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[Illustration: Book Cover]
FOUR WINDS FARM
"In ... his dream he saw a child moving, and could divide the main
streams, at least, of the winds that had played on him, and study
so the first stage in that mental journey."
_The Child in the House._--WALTER H. PATER
[Illustration: And thus she led him out of the large, cold
hall.--_Front._]
[Illustration: Title Page]
FOUR WINDS FARM.
BY MRS. MOLESWORTH:
Author of "Carrots," "The Cuckoo Clock," &c.
ILLUSTRATED
BY
WALTER CRANE.
LONDON:
MACMILLAN & CO:
1887.
_TO_
MY YOUNGEST DAUGHTER
OLIVE
I INSCRIBE THIS LITTLE STORY
WHICH WE THOUGHT OF TOGETHER
LONDON, _June_ 1886.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I. THE VOICES IN THE CHIMNEY 1
CHAPTER II. AT SCHOOL 15
CHAPTER III. FLYING VISITS 29
CHAPTER IV. A RAINBOW DANCE 43
CHAPTER V. GOOD FOR EVIL 58
CHAPTER VI. ORGAN TONES 73
CHAPTER VII. THE BIG HOUSE AND THE LADY 87
CHAPTER VIII. LITTLE FERGUS 102
CHAPTER IX. MUSIC AND COUNSEL 117
CHAPTER X. THE STORY OF THE SEA-GULL 132
CHAPTER XI. DRAWN TWO WAYS 150
CHAPTER XII. LEARNING TO WAIT 166
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
AND THUS SHE LED HIM OUT OF THE LARGE, COLD HALL _Front._
WAS IT FANCY THAT HE HAD SEEN A WAVING, FLUTTERING FORM
BESIDE HIM? _Page_ 30
"NOW FOR OUR DANCE--OUR RAINBOW DANCE, SISTERS--NO NEED TO
WAKE HIM ROUGHLY. WE NEED ONLY KISS HIS EYELIDS" 47
"LOOK HERE, DOLLY," AND HE HELD OUT TO HER THE POOR COPY-BOOK
WHICH HE HAD ALREADY TAKEN OUT OF HIS SATCHEL 67
AND WHEN SHE SAT DOWN TO PLAY THE LIGHT SPARKLED AND GLOWED ON
HER FAIR HAIR, MAKING IT LOOK LIKE GOLD 120
"ARE YOU NOT WELL, MOTHER?" HE SAID GENTLY 153
IT WAS FERGUS, LITTLE LAME FERGUS, MOUNTED ON A TINY ROUGH-COATED
PONY, COMING TOWARDS HIM 178
CHAPTER I.
THE VOICES IN THE CHIMNEY
"Wherefore and whence we are ye cannot know."
"The Winds' Song," _Light of Asia._--EDWIN ARNOLD
The first thing that little Gratian Conyfer could remember in his life
was hearing the wind blow. It had hushed him to sleep, it had scolded
him when he was naughty, it had laughed with him at merry times, it had
wailed and sobbed when he was in sorrow.
For the wind has many ways of blowing, and no one knew this better than
Gratian, and no one had more right to boast an intimate acquaintance
with the wind than he. You would be sure to say so yourself if you could
see the place where the boy was born and bred--"Four Winds Farm."
It had not come by this name without reason, though no one still living
when Gratian was a boy, could tell how long it had borne it, or by whom
it had been bestowed. I wish I could take you there--were it but for
five minutes, were it even in a dream. I wish I could make you _feel_
what I can fancy I feel myself when I think of it--the wonderful fresh
breath on one's face even on a calm day standing at the door of the
farm-house, the sense of life and mischief and wild force about you,
though held in check for the moment, the knowledge that the wind--the
winds rather, all four of them, are there somewhere, hidden or
pretending to be asleep, maybe, but ready all the same to burst out at a
moment's notice. And when they do burst out--on a blowy day that is to
say--ah then, I wouldn't advise you to stand at the farm-house door,
unless you want to be hurled out of the way more unceremoniously than
you bargained for.
It was a queer site perhaps to have chosen for a dwelling-place. Up
among the moors that stretched for miles and miles on all sides, on such
lofty ground that it was no wonder the trees refused to grow high, for
it was hard work enough to grow at all, poor things, and to keep their
footing when they had done so. They did look battered about and
storm-tossed--all except the pines, who are used to that kind of life, I
suppose, and did their duty manfully as sentinels on guard round the
old brown house, in which, as I said, the boy Gratian first opened his
baby eyes to the light.
Since that day nine winters and summers had passed. He was called a big
boy now. He slept alone in a room away up a little stair by itself in a
corner--an outside corner--of the farm-house. He walked, three miles
there and three miles back, to school every day, carrying his books and
his dinner in a satchel, along a road that would have seemed lonely and
dreary to any but a moorland child--a road indeed that was little but a
sheep-track the best part of the way. He spent his evenings in a corner
of the large straggling kitchen, so quiet that no one would have guessed
a child, above all a boy, was there; his holidays, the fine weather ones
at least, out on the moor among the heather for the most part, in the
company of Jonas the old shepherd, and Watch the collie dog. But he
never thought his life lonely, though he had neither brother nor sister,
and no one schoolfellow among the score or so at the village school that
was more to him than another; he never thought about himself at all in
that sort of way; he took for granted that all about him was as it
should be, and if things seemed wrong sometimes he had the good sense
to think it was very probably his own fault.
