22nd Dec. 1651.
'Rough Moll, the worst-tempered woman in all Yorkshire.' It was thus
her neighbours were wont to speak behind her back of Mistress Moll,
the keeper of the 'George and Dragon' Inn at Hutton Cranswick near
Driffield in the East Riding. Never a good word or a kind deed had she
for anyone, since her husband had been called away to serve in King
Charles's army. In former days, when mine host was at home, the
neighbours had been encouraged to come early and stay late at night
gossipping over the home-brewed ale he fetched for them so cheerily;
for Moll's husband was an open-hearted, pleasant-mannered man, the
very opposite of his shrewish wife. But now, since his departure for
the wars, the neighbours got to the bottom of their mugs with as
little delay as possible, vowing to themselves in whispers that they
would seek refuge elsewhere another night, since Moll's sour looks
went near to give a flavour of vinegar even to the ale she brewed.
Thus, as speedily as might be, they escaped from the reach of their
hostess's sharp tongue.
But the lasses of the inn, who were kept to do the rough work of the
house, found it harder to escape from the harsh rule of their
mistress. And for little Jan, Moll's four-year-old son, there was
still less possibility of escape from the tyrant whom he called by the
name of Mother.
Nothing of true mother-love had ever yet been kindled in Rough Moll's
heart. From the very beginning she had fiercely resented being
burdened with what she called 'the plague of a brat.' Still, so long
as his father remained at home, the child's life had not been an
unhappy one. As soon as ever he could stand alone he drew himself up
by his father's trousers, with an outstretched hand to be grasped in
the big fist. As soon as he could toddle, he spent his days wandering
round the Inn after his daddy, knowing that directly he grew tired
daddy would be ready to stop whatever he might be doing, in order to
lift the small boy up in his arms or to give him a ride on his knee.
'Wasting your time over the brat and leaving the Tavern to go to rack
and ruin'--Moll would say, with a sneer, as she passed them. But she
never interfered; for the husband who had courted her when she was a
young girl was the only person for whom she still kept a soft spot in
the heart that of late years seemed to have grown so hard.
Truth to tell, tavern-keeping was no easy business in those unsettled
times, and Moll had ever been a famous body for worrying over trifles.
'"The worry cow
Would have lived till now,
If she had not lost her breath,
But she thought her hay
Would not last the day,
So she mooed herself to death."
'And all the time she had three sacks full! Remember that, Moll, my
lass!' Jan's father would say to his wife, when she began to pour out
to him her dismal forebodings about the future.
But since this easy-going, jolly daddy had left the Inn and had gone
away with the other men and lads of the village to fight with My Lord
for the King, little Jan's lot was a hard one, and seemed likely to
grow harder day by day.
Rough Moll's own life was not too easy either, at this time, though
few folks troubled themselves to speculate upon the reason for her
added gruffness. So she concealed her anxieties under an extra
harshness of tongue and did her best to make life a burden to everyone
she came across. For, naturally, now that the Inn was no longer a
pleasant place in mine host's absence, it was no longer a profitable
place either. Custom was falling off and quarter day was fast
approaching. Moll was at her wits' end to know where she should find
money to pay her rent, when, one day, to her unspeakable relief, My
Lady in her coach stopped at the door of the Inn. Now Moll had been
dairymaid up at the Hall years ago, before her marriage, and My Lady
knew of old that Moll's butter was as sweet as her looks were sour.
Perhaps she guessed, also, at some of the other woman's anxieties; for
was not her own husband, My Lord, away at the wars too? Anyway, when
the fine yellow coach stopped at the door of the Inn, it was My Lady's
own head with the golden ringlets that leaned out of the window, and
My Lady's own soft voice that asked if her old dairymaid could
possibly oblige her with no less than thirty pounds of butter for her
Yuletide feast to the villagers the following week.
The Moll who came out, smiling and flattered, to the Inn door and
stood there curtseying very low to her Ladyship, was a different being
from the Rough Moll of every day. She promised, with her very
smoothest tongue, she would not fail. She knew where to get the milk,
and her Ladyship should have the butter, full weight and the very
best, by the following evening, which would leave two full days before
Christmas.
'That is settled then, for I have never known you to fail me,' said My
Lady, as the coach drove away, leaving Moll curtseying behind her, and
vowing again that 'let come what would come,' she would not fail.
It was small wonder, therefore, after this unaccustomed graciousness,
that she was shorter-tempered than ever with her unfortunate guests
that evening. Was not their presence hindering her from getting on
with her task? At length she left the lasses to serve the ale, which,
truth to tell, they were nothing loath to do, while Moll herself, in
her wooden shoes and with her skirts tucked up all round her,
clattered in and out of the dairy where already a goodly row of large
basins stood full to the brim with rich yellow milk on which, even
now, the cream was fast rising.
