INISTOW FARM.
"_Clean, simple livers._"--CRASHAW.
The rowers in the leading boat were seven--four young men and three
young women; and they pulled two to an oar--all but the bowman, a young
giant of eighteen or thereabouts, who did without help. A fourth young
woman sat beside, suckling a baby. And so, counting the baby and the
two children and the old steersman, whom they all addressed as
"Father," and omitting 'Dolph and the sheep, they were twelve on board.
The second and third boats had half a dozen rowers apiece. The second
was steered by a wizened middle-aged man, Jan by name. Tilda learned
that he was the shepherd. More by token, he had his three shaggy dogs
with him, crowded in the stern.
At first these dogs showed the liveliest interest in 'Dolph, raising
themselves with their forepaws on the gunwale, and gazing across the
intervening twenty yards of water. But they were dignified creatures,
and their self-respect forbade them to bark. 'Dolph, who had no
breeding, challenged back loudly, all his bristles erect--and still the
more angrily as they forbore to answer; whereat the young men and women
laughed. Their laughter would have annoyed Tilda had it been less
unaffected; and, as it was, she cuffed the dog so sharply that he ceased
with a whine.
She had never met with folk like these. They gave her a sense of having
reached the ends of the earth--they were so simple and strong and
well-featured, and had eyes so kindly. She could understand but a bare
third of what they said, their language being English of a sort, but
neither that of the gentry--such as Arthur Miles spoke--nor that of the
gypsies; nor, in short, had she heard the human like of it anywhere in
her travels. She had never heard tell of vowels or of gutturals, and so
could not note how the voices, as they rose and fell, fluted upon the
one or dwelt, as if caressingly, on the other. To her their talk
resembled the talk of birds, mingled with liquid laughter.
Later, when she came to make acquaintance with the Scriptures and read
about the patriarchs and their families, she understood better.
Laban with his flocks, Rebekah and her maidens, the shepherds of
Bethlehem--for all of them her mind cast back to these innocent people,
met so strangely off an unknown coast.
For she had come by water; and never having travelled by ship before,
and being wholly ignorant of geography and distances, she did not dream
that the coast towards which they were rowing her could be any part of
England.
It loomed close ahead now--a bold line of cliff, reddish brown in
colour, but with patches of green vivid in the luminous haze; the summit
of the cliff-line hidden everywhere in folds of fog; the dove-coloured
sea running tranquilly at its base, with here and there the thinnest
edge of white, that shone out for a moment and faded.
But now the cliffs, which had hitherto appeared to run with one
continuous face, like a wall, began to break up and reveal gullies and
fissures; and as these unfolded, by and by a line of white cottages
crept into view. They overhung a cove more deeply indented than the
rest, and close under them was a diminutive grey pier sheltering a
diminutive harbour and beach.
And now the voyage was soon ended. The boat shot around the pier-end
and took ground upon firm shingle. The others, close in her wake, ran
in and were beached alongside, planks were laid out from the gunwales,
and in half a minute all hands had fallen to work, urging, persuading,
pushing, lifting the sheep ashore, or rounding them up on the beach,
where they headed hither and thither, or stood obstinately still in
mazed fashion, all bleating. The middle-aged shepherd took command of
these operations, no man gainsaying, and shouted here, there and
everywhere, sparing neither age nor sex, but scolding all
indiscriminately, hallooing to his dogs and waving his arms--as his
master described it later--"like a paper man in a cyclone." And the dogs
were silent no longer, but coursed the beach with short, fierce yelps,
yet always intent on their business, as 'Dolph discovered when, spurred
on by his theatrical instincts, he made a feint of joining in the sport.
A snap of teeth close to his fore-legs sent him back yelping, and he
retired in dudgeon to a heap of seaweed; but by and by, when the sheep
were gathered into a compact crowd, he made a really heroic effort to
divert attention back to his own talents.
"Look to the dog, there--look to 'en!" cried a maiden of eighteen,
pointing and then resting a hand on either hip while she laughed.
