PETER FLEMING
The swift night came down; fells and dales were folded in purple gloom.
Stars began to shine, and Barbara, eating her supper of coarse bread,
let her eyes wander from group to group with meditative enjoyment. To
her the sky was no vast abyss dotted with a formless multitude of
shining points, but a field of wonderful fiery things, each following
its own appointed course. Yonder glittered Leo, there swung the Great
Bear and the Dragon; and, there on a mountain peak, shimmered the
Northern Crown. It led her thoughts to Timothy Hadwin's prophecy, when
he cast her horoscope; for she should wear a crown, he said, and though
Barbara was too wise to put a strict construction upon his words,
nevertheless, she found pleasure and inspiration in them, wondering what
they might mean.
She flung an extra armful of wood upon the fire, for the night air
nipped frostily. Then, taking her lantern, she went among the sheep to
see that all was well with them and their lambs. The little orphan had
been adopted, and nestled with its foster-brother against a warm woolly
side. A sense of placid well-being lay over the fold, so the girl
returned to the fire. As she sat in silence, her fingers busy making a
withy basket, and her mind active, there came from over the tarn a
sudden burst of melody, ethereal as elfin music. It was echoed to and
fro from cliff to cliff, now it danced overhead, then it stole like a
whisper out of a dale far away. The shores of the tarn were ringed with
sounds, so haunting that they seemed to be unearthly. Barbara listened
in amazement.
Someone was playing a flute from the Rock of the Seven Echoes.
Again the music came rippling across the water and was tossed about from
hillside to hillside in airy phantasy. When at last it died into
silence, Barbara became conscious of the other sounds of the night--the
tinkling of distant waterfalls, the cropping of a sheep close by. She
listened expectantly, but the sounds were not repeated.
"It must be Peter," she thought, "only Peter plays the flute hereaway,
except Jake, the ratter, and only Peter would play it at such a place."
Her eyes brightened when she thought that he was back again in the dale.
Between him and the sisters lay a good fellowship. Often he spent hours
with Barbara among the sheep, reading to her stories of old combats and
great doings from the Iliad and Odyssey. But he was equally at ease when
he helped Lucy to top and tail gooseberries, or sought among the bracken
for the nest of the laying-away hen.
Barbara stirred her fire to a brighter glow. She knew that he would see
it on the other side of the tarn, and perhaps he might come round to the
cave and greet her after his long absence.
Peter was the only son of John Fleming, the miller--called Dusty John in
the village--who was a man of some substance, plain habits and little
education. But he gave his son every advantage. The boy was sent to
school, and afterwards, proving himself apt beyond expectation, went to
St. Bees, from which ancient seat of learning he won a scholarship to
Oxford. The miller's ambition was to see his son in the church, where he
did not doubt Peter would soon be promoted to the highest office. In
dreams he beheld him Archbishop of York or Canterbury. But the lad said
neither yea nor nay to his father's wishes. He enjoyed himself to the
full, coming home for vacations with a light heart, accepting the
truckle bed in the mill-house and the homely fare with as lively a
humour as he did the varied life of Oxford.
He reached the cave just as the moon was rising, and leaned his back
against the cliffs to watch the light sparkle on the water.
"When did you get home?" asked Barbara, putting her withies aside, and
bringing him a cup of milk.
He laughed.
"I've not got home yet," he said, "for I left the coach early in the
afternoon to come over the tops. But they were too deep in snow, so I
had to take the Girdlestone Pass instead. I stayed at the Shepherd's
Rest for an hour. Now here I am, late as usual."
Then he plied her with eager questions about his father and mother, the
village folk, and the welfare of all at Greystones.
"How goes the studying, Barbara?" he asked. "Have you read the book I
sent you?"
She shook her head.
"Nay; it's not that I haven't the will, but there's no time. Jan Straw
is grown so old, and the new hind hasn't got into the way of things yet,
so that the heavy end falls on me." Then she added with a smile,
"There's such a lot of me to get tired, Peter."
He looked at her. Though he could not see the calm eyes and the
corn-coloured hair, the outlines of her form were splendid in the
silvery light. He felt dwarfed beside her, not physically, but morally.
Hers was the finer spirit. He acknowledged it with a glow of generous
feeling, for he was given to hero-worshipping.
