THICKER THAN WATER
Now I do not deny that I was frightened out of my life by the sudden
appearing of the Golden Farmer. But it was different with Elsie.
Perhaps it ran in the blood. For, though most people in Breckonside
were feared of my father and his long arm, I am not--no, nor ever could
be. And so, in that moment of panic, it was given to Elsie to be able
to speak serenely to her grandfather.
Yet I could see that the little man was all in a fume of anger, and
kept it badly down, too.
"What are the two of you doing here?" he cried, dancing about and
shaking his stick at us. "Where do you belong, and what ill purpose
fetched ye to Deep Moat Grange?"
"One question at a time," said Elsie, standing quietly before him, with
one thumb tucked in a leather strap about her waist. "'Who are we?'
say you. I will tell you, grandfather----"
"Grandfather----!"
You should have seen the little wizened man jump at the word.
"Grandfather!" he repeated in a kind of skirl, or scream, as of a
bagpipe. "Ye are no blood kin of mine---!"
"Am I no?" said Elsie. "I am Bell Stennis's daughter, and a daughter,
too, of one Ensign Stennis, a British officer----"
"A devil--a black devil," cried the wizened little man, shaking his
stick, as it were, at the four winds of heaven; "bride-bed or
bairn-cot, shroud or bier, I have no word to say to any connected with
Bell Stennis or the man that she counted her husband----!"
"Except to give her a decent burial, as ye did," said Elsie. "I have
seen her name on the stone in Breckonside churchyard, and the space for
your own beneath----!"
"Any one with eyes might have seen as much. But surely I am not
expected to own you for a granddaughter just because ye have looked
over the cemetery wall!"
"Neither have you a right to be angry because Joe Yarrow and I look
across the ditch at the flower beds of Deep Moat Grange----"
There appeared to be some hidden sting in this saying of Elsie's. For
a moment the old man looked perfectly murderous. But he quickly
recovered himself.
"Faith," he cried, "but it would have been telling your mother, if
indeed she be my daughter Bell--if she had had the gift o' the gab like
you! But that's no proof. I have ever been a silent man myself!"
"Maybe you had need, grandfather!" cried Elsie merrily, as if it were
all a joke, even when I knew that our lives hung, of a certainty, in
the balance between his goodwill and his anger at our intrusion.
Certainly, however, Elsie had a curious power over the old man, and
instead of getting angry, he actually laughed, a queer, crackling
laugh, caught perhaps from living so long among mad folk. I have heard
doctors out of lunatic asylums laugh like that. There is nothing so
catching as crack-brainedness. A lot of people have it at
Breckonside--maybe because the East Dene Asylum is so near. Perhaps
not.
"I see," said old Mr. Stennis, "that you have upon your body day-linen
of my weaving. That is a waste. I only weave now to amuse myself, and
sometimes for the great of the land--because no one can weave like
Hobby Stennis. Therefore the webs I have sent that old wretch Mrs.
Comline in the town of Dumfries, and now yearly to Nance at the
bridge-end, ought to have been put carefully away, and not cut up to
make fal-lals for a daft hempie of your age! Nance ought to know
better. She is old enough and ugly enough for that!"
"Then if I am your daughter's daughter, as I see you admit," said
Elsie, taking his words as an admission, "let us go across and view the
bonnie flowers over yonder, the bedded tulips, the Lent lilies, and all
the flowers of the spring."
Then, for the first time the old man had a look of fear, almost of
revolt.
"Lassie," he cried, "ye have no knowledge of what you ask. Bide where
you are, and go your way backward from this side of the moat."
He bent toward us as if whispering, though he had no need, all being
clear behind and around us for a long way on every side.
"There are folk that are not canny on yon side of the moat!" he said,
with the same curious shrinking look over his shoulder. "I can hardly
manage them myself!"
"Nonsense," said Elsie, "take us across, and be done with it. Is it
not your own land, your own flowers, and I your nearest of kin?"
"Aye," said the old man, shaking his head, "it will be true enough. Ye
mind me of Bell's mother--my wife that was. God rest her soul--and her
tongue! Ye are never a Stennis. And High Heaven pity the man that is
going to run away with you, as I did with your grandam!"
Elsie indicated me with her thumb.
"Joe is," she said coolly.
The Golden Farmer turned and looked me over from head to foot, and I
own that with the thought of all we had seen and all that we might yet
see, I shook like a leaf. I never had Elsie's assurance, or, more
properly, cheek, but followed obediently, and I must own that generally
it came out all right when I did as Elsie told me.
"Then I pity him," quoth her grandfather, grimly; "but since you will,
follow me."
And he led the way, first to the tree where he had tethered his beast,
and afterwards to the narrow wooden bridge, like a drawbridge in
chivalry books, which spans the oily black water of the moat.
I came behind with Elsie. All the time I kept putting my hand on her
arm to stop her. For I believed that we should never, never cross that
bridge again. If Elsie had no fear of her grandfather, I had! And
besides, there was Jeremy Orrin with his big knife. Such at least was
the idea that kept recurring to my disturbed brain. I could see him
swimming the moat with it yet, wild to get at us. There were also the
mad sisters, and all the linked terrors of Deep Moat Grange.
But not the least bit of notice did Elsie take. She shook my hand off
her arm, and told me that if I was afraid I could go back to the school
green and play marbles with the little boys.
So of course I said no more, but came meekly behind Elsie, and she
followed her grandfather. He was leading his horse, that lifted its
feet gingerly at the crossing of the wooden bridge, not liking the
noise, as horses are wont to do on gangways of ships and when they lead
them into trucks at railway stations.
In another minute Elsie and I stood within the Moat. And turning
round, what was my horror to see the bridge rising slowly into the air
behind me, and in a little house at the side, bent double over a wheel,
I caught sight of the "mounster," Jeremy Orrin, with a grin on his face
and all his dark ringlets shaking and dancing.
As we went past he set his head out and called these words after us:
"Rats in a trap!" he cried, "rats in a trap!"
And I can tell you that I for one felt just as he said.
But Elsie followed her grandfather step for step and took no notice.
You would have thought she was the crowned queen of the place.