This was Chrissy (short for Christiana), the prettiest, though not the
youngest of the girls. Beside her there were Dinah (it was she who
suckled the baby) and Polly, and Rose and Sabina, and Charity; and of
the young men John Edward, and William, 'Rastus, Donatus and Obed.
These were of the sons and daughters of the old steersman, with others
of whom Tilda had not yet learnt the names. There was Old William
also--Dinah's husband--a young man of thirty or so, but serious for his
years; and Old William's two sisters, Sheba and Bathsheba--the younger a
maiden, but the elder married to a youth they called Daniel; and Festus,
who appeared to be courting Chrissy; and Roger, the young giant who had
pulled the bow oar, and was courting nobody as yet. Quick though Tilda
was to find her feet in a crowd and distinguish names and faces, she
found the numbers bewildering. To Arthur Miles they were but a phantom
throng. He stood on the beach amid the small tumult and, while the
sheep blundered by, gazed back upon the Island, still in view, still
resting like a shield out yonder upon the milky, golden sea.
As yet Tilda could not know that the old man had been married twice,
that these stalwart youths and maidens were his offspring by two
mothers. Indeed, they might all have been his, and of one womb, so
frankly and so gently spoken they were one to another. Only the
shepherd kept scolding all the while, and with vigour, using his brief
authority which no one--not even his master--attempted to dispute.
While this was going on two farm-boys from the rearmost boat had run up
the hill, and by and by returned, each cracking a whip and leading a
pair of horses harnessed to a lumbering hay-wagon. All scrambled on
board, romping and calling to Tilda and Arthur Miles to follow their
example; and so, leaving the shepherd to follow with his collected
flock, the procession started, the horses plunging at the first steep
rise from the beach.
Half-a-dozen children had collected on the beach and ran with them,
cheering, up the hill, and before the cottage doorways three or four
women, wives and widows, stood to watch the procession go by.
These (someone told Tilda) were all the inhabitants left, their men-folk
having sailed away west and north a month ago for the fishery.
"Wish 'ee well, Farmer Tossell!" cried one or two. "Sheep all right, I
hope?"
"Right as the bank, my dears!" called back the old patriarch, waving a
whip he had caught from one of the farm-boys. "The same to you, an'
many of 'em!"
They mounted the hill at a run, and when the horses dropped to a walk
Farmer Tossell explained to Arthur Miles, who had been thrust forward
into a seat--or rather perch--beside him, that this bringing home of the
sheep from Holmness was a great annual event, and that he was lucky, in
a way, to have dropped in for it.
"The whole family turns out--all but the Old Woman an' Dorcas. Dorcas
is my eldest. They're t'home gettin' the supper. A brave supper
you'll see, an' the preacher along with it. I dunno if you 're saved.
. . . No? P'r'aps not, at your age. I was never one for hurryin' the
children; bruisin' the tender flax, as you might say. . . But you
mustn't be upset if he _alloods_ to you. . . . A very powerful man, when
you're used to 'en. So you've a message for Miss Sally? Know her?"
The boy had to confess that he did not.
"Curious!" the farmer commented. "She's one of the old sort, is Miss
Sally. But you can't get over to Culvercoombe to-night: to-morrow
we'll see. . . . What's your name, by the way?"
"Arthur Miles."
"And your sister's?"
"She's called Tilda; but she--she isn't really--"
Farmer Tossell was not listening.
"You'll have to sleep with us to-night. Oh," he went on,
misinterpreting the boy's glance behind him (he was really seeking for
Tilda, to explain), "there's always room for one or two more at Inistow:
that's what you might call our motto; and the Old Woman dotes on
children. She ought to--havin' six of her own, besides nine of my first
family."
The wagon had reached a short break in the ascent--you might liken it to
a staircase landing--where the road ran level for about fifty yards
before taking breath, so to speak, for another stiff climb. Here a
by-road led off to the right, and here they turned aside.