"We'll make a pact, Barbara," he said, "while I'm at home I'll shepherd
the sheep, and you shall read."
"You are good and kind, Peter," replied she, "but I remember how you
helped me once before. If it wasn't a rainbow, it was a flower, and if
it wasn't a flower, it was a bird, but never the sheep-salving or the
cattle-herding. The kye got into the barley-field--do you mind?"
They both laughed.
"What a careless brute I am to be sure," said he. "But if you won't let
me look after the farm, I'll come and read to you, when you have time to
listen. I've brought you a new book; you'll like it."
He unstrapped the pack he carried, and took out a stout volume. In the
light of the fire he showed it to her. It was Pope's Homer.
"Some warm day," he continued, "we'll sit on the fellside and wake again
echoes of great deeds, and old battles. Thundergay shall be Olympus, and
you shall be Athene, the azure-eyed maid. Listen to this----"
He bent down by the fire and held the book so that he could read by its
light.
"'Now heaven's dread arms her mighty limbs invest,
Jove's cuirass blazes on her ample breast....'
"I can see you in them, Barbara."
'The massy golden helm she next assumes,
That dreadful nods with four o'er shading plumes;
So vast, the broad circumference contains
A hundred battles on a hundred plains.
The goddess thus the imperial car ascends;
Shook by her arm the mighty javelin bends,
Ponderous and huge; that when her fury burns,
Proud tyrants humbles, and whole hosts o'erturns.'"
He closed the book and put it into the girl's hands.
"I've never seen you roused up to do battle," he laughed, "but you'll
look like that when the spirit moves you. Good-night, Barbara."
Something stirred her like the call of a trumpet heard by her spiritual
ears alone. Was her placid life upon the mountains going to end? Would
she have to fight with her desires, because Duty still pointed a stern
finger towards the sheep-paths, while another road opened before her--a
broad and pleasant road. Peter always roused this restlessness in her
heart. She was glad, yet sorry, when he went singing home, leaving her
to the night-loneliness with her book of old battles.
The next morning Peter Fleming was walking up and down the cobbled path
of the mill-garden between flowering currant bushes, and sheaves of
lent-lilies, whose buds were still encased in their pale-green sheaths.
Everything sparkled in a sudden burst of sunshine. From the mill-wheel
the water fell like a glittering fringe, and the beck raced merrily by,
clutching at the weeds and grasses on its rim, and drawing them down to
make them gorgeously green under its clear surface. On the other side of
the stream stood Cringel Forest.
The mill-house was a tall building with the date, 1600, carved over the
door under a coat of arms of a wheat-sheaf and a sickle. The Flemings,
or De Flemings, as they were then called--had been millers in the dale
since the reign of Elizabeth, a fact which Dusty John prided himself
upon, although he was as simple an old man as ever spoke the vernacular.
The kitchen door was open at the end of the cobbled path, and in its hot
and sunny atmosphere, Peter's mother stood ironing. Her muslin
kerchief--as fine as ever came from the looms of the East India
Company--her gown of russet, and white apron were the essence of
cleanliness and order.
"Get away with thy blandishments," she said, for Peter had paused on the
threshold to tell her that she looked like a ripe hazel-nut, her face
was so brown and rosy and round. "Thee'd witch the wisdom out of my old
head with thy flattery. And as for thy dadda--he cannot walk for
swaggering, thee's lillied him up so handsome!"
She smiled proudly into the clear-eyed face looking so affectionately
into her own. Peter made her feel that she was still young and worthy of
admiration. When he came home she always wore white stockings--though
she thought them an extravagance at other times--and placed a flower or
a bow of ribbon under her chin.
She held up a kerchief that she was ironing, and said tenderly:
"It will be a great day for thy father and me when we see thee
consecrated, Peter."
He stepped across the floor where the sunshine lay in a broad band, and
kissed her.
"And a blessed day when I does up thy lawn sleeves, my son. Thee must
never let anyone do up thy sleeves but me, lad, not even thy wife when
thee gets one. There's nobody kens the art of clear starching and
ironing better than thy old mother."
The young man sat on the edge of the table and swung his legs.
