SIX WHITE HORSES AND A COACH
The cow-house was dim, like night, when a cloudy moon is shining,
although the clock had just struck four. Through a small window the grey
light stole and vaguely lit up the horned heads of the cattle. It showed
Jan Straw sitting in a corner.
Rain beat on the roof like the trampling of heavy feet; it fell in a
sheet from the eaves, and spouted like a waterfall from the drip-stone;
the noise of the beck increased until it became a roar.
With a heave and a snort Cushy, Barbara's favourite cow, got up. She
feared! she did not know what she feared; but perhaps in those days when
the earth was new-made and cataclysms were frequent occurrences, her
forbears had learnt to dread the sounds of a rising flood. She stirred
the other beasts into restlessness, although they had borne the thunder
and lightning with timid resignation.
Jan Straw sat motionless. He had stopped muttering, and his eyes were
half-closed. His hands were cold as ice. The flame of life was burning
very low. To him had come a presentiment that death was on his way to
put it out. Once he had seen a play acted upon the village green in
which Death came by with all his bones a-jangling, and the memory of it
had not faded. His intellect was too beclouded to fear. The dogged
stolidity, that had made him an unrepining drudge through manhood to old
age, now made him a placid watcher for the fleshless form that would
extinguish his little candle.
Lucy heard the trampling and snorting of the beasts, and she came to the
cow-house door. Peter Fleming was with her, for he had reached
Greystones just in time to take shelter there. The sudden change from
the brightly lit kitchen, where the candles were burning, to the dimness
of this place at first bewildered him; he could not distinguish anything
clearly--the cattle looked like ungainly shadows, and their horns like
the bare and twisted branches of trees. Then one by one the forms took
shape, and his eyes fell upon the old man.
"Hulloa," he cried, laying his hand on Jan's bent shoulder, "What ho,
Jan! how goes thyself? Why! I believe you've been asleep in the midst of
all this racket. It's loud enough to waken the dead."
The old man roused himself from his lethargy, gathered his scattered
wits, and looked at the countenance bending over him for some moments
without replying.
At last he asked in a voice that trembled away into silence:
"Will it waken her?"
Peter knew of whom he was thinking.
"Nay," he said kindly, "her bed is a bed of peace."
The grey face fell, and the young man saw that he had not anticipated
Jan's desire.
"I shouldn't wonder," he replied, "if she doesn't hear it in her sleep,
and dream of you."
"I thought as how she might waken and be watching," answered Jan.
"M'appen she is," Lucy spoke with tenderness, for she was fond of the
old man. "She'll certainly be looking out for thee, Jan. She'll never
sleep so heavily but she'll hear thy step when thee goes."
"I's going soon."
His head sunk upon his breast; he was old, forlorn and weary.
"Nay, Jan, nay," said Lucy, "you mustn't leave us yet. Barbara and me.
We'd be so lonesome sitting by the winter fire, wanting thy face that's
smiled on us ever since we were born."
"We's o' comers and gangers," he replied. "There's new faces coming to
take the place of the old ones. I's ganging. He'll soon pass by."
"Who, Jan?"
"Him with the reaping-hook."
Lucy laughed his words away, though she shivered.
"It's a coach and six white horses that'll come for thee, Jan. Thee
shall ride on velvet cushions, the horses will be shod with gold, and
the bits will be made of silver."
"Aye, that's the manner of it," said Peter cheerfully.
"Six white horses and a coach," repeated the old man, then he shook his
head. "Coaches is for gentry folk. I'll have to go away with him, the
man of the bare bones. He's like me the way he gets his bread, reaping
the harvest from the fields, and no' finding mickle fatness in it
nouther."
"Come to the fire," said Peter. "You're cold here, come and get warm."
He helped Jan to his feet, and supported the tottering footsteps to the
kitchen, where the old man sank into his seat in the ingle-cheek.
The rain was still clattering overhead, and sweeping down the windows in
a solid sheet of water, so that nothing could be seen through the glass.
Peter went to the door, and looked out.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "the beck has wakened up with a vengeance."
"It won't sweep away the house, will it?" asked Lucy. She felt much
relieved to have Peter by her side, and even dared to cast her eyes upon
the angry stream, swirling under the garden wall.
Her great-grandmother laughed.