Thirty pounds of butter could never all be made in one day; she must
begin her task overnight. True, little Jan was whining to go to bed as
he tried vainly to keep awake on his small hard stool by the fire. The
brat must wait; she could not attend to him now. He could sleep well
enough leaning against the bricks of the chimney-corner. Or, no! the
butter-making would take a long time, and Moll was never a methodical
woman. Jan should lie down, just as he was, and have a nap in the
kitchen until she was ready to attend to him. Roughly, but not
unkindly, she pulled him off the stool and laid him down on a rug in a
dark corner of the kitchen and told him to be off to sleep as fast as
he could, stooping to cover him with an old coat of her husband's
that was hanging on the door, as she spoke. Nothing loath, Jan shut
his sleepy eyes, and, burying his little nose in the folds of the old
coat, he went happily off into dreamland, soothed by the
well-remembered out-door smell that always clung around his father's
belongings.
It did not take Moll long to fill the churn and to set it in its
place. Just as she was busy shutting down the lid, there came a knock
at the door. 'Plague take you, Stranger,' she grumbled, as she opened
it, and a gust of snow and wind blew in upon her and the assembled
guests in the tavern kitchen. 'You bring in more of the storm than you
are likely to pay for your ale.'
'My desire is not for ale,' said the Stranger, speaking slowly, and
looking at the woman keenly from underneath his shaggy eyebrows. 'I
came but to ask thee for shelter from the storm; and for a little
meat, if thou hast any to set before me.'
'To ask _thee_ for shelter.' 'If _thou_ hast any meat.' The unusual
form of address caught Moll's ear. She looked more closely at her
visitor. Yes, his lower limbs were not covered with homely Yorkshire
frieze; they were encased in odd garments that must surely be made of
leather, since the snowflakes lay upon them in crisp wreaths and
wrinkles before they melted. She had heard of the strange being who
was visiting those parts and she had no desire to make his
acquaintance. 'Hey, lasses!' she called to her maids at the far end of
the tavern parlour, 'here is the man in leather breeches himself, come
to pay us a visit this wild night!'
A shout of laughter went up from the men at their tankards. 'The man
in leather breeches!' 'Send him out again into the storm! We'll have
none of his company here, the spoil sport!'
Moll nodded assent, and returning to her unwelcome guest, said
shortly, 'Meat there is none for you here,' and moved towards the
door, where the Stranger still stood, as if to close it upon him.
But the man was not to be so easily dismissed.
'Hast thou then milk?' he asked.
Moll laughed aloud. A man who did not want ale should not have milk;
no money to be made out of that; especially this night of all nights,
when every drop would be wanted for her Ladyship's butter.
Lies were part of Moll's regular stock-in-trade. She lied now, with
the ease of long habit.
'You will get no shelter here,' she said roughly, 'and as for milk,
there is not a drop in the house.'
The Stranger looked at her. He spoke no words for a full minute, but
as his eyes pierced her through and through, she knew that he knew
that she had lied. The knowledge made her angry. She repeated her
words with an oath. The Stranger made as if to turn away; then, almost
reluctantly but very tenderly, as if he were being drawn back in spite
of himself: 'Hast thou then cream?' he asked. Yet, though his tone was
persuasive, his brows were knitted as he stood looking down upon the
angry woman.
'Not as if he cared about the cream, but as if he cared about me,'
Moll said herself, long after. But at the time: 'No, nor cream either.
On my soul, there is not a drop in the house,' she repeated, more
fiercely than before.
But, even as she spoke, she saw that the Stranger's eyes were
fastened on the churn that stood behind her, the churn evidently full
and drawn out for use, with drops of rich yellow cream still standing
upon the lid and trickling down the sides.
Moll turned her square shoulders upon the churn as if to shut out its
witness to her falsehood. Her lies came thick and fast; 'I tell you
there is not a single drop of cream in the house.'
The next moment, a loud crash made her look round. She had forgotten
Jan! The loud angry voice and the cold blast from the open door had
awakened him before he had had time to get sound asleep. Hearing his
mother vow that she had not a drop of cream in the house, he left his
rug and began playing about again. Then, being ever a restless little
mortal, he had crept round to the churn to see if it had really become
empty in such a short time. He had tried to pull himself up by one of
the legs in order to stand on the rim and see if there was really no
cream inside; and in attempting this feat, naturally, he had pulled
the whole churn over upon him. And not only the churn,--its contents
too! Eighteen quarts of Moll's richest yellow cream were streaming all
over the kitchen floor. Pools, lakes, rivers, seas of cream were
running over the flagstones and dripping through the crevices into the
ground.
With a cry of rage Moll turned, and, seeing the damage, she sprang
upon little Jan and beat him soundly; and a beating from Moll's heavy
hand was no small matter: then with a curse she flung the child away
from her towards the hearth.
'Woman!' The Stranger's voice recalled her. 'Woman! Beware! Thou art
full of lies and fury and deceit, yet in the name of the Lord I warn
thee. Ere three days have gone by, thou shalt know what is in thine
heart; and thou shalt learn the power of that which was, and is, and
will be!'