The road ran parallel, or roughly parallel, with the line of the cliffs,
between low and wind-trimmed hedges, over which, from his perch beside
Farmer Tossell, the boy looked down across a narrow slope of pasture to
the sea. The fog had lifted. Away and a little above the horizon the
sun was dropping like a ball of orange flame in a haze of gold; and
nearer, to the right of the sunset, lay the Island as if asleep on the
waves, with glints of fire on the pointed cliffs at its western end, and
all the rest a lilac shadow resting on the luminous water.
He gazed, and still gazed. He heard no longer, though the farmer was
speaking. There was indeed some excuse, for the young men and girls
had started another hymn, and were singing with all their voices.
But he did not even listen.
The road rose and dipped. . . . They came to a white-painted gate, which
one of the young men sprang down to open. The last glow of the sunset
fell on its bars, and their outline repeated itself in dazzling streaks
on the sky as the horses wheeled to the left through the gateway, and
the boy turned for a last look. But Holmness had disappeared. A brown
ridge of stubble hid it, edged and powdered with golden light.
Turning from the sea, the wagons followed a rutted cart-track that wound
downhill in a slow arc between an orchard hedge and an open meadow
dotted with cattle. High beyond the orchard rose a cluster of elms,
around which many rooks were cawing, and between the elms a blue smoke
drifted. There too the grey roof of the farmhouse crept little by
little into sight; and so they came to a second gate and the rick-yard;
and beyond the ricks was a whitewashed doorway, where a smiling elderly
woman stood to welcome them. This was Mrs. Tossell, forewarned many
minutes since by their singing.
She had come straight from preparing the feast, and her face was yet
flushed with the heat of the kitchen fire. The arrival of the extra
mouths to be fed did not put her out in the least. But she looked the
children over with eyes at once benevolent and critical--their clothes
and their faces--and said frankly that they wanted a wash, which was
only too evident, the _Evan Evans_ being a peculiarly grimy boat, even
for a collier.
"The sooner the better," agreed Tilda with the utmost alacrity.
"Well, and I'm glad you take it like that," said their hostess, nodding
approval. She called "Hepsy! Hepsy!" and an elderly serving-woman
answered the summons. "Run, Hepsy, and fill the wash-house boiler," she
commanded.
Within twenty minutes two long wash-trays stood ready and steaming--one
for Tilda in the wash-kitchen itself, the other for Arthur Miles in a
small outhouse adjoining; and while the children revelled in this
strange new luxury, Mrs. Tossell bethought her of certain garments in a
press upstairs--a frock and some underclothing long since outgrown by
Sabina, a threadworn shirt and a suit that had formerly habited Obed,
her youngest, all preserved and laid away on the principle (as she put
it) that "Store is no Sore."
It was Chrissy, the pretty girl, who carried his clean garments to
Arthur Miles; and he, being caught naked in the wash-tub, blushed
furiously. But Chrissy was used to brothers, and took stock of him
composedly.
"My!" she exclaimed, "what pretty white skin you've got!" And with that
her quick eyes noted the mark on his shoulder. "Well, I never--but
that's funny!"
"What's funny?" asked the boy.
"I'll tell you later, in the kitchen," she promised, and went off to
Tilda.
The kitchen was of noble size--far larger even than the refectory at
Holy Innocents' Orphanage--and worthy of the feast Mrs. Tossell had
arrayed there to celebrate the sheep-bringing. The table, laden with
hot pies, with dishes of fried rasher and hog's-puddings,
black-puddings, sausages, with cold ham and cold ribs of beef, with
apple tarts, junkets, jellies, syllabubs, frumenties, with mighty
tea-pots and flagons of cider, ran close alongside the window-seat where
the children were given their places, and whence, turning their heads,
they looked out upon a garden set with clipped box-trees, and bordered
with Michaelmas daisies, and upon a tall dove-cote of many holes and
ledges crowded with pigeons settling down to their night's rest. On the
outside of the table ran an unbacked bench, and at top and bottom stood
two ample elbowed chairs for the farmer and his wife; but Mrs. Tossell
had surrendered hers to a black-coated man whom all addressed as
"Minister," though in talk among themselves they spoke of him rather as
The Rounder. Before the company sat he delivered a long grace with much
unction. Tilda--a child of the world, and accustomed to take folks as
she found them--eyed him with frank curiosity; but in Arthur Miles his
black coat and white tie awoke a painful association of ideas, and for a
while the child sat nervous and gloomy, without appetite to eat . . .