"Lucy's a timid lass," she said. "Before you came she thought it was the
last day, but I knew the good God was a better landlord than that, and
would want more market out o' his green fields than he's gotten so far,
before he burnt them into ashes. Now she's afraid Greystones will fall!
Hoots-toots, bairn. Greystones will stand as long as there's a Lynn to
care for it. I've seen many a worser storm than this."
The old woman talked on. When her mind got back to bygone days she was
garrulous. Some of her stories offended the fastidious tastes of Lucy,
but Peter liked them. Strange customs and coarser habits did not blind
him to the fact that life and its passions are much the same in every
age, only wearing a different garb.
Lucy and Peter still stood, one at each side of the doorway, looking
out. The beck raced below them, spluttering and foaming, and they could
hear the grinding of rocks under its feet. It rose rapidly higher. Even
as they watched it snatched at a bush on the opposite bank, twisted it
as a child might twist a blade of grass, rooted it up, and swept it
away.
"Barbara will get wet!" said Lucy. "She's at Ketel's Parlour. There's a
crack in the roof, and the rain sometimes gets in."
Peter cast a glance at the still teeming clouds. He had not seen Barbara
for a long time, and he was half inclined to venture forth, make his way
up the dale, through a hundred spouting waterfalls, and share her lonely
vigil.
Lucy divined his thoughts. She shut the door hastily and drew him to a
seat.
"We'll have tea; you'd like tea, Peter? And great-granny is dying for a
cup," she said. Then she whispered so that the old woman could not hear:
"I'm so thankful you came--I really was frightened."
Peter allowed himself to be ruled by her, making only a laughing
protest. The prospect outside was not enticing, and the prospect within
was comfortable and bright.
Lucy stepped lightly about her duties, spreading the table with
clap-cakes, butter and honey. Peter's presence excited her; her eyes
sparkled; her movements were lively. She dulled her ears to the roar of
the torrent, and the rushing of the rain--though both were deafening.
Jan Straw wakened from the sleep into which the kindly warmth of the
kitchen had thrown him, and followed her with a steady gaze. He thought
that she was a being between an angel and a fairy. Her eyes were blue
like flowers with the morning dew in them, her skin was soft and white
as the breast feathers of a swan, her cheeks were like roses. He had a
confused remembrance of a story, still told in the dale, about the man
who had seen the last of the fairies. He had disturbed them at their
play, and they had run up a ladder into a cloud, shutting a door after
them. No one ever saw them again among the tarns and meres, dancing by
moonlight. "Her o' the white fingers" had, also, gone up into a cloud,
and been seen no more. But she was an angel. Looking at Lucy he forgot
the man with the reaping hook.
Lucy masked the tea, and called Jan to the table. They tried to forget
that awesome sound of rushing water outside. Mistress Lynn could be a
jovial companion when she chose, and she liked to cross wits with Peter.
He dared to contradict her--such a rare experience she appreciated, for
it was done good-humouredly. The old woman had a purpose in unbending to
him. She wanted him to marry Lucy.
She wanted it for several reasons--because she liked him and knew he was
no fortune-hunter, because she wished to see Lucy settled before Joel
came back--she had other plans for Joel--because she was sorry for the
girl's disappointment: she knew what blighted hopes felt like when the
heart was young. Though she would not have scrupled to add
disappointment to disappointment had it suited her purpose, in this case
she was at one with her great-grand-daughter, and determined to bring
about that which they both desired.
When tea was finished Peter bent over Lucy's chair to read her cup.
"Health and wealth and happiness," he said.
"I've heard it many times," said she, with a light laugh. "I've got the
first, and dreamed of the last, but I've still to catch a glint of the
other. Read Jan's," she handed him the old man's mug. "Perhaps you'll
find something worth having there."
"Nowt but the rheumatics has ever come out o' my cup," said Jan gravely.
"But I see six white horses and a coach," replied Peter.
"Do 'ee now?" Jan put his finger into the empty mug and sorted the
tea-leaves one by one, counting them aloud. "So there be," he said.
Lucy began to wash up the dishes, childishly pleased to bare her round,
white arms, when there was someone to see them.
Throughout the meal, which had been a merry one, they had tacitly
ignored the rain, although it was still coming down--as they say in the
dales--whole watter. Now they were suddenly silent. But on the slates it
clattered, on the walls it slashed, on the ground it spluttered, through
the air it fell hissing. Over and above it the beck thundered.