But he found things puzzling; he was a child who thought a great deal
more than he spoke; he would not have been so puzzled if he had had more
of the habit of putting his thoughts into words. Hitherto it had not
seemed to matter much, life had been a simple affair, and what he did
not understand he forgot about. But lately, quite lately, he had
changed; his soul was beginning to grow, perhaps that was it, and felt
now and then as if it wanted new clothes, and the feeling was strange.
And then it isn't everybody who is born and bred where the four winds of
heaven meet!
What was Gratian thinking of one Sunday evening when, quiet as usual, he
sat in his corner? He had been at church and at the Sunday School; but I
am afraid he could not have told you much about the sermon, and in his
class he had been mildly reproved for inattention.
"You must go to bed," said his mother; "it is quite time, and you seem
sleepy."
The boy rose and came round to the table at which sat his father and
mother, each with a big book which Gratian knew well by sight--for it
was only on Sunday evenings that the farmer and his wife had time for
reading, and their books lasted them a good while. In fact they had been
reading them fifty-two evenings of each year ever since the boy could
recollect, and the marks, of perforated cardboard on green ribbon--his
father's bore the words "Remember me," and his mother's "Forget me
not"--which once, before he could read, he had regarded with mysterious
awe, did not seem to him to have moved on many pages.
He stood at the table for a moment before his mother looked up; he was
vaguely wondering to himself if he too would have a big book with a
green ribbon-marker when he should be as old as his father and mother;
did everybody? he felt half-inclined to ask his mother, but before he
had decided if he should, she scattered his thoughts by glancing up at
him quickly. She was quick and alert in everything she said and did,
except perhaps in reading.
"Good-night, Gratian. Get quickly to bed, my boy."
"Good-night, mother, good-night, father," he said, as his mother kissed
him, and his father laid his hand on the child's curly head with a
kindly gesture which he only used on Sunday evenings.
"Gratian is in one of his dreams again," said the mother, when the
little figure had disappeared.
"Ay," said her husband, "it's to be hoped he'll grow out of it, but he's
young yet."
Gratian had stopped a moment on his way across the red-tiled passage, at
one end of which was the white stone staircase; he stopped at the front
door which stood slightly ajar, and stepped out into the porch. It was
autumn, but early autumn only. Something of the fragrance of a summer
night was still about, but there was not the calm and restfulness of the
summer; on the contrary, there was a stirring and a murmuring, and the
clouds overhead were scudding hurriedly before the moon, as if she were
scolding them and they in a hurry to escape, thought Gratian; for there
was a certain fretfulness in her air--a disquiet and unsettledness which
struck him.
"Either she is angry and they are running away, or--perhaps that is
it--she is sending them messages as fast as they can take them, like the
rooks after they have been having a long talk together," he said to
himself. Then as a figure came round the side of the house on its way to
what was really the kitchen--though the big room which Gratian had just
left went by the name--"Jonas," said the child aloud, "is there
anything the matter up in the sky to-night?"
The old shepherd stood still; he rested the empty milkpail he was
carrying on the ground, and gazed up to where Gratian was pointing.
"I cannot say," he answered, "but the summer is gone, little master. Up
here the winter comes betimes, we must look for the storms and the
tempests again before long."
"But not yet, oh not just yet, Jonas; I can't think why they don't get
tired of fighting and rushing about and tearing each other--the winds
and the rain and the clouds and all of them up there. Listen, Jonas,
what is that?"
For a faint, low breath came round the end of the house like a long
drawn sigh, yet with something of menace in its tone.
"Ah yes, Master Gratian. It's the winter spirit looking round a bit as I
said. They'll be at it to-night, I fancy--just a spree to keep their
hands in as it were. But go to bed, little master, and dream of the
summer. There'll be some fine days yet awhile," and old Jonas lifted the
pail again. "Madge must give this a scalding before milking time
to-morrow morning, careless wench that she is," he said in a
half-grumbling tone as he disappeared.
And Gratian climbed upstairs to bed.
He had a candle, and matches to light it with, in his room, but the
moonlight was so bright, though fitful, that he thought it better than
any candle. He undressed, not quickly as his mother had told him, I
fear, standing at the curtainless window and staring out, up rather,
where the clouds were still fussing about "as if they were dusting the
moon's face," said Gratian to himself, laughing softly at this new
fancy. And even after he was in bed he peeped out from time to time to
watch the queer shadows and gleams, the quickly following light and
darkness that flitted across the white walls of his little room. It was
only an attic, but I think almost any little boy would have thought it a
nice room. Mrs. Conyfer kept it beautifully clean to begin with, and
there was a fireplace, and a good cupboard in the wall, and a splendid
view of moor and sky from the window. Gratian was very proud of his
room; he had only had it a short time, only since the day he was nine
years old, and it made him feel he was really growing a big boy. But
to-night he was hardly in his usual good spirits. It weighed on his
mind that the teacher at the Sunday School had been displeased with
him; for he knew him to be kind and patient, and Gratian liked to win
his smile of approval.