"You'll be disappointed, mother," he said, "but I never can see
myself--in spite of your dear visions--in bishop's sleeves. I'm a lazy
beggar, and more likely to be lying under a tree, finding sermons in
stones and books in the running brooks than beating the pulpit cushions
of Durham or Carlisle."
She shook her head indulgently.
"Time enough, time enough," she said. "Thee's too young yet to know thy
own mind."
Peter looked round the kitchen and laughed.
"Would you like to live in a palace, mother?" he asked.
"A palace! And what would I do there?" she replied, seeing no further
than the lawn sleeves which she would wash and iron.
The kitchen of the mill-house was small, clean and simple. Brass
fire-irons, two or three candlesticks, a burnished copper warming-pan
reflected the strong sunshine, but otherwise the puritanical severity of
the white-washed walls was unrelieved. The floor was strewn with river
sand, and the chairs and dresser glistened with constant oiling and
rubbing. On the dresser was a pile of newly-made clap-cakes, and round
the fire stood an oak maiden hung with clean linen. The place had a
kindly, homely smell, and Peter sniffed it with enjoyment. He loved the
towers of Oxford, and the shadow of his college cloisters, but this
small and sunlit kitchen, where his mother baked and ironed, and his
father smoked his evening pipe, brought him back to those primitive
passions of man out of which the strength of his life springs.
Peter returned to the garden and continued his walk up and down the
cobbled path.
He was thinking of his future, and wondering what he would be able to
make of it. He had almost decided that he would not take orders when his
college days were done, which would be at the summer vacation. The
prospect of becoming a curate, or even a North Country vicar did not
attract him; on the other hand, he had no particular leanings in any
other direction. That which would have suited him down to the ground, he
sometimes told himself whimsically, was the position of a country
gentleman, with a good library, a well-stocked stable, plenty of dogs
and troops of friends. His was a genial, breezy nature; he had a firm
hand, a just mind, and a clear brain, added to a boyish love of the
unusual and adventurous. Peter was a favourite in the village. He liked
pretty faces, and flirted openly, but he left the lasses' hearts none
the worse. He fished and hunted with the lads; he talked politics with
the tailor, religion with the cobbler, and with Jake, the rat-catcher,
spent many a long afternoon. It was Jake who taught him to play upon the
flute, and though he never managed to charm the rats with his music--as
the strange little man did--he had the young men and maids capering on
the bit of green before the inn door on summer evenings, long after they
ought to have been abed.
His meditation was interrupted by a horseman calling from over the wall:
"Halloa! Peter, back again?"
It was Joel Hart.
"I'm glad to see you," said he.
"I thought you'd made up your mind to go abroad and seek your fortune,"
replied Peter, shaking hands heartily.
"So I had, but I broke it again. I couldn't be quite sure where to find
the fortune."
They both laughed, but Joel had a note of envy in his mirth.
"You're a lucky dog, Peter," he exclaimed, "to have money in your
pockets and a fond father ready to supply more. How long are you home
for?"
"Six weeks. It's the Easter vacation."
"Good! we'll have some fishing and wrestling--eh? We'll make a damned
fine holiday of it. I want something to take my mind off the worry of
wondering where my bread and butter is to come from. You don't want to
work, I bet; had enough of that sort of thing down yonder--eh? Come and
have a glass at the Wild Boar."
He alighted and leading his horse by the bridle walked down the village
street with Peter.
When they were boys they had gone nutting and fishing together, and the
memory of many a hairbreadth escape still bound them with the links of
affection, though in mind and character they had long since drifted
apart.
Joel Hart was a handsome man. Beside him, Peter with his homely face,
honest grey eyes, and loosely built figure looked rough-hewn--looked,
indeed, that which he was, the off-spring of clean-living, hard-working
peasant forefathers. The two men were of a height, but the one carried
himself proudly, looking neither to right nor left; the other with an
easy swing, that could stoop to give pennies to a crying child, or lift
a bundle for an old woman. There was an expression of arrogance and
dissatisfaction on Joel's features that marred their beauty. He had dark
curling hair, which he wore rather long, his eyes were large,
well-shaped, full of a smouldering fire or melting sadness as his mood
chanced to be.