Mistress Lynn sat upright in her bed, and listened with an expression of
awe upon her grim old countenance; Lucy drew nearer to Peter, her eyes
wide and panic-stricken; Jan Straw left the ingle.
"Hark!" said the old woman.
Peter went to the door and looked out.
Down the bed of the stream came a foaming, boiling cataract. Seen
through the gloom it was suggestive of flying, riderless horses, tossing
their manes in the air, and chafing at their bits.
"Six white horses and a coach," muttered Jan, stumbling bare-headed into
the rain.
"Come back," cried Lucy.
"Come back," cried Peter.
"Jan, Jan, you old fool," said Mistress Lynn, leaning out from her
great bed, and peering across the candle-lit room to the darkness framed
by the open door.
But Jan was gone. The garden wall fell and the water rolled up to the
doorstep, where it seemed to pause before slowly withdrawing. It did not
go back alone. Lucy, regardless of her own safety, impulsive to
recklessness where her affections were concerned, followed it, and
thinking that she saw Jan but a few steps ahead, ran forward.
The ground gave way under her feet, and the beck had its grip on her in
a moment.
The incident happened so swiftly that Peter was already struggling with
the flood for the possession of the girl before he realised what had
taken place. When he tried to recall it afterwards he could remember
nothing save that his hand, by its own sense and cunning, had snatched
at her frock as she was being swept past him. He dragged her from the
water, and carried her into the house, laying her drenched form down
before the fire. She was not unconscious, and stumbled to her feet,
crying:
"Jan, save Jan, Peter!"
She would have followed him out again into the slashing rain, but
Mistress Lynn called her back peremptorily.
The old woman was terribly upset. She had had to lie in the four-poster
and know that something dreadful was taking place outside. She had
watched Jan rush out, then Lucy, then Peter; but she had heard nothing
save the roar of waters, and seen nothing save a faint white gleam as
they foamed by. Now she strove for composure, and wiped the tears that
had come unbidden upon her cheeks.
"Go and fettle thyself," she said to the shivering girl. "Then you'll be
fit to look after the old man if he needs looking after any more."
Peter raced the beck through the copse where it was ploughing among the
tree-trunks; he sought along the basin by the falls, but he could not
find a trace of Jan Straw. He shouted, but he could not hear his own
voice among the roaring of the waters, much less a cry for help were it
uttered. He followed the flood through Cringel Forest to the village,
where he told what had happened. Then, knowing that there was no chance
now of finding the old man alive, if there had ever been a chance, he
retraced his steps to Greystones.
He found Lucy kneeling before the fire drying her hair. A sob broke from
her when he returned alone for she had hoped against hope.
"You couldn't find him?" she said.
He shook his head sorrowfully.
"Poor old Jan is gone," he replied.
Lucy covered her face with her hands, but the old woman leaned back upon
her pillows, a red patch on each cheek.
"Gone!" she said, "gone! Jan Straw gone! The last link with my ain
generation." She was silent, seeing the years which he had kept alive
for her, fading away. "So Jan's gone, the old, old, creature, but
younger than me by twenty winters. Poor Jan."
Then she turned upon Lucy. She must find some vent for the choking
emotion of age.
"This o' comes of your fairy-tales," she said. "Six white horses and a
coach! You'd better have left him sitting in the cow-house, waiting for
the man with the reaping-hook."
"Don't blame me," cried the girl. "I would have saved him if I could."
"You'd have drownded yourself to no purpose. What could a lass like you
do when the beck's in spate? It would have twisted you up like a
windle-straw."
Lucy turned to Peter with entreaty in her eyes.
He took her hand and stroked it.
"I think you were very brave," he said.
He saw again the water with its tigerish lips, the crunching rocks, the
broken body of a sheep tossing among the foam; he looked at the girl, at
her tearful eyes, her damp hair hanging in jetty rings round her face;
she seemed to be but a child, a forlorn, unhappy child, seeking for
sympathy.
Hardly realizing what he did he bent down and kissed her.
"Old Jan was glad to go, Lucy," he said. "You must remember that, and
not grieve for him. He had a long life and a lonely one. But he is now
walking beside still waters with her o' the white hands."
Night came, the rain ceased, and the moon reaped the stars with a golden
sickle. The sky was calm, but the fells and dales were still roaring
with the sound of many waters, and streaking the darkness with silver
threads. Peter went home, stirred to the depths of his being.