Tilda for once was unobservant of him. The Minister, with his long thin
neck, straggling black beard, weak, eloquent mouth and black, shining
eyes--the eyes of a born visionary--failed, as well they might, to
suggest a thought of Dr. Glasson. She was hungry, too, and her small
body glowing deliciously within her clean garments. Amid all this
clatter of knives and forks, these laughing voices, these cheerful,
innocent faces, who could help casting away care?
Now and again her eyes wandered around the great kitchen--up to the
oaken roof, almost black with age, and the hams, sides of bacon, bundles
of potherbs, bags of simples, dangling from its beams; across to the
old jack that stretched athwart the wall to the left of the fireplace--a
curious apparatus, in old times (as Chrissy explained to her) turned by
a dog, but now disused and kept only as a relic; to the tall settle on
the right with the bars beneath the seat, and behind the bars (so
Chrissy averred) a couple of live geese imprisoned, and quietly sitting
on their eggs amid all this uproar; to the great cave of the fireplace
itself, hung with pothooks and toothed cramps, where a fire of logs
burned on a hearthstone so wide that actually--yes, actually--deep in
its recess, and behind the fire, were set two smoke-blackened seats, one
in each farther angle under the open chimney.
Before the feast had been twenty minutes in progress the farmer looked
up and along the table and called for lights. His eyes, he explained,
were not so young as they had been. Roger--tallest of the young men--
jumped up and lit two oil-lamps that hung from the beams. The lamps had
immense reflectors above them, made of tin; but they shone like silver,
and Tilda took them for silver.
"That's cheerfuller!" shouted Farmer Tossell with a laugh of great
contentment, and fell-to again.
But as the light wavered and anon grew steady, Chrissy leaned over
Tilda, touched Arthur Miles on the shoulder, and pointed to the wall
opposite. Tilda stared also, following the direction of her finger.
The lamp-light, playing on the broad chimney-piece with its brass
candlesticks and china ornaments, reached for a yard or so up the wall,
and then was cut off by the shadow of the reflectors. But in that
illuminated space, fronting the children, stood out a panel of plaster,
moulded in high relief, overlaid with a wash of drab-coloured paint.
The moulding was of a coat-of-arms--a shield surrounded by a foliated
pattern, and crossed with the same four diamond device as was tattooed
on Miles Arthur's shoulder--this with two antlered stags, collared, with
hanging chains for supporters; above it a cap of maintenance and a
stag's head coupe for crest; and beneath a scroll bearing some words
which Tilda could not decipher. She glanced at Chrissy, alert at once
and on the defensive. She had recognised the four diamonds, but all the
rest was a mere mystery to her.
"He's got just that mark on his shoulder," said Chrissy, meeting her
gaze and nodding towards the shield.
"Has he?" said Tilda disingenuously.
But she was jealous already, and by habit distrustful of her sex.
"Didn't you know? I noticed it, just now, when he was stripped. And I
thought for a moment . . . you two coming and asking for Sir Miles.
. . . But I'm always supposing some secret or other. Mother says it
comes of muzzing my head with books, and then putting two and two
together and making 'em five. . . . It's fanciful, of course"--here
Chrissy sighed--"things don't happen like that in real life. . . . But
there's always been stories about Sir Miles; and when I saw the mark--it
_is_ queer, now--"
But Tilda kept a steady face, her eyes fixed on the escutcheon.
"What does it mean?" she asked. "I don't know about these things."