The world had dealt hardly with him, and he could not forgive it. His
father, the son of that ill-fated Joel Hart whom Annas Lynn had hidden
in the wool-barn, had married late in life, and died shortly after,
leaving his infant to be brought up by the widow--a vain and foolish
woman. She had been indifferent to his discipline and education, and
when she died, left the estate--it was a very small one--burdened with
debts, a burden that increased rapidly, owing to extravagance and bad
management. Joel was not competent to deal with it. A habit of
indolence, fostered by his up-bringing, had become second nature to him;
his temper was uncertain; yet he cared deeply for two things--Forest
Hall and Lucy Lynn. To preserve the one, and gain the other was a wild
dream that he dreamed, but made only fitful attempts to realise. He felt
that he was bound by invisible bonds which he could not break.
"I'm getting to the end of my resources, Peter," he said as they stood
in the inn parlour, drinking. He often make a joke of his poverty; it
was too well-known to be hidden; and he did not care that folk should
see how much he felt it. "I've only one hope left."
"I trust it's a substantial one," remarked Peter.
Joel flung back his head and laughed.
"Ha, ha," he cried, "ha, ha. It's the old great-grandmother up at
Greystones."
"You're not thinking of marrying her--are you?" said Peter, his eyes
twinkling.
"'Pon my soul I never thought of it! What a pity. She'd have had me,
Peter, for the love she bore my grand-dad. I needn't have waited till
she was dead, then, to have got her money."
"She's rich--is she?"
"Must be! an old miser! She told me she was going to leave the little
she had--little, mind you, and Greystones is the most prosperous farm
for miles round--she said she was going to leave it to be divided
between Barbara, Lucy, and me. She's ninety-five now, and can't live
much longer, though she looks as hale and hearty an old sinner as ever
laid up treasure in this world. I hope she'll not forget her promise."
"Court her," replied Peter, briefly.
"Her or her great-granddaughters?" Joel shot a sharp glance at his
companion. He sometimes thought that Peter had a warm side for Lucy as
well as himself. "All the same," he continued, tossing off another
glass, "I'm breeding dogs, as a stand-by, in case she dies without
leaving me a shilling. You must come and see them. I've got a litter of
the prettiest pups you ever saw. I keep 'em in the parlour because the
kennels are all out of repair. It's a comedown, eh, for the master to
sup his porridge in the kitchen, but feed his dogs under the very noses
of his forefathers in their gilt frames?"
They talked a little longer, made plans to join the fox-hunt next
morning, then Joel mounted his horse and rode away, while Peter retraced
his steps up the village street.
He thought that Joel was changing. The man looked unhappy and restless
in spite of his gay demeanour. He talked too much, and he drank too
much. He might be as poor as he asserted, but he rode a fine
horse--Peter was a judge of horse-flesh--and his clothes were dandified
beyond the fashion of the times. Yet there was something in him that
appealed to Peter, who thought he looked like a gay bird in a trap. And
what trap could be worse than one made out of family pride, poverty, and
lack of education?
Pondering upon his friend's character and circumstances, he passed
through the village.
High Fold, in the midst of which the mill stood, was a cluster of houses
on the fringe of Cringel Forest. They were built of grey stone, roofed
with rough-hewn slates, where the yellow stonecrop ran riot, hung with
queer little balconies, giving them a foreign air. They stood at all
angles on either side of a steep road, at the foot of which was the inn,
at the top the church. Except for the house known as Forest Hall, the
farm of Greystones and a few solitary cots, High Fold marked the limit
of human habitation in that direction. Beyond it were many miles of
heathy moorland, a wild expanse of mountain, barren ravines, each with
its own gushing beck, and wild marshes. The people were a healthy,
thrifty race, lacking little--and those things not necessities--working
hard and simply, and living to a good old age. Many of them herded sheep
on the common lands; a few wrought in a silver mine some distance off;
others spun and carded wool; a tailor, a weaver, a rat-catcher and a
blacksmith were respected members of the community. They owned a large
flock of geese, each bird was smit with its owner's private mark, and a
goose-girl, in the common employ, led them daily to their
feeding-grounds. There were few idle hands in the village, even the old
men knitted stockings, sitting on the inn bench of a spring or summer
evening.
