A MOOR WOMAN.
Griff Lomax bethought him, early on Monday morning, that his friend the
preacher would be better for a little more of the same treatment to
which he had subjected him yesterday. He found Gabriel just coming down
the stairs.
"Well, old fellow, how are things with you to-day? You're late down, at
any rate, and that means you have slept."
"Ay, like a child," said the preacher, with a half-rueful, half-ashamed
air. "Like a child, Griff--and that after I'd sinned grievously against
the Lord."
"Confound it, man," laughed Griff, "I wish I could drive it into you
that you're a poorer hand at sinning than most of us. Just you tell
yourself, Hirst, that the Lord has a pretty handful to look after, and
that He can't spare you the exclusive attention you seem to count on: I
should be ashamed to expect it, myself."
"Griff, lad, don't make mock; try to soften your heart to the Lord, and
His ways will come clear to you."
The preacher's voice was tender. His yesterday's excitement had left
him weak, and his heart turned to Lomax with a mixed feeling that the
lad was at once a tower of strength and a weak unbeliever.
"I don't mock in my heart, and you know it, Hirst. But I want to
kick some of the nonsense out of you, and that's the truth of it.
Now, I'm going to watch you eat your breakfast: what is there on the
table? Humph! three slices of bread and butter, and tea--the tea is
unconscionably weak, too, by the look of it."
"Here--I say, Griff--what are you going to do?" cried Gabriel, as his
visitor strode out of the room, and across the stone flags of the hall.
Lomax, however, was in the kitchen by this time. The housekeeper was
ironing one of Gabriel's coarse cotton shirts.
"Betty Binns," said the intruder, "do you call yourself a woman of
sense?"
Mrs. Binns fairly gasped at that. It was bad enough that young Lomax
should march into her kitchen without permission, but that he should
forthwith give battle to her in this foolhardy way--"well, it did beät
all."
"If so be as I'm not, I'm ower old to learn!" she retorted, waiting
till her opponent should give her some sure ground for combat.
Griff, spoiling for one of his old-time fights with the redoubtable
Betty, put on just that air of smiling effrontery which most annoyed
her.
"A woman is as old as she looks, Mrs. Binns, and there's heaps of time
yet for you to learn."
"Tak your fal-lal Lunnon manners to them as wants 'em!" snorted Mrs.
Binns, viciously laying to on the wristbands of the shirt, and glaring
bellicosely at the intruder. She broke a button during the process--a
piece of carelessness which did not tend to soothe her ruffled feelings.
"All right; I'm off in a moment. What I wanted to say to you was just
this--a woman of sense would never let her master starve as you do.
Gabriel Hirst will die before long, if he goes on with these precious
slops you give him, and his death will be at your door."
This was an aspect of the situation which had not occurred to Betty.
She was not going to confess as much, though, so she merely growled an
invitation to Lomax to go on with what he had to say.
"Just put a pan of water on the fire, and a couple of good fresh eggs
in the pan--no, you can put four. I've breakfasted already, but I'll
start again by way of example."
"An' who gave ye leave, if I may mak so bold as to axe to come lording
it i' _my_ kitchen?"
"No one; but I'm here all the same. You don't know the food a strong
man needs, and I've come to teach you."
Betty Binns was in two minds whether she should throw her iron at
Griff's head; but she restrained herself, and tried her hand at grim
satire instead.
"Th' maister is a man o' God, Mr. Lummax, which _tha'll_ niver be nohow
tha tries. It's nobbut likely he should want his vittals different fro'
other fowks's."
"The more he's a man of God, the more strength he needs to fight the
devil.--Now come, Mrs. Binns, we've had many a set-to in times gone by,
and I'll acknowledge you generally have the best of it: won't you do my
way this once?"
He was talking sense now, Betty could not but admit. Of course she
always had the best of it--it took something more than a mere man to
vanquish Betty Binns--and she always had said "there war summat she
liked i' th' lad;" and perhaps he was not as far wrong on this occasion
as bothersome men-folk generally were.
"Well, happen ye've hit on a bit o' common sense once i' a while. Th'
maister, he do look main poorly when th' Sperrit keeps strong meät out
on him. Ay, well, well, we'll be seeing."
Lomax chuckled at the overthrow of Betty Binns; he had expected more
fight from her. Truth to tell, however, the housekeeper had been sorely
bothered of late to see Gabriel growing leaner and leaner; he was a
solid, square-built man, as his father had been before him, when Nature
had her own way, but his increasing mania for slops was playing havoc
with him. So that Betty was really a good deal relieved to find an ally
in young Lomax.
"Didn't I say you were a woman of sound sense?" said Griff, with
barefaced disregard of his first statement. "You're jolly fond of me,
too, Betty, under all that bluster of yours."
Betty raised a rolling-pin from the table, and pursued her tormentor as
far as the kitchen door.
"And, Betty, as you love me," he said, by way of a last Parthian shot,
"make a couple of rounds of buttered toast. You will, won't you?"
"I'll lay this about your lugs," retorted Betty, brandishing her
weapon, "if ye're not off in a brace o' shakes."
Gabriel Hirst was standing by the window when Griff returned.
"Well, what have you been doing?" he demanded.
