however, and drawing out a bundle of silver spoons and a gold
locket, she laid them on the bed. She counted the spoons one by one, and
fingered the locket absently, as though the thoughts which it roused
carried her mind back to some experience long past. The expression of
her face changed from grim satisfaction to great weariness. Her lips
moved, but the words were lost in the chatter of the beck.
When Mistress Lynn was a girl, over three-quarters of a century ago,
she had loved Joel Hart, a young gentleman of quality, whose home was
not far off, and the locket had been a gift from him. But he married
Mary Priestly, the heiress of Forest Hall, in Cringel Forest, and she
married David Lynn, of Greystones. Neither marriage was very happy. Joel
took part in the rebellion of 1745, and was shot, losing all his lands
save the old house of Forest Hall, which his descendant owned and lived
in at this time. But between the rebel's outlawry and his capture, what
memories were crowded for the village girl he had once made love to! She
had hidden him from pursuit among the wool-sacks, unknown to her dour,
loyal husband. The tale had once been a favourite one for a winter
night's telling. But now it had ceased to rouse enthusiasm in the dale.
Only to this old woman was it a vital memory.
She turned the locket over, then she dropped it, putting such melancholy
thoughts as it drew forth resolutely away. She searched in the back of
the bridewain and brought out some bags of blue linen, each one tied
with a leather thong. They were full of money.
It was for the winking yellow coins which she poured into her lap, that
Annas Lynn, at ninety-five, still found life worth living. She, the
relic of a past age, with son and grandsons dead, and only two young
girls left of all her kindred, whose heart had shrivelled with the death
of Joel Hart long ago, still hoped that many years would pass before she
was laid to sleep by the mouldering bones of her husband in the
kirk-garth. She was proud of her age, proud of her right to be called
great-grandmother, proud of her keen wits. She ruled the steading and
the flocks, and the ploughed lands, and the pastures with regal
authority from her bed in the kitchen. No one disputed her sway. Lucy,
younger than Barbara by a year, had been known to defy her; but she rued
her rashness in tears for many days afterwards. Neither her son, nor her
grandsons, middle-aged men when they died, had ever opposed her will.
She broke if she could not bend.
Mistress Lynn stooped over her money-bags. She counted the coins,
letting them fall into her hand with a merry tinkle. She counted them
below her breath, as though she were afraid to utter the toll of her
wealth openly. She was a rich woman. The toil of years lay in her lap;
and Barbara's care of the lambs, Lucy's light hand with the butter, the
faithful service of old Jan Straw still added many a sovereign to the
pile. Gold! gold! it warmed the life blood that otherwise would have run
cold at the fountain. To get richer was the ambition of this old woman.
She set about compassing it with all the craft of a daughter of Jacob.
The sheep-dog heard the faint jingle, and, getting up, came sniffing to
the bedside. He buried his nose in the quilt, causing a coin to slip
unnoticed upon the floor. Like all his kind he owed a willing obedience
to a strong hand, and though he slunk in terror from his mistress's
anger, he returned trustfully to eat the crumbs which she sometimes gave
him.
She patted his head.
"There's no cream-cakes hid among the blankets, Toss, my lad," she said.
"Get awa back, and take thy sleep."
The dog returned to his bed by the fire, but the coin lay shining upon
the sheepskin beside the four-poster. She did not miss it.
Midnight; and the hour of twelve rang out, overcoming for a brief while
the ceaseless chattering of the beck. Mistress Lynn put away her
money-bags, and relocked the bridewain. She bent her head, listening
intently, but to a clock striking twelve far back in her memory. On such
a night as this, at the same hour, she had hidden Joel Hart among the
wool-sacks, while David Lynn, goodman, slept peacefully in his bed. That
night summed up for Annas all the sweetness and bitterness of life. She
had lived then to the utmost fibre of her being.
She drew the curtains and lay down. The four-poster once more took on
its likeness to a ship in full sail.
But there was no rest for the old woman. She spent the night-time, as
she had foretold to her great-granddaughter, thinking of the days gone
by. During those cold, early hours, that drag so wearily for the
wakeful, she lived again through many a wild scene. Yet she longed for
sleep, and vainly tried to put the memories from her, which she would
rather cast into oblivion for ever. Hers had been an eventful life.