Peter followed the road beyond the village, where it turned into a
cart-track, and wound through Cringel Forest, leading to Forest Hall,
and then on up the dale to Greystones.
As he lay under a beech-tree, watching the birds fluttering among the
smooth branches, a little old man came wandering through and sat beside
him.
The hair of the little old man curled on his shoulders, like a
child's--though it was grey instead of golden--and his eyes were also
like a child's, bright and questioning. He was primly dressed in a
flowered waistcoat buff breeches and blue stockings, but the garments
were faded and threadbare. On his knee he held a basket of roots and
leaves.
"Meditation," he said, "is the mother of great thoughts, and repose
fosters them till they be well-grown."
"That's comforting to my lazy soul," drawled Peter.
The thin old voice continued, carefully choosing the words as though,
even in meditation, nothing slipshod or ill-fitting was allowed to pass.
"We should find time to be idle," he said. "When the soul is possessed
by tranquillity, there enters in an angel called thought--a mysterious
being, whose birth and origin is far beyond our knowledge or
understanding. But we can give her housing, care for her like kind folk,
and she will reward us abundantly. Her presence with us is her reward."
Peter chewed a blade of grass, basking in the warm light. For a little
while neither spoke. The last week had shaken off all the appearance of
winter from the forest. The trees were budding, a tall poplar rose
purple as a plum, yonder a group of larches were turning green, and a
sycamore had all its tips dipped in crimson. The blackthorn thicket was
white, and the lesser celandines were golden on the banks. In the forest
lay a deep blue silence--the silence of old wise trees, but on the
topmost branches, gay and giddy birds were pouring out their hearts to
the spring sunshine in a wild burst of melody.
"It's all very beautiful," said Peter; "that light on the
beech-stems--it might be a splash of pure gold. The trees seem to be
aware of it too--if only their leaves were out they would be clapping
their hands for joy." Then he turned to Timothy Hadwin. "I'm becoming a
convert to your Faith," he said. "I believe the earth has a soul and
every living thing."
"You feel it, then?" replied the old man, eagerly. "You feel a magic in
the woods which only comes from the communion of souls? You and I and
the trees are not alone here. You feel that other minds are reaching out
to touch you, as you are reaching out to touch them? You have in your
own mind this vision of the truth--the kinship of the living world?"
"Perhaps it's imagination after all," said Peter.
"Imagination does not lie."
"It may deceive."
"No, no. What we imagine is true for ourselves, though no one else may
see it to be so. We each of us have senses, feelings, thoughts of our
own. Were you to tell me that you saw a hamadryad coming out of yon
beech-tree, I should not contradict you because I could not see it. But
if you plucked a buttercup, and said it was only coloured matter, I
should say you were wrong, for I know it to be something more. The
greatest blessing of life is sight, and the commonest ill is blindness."
He laid his hand upon the ground and continued. "We are all akin,
because we are all the children of the Earth. Her great mind is made up
of our little minds. She knows us better than we know ourselves--do we
know ourselves at all? I love to think of the Earth, a personality, a
great angel rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, rushing along
through the dark night or the bright day, through clouds and through
sunshine, never halting or stumbling or going astray, carrying upon her
bosom a multitudinous life, caring for it, as a thoughtful mother."
After this conversation the two men were silent for a while, each
following the trend of his own thoughts. Then Timothy got up and went
away. But Peter remained under the beech-tree.
Peter had capacity for the full enjoyment of life, and a boundless
curiosity concerning it. As he lay on the ground he seemed to feel the
heart of the Earth-mother beating under his own, and he was filled with
a sense of her teeming vitality and his individual share of it. He
opened his mind to the sounds and sights around. It delighted him to
follow with his eyes the stems of the trees as they sprang straight from
the bosom of their universal mother into the blue air. He listened to
the whistling of the birds, the hum of the bees, and watched a rabbit
leap among the ferns--pleased with such simple demonstrations of life.
Perhaps a change was working in his own nature, for never had the common
things about him seemed to be so full of absorbing interest as now;
never had he been so conscious of the sap running up the branches of
the trees, and of his own vitality. At present he did but enjoy the
sense of power, which he could use if he desired. But soon, he told
himself, he would labour, singing in the light of the sun.
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 passed 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.