A LETTER FROM JOSEPH YARROW, SENIOR, TO HIS SON JOSEPH YARROW, JUNIOR
Dear Joe--Yours of the 10th received and contents noted. You ask me to
tell you in writing what happened when, like a fool, I allowed myself
to be caught and imprisoned by the other fools at Deep Moat Grange, at
that time the property of the late Mr. H. Stennis.
Nothing can be more generally useless than the practice of going back
on old transactions, the gain of which has long gone to your banker, or
the loss been written off. But as, on this occasion, you represent to
me that a few notanda from me might aid your book to sell, I comply
with your desire. Your proposition, kindly but speculative, that I
should receive ten per cent. (10%) of the proceeds, is one to which I
cannot accede. The venture is your own, and though I reply as a
father, I desire to rest absolutely disinterested in the business. I
have made my success in life, such as it is, by never touching anything
of a doubtful or gambling nature. And I am creditably informed the
publication of books of thrilling adventure such as you propose
undoubtedly falls under the latter category.
But the facts, nevertheless, are at your service. All that I ask of
you is that you should allow them to remain facts. I once lifted a
page of your MS., which had been blown from your desk, and I grieve to
say that it contained such twaddle about love, together with other
intangible and inappreciable articles, that I came very near to
discharging you on the spot. But I remembered the solid qualities and
aptitudes you had shown (I give you so much credit, but I trust you do
not strike me for a rise on the strength of it) on the occasion of my
late disappearance.
Well, on Monday, the sixth of December, at 8.59 I received a letter
bearing the Edinburgh postmark, stating that a certain Mr. Stephen
Cairney, who has owed me over three hundred pounds for a number of
years (L329, to be exact) would be selling a large parcel of cattle at
Longtown Tryst. The writer of the note was Mr. H. Stennis, of Deep
Moat Grange, and he informed me that he had successfully adopted a
similar course at Falkirk some years ago. He had been able to give his
lawyer due notice, and had "riested" the money in the hands of the
auctioneer.
Now there is no reason why Hobby Stennis should go out of his way to
put money into my pocket. On the contrary! If it had been the other
way about I should have seen him farther first before I meddled.
Still, the sum was a considerable one, and Mr. Dealer Stephen Cairney
certainly a slippery customer, whom I might never be able to make
anything off of again. It was just possible that old Hobby, as
spiteful an old ruffian as lived, whether as poor weaver or as Golden
Farmer, had his knife into Cairney for some old quarrel which most
likely Cairney had himself forgotten.
At any rate, there was nothing against my riding to Longtown to see.
Nothing against my trying, at least, to come by my own. Still it was
with an angry and unsettled mind, but a firm determination not to be
cheated if I could help it, that I rode off to Longtown on Dapple, the
good and trusty mare I had bought as a bargain from the heirs and
assigns of Mr. Henry Foster, sometime deceased.
My wife was most difficult as to my riding alone, but if a man is to
take account of the whim-whams of his women-folk, he will have time for
little else. So I gave Joseph and Kingsman sufficient directions and
elaborate instructions to pass them over till my return, and so parted.
There is nothing to note on the journey to Longtown. I fell into
converse with several farmers and made arrangements with one to take
his young pigs at valuation--which I judged a good affair to me, his
valuator being largely indebted to me in the line of bone manures and
feeding stuffs.
But beyond that nothing, and even that affair was quite in the course
of business, though it has not yet matured.
For, perhaps owing to the unsettled state of the country, the pigs have
been anxious-minded and run to legs, utterly refusing to put on flesh,
which, as I understand it, is the first duty of pig. I came somewhere
across a book by Thomas Carlyle in which he stated this somewhat
strongly. I was much struck by the strength and precision of the
argumentation, and wished that at all times he had thought fit to write
with similar clearness. There is no doubt that the man had the
ability. I have read worse newspaper articles.
I found my man without great difficulty, and duly "riested" or arrested
the moneys due to me, in the hands of Mr. Lightbody the auctioneer,
taking the said Mr. Lightbody's cheque on a Thorsby bank--both as more
portable, and also to give that sound and well-considered man time to
settle with the buyers of the Cairney cattle--lots A, B, and C, on
which I had first charge.
Now, I am not a man ever to halt at markets, or to drink in public
places--more, that is, than to clinch a bargain, as an honest man
ought, neither with stinting nor with offensive liberality. I even
made it up with Cairney, though at first, of course, he was neither to
hold nor to bind. He threatened to bring me up "before the fifteen"
for damage to his credit. But I pointed out that nothing hurts a man's
credit so much as the habit of not paying his debts. Whereupon he
calmed a little, and said he, "I'll wager that it was old Hobby who put
you on to this!" To which, naturally, I made no reply, letting him
think just what he would.