She had been born and bred in this land of the dales and fells, under
the shadow of Thundergay. Her looks and actions showed the blood from
whence she came. She was a true descendant of those wild Northmen, who
had once swooped down upon that countryside, and built their homesteads
there. Tall, blue-eyed, and yellow-haired in her youth, she might have
been Unn, the Deep-minded, come to life again out of her saga. About her
breathed an air of mystery, for she was, in truth, no common woman,
either in body or in mind.
She had married early, and made this farm of Greystones the very centre
of her own personality. Husband and children had feared rather than
loved her, and no one knew what depths of affection her nature held,
save Joel Hart, dead seventy years ago. There was a Joel Hart now living
at Forest Hall, the old house about a mile away down the dale, and upon
him had fallen a pale reflection of her love. He and Barbara were the
only beings for whom she felt any real regard, and this not for their
own sakes, but because the one bore so striking a resemblance to his
ill-fated ancestor and the other to herself. They were a reincarnation,
in appearance, of the past.
As Mistress Lynn lay awake, she became acutely conscious of those other
days. They lived again. At one moment she was helping to bar the doors
against the last raid of the moss-troopers, while her husband shot at
them with a flint-lock from an upper window. Then, in the twinkling of
an eye, she was standing among the wool-sacks, her lantern making a
round moon of light upon the wall opposite. Even yet she could not see a
lantern's glow without the blood quickening through her veins.
Sleep would not come to her. She tried to draw her mind away from such
scenes, and think of the quiet hills. She listened to the beck, singing
under the windows. Its voice was so clear that it seemed to be running
across the kitchen floor by her bed. But it would only sing of the past,
like a bard telling tales of the strenuous days of old. It was a lullaby
for heroes, not for a weary old woman who could not sleep. She lay, shut
in by her curtains, with her eyes fixed wide, seeing faces and hearing
voices long since gone into the spirit-world.
Outside, the moon was shining like a new silver crown. The fells lay
white under its rays, for the snow had not yet melted from the uplands,
though primroses were beginning to peep along sheltered spots of the
beck-side. There was a touch of frost in the air, which gave a shimmer
to the sky. The roof of Greystones glistened, and the five great
sycamores, standing about the house, flung barred, black shadows across
the sheep-pens that lay at the back of the farm, surrounded with one
great wall ten feet high, built when robbers were frequent visitors. No
other steading stood in the dale. The little village of High Fold lay
two miles away, hidden by the trees of Cringel Forest. Behind Greystones
the fellside ran up at a steep angle to Mickle Crags. It was not a
cheerful place. The fell-folk said that a curse had been laid upon it,
but when, and by whom, and for what offence, no one had ever heard. Yet
many believed that the house would one day fall, or the beetling black
crags come down upon it, and then would end the family of the Lynns, who
had lived there for three hundred years. Lucy laid crossed straws on the
threshold, as her mother had done, and her mother's mother, and hung
horseshoes over the doors, but the house still kept its melancholy air.
The lonely situation of the place had much to do with this impression,
for Boar Dale was deep and wild and barren, surrounded by a mountain
rampart, up which the sun must climb before it could send its kindly
beams to dispel the mists that made it their home.
Barbara and Lucy, aided by the village folk, had tried to persuade
Mistress Lynn to leave the house and have another built in a more
cheerful spot, but she would not listen to them. Had she not lived
there for more than seventy years? Nothing had ever happened. There had
been landslips, to be sure, upon the fells behind, but they had never
fallen anywhere near the house. The beck was flooded every winter, but
never got higher than the bottom step of the garden. What was there to
fear? No; when she left Greystones, abandoned it to the bats and the
owls, it would be when she was carried out with her feet up. Then
Barbara and Lucy could do as they liked.
Mistress Lynn had been bedridden for several years. She had slipped in
the yard one muddy day and injured her ankle. It had recovered
sufficiently for her to have hobbled about with the help of a stick, but
the proud old woman could not brook such an idea. She would not be seen
hirpling like a sheep with the louping-ill, and so she preferred to
remain in bed and keep her dignity. She was quite happy and fully
occupied in holding her iron sceptre over her little family, and never
gave a thought to the curse. But Barbara and Lucy sometimes awoke at
night and shuddered, for they knew that the scarred and broken face of
Mickle Crags was peering down upon the roof with a malignant grin.
The moon set, and, in the grey dawn the old woman fell asleep. It was
then that the birds began to twitter in the copse hard by, through which
the beck babbled when it had run by the door. At the first low whistle
of a blackbird, Barbara awoke.