THE BROM-WATER MYSTERY
It is wonderful how soon a thing is forgotten, or at least put on a
shelf in people's memories. Poor Harry Foster, for example! There was
a man now--a man murdered in the discharge of his duty, if ever a man
was. And after a month or two another man was travelling the same road
with a new mail cart and new sacks of letters, as quiet as water going
down a mill-lade. The only difference was that he started a while
later in the morning than poor Harry, after it was daylight, in fact,
so that the Bewick people had to wait, often till midday, before they
got their letters.
And when they made complaint to the Postmaster-General, or some other
big-wig, he up and said to them, "You Bewickers, it is open to you to
choose one of yourselves to bring up the mails from Breckonside,
running the risk of Harry Foster's fate and providing a sufficient
guarantee for any loss the post office run by Her Royal High Majesty
may sustain."
Something like that he said. But no Bewicker offered. Of course
not--why, they had skin creeps at the very thought.
"So," says the post official big-wig, "you Bewick cowards, be good
enough to shut up and take your letters when they are sent out to you."
Still there were people who kept thinking about poor Harry for all
that. And I was one of them. Elsie did not seem to care so much, or
at least so long. Did you never observe that you can't keep a girl
long interested in the same thing, unless you keep on telling her all
the time how much prettier she is getting to look? But I did not know
even that much, not then. I was just mortal green--green as father's
spare pasture field after three days' steady rain and one of May
sunshine. And, indeed, to tell the truth outright, I thought
altogether too much at that time about people, and too little about my
Latin and Greek prose, as Mr. Mustard, who was a good classic himself,
often told me. He said I should rue it. But I can't say I have ever
gone as far as that. Not to date, anyway. Perhaps I may some day,
when I start reading Latin to pass the time.
The adventure grew more interesting to me after the policeman and
detectives had one by one all cleared off. The affair was "classed,"
as the French say in their crime books--I learned my French out of
these, and a jolly easy way, too--that is, the police were not going to
do anything more in the matter, unless something fresh turned up. And
it would have to be something mighty fresh, too, to move them. They
had all got so sick of the whole business.
There was just one thing that kept me back. That was, I was nearly
sure that Elsie's grandfather had something to do with the whole series
of crimes of which the death of poor Harry was only the last and the
most senseless. Perhaps not Mr. Stennis directly, but somebody about
Deep Moat Grange. So, of course, I did not want to bring Elsie into it
if I could help it. Because if her grandfather was a murderer, and if
all the missing drovers and absconding cattle dealers were laid to his
account, and he hanged for it, it would be clearly impossible for Elsie
to go on living with Nance Edgar at the Bridge End. And as I was not
yet ready to make other arrangements for her (besides being mortally
afraid of the curate), I said nothing to any one--least of all to Elsie
herself.
I think I had suspected everybody for miles round in turn--from Mr.
Codling the policeman to the vicar himself. As for poor Mr. Ball, I
had him so completely under observation, and was so sure of his guilt,
that when the unfortunate bailiff went out only to fodder the cattle, I
followed stealthily in his footsteps, sure that the secret of the
mystery lay in the range of cattle sheds or under the pigs' feeding
troughs. In the end I only managed to get a welting from father for
coming home all muddy from head to foot--and not pleasant mud at that.
But really I did not mind. I was always glad when I got home safe.
Now I know that I was taking my life in my hands every minute. Even
then I had glimmerings of the fact. The folks of Breckonside might
say, as they always did, that the killing of poor Harry was the work of
some chance tramps, who would be far away by the next morning. But
putting everything together, just as Sherlock Holmes used to do, I
couldn't make it out at all. I had his spirit, but not his luck--no,
not by any means his luck.
This, however, was what I made out. Harry had jogged on till he met
with some one whom he knew, that is, almost immediately after he parted
with Davie Elshiner, the poacher. He had talked, parleyed, and then
accepted company. Then some one of these, sitting on the back seat of
the dog cart, had covered up his mouth and butchered him most foully.