At three o'clock I had Dapple saddled. For it being the winter season,
I judged that late enough to be travelling over so wild a country. But
having done harm to no one, and carrying no sums of money, I saw no
reason for fear.
At the half-way little hedge inn, for once in my life I lighted down
and called for a bowl of soup, but could only get coffee, and that
without milk--which proves the improvidence of these people. For Crewe
Moss would easily have pastured a hundred cows, though it would most
likely happen that an odd one might get laired in the soft places now
and then. But not to have so much as a drop of milk and on Crewe Moss!
Lamentable! So I told the people what I thought of them, mounted
Dapple, and came my ways.
I had gone, perhaps, three miles, and was skirting the woods adjoining
the property of Mr. Stennis, when, as I passed under some high trees a
noose dropped about my neck. The mare passed on, and I was left
dangling as neatly as if the hangman had done it. Happily for me the
cord had descended lower than my neck on one side, and I was caught
under the left armpit. But there I swung and turned all the same,
shouting manfully for help. I could observe as I wheeled about, for
all the world like a scarecrow in a bean field, some one in the act of
catching Dapple and tying her to a tree.
Then the man--a long-limbed, ugly-mugged fellow, with corkscrew curls
exactly like the old maids when I was young--came back, and, letting me
down, wrapped me carefully in a coil of rope till I could move neither
hand nor foot. I know him now to be Mad Jeremy, for long chief agent
in the doubtful affairs of Mr. Hobby Stennis.
Now I am a fair weight, for my inches, though not to call a heavy man.
But this gipsy-looking fellow took me on his back as easily as if I had
been a bag of shavings for kindling. If he had taken to honest
courses, that same Jeremy Orrin--for so I am informed he is called--I
would gladly have given him a thirty-shilling-a-week job in the
warehouse. Nothing would have come unhandily to him.
Well, he carried me by various passages, the rough stone and lime of
which scratched my face, knees, and knocking elbows, to a commodious
rounded chamber. It was floored, walled, and roofed with wood. But I
could make out, by sounding, the stone arching, and behind that again
the solid earth. It was, as I now know, the cellar or ice house of the
monks which they had built for themselves on the verge of the Moat to
cool their wine in torrid summers.
Hither the woman, Aphra Orrin, accompanied her brother, my captor.
They searched me thoroughly, as though I were a postman with registered
letters and other valuables, but, as was my habit, they found upon my
person no store of valuables--fairs and trysts being no fit places to
make parade of one's gear.
Among some almanacs, jottings of bargains, and other things, these two
came on the cheque for three hundred pounds on the bank of Thorsby, at
which Mr. Lightbody, the auctioneer, did his business--as they said,
for the purpose of giving him a day extra--which, indeed, an honest man
might very well do, paying out on many occasions before he had received
the price from the buyer.
At the sight of that they were much bewildered, and did not, as I
judge, know what to do. Finally, after having taken away the cheque
and considered upon it, or perhaps taken the advice of a third person,
they brought it back to me, and offered me my life in exchange for my
signature upon the back of that piece of paper.
But to this I would not agree. I regarded the position all round, and
saw clearly that as soon as I had signed, it would be as good as
signing my death warrant. So I judged it best to put them off with
half promises, and partial encouragements. As, "that I could not bring
myself to rob my family of so great a sum," or "that the bank would
expect me to present the cheque in person." Both of which were mere
vanities--for, of course, the cheque was made out to me personally and
would be paid over my signature, which was as well known to the
cashiers of the Thorsby bank as that of the manager himself.
So, being countered in this, the man with the curls was for putting his
knife into me instanter, but the tall woman took him apart, and I could
hear her pounding the table with her fist, persuading him. With three
hundred pounds, so she argued, they could all get out of the country,
supposing that Mr. Stennis's money was not available. I was, I learned
from her words, their anchor to windward. They had expected I should
bring back the money in gold or notes. Therefore, as I had not done
so, I should be kept in the ice house and coaxed till I signed the
cheque. Then they could close all the doors--no need of stronger
measures--and leave me tied on the floor of the ice house. Who, at
least for long, would be any the wiser?
I had time for many things, there, in that chilly abode. They chained
my ankles to rings let into the wall, the bolts of which appeared
through the lining of planks. I was given a mattress to lie upon, and
occasionally Mad Jeremy threw me a loaf of bread, as one does to a dog.
Most of all, I was afraid that my faculties should rust, or even that I
should go mad, so by steady application I learned the multiplication
table up to twenty-four-times, making each as familiar to me as ten
times ten. This would prove of great use to me afterwards in my
business, and those who do have transactions with me wonder at my
quickness while I laugh at their simplicity.