"It is always the same with me," thought the little boy, "at school
every day too I am the stupidest. I wish there were no lessons in the
world. I wish there were only birds, and lambs, and hills, and moors,
and the wind--most of all the wind, and no books--no books, and----"
But here he fell asleep!
When he woke the room was quite dark; the clouds had hung their dusters
over the moon's face by mistake perhaps, or else she had got tired of
shining and had turned in for a nap, thought Gratian sleepily. He shut
his eyes again, and curled himself round the other way, and would have
been asleep again in half a minute, but for a sound which suddenly
reached his ears. Some one was talking near him! Gratian opened his eyes
again, forgetting that that could not help him to hear, and listened.
Yes, it was a voice--two voices; he heard one stop and the other reply,
and now and then they seemed to be talking together, and gradually as he
listened he discovered that they came from the direction of the
fireplace. Could it be the voices of his father and mother coming up
from below, through the chimney, somehow? No, their voices were not so
strangely soft and sadly sweet; besides their room was not under his,
nor did they ever talk in the middle of the night.
"They are too sleepy for that," thought Gratian with a little smile. For
the farmer and his wife were very hard-working, and even on Sunday they
were tired. It was a long walk to church, and unless the weather were
very bad they always went twice.
Gratian listened again, more intently than ever. The voices went on; he
could distinguish the different tones--more than two he began to fancy.
But how provoking it was; he _could_ not catch the words. And from the
strain of listening he almost began to fall asleep again, when at
last--yes, there was no doubt of it now--he caught the sound of his own
name.
"Gratian, Gra--tian," in a very soft inquiring tone; "ye--es, he is a
good boy on the whole, but he is foolish too. He is wasting his time."
"Sadly so--sad--ly so--o," hummed back the second voice. "He only
dreams--dreams are very well in their way, they are a beginning
sometimes, so--me--ti--imes. But he will never do anything even with
his dreams unless he works too--wo--orks too."
"Ah no--no--o. All must work save the will-o'-the-wisps, and what good
are they? What good are the--ey?"
Then the two, or the three, maybe even the four, Gratian could not be
sure but that there were perhaps four, voices seemed all to hum
together, "What good are the--ey?" Till with a sudden rushing call one
broke in with a new cry.
"Sisters," it said, "we must be off. Our work awai--aits us, awai--aits
us."
And softly they all faded away, or was it perhaps that Gratian fell
asleep?
He woke the next morning with a confused remembrance of what he had
heard, and for some little time he could not distinguish how much he had
dreamt from what had reached his ears before he fell asleep. For all
through the night a vague feeling had haunted him of the soft, humming
murmur, and two or three times when he half woke and turned on his side,
he seemed to hear again the last echoes of the voices in the chimney.
"But it couldn't have been them," he said to himself as he sat up in his
little bed, his hands clasped round his knees, as he was very fond of
sitting; "they said they were going away to their work. What work could
they have--voices, just voices in the chimney? And they said I was
wasting my time. What did they mean? _I'm_ not like a will-o'-the-wisp;
I don't dance about and lead people into bogs. I----"
But just then his mother's voice sounded up the stairs.
"Gratian--aren't you up yet? Father is out, and the breakfast will be
ready in ten minutes. Quick, quick, my boy."
Gratian started; he put one pink foot out of bed and looked at it as if
he had never seen five toes before, then he put out the other, and at
last found himself altogether on the floor. It was rather a chilly
morning, and he was only allowed cold water in a queer old tub that he
could remember being dreadfully afraid of when he was a _very_ little
boy--it had seemed so big to him then. But he was not so babyish now; he
plunged bravely into the old tub, and the shock of the cold completely
awakened him, so that he looked quite bright and rosy when he came into
the kitchen a few minutes later.
His mother looked up from the pot of oatmeal porridge she was ladling
out into little bowls for the breakfast.
"That's right," she said; "you look better than you did last night. Try
and have a good day at school to-day, Gratian. Monday's always the best
day for a fresh start."
Gratian listened, but did not answer. It generally took him a good while
to get his speeches ready, except perhaps when he was alone with Jonas
and Watch. It seemed easier to him to speak to Jonas than to anybody
else. He began eating his porridge--slowly, porridge and milk spoonfuls
turn about, staring before him as he did so.
"Mother," he said at last, "is it naughty to dream?"
"Naughty to dream," repeated his mother, "what do you mean? To dream
when you're asleep?"
"No--I don't think it's that kind," began the child, but his mother
interrupted him. Her own words of the night before returned to her mind.
Could Gratian have overheard them?
"You mean dreaming when you should be working, perhaps?" she said.
"Well, yes--without saying it's naughty, it's certainly not good. It's
wasting one's time. Everybody's got work to do in this world, and it
needs all one's attention. You'll find it out for yourself, but it's a
good thing to find it out young. Most things are harder to learn old
than young, Gratian."
Gratian listened, but again without speaking.
"It's very queer," he was thinking to himself--"mother says the same
thing."