"Why it's Sir Miles's coat-of-arms; of the Chandons, that is. Inistow
Farm used to belong to them--belonged to them for hundreds of years,
right down to the time Miss Sally bought it. Father farmed it under
them for thirty years before that, and his father, and his grandfather,
and his great-greats--back ever so long. He was terribly put out when
it changed hands; but now he says 'Thank the Lord' when he talks of it."
"Changed hands?" Tilda found herself echoing.
"Yes. Inistow has belonged to Miss Sally these five years now. I
thought maybe you'd be knowing all about her and Sir Miles--coming like
this and inquiring for them. She's a good one, is Miss Sally; but when
a woman sees a man poor--well, of course, that's her revenge."
"Is--is Sir Miles _poor?_"
Tilda's hopes were tottering, falling about her, she hardly knew how or
why. Vaguely she had been building up a fabric of hope that she was
helping Arthur Miles home to a splendid inheritance. Such things
happened, almost as a matter of course, in the penny fiction to which
her reading had been exclusively confined. To be sure, they never
happened--they were wildly unlikely to happen--in the world of her own
limited experience. But in the society to which the boy belonged by his
gentle manners and his trick of speech, which could only come as a
birthright--in that rarefied world where the ladies wore low gowns, with
diamonds around their necks, and the gentlemen dined in fine linen with
wide shirt-fronts--all life moved upon the machinery of romance.
The books said so; and after that romance she had been pursuing, by
degrees more consciously, from fugitive hints almost to certainty that a
few hours would give it into her grasp. And now--
"Is--is he poor?" she repeated. She could not understand it.
The story-books always conducted the long-lost heir to rank and wealth
in the end.
"Well, he don't _spend_ money, they say," answered Chrissy. "But nobody
knows for certain. His tenants never see him. He's always abroad:
he's abroad now--"
"Abroad?"
This was worse and worse.
"Or else shut up at Meriton--that's the great house--with a lot of nasty
chemicals, trying to turn copper pennies into gold, they say."
Tilda caught at this hope.
"P'r'aps 'e'll manage it, one of these days."
"That's silly. Folks have been trying it for hundreds of years, and
it'll never be done."
"And 'Olmness? 'As Miss Sally bought 'Olmness too?"
"No; he wouldn't part with it, for some reason. But father rents the
grazing from him; same as before, when th' island belonged to Inistow
Farm. There's a tale--"
But Tilda was not to hear the tale, for just now Mrs. Tossell pushed
back her chair, and at her signal the feast ended. All left the table,
and exchanged their benches for the settle or for chairs which they drew
in a wide semicircle around the fireplace. Across the warm chord of
this semicircle the sheep-dogs, stretched before the blaze, looked up
lazily, and settled themselves to doze again. 'Dolph, lying a little
apart (for they declined to take notice of him), copied their movements
in an ingratiating but not very successful attempt to appear bred to the
manner.
Tilda remarked that the company took their new positions with some
formality. The shepherd alone comported himself carelessly, slouching
around to the back of the fire, where he lit a clay pipe from the embers
and seated himself on one of the ingle-ends, so that his tobacco smoke
had a clear passage up the chimney. Then, almost before the children
knew what was happening, the Minister gave out a hymn.
All sang it lustily, and when it was ended all dropped on their knees.
The Minister broke into prayer--at first in smooth, running sentences,
formal thanksgivings for the feast just concluded, for the plenty of
seedtime and harvest, for the kindly fruits of the earth, with
invocations of blessing upon the house and the family. But by and by,
as these petitions grew more intimate, his breath came in short gasps.
"O the Blood!" he began to cry; "the precious Blood of Redemption!"
And at intervals one or other of his listeners answered "Amen!"
"Hallelujah!" Tilda wondered what on earth it was all about; wondered
too--for she knelt with her back to the great fireplace--if the shepherd
had laid by his pipe and was kneeling among the ashes. Something in the
Minister's voice had set her brain in a whirl, and kept it whirling.