Then I took up one by one all the concerns of every man I knew, and set
myself problems as against myself. As thus: Yarrow, of Breckonside,
will be coming to me shortly for two hundred loads of fodder for the
company's horses. He has the contract down at Clifton--the tramway
company--and get the fodder he must. And how shall I mix the stuff so
that it will be passed when it comes to be taken off his hands?
I thought all this out, putting myself in the other's place, and no one
can imagine--who has not tried it--how excellent a lesson in affairs it
proved. After that drill in the old ice house, where at times I was
well-nigh frozen, I seemed to see inside every man's skull with whom I
was making a bargain. It was not only a great advantage, but in a sort
of way it was poetry also. I don't expect Joseph to understand this
any more than I understand his maunderings about love and girls. Not
but what I am fond of my wife. She brought me a good round sum, as
every woman ought, which I have used with care and caused to breed
handsomely. But if I were to tell Mary that I loved her, I think she
would go at once and order my tombstone. At least, she would call in a
doctor!
Still, with all my invention, the time hung heavy. Each day the Orrin
woman came bringing Lightbody's cheque, with new arguments why I should
sign it. I put her off, though sometimes not without difficulty. I
think she must have been partly cracked, in spite of her apparently
business-like habits, for it puzzled me how they would have got the
money, even over my signature, taking into consideration my sudden
disappearance and the to-do there would be about it. But I took care
to say nothing about that. Mr. Lightbody's cheque and the hope that
they had of my signing it, and so enabling them to get the money, was
my best safeguard.
But one day Miss Orrin, apparently after long cogitation, made another
proposal. If I would write to my bankers telling them that I had gone
abroad on an affair of great moment, and asking them to pay to the
bearer a thousand pounds on my behalf, Miss Orrin would pledge her word
to leave me with ten days' provisions in the vault, and at the end of
that time to send to the authorities a message stating where I was to
be found.
This, she said, was their ultimatum. The alternative unexpressed, but
evident, was Master Jeremy's knife. However, I did not agree. The
business had too speculative an air, and there was a decided lack of
guarantee. For there was nothing to prevent those kind friends from
cutting my throat after they had pocketed the cash, supposing that my
banker was fool enough to pay it without going to the police. I
suppose, however, that Jeremy would have stayed here by me, and if the
police had been called in, or his sister had not returned, there would
have been no more of me.
I told them plainly, and as a business man, that they would only be
running their heads into a trap if I wrote any such order, but that the
cheque was negotiable anywhere. It could pass through any number of
hands even from the Continent. This little bit of information, I
believe, preserved my life. For the very next day I caught one of the
jackdaws that came to seek shelter about my dungeon, entering through a
crack high in the arched roof. I wrote the message--already
reproduced--on paper stuffed in a rook's quill which I picked up off
the floor, and fastening the long feather to the jackdaw's tail with
whitey-brown thread unwound from a button, I let the bird flutter away.
Now I come to a circumstance that I have something of delicacy about.
Bairns' plays are not suitable for men of ripe years, you say. I
agree, but when sometimes one has children, and especially an only son
upon whom the care and guidance of a large business will some day
devolve, there are certain kinds of plays that cannot be hastily
condemned even by the wisest.
It was the year when the fever, now called typhoid, but then simply the
"Fivvor," made ravages in Breckonside. No one knew what brought it,
and none knew why it went away. But during its stay, both myself and
my son Joseph were attacked by it among the first. My wife, Mrs.
Yarrow, had her hands full with the two of us. Neither was very ill,
but the time of convalescence was long; and had it been any other
doctor than Dr. Hector who attended me, I would have been out a dozen
times a day.
But--and I like him for it, for I have the faculty myself--Dr. Hector
has a way with him that makes people think twice before disobeying him.
Joe was in his room, I in mine, and there was between us a thick
partition, such as are to be found in old houses, of double oak, with
an air space between.
Now my brain being by nature busy, and to amuse the boy most of all, I
concocted a simple code of sound signals which Joe and I called our
"Morse." We would often amuse ourselves the day by the length, by
rapping our messages the one to the other. It went like this. I made
a little tablet for Joe, and kept one by me till we had both learned
the inscription by ear, as it were.
+-----------------------+
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
+-------|---|---|---|---+
| 1 | A | B | C | D | E |
+---|---|---|---|---|---+
| 2 | F | G | H | I | K |
+---|---|---|---|---|---+
| 3 | L | M | N | O | P |
+---|---|---|---|---|---+
| 4 | Q | R | S | T | U |
+---|---|---|---|---|---+
| 5 | V | W | X | Y | Z |
+-----------------------+
It consisted of the alphabet arranged in five lines, and numbered
above, and at the side. Then the intersection of the number of knocks,
two series with a pause between, beginning with the horizontal top
figures gave the letter. It was simplicity itself when once learned.