So saying, the unwelcome guest opened the outer door and walked away
into the raging storm and darkness,--a less bitter storm it seemed to
him now than that created by the violent woman within doors. Some way
further on he espied a haystack, under which he lay down, as he had
done on many another night before this, and there he slept in the wind
and the snow until morning.
Moll, meanwhile, enraged beyond words at the loss of her cream,
stalked off for a pail and cloth, and set herself to wash the floor,
muttering curses as she did so. Never a glance did she cast at the
corner by the fire where little Jan still lay by the hearth-stone,
motionless and strangely quiet; he, the restless imp, who was usually
so full of life. Never a glance, until, the centre of the floor being
at last clean again, Moll, on her knees, came with her pail of
soap-suds to the white river that surrounded the corner of the kitchen
where Jan lay. A white river? Nay, there was a crimson river that
mingled with it; a stream of crimson drops that flowed from the stone
under the child's head.
Moll leapt to her feet on the instant. What ailed the boy? She had
beaten him, it is true, but then she had beaten him often before this
in his father's absence. A beating was nothing new to little Jan. Why
had he fallen? What made him lie so still? She turned him over. Ah! it
was easy to see the reason. As she flung him from her in her rage,
the child in his fall had struck his head against the sharp edge of
the hearth-stone, and there he lay now, with the life-blood steadily
flowing from his temple.
A feeling that Rough Moll had never been conscious of before gripped
her heart at the sight. Was her boy dead? Had she killed him? What
would his father say? What would her husband call her? A murderer? Was
she that? Was that what the Stranger had meant when he had looked at
her with those piercing eyes? He might have called her a liar, at the
sight of the churn full of cream, but he had not done so; and little
she would have cared if he had. But a murderer! Was murder in her
heart?
Lifting Jan as carefully as she could, she carried him upstairs to the
small bedroom under the roof, where he usually lay on a tiny pallet by
her side. But this night the child's small figure lay in the wide bed,
and big Moll, with all her clothes on, hung over him; or if she lay
down for a moment or two, it was only on the hard little pallet by his
side.
All that night Moll watched. But all that night Jan never moved. All
the next day he lay unconscious, while Moll did her clumsy utmost to
staunch the wound in his forehead. Long before it was light, she tried
to send one of her maids for the doctor; but the storm was now so
violent that none could leave or enter the house.
Her Ladyship's order went unheeded. The thirty pounds of butter were
never made. But My Lady, who was a mother herself, not only forgave
Moll for spoiling her Yuletide festivities, but even told her, when
she heard of the disaster, that she need not trouble about the rent
until her boy was better.
Until he was better! But would Jan ever be better? Moll had no thought
now for either the butter or the rent. The yellow cream might turn
sour in every single one of her pans for all she cared, if only she
could get rid of this new unbearable pain.
At length, on the evening of the second day, faint with the want of
sleep, she fell into an uneasy doze: and still Jan had neither moved
nor stirred. Presently a faint sound woke her. Was he calling? No; it
was but the Christmas bells ringing across the snow. What were those
bells saying? 'MUR-DER-ER' 'MUR-DERER'--was that it? Over and over
again. Did even the bells know what she had done and what she had in
her heart? For a moment black despair seized her.
The next moment there followed the shuffling sound of many feet
padding through the snow. The storm had ceased by this time, and all
the world was wrapped in a white silence, broken only by the sound of
the distant bells. And now the Christmas waits had followed the bells'
music, and were singing carols outside the ale-house door. Fiercely,
Moll stuck her fingers in her ears. She would not listen, lest even
the waits should sing of her sin, and shew her the blackness of her
heart. But the song stole up into the room, and, in spite of herself,
something forced Moll to attend to the words:
'Babe Jesus lay in Mary's lap,
The sun shone on his hair--
And that was how she saw, mayhap,
The crown already there.'
That was how good mothers sang to their children. They saw crowns
upon their hair. What sort of a crown had Moll given to her child? She
looked across and saw the chaplet of white bandages lying on the white
pillow. No; she, Moll, had never been a good mother, would never be
one now, unless her boy came back to life again. She was a murderer,
and her husband when he returned from the wars would tell her so, and
little Jan would never know that his mother had a heart after all.
At that moment the carol died away, and the waits' feet, heavy with
clinging snow, shuffled off into the darkness; but looking down again
at the head with its crown of white bandages upon the white pillow,
Moll saw that this time Jan's eyes were open and shining up at her.
'Mother,' he said, in his little weak voice, as he opened his arms and
smiled. Moll had seen him smile like that at his father; she had never
known before that she wanted to share that smile. She knew it now.
Only three short days had passed since she turned the Stranger from
her doors, but little Jan and his mother entered a new world of love
and tenderness together that Christmas morning. As Rough Moll gathered
her little son up into her arms and held him closely to her breast,
she knew for the first time the power of 'that which was, and is, and
will be.'