The next afternoon, when the beck had subsided to its normal flow, Jan
Straw's body was found in a pool and taken to Greystones. All the
village, and shepherds from distant cots among the hills, were bidden to
the funeral. Lucy and Barbara had no time for tears. Mistress Lynn would
not have it said that she had not shown honour to her old servant, and,
two days before the burial, the sisters were busy from dawn to dark
baking arval cakes to be given to the guests. These little cakes were
made of wheaten meal, and taken piously home, to be eaten in remembrance
of the dead.
The ceremony was a solemn one in the mill-house. The old man, Peter's
father, ate the arval cake with one hand over his eyes, and his figure
bent as though in prayer. Peter's mother wept behind her handkerchief,
and nibbled a crumb of it, saying softly:
"In memory o' thee, Jan Straw."
Peter, too, was not unmoved. The simplicity and pathos of the act
brought tears to his honest eyes, of which he was not ashamed.
Later on John Fleming sat at one side of the fire smoking, Mistress
Fleming at the other side knitting, and Peter lay on the rug between
them, telling stories of Oxford, when the old man suddenly took his pipe
from his mouth, and said:
"I wish you'd marry, Peter."
"Marry! Good heavens!"
"I want you to settle down. Once I had other views. I thought I'd live
till you could read the burial service over me--earth to earth, dust to
dust, ashes to ashes, in sure and certain hope--you know how it goes.
Beautiful words, them! They kind o' sum up the big and the little o'
life. Well, but now----"
He paused, took out of his pocket a large square of linen and wiped his
brow.
"I'm sorry to have disappointed you, father."
"I kind o' expected it," replied the miller. "I used to say to your
mother, 'the lad's not the right cut for a cassock. He'd split the skirt
o' it with his long legs, rax it down the back with wrestling, and
carry puppies and kitlins in the pockets.' But she--she didn't ken you
as well as I did. 'Leave him alone,' she said, 'the lad's all right. You
can't put an old head on young shoulders.' I wasn't for believing her.
'Zookers!' said I, 'I's an old man, but I's got a young head on my old
shoulders. The lad takes after me, that he does!"
"I was hoping," Peter began, but the miller interrupted him.
"Don't be hoping anything, or pluming yourself up that I didn't mind.
I've wished ever since--since--you ken when--that I'd brought you up to
be a decent honest miller like myself, and had knocked them eddication
notions out o' my head and your's too. They've done nowther on us any
good."
"If you'd only consent to my going away--not out of the country--but to
London, say, I would do something to take the sting out of your
disappointment. You'd be proud of me yet."
His mother laid a gentle hand on his arm.
"Whist, lad," she whispered, "list to thy dadda."
"We're getting old," John Fleming began, then stopped to clear his
throat. "We're getting old, thy mother and me, and we've no chick nor
child left but you, lad. We want you to stay at home with us till we're
called away."
"It won't be for long, Peter," said his mother.
"We'd like you to settle down," continued the old man. "There's money
enough--the Lord has blessed me with prosperity. You can take a wife,
Peter, and bring up a family. I'd like to see a grandson on my knees
before I die, and know that the old mill-house will go down to another
John Fleming--a sober, God-fearing man I hope he'll be, with no
book-learning to spoil his appetite for common labour. Not that I'm
blaming you, lad. I couldn't have wished for a better son--in that the
Lord has blessed me far beyond my deserts."
Peter grasped his father's hand and shook it without a word. The old man
laughed, and slapped him on the back, then snorted, as though tears had
got into his throat.
"I always have a cough when the winter comes," he said, tapping his
chest.
"So you want me to get married," remarked Peter, after a while. "That's
a matter for deep reflection."
"I've always wished for a daughter," replied his mother. "I cried when
you were born, but thy dadda was pleased."
"There's a nice lass would just do for you, lad," said the miller,
winking at his son. "She's a bonny lass with no silly ways about her.
Your mother and me's kind o' fond o' her already. She looks us up
whiles, and twists as purty a bow as you could wish to see for your
mother's caps and bonnets."
"I guess her name," said Peter.
"It begins with L," replied the old man.
Peter got up and stretched himself.
"I'm going for a walk," he said, "it's a fine moonlight night."
"And you'll think over what I've been saying?" asked the miller.
The young man smiled, kissed his mother, and took his cap down from a
nail.
"I'll tell you my decision when it's made," he replied.