Joe picked it up quickly, and we rapped out messages to each other as
soon as we were awake. For instance, three knocks, then after a pause
two more, gave the letter H.
This was the first of our morning's greetings, "Heeps better." Joe did
not spell well at that time, but for the correction of his orthography
it needed the schoolmaster's cane, and not a newly invented Morse sound
code. So I let him spell as he liked. It lightened our days very
much. And I will admit, ever after that, Joseph and I understood each
other better.
Now it will hardly be believed, but I am willing to let my commercial
honour stand for the truth of what I am about to say, which with those
who have done business with me will be sufficient. One morning I awoke
early, before the slate-blue crack, with a star wandering across it,
which was the jackdaw's front door, had changed to the grey of a
winter's morning. I lay on my comfortless straw couch, wondering why
it was that my prison was not colder. It could not be that it was so
far underground as to be warm like the bottom of a mine, by its own
distance from the earth's surface. There were the exits and the
entrances of the jackdaws to witness against that.
Still, though cold enough at times, the fact remained that the
temperature of my prison never descended to the freezing point.
Indeed, it had probably been chosen as a winter home by the birds on
that account. Once or twice I had seen a flake of snow fluttering
down, but these melted before they could be discerned on the oaken
floor of the curious circular cellar in which I lay.
I was, as I say, pondering over these things, about home, too, and what
Joseph would be doing. I almost blush to write, but I began
automatically knocking out a sentence in our old "Morse" code which had
amused us during the fever year.
"Is any one there?" I spelled the words out.
And I actually sat upright with wonder when I heard come through the
thick oak of the partition, first five distinct knocks, then, after a
pause, one.
[Illustration: "I heard first five distinct knocks then after a
pause--one."]
It was the letter E! But, then, only Joe and I knew of it! My heart
sank. I thought in swift, lightning flashes. Had my son been captured
also? But the person at the other side of the wall went on spelling,
one knock, pause, three knocks.
It was the letter L!
And so with the quiet regularity of an expert, the sentence came back
to me.
"Elsie here--Who are you?"
I felt much inclined, of course, to ask who Elsie might be, but I made
my answer--fearing a trap--by the mere spelling out of my name and
address, "Joseph Yarrow, Breckonside."
Then there was tapped out hurried, imperfectly, in a manner denoting
undue and even foolish emotion--"Dearest Joe. I thank you for trying
to help me. Your Elsie."
There was evidently some mistake. No one had a right to answer me
thus--least of all an Elsie--my wife's name being Mary, and she as
little likely to address me as "Dearest Joe," as to call me the Grand
Mogul! In fact, it was nothing less than a prodigious liberty--whoever
Elsie might be.
But a thought flashed across my mind. The young dog! At it already!
If I had my hand on his collar, I would teach him to be anybody's
"Dearest Joe!" "Dearest Joe" indeed! I would "Dearest Joe" him!
But after all the situation had made me smile, and I knew that there
was but one Elsie in Breckonside--Elsie Stennis--and as good a girl as
ever stepped! Too good for Joe, if only she had her rights--what with
the old rascal's property, not that I minded much about that--and a
temper which would make Master Joe toe the line. He had need of
that--I never!
Now I do not say that I thought all that then. I desire to be exact in
the smallest details. I merely smiled, perhaps a little grimly, and
rapped out the correction--"Joseph Yarrow, Senior."
I knew that would surprise her. For I must have had the reputation of
being in my grave for many days before the wretched crew at Deep Moat
Grange got hold of her.
Then very falteringly was rapped out the further question: "Are you
really Joe's father?"
I replied that I had been given to believe so, but that Joe's apparent
conduct might well give rise to doubts.
The answer came back at once:
"You don't mean that, Mr. Yarrow!"
Which, I will own, fairly conquered me--almost made me laugh, and
though an old man, I felt quite warm about the heart. Now, when I came
to think of it, I had always liked to see Elsie Stennis tripping about
the village streets. One picture I was foolish enough to remember--a
dingy November day after it had been raining, and Elsie going to school
to her teaching. She was crossing the little dirty place in front of
Ebie McClintock's forge, and she stooped to pick up her skirts, giving
them a little shake, and then hopped across with her nose in the
air--pert and pretty as a robin redbreast.
No fool like an old fool. I am speaking to you--Mr. Joseph Yarrow,
Senior.