After that no more was to be learned. The light vehicle which had
bounded from side to side of the narrow drove-road had certainly been
empty. I am no Sherlock Holmes, but my father and I know about horses
and local conveyances. And we could see by the rebounding, the one
wheel climbing the bank, and the other sinking in the slough, that if
any one had been inside--nay any _thing_, the contents of the cart, be
they what they would, must have been emptied out.
But Harry, the mail bags, even the parcels for Bewick, had completely
disappeared. Nothing except the empty cart and the broad plane-tree
leaves were ever seen again. It seemed so simple a thing to trace--a
dead body, accounted no easy thing to make away with even
professionally, a dozen bags of letters--many with negotiable values,
of which the issuing bank had, luckily, reserved the numbers--tobacco
in tins, cigarettes in boxes, sweets, sugar in cones, even a Stilton
cheese for the old bachelor, Major Templand (retired), who cried out
more about the loss of his Welsh rabbit than all the others put
together. Clues--there were balls and wads of clues! Only, none of
them led anywhere. Neither did the woods, through which there was no
track of anything previous to those made by Mr. Stennis's pony the
following day. Nothing either way along the road. No, I could put my
hand on nothing and nobody. And I gave it up at last, sure
nevertheless that it was somewhere about the house of Deep Moat that
the solution must be looked for.
And, indeed, some light, such as it was, came from the last quarter
from which it could be expected.
Mr. Ablethorpe arrived one fine summer afternoon at our place in
Breckonside. I was playing in the backyard, half a dozen dogs tumbling
over me. It had been intended that I should go out that afternoon with
a van, but somehow one of the men had got back earlier from his morning
round, and had been re-dispatched as more trustworthy. Also idleness
in a boy was bad enough, but in a man paid weekly wages--insupportable.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Yarrow," cried the curate in his hearty voice,
loud but not a bit preachy--I give him that due--"can I have your Joe
an hour or two?"
"Have him and keep him, the lazy whelp," cried my father from the back
shop, where he was busy writing up his books in his shirt sleeves.
Then, laying down his pen where it would not roll over the page (which
always roused him to crisply expressed anger), he came out to meet the
young curate from the neighbouring parish of Breckonton. Upper or Over
Breckonton was still more dependent on my father than my native
Breckonside. There were other ways of getting supplies at Breckonside,
at least for a time. But Over Breckonton was wholly dependent on my
father's vans, carrier's carts, and general delivery of goods.
They shook hands with some heartiness. For though my father had a
standing quarrel with both vicars he was always on the best of terms
with the curates.
"What might you want him for, Mr. Ablethorpe?"
"Oh," said Mr. Ablethorpe, "the farmers are busy with their moor hay,
you see, and I thought if Joe and I----"
"Say no more," cried my father, "you shall have him. And if he does
not work like a good 'un, you tell it to me, that's all! I see now why
the farmers of your parish call you the 'Hayfork' Minister!"
"Oh, they call me that, do they?" said the curate, not at all
disguising his pleasure in the nickname, "well, I'm no great preacher,
you know. So it is as well to make oneself of use some way!"
"That's right--that's right," cried my father, "I hope you will put a
little of that teaching into the lazy bones of my young whelp. Joe!
Ah, Joe, you villain! Come here! Don't skulk!"
As my father did really know where I was (and also because I was an
obedient boy with a reverence for the fifth commandment of the
Decalogue), I came immediately, greatly to the disappointment of the
dogs, who thought themselves in for a good long romp. I found Mr.
Ablethorpe explaining to my father that we were just going to call in
at Brom Common Farm, to give Caleb Fergusson a lift with his hay--that
Caleb was an old man, and would be the better of the assistance of two
pairs of sturdy arms. Furthermore, it would keep Joe in training for
the next cricket match--Breckonton and District _v._ Upper Dene
Hospital it was.
"I don't know exactly how long we shall be, I tell you frankly," said
the curate. "If old Caleb has nearly finished, Joe and I may take a
walk before coming home. It won't do to have him getting slack, lying
about the yard like this."