"Oh, nothing. I felt a bit hungry after the walk from Marshcotes, and I
asked Mrs. Binns to boil four eggs."
"I thought you'd had breakfast, or I should have offered it long ago."
"I have had one, but I intend to tackle another. Two eggs for me, two
for you; a round of toast each. Your Betty Binns isn't half the sport
she was, Gabriel; she gives in like a lamb."
"He's a gooid for naught, is Griff Lummax," muttered Betty, as she cut
the bread and held it before the fire; "but there's summat I like about
him; ay, I willun't deny 'at he hes a way wi' him."
Gabriel made a last stand when the eggs were set down before him with a
clatter.
"You don't know, Griff, how religion takes a man; he wants to be always
subduing, subduing, and it's a fearful sin to pamper the carnal body."
"Fiddlesticks! You look after your body, and the Lord will look after
your soul; play the fool with your body a year or two longer, and
you'll begin to wonder whether you have a soul at all."
"But, Griff--John the Baptist lived on locusts and wild honey, and----"
"You're not John, though, and you happen to have some one to look after
you. Chip that egg."
Gabriel obeyed meekly, though he sorely doubted Griff's way of putting
things. He ate with a relish, however, and at the end of it Lomax got
to the real subject in hand.
"What about this girl? Who is she?" he asked abruptly.
The preacher flushed.
"All last night I was dreaming of her, and that was why I slept so
quietly: I forgot that it was the flesh, and we went over the moor
together till we got to the Thorntop road. She was more like a spirit
than a woman, and her eyes were as quiet and deep and far away as the
stars. I whispered, 'Greta,' and she took my head to her breast, and
'Hush!' she said; 'the fight is over and done with, and the reward is
here.' Griff, man, it's hard, hard, coming back to the sin."
Griff watched him curiously. The innocence of this broad-shouldered
man, his childish outspokenness--he could not tell whether more to pity
or admire them.
"Greta? It doesn't sound like one of the names hereabouts. Who is she,
Gabriel?"
"Greta Rotherson. She lives at the corn-mill in Hazel Dene."
"What? Is some one running the old mill again? It was standing when I
left here last year."
"Yes; Miller Rotherson came from the low country in the spring, saw the
mill, and bought it out of hand. You should hit it off, you and he;
many's the time I've sought to save his soul alive, but he always has
the one answer. 'Give it up, Mr. Hirst,' says he. 'Some men were made
to take religion, as your saying is, and some were not; and there's
about the end of it. I don't need it, and I couldn't take it if I tried
from now till Doomsday.'"
Griff smiled; he recognized a kindred spirit.
"Did you ever try to convert the daughter?" he asked, after a pause.
Again the preacher flushed, and the lines on his face deepened.
"I've been thinking that over, and it seems as though that fit of mine
was not a matter of yesterday, nor the day before nor the day before
that. It's been coming on a long while, Griff, though I never guessed
it till I saw her, winsome as a fairy, paddling in the beck. I _did_
try to convert her, just once; but the words wouldn't come, and when
she laughed, with a kind of coo at the tail of her voice, I fell soft
and hadn't the heart to upbraid her. Ay, Griff, it's been coming this
long while."
"And the best thing that has come to you since you were born," cried
Lomax, cheerily. "What with the girl, and enough to eat, and a rap over
the knuckles now and then from me--for old times' sake, you know--we'll
make a moor man of you yet, Gabriel. Do you ever feel the swish of a
gale making you drunk?"
For a moment the preacher yielded to that storm-suggestion; his whole
face lit up, his eyes sparkled.
"Yes, drunk. When the heather lies low against the peat, and the rain
belches out of the sky--it's almost like freedom at times."
"You'll do," growled Lomax.
The light went out of Gabriel's eyes.
"But it's the old Adam; it has to be beaten under."
"I wish you'd let your old Adam alone a bit, Gabriel. He's not half as
bad as some who followed him. Come for a ride to-night; the moon is at
full, and Lassie is eating her head off in the stable."
"Yes, I'll come. It's good to have you back again, Griff."
"As good as to be back? I doubt it. I must be off now, anyway, or that
mother of mine will be seeking me with a hunting-crop; I promised to
take her for a walk this morning. It's a pity about the mill, Gabriel;
I used to bathe regularly in the stream, and there is an end of that
now; I was coming for a bathe when you ran into me yesterday."
"Shall you be going to see Miller Rotherson?" asked Gabriel, wistfully,
as they stood at the gate.
"Of course, old fellow, if only to give him a helping hand; you're a
terrible chap when you set your mind on conversion."
"Because if--if you liked me to go with you--I know them, you see."
"Yes, I see," smiled Griff. "All right; I'll call for you on the way."
The preacher's brow was clouded as he went back through the fading
stocks and asters that lined the garden path.
"Just the same, just the same," he muttered; "when you're serious, a
devil of passion, and when you're gay, a scoffer. But, God knows, lad,
how I love you!"
"I'm late, mother," said Griff, rushing into the Manor parlour at his
usual hurricane speed. "Old Gabriel has been in a poor sort of way,
lately, and I had to bully him. Where are we going to-day?"
"Anywhere you like, Griff. Let us take the first path we come to, and
go straight ahead. We won't bind ourselves to anything."