"Glory! Glory! The Blood! Glory be for the Blood!"
And with that, of a sudden the man was shouting a prayer for _her_--for
her and Arthur Miles, "that these two lambs also might be led home with
the flock, and sealed--sealed with the Blood, with the precious Blood,
with the ever-flowing Blood of Redemption--"
Her brain seemed to be spinning in a sea of blood . . . Men and women,
all had risen from their knees now, and stood blinking each in the
other's faces half-stupidly. The Minister's powerful voice had ceased,
but he had set them going as a man might twirl a teetotum; and in five
or six seconds one of the men--it was Roger, the young giant--burst
forth with a cry, and began to ejaculate what he called his
"experience." He had been tempted to commit the Sin without Pardon; had
been pursued by it for weeks, months, when alone in the fields; had been
driven to wrestle with it in hollows and waste places, Satan always at
his ear whispering to him to say the words of blasphemy, to cross the
line, to have rest of mind though it were in damnation. To Tilda this
was all mere gibberish, but to the youth and to his hearers all real and
deadly earnest. His words came painfully, from a dry throat; the effort
twisted him in bodily contortions pitiful to see; the sweat stood on
his handsome young forehead--the brow of a tortured Apollo. And the
circle of listeners bent forward to the tale, eager, absorbed, helping
out his agony with groans and horrified murmurs. They held their
breath, and when he reached the crisis, and in a gush of words related
his deliverance--casting up both arms and drawing one long shuddering
breath--they could almost see the bonds burst on the muscles of his
magnificent chest, and broke afresh into exultant cries: "Glory!"
"Hallelujah!" "The Blood--the Blood!" while the shepherd in the
ingle-nook slowly knocked out the ashes of his pipe against the heel of
his boot. He was a free-thinker, an ex-Chartist, and held himself aloof
from these emotions, though privileged, as an old retainer, to watch
them. His face was impassive as a carved idol's.
The young giant dropped back into his chair, and doubtless a second
spiritual gust was preparing to shake the company--you could feel it in
the air--when Godolphus intervened. That absurd animal, abashed by a
series of snubbings, probably saw a chance to rehabilitate himself.
For certain during the last few minutes he had been growing excited,
sitting up with bright eyes, and opening and shutting his mouth as in a
dumb effort at barking. Now, to the amazement of all, including the
sheep-dogs, he lifted himself upon his hind legs and began to gyrate
slowly.
Everyone stared. In the tension nobody yet laughed, although Tilda,
throwing a glance toward the chimney-corner, saw the shepherd's jaw
relax in a grin. Her head yet swam. She felt a spell upon her that
must be broken now or never.
"'Dolph!" she called, and wondered at the shrill sound of her own voice.
"'Dolph!" She was standing erect, crooking her arm. The dog dropped on
his fore-paws, crouched, and sprang through the hoop she made for him;
crouched, sprang back again, alighted, and broke into a paean of
triumphant yelps.
Tilda was desperate now. With a happy inspiration she waved her hand to
the ancient jack against the wall, and 'Dolph sprang for it, though he
understood the command only. But he was a heavy dog, and as the rusty
machine began to revolve under his weight, his wits jumped to the
meaning of it, and he began to run like a turnspit demented.
"Faster! 'Dolph!"
The Minister had arisen, half-scandalised, on the point of calling for
silence; but his eyes fell on Tilda, and he too dropped back into his
chair. The child had raised both arms, and was bending her body
back--back--until her fingers touched the hem of her skirt behind her.
Her throat even sank out of view behind her childish bust. The
shepherd's pipe dropped, and was smashed on the hearthstone. There was
a silence, while still Godolphus continued to rotate. Someone broke it,
suddenly gasping "Hallelujah!"
"Amen! Tis working--'tis working!"
In despite of the Minister, voice after voice took up the clamour.
Farmer Tossell's louder than any. And in the height of the fervour
Tilda bent her head yet lower, twisted her neck sideways, and stared up
at the ring of faces from between her ankles!