"That's all right," said my father, who was aching to get back to his
books, and wished nothing better than to have me taken off his hands,
"all serene! Don't you fret, Mr. Ablethorpe. Joe will be in good
keeping along of you. I wish I could say as much of him always. He is
a wandering, good-for-nothing wretch!"
That, you see, was my father's way of talking. He didn't mean anything
by it. But the words just flowed naturally from him, and he could no
more help abusing me, or, indeed, any of his men, than taking a snooze
when sleepy in the afternoon.
The curate, who knew that barking keeps the teeth open and so prevents
biting, simply laughed and said, "Well, come along, Joe! You are under
my care and authority for this day, at any rate."
As for me, I was glad enough. For, but for Elsie, and the thought of
my going to college in the late autumn, I liked Mr. Ablethorpe very
well, as, for that matter, did nearly every one who knew him--except
his vicar, who did not appreciate a young man being so popular;
"stealing the hearts of his congregation from him," as he expressed it.
I was still gladder, because I knew that that afternoon there was not
the least chance of seeing Elsie. She had gone up to read Latin and
piles of hard books with Miss Martha Mustard, the dominie's sister, who
was said to be far more learned even than he. At any rate, though not
what you would call "honeysuckle sweet," she had at least a far better
temper.
The curate and I set out. It was the selfsame road that Elsie and I
had taken earlier in the year, on the May morning when we were the
first to look inside poor Harry Foster's blood-stained mail cart.
But now the leaves were turning and drying, already brown at the edges,
and splotched with yellow and green along the webbing inside. Soon our
feet were on the heather, and I watched the curate to see if he would
turn his head to take a look across at the little creeper-hidden cot at
the Bridge End, where Elsie was not. But either he was on his guard,
or he was as well aware as I myself of her absence. At any rate he
never turned his head, but swung along with a jolly hillman's stride
which it took me all my pith and length of limb to keep pace with.
And as we went he improved the occasion. Not like a common minister,
who asks you if you have been a good boy and always tell the truth.
Silly questions, as if the man had never been a boy himself!
But the curate said: "Now, look here, you are getting out of the way of
going to church, just because of your father's silly quarrel with the
vicar of your parish. That may be well enough for your father. He is
a grown man, and can judge about these things as well as you or I. But
it is different with a young fellow. He gets into bad habits. Oh,
yes, I know you go sometimes to the Presbyterian chapel" (he actually
used the word chapel!), "but you do that because Miss Stennis is your
friend, and though, of course, anything is better than nothing----"
"It's as good as----" I was beginning hotly, when he interrupted me.
"Yes, yes," he cried hastily, "of course that is all right for those
who are in it. But you are a Churchman and the son of a Churchman.
_I_ don't go hunting Presbyterians all over two parishes. But when I
see a Churchman, and the son of a Churchman, in danger of
drifting--well, I step over the line of my duty and speak my mind."
I answered nothing, for after all clergymen have a monopoly of that
kind of talk. But I kept my wits about me. I thought he was going to
ask me to come regularly to his church so as to keep me away from
Elsie, but not a bit of him.
"What I want you to promise me is that when you go to Edinburgh you
will lose no time in looking up a friend of mine, Harry Ryan, who has a
church on the South Side. If you don't he will look you up. But I
want you to go, on the principle of one volunteer being worth two
pressed men. More than that, it will do you good, and if you have left
any friends here in Breckonside they will, I am sure, be glad that you
are being looked after a bit. I don't mean that your liberty will be
interfered with in the least. It won't be interfered with half enough
in these lecturing barrack-rooms they call Scotch universities. But
any way, don't be afraid. Harry Ryan will see you through."
Well, I could say no less than that I would do as he said. And when I
heard that Mr. Ryan was a good "cover," as well as a safe bat and
change bowler, I thought I would risk it. Afterwards I found it would
have been one of the best things I could do. Though, mind you, for all
that there may have been some thought of Elsie in the back of Mr.
