DREAR-NIGHTED DECEMBER
Then happened that event which in an hour, as it were, made a man out
of a rather foolish boy. The postman comes twice to our doors during
the day with letters--once for those from the neighbourhood of
Breckonside, once for the mails that come in from London and all the
countries of the world. Not that there were many of these, save now
and then one or two for my father, about hams and flour. I used to
annex the stamps, of course--generally from the United States they
were, but once in a while from France.
One dullish December morning, in the early part of the month, my father
got a letter which seemed to cause him some annoyance. He did not
usually refer to his correspondence. But I was standing near him--for
after all, on account of certain business reasons, I had not yet gone
to Edinburgh--and I heard him mutter, "I suppose I had better go to
Longtown Tryst, or I may never see my money. Still, it is a nuisance.
I wish old----"
Here he broke off suddenly, and turning round ordered our man Bob--Bob
Kingsman, to saddle the mare. Then he called out to mother to put up
something for him, for he had to ride to Longtown, and might be away
all day.
"But, father----" she began.
He waved his hand impatiently.
"It is a money payment," he said, "long outstanding, and if I do not
get the man to-day at Longtown Tryst I may say good-bye to my chance of
it."
He scarcely stayed to get the breakfast my mother had prepared. He did
not answer when she pressed upon him this or that as "an extry."
However, along with sundry sandwiches, she slid a small "neat" flask
into the side pocket of his riding-coat--"in case" as she said. For
this was no habit of my father's.
After that he called me into the yard to receive instructions as to
various details about the sending out of the vans, and he gave Bob
Kingsman "what for," because he had been so long saddling Dapple.
I can see him now as he rode away. Though a heavy man he rode well,
and in fact never looked so well as when on horseback. I can remember,
too, that my mother was at an upper window, my bedroom, in fact,
whither she had gone to "put things in some sort of order."
My father waved his hand to her, with a more gracious gesture than I
had ever before seen him use. I answered with my cap. For my mother,
as I think, was so taken aback that she withdrew into the house, with
something of the instinctive shyness of a girl who peeps at her
sweetheart from behind the curtain.
Perhaps it was as well. She kept the little love token to herself. It
was hers, to get out of it what dreary comfort she could, in the terror
and suspense of the days that followed.
* * * * *
Longtown, to the Tryst or Fair of which my father set out, was about
fourteen miles over the moors--quite, indeed, on the other side of the
Cheviots. It had thriven because it formed a convenient meeting place
for Scotch drovers and cattle rearers with the buyers from the big
Midland towns, and even from London. Little more than a village in
itself, it contained large auction marts for lamb sales, horse markets,
and the general traffic of an agricultural district. The country folk
went there of a Wednesday, which was its market day. My father's road
lay plainly enough marked across the Common, then by Brom Moor and the
Drovers' Slap, a pass through the high, green Cheviots, with a little
brook running over slaty stones at the bottom--ice-crusted now at the
edges, and the water creeping like a slow black snake between the
snow-dusted banks.
We waited up long for my father that night, mother and I. Bob had gone
down to the village--to do some shopping, he said. But I could easily
have told in what shop to find him--the one in which they don't, as a
general rule, do up the goods with string and brown paper.
Then in the slow night, I with a book and she with her stocking, my
mother and I sat and waited. It would have been nothing very unusual
if father had not returned at all that night. He sometimes did this,
when business kept him at East Dene or Thorsby. On such occasions his
orders were that we should lock up at eleven and go quietly to bed.
Mother mostly let the maid, Grace Rigley, go home to her father's house
at the other end of the village. Indeed, we were always glad when she
did, for it let us have the house to ourselves, a pleasure which people
who keep servants all the time never know.
We gave father till twelve that night--why, I do not know--except that
the hill road was an unusual one for him to travel. And what with the
sloughs and quags, the peat-faces and green, shaking bogs, it was not
at all a canny country after dark.
I had to keep mother up, too.
"Why did he wave his hand to me this mornin', Joe?" she said, more than
once; "he didn't use to do that!"
"Oh, he just saw you at the window, mother," I answered her, "and
perhaps he thought you were a bit 'touched' at his not fancying his
breakfast."
"No, Joe," she cried quite sharply; "me 'touched'--with him--never! He
knew better."
"Touched" was, of course, our local word for offended.
Then would mother knit a while, and run again to the door to listen.
"I thought I heard him!" she said. "I am nearly sure."
And there came a kind of white joy upon her face, curious in such a
naturally rosy woman with cheeks like apples. But it was only some of
the van horses moving restlessly or scraping their bedding in the
stables.