Ablethorpe's mind. For there were heaps and heaps of pretty girls at
Mr. Ryan's church, as I found out when I visited the city--all sorts,
swell girls, villa girls, and shop girls (these last the prettiest).
And he may have thought that among so many I would be almost certain to
forget Elsie. He _may_, I say. I don't know that he did. Only--I
should in his place.
Well, my curate, he went on like sticks a-breaking all about the
difference between church and chapel, and how, though the Presbyterians
were by law established in Scotland, they were only chapel people after
all. And that there was only one Church, properly so called. Oh, a
lot like that. And he got quite hot about it, because he had been in
Scotland himself, and had been called a Dissenter by the parish
minister. He had never got over this, and even now the remembrance of
it made him ruffle up his hair like tossing moist meadow hay. Then he
would start in to explain about it all over again.
I didn't mind, for I thought: "The more he cares for things like that
'Postolic Succession and 'Down with John Knox,' the less time will he
have for meandering about Elsie." So I was pleased all right with what
he said, though I didn't listen much. However, I promised to go to his
friend's church in Edinburgh, and not to any of the Presbyterian
"schism-shops." That was what he called them, for he pitched into them
proper. Then he was as pleased as Punch, and looked upon me with a
sort of air as if he owned me. I bet he took me for a brand plucked
from the Presbyterian burning. You see, on the border of the two
countries it is different from anywhere else. It is like drawing a
chalk line, and both sides, Piskies and Presbies, spar up to it. They
are always letting out at each other, while thirty miles inland they
don't care a jujube about the matter, and even play golf together and
smoke pipes on the sly after sermon. This is truth, and you can put it
between the leaves of the Holy Book and swear on it.
Well, I told the curate I would go to his friend Harry Ryan's
church--St. James the Less was the name of it. But I didn't say _how
often_ I would go! It is always well to keep a sort of anchor out,
grappled in the hinterlands of your conscience, when you are promising
in the dark, as I was that time.
All this time, when Mr. Ablethorpe was improving me and leading me in
the way of the Thirty-nine Articles (no, not exactly--I forgot--he
didn't like them; he thought he could have made much better ones, but
in the way of the catechism and Prayer Book), we were legging it across
big bare Brom Common. He would stop and argue, keeping me looking
straight at him till the water came into my eyes. Then on he would go
again, more set than ever on making a good Churchman out of me. I
never saw anybody quite so certain that he was right as Mr. Ablethorpe.
Why, he would have taken his Davy that even the best of Dissenters
would only get into a kind of half-way house, back-stairs heaven, and
might count themselves lucky if they were not sent flying altogether.
But all this got us over the ground pretty quick, and we were at old
Caleb Fergusson's before we knew it. Then, just as we were going into
the stackyard I remembered that old Caleb was a Presbyterian, and of
the worst and toughest kind--Free Kirk elder right through to the back
seam of his coat. So I asked curate how that was, and how he
reconciled helping old Caleb with his conscience and all that he had
been drilling into me.
But Mr. Ablethorpe only said, "Caleb Fergusson is a Presbyterian, it is
true, and very obstinate and blinded. But he has a farm at too dear a
rent, and has lost the only son who helped him in the working of it.
So I go sometimes to give him a hand."
It was not a very logical explanation after what he had just been
unlading into me. But all the same I liked him the better for
it--jolly well, too.
We found Caleb just at the end of stacking his meadow hay, and very
testy. He had his old wife out to help him. She was tottering on the
edge of a rick, half-way up, and all the other help he had was a small
boy grandson, whom he was making sorry that he had ever been born. I
thought Caleb would have been glad to see us, and so I dare say he was.
But his crusty Scotchness would not let him show it. Show it? No fear.
He let Mr. Ablethorpe take his fork, it is true, and ordered down his
wife from the stack with the grumble that she had left "the hale affair
as saft as saps!"
Then he turned and rated the curate for not coming earlier, if he meant
to be any use.
"But it's just like you English Kirkers," he said. "Ye are at the fore
wi' your chants and vain ceremonies, but when it comes to the halesome
milk o' the Word--faith, but your coo's dry!"
I stood aghast. I expected such a volley from the fervid curate as
would sweep the daring old man off the shafts of his red farm cart.
But I did not know Mr. Ablethorpe yet.
"I am sorry, Caleb," he said meekly; "I meant to come earlier, but I
had a few calls to make and a service to take----"
"Service, quo' he," snorted the old Free Kirker; "the rags o' Rome!"
"And besides," continued the curate, without troubling himself with the
taunt, "there was so heavy a dew this morning that I did not think you
would be leading till the afternoon!"
"Nae mair we wad, if Providence had left us the means o' waitin' till
the hay was decently won. But what can a puir auld bereaved couple
dae, hirplin' at death's door, baith the twa o' them?"
By this time I was on the stack, and the Hayfork Minister was sending
me up armful after armful to settle into its place.
"Tramp, will ye!" shouted the old man; "that wife o' mine has gotten
nae heavier on her feet than a cricket on the hearth, or a spider that
taketh hold wi' her hands and is in king's pailaces! Tramp, laddie!"
So, as Mr. Ablethorpe forked the hay, I stepped sturdily round, till I,
too, was fain to strip to my shirt, and even moisten the sweet-smelling
bog hay with the sweat of my brow.
And while we worked old Caleb stood by, and, as he expressed it,
"tightly tairged the Apiscopian on doctrine and the Scriptures." Mr.
Ablethorpe was certainly at a disadvantage in a theological argument
conducted from a hay cart (with a borrowed horse) against an assailant
sitting crumbling tobacco into a pipe on the safe eminence of an
upturned wheelbarrow.
[Illustration: "While we worked Old Caleb ... tightly tairged the
'Apiscopian' on Doctrine and the Scripture."]
But the humility with which he listened to the old elder amazed me. It
was not that he agreed with him. He carefully guarded against that.
But he accepted many of the old Scot's positions, merely gliding in a
saving clause by way of amendment, to salve his conscience, as it were,
between two forkfuls of hay. Even these, however, were of no effect.
For not only was Caleb a little deaf, but he never waited for a reply,
and by the time that Mr. Ablethorpe had added his rider Caleb was far
into yet another argument destined to the final destruction of the
"rags of Rome, and all sic as put their trust in them!"
When work was over for the day, Mr. Ablethorpe would not stay for tea.
He had to go farther, he explained, after dabbling his face in the
water of the pump trough and wiping it with the fine white cambric
handkerchief which I had so scorned.
Caleb accompanied us to the gate, and I looked for a profusion of
grateful thanks. But I did not know my Scotsman. All he said was
only, "The neist time ye come to gie a body a half-day fowin'
(forking), come at an hour when we will get some wark oot o' ye!"
The curate laughed, and shook him by the hand cordially.
"A good old man," he said, as we walked off, "but dreadfully confirmed
in his delusions."
"Why did you not tell him what you told me?" I made bold to ask.
Mr. Ablethorpe turned quickly and clapped me on the shoulder.
"I have not faith enough to remove mountains," he said, "but with a
spade I can sometimes make a show at moving a molehill where it ought
to go."
We continued on over the moor toward the Brom Water, where was the
place that Poacher Davie Elshiner had done his fishing that morning of
the loss of poor Harry Foster.
I asked Mr. Ablethorpe what we were to do there, and warned him that I
had no wish to go nearer to the house of Deep Moat. So that if he
counted on visiting his penitent Miss Aphra Orrin he would have to go
alone.
"I am perturbed in my mind, and that's the truth," he said. "There is
something strange along the branch of the river which flows into the
Moat. I walked home that way yesterday, and I wish for your presence
and assistance. Two can do so much more than one. Also, you know the
locality, as well I know. I look to you to help me to solve the
mystery which, to my mind at least, hangs over Brom Water."