Now our house with its big, bricked yard, and all the different
out-buildings--stores, coal-sheds, salt-pens, granaries, oil-cake house
and cellars, occupied quite a big quadrangle. At the corner was Bob
McKinstrey's room, through which was the only entrance excepting by the
big gate. Bob had two doors, one opening out on a narrow lane, called
Stye Alley, where poor people had kept pigs before my father and the
local authority had made them clear off.
On the other side, Bob's room looked into the yard, so that he could
see at night that all was right. He could also enter the stable by a
little side door, of which he alone had the key--that is, of course,
excepting my father's master key, which he always carried about with
him.
Now I had locked the big double gate myself--the one by which the
lorries and vans went and came. I had pushed home the bars. I had
even gone round to see that Bob had closed his door behind him. The
lock was a self-acting one, but Bob was apt to be careless.
I knew that my father, when he came, would let himself in by the big
yard gate, opening the right-hand half of it to bring in Dapple.
Well, at twelve o'clock mother and I went to bed--I to sleep, but with
half my clothes on me, in case father wanted anything when he should
come. For if he did he made no allowances. Everybody had to be on the
jump to get it.
I don't think, however, that mother slept much. Afterwards I heard
that she had never put out her light. It was, I think, about four
o'clock and the moon was setting when I heard a light shower of stones
and sand tinkle on my window.
I made sure that it was father, though what he wanted with me I could
not imagine. For he always took a pass key with him, and the extra
bolts of the house door were never shut when he was out anywhere on
business. He never liked any one to interfere with his comings and
goings, you see. So much so that we none of us durst so much as ask
him when he got back in the morning, for fear of having our heads
snapped off.
It was, however, Bob Kingsman who was below.
"Come down, Joe!" he whispered, "an' dinna let the mistress hear ye!"
I was at his side, with boots over my stockinged feet, almost before I
could get myself awake.
"Is it father come home?" I asked sleepily.
Bob said nothing, but led me round to the stables. And there, nosing
the lock of the inner door, saddled and bridled, stood Dapple, waiting
to be let into her own stall.
"Pass your hand over her," said Bob.
The mare was warm, the perspiration and the flecks of foam still upon
her. Bob held up his lantern. The bridle was fastened to a plaited
thong of her mane.
And the plait was the same peculiar one which my father had remarked in
the whip lash in the mail cart, the morning of the loss of poor Harry
Foster!
* * * * *
By a sort of instinct Bob opened the stable door, and, just as if
nothing had happened, the mare moved to her place. He was going to
take off the saddle and undo the reins, but I stopped him. There was a
great fear at my heart, for which after all there did not seem to be
any very definite cause.
Father might have gone up to his room without awaking anybody. The
great door of the yard was locked. Some one, therefore, must have
unlocked it, let in Dapple, and relocked it. Who but my father could
have done this? At worst he had met with some accident, and was even
then dressing a wound or reposing himself.
That is what we said, the one to the other. But I am quite sure that
neither of us believed it, even as the words were leaving our mouths.
Then we heard something that made us both jump--the voice of my mother.
She was speaking down from her window. I could see the white frill of
her cap.
"Father," she called out in a voice in which she never spoke to me.
"Is that you?"
Then in quite another tone, "Who has left the stable door open?"
"Me, mistress--and Joe!" said Bob.
"Then there is something wrong! I am coming down."
And the next moment we could hear her, for she had never undressed,
descending the stairway.
"What shall we do--quick--what shall we say?"
Bob Kingsman was never very quick at invention.
"Tell her 'an accident,'" I whispered, "we are going to look for
him--say nothing about the yard door having been opened and shut again."
For even then I felt that the key of the mystery lay there.
My mother took it more quietly than we had hoped. She did not cry out,
but to this day I mind the tremulous light of the candle which she
carried in one shaking hand and sheltered with the other. It went
quavering from her breast to her face, and then down again till it
mixed with the steady shine of the stable lantern in Bob's hand.
She went into the stable and looked Dapple over carefully, without,
however, attempting to touch anything about the mare's trappings.
"There will hae been an accident," she faltered, her tongue almost
refusing its office, "your faither must have been thrown! We will all
go and seek for him. We will waken the village."
"But you are not fit, mother. Bide here quiet in the house--let others
seek--you are never fit."
"Who has my right?" she said, with a suppressed fierceness, very
strange in one so kindly. "I will go out and seek for my man! No one
shall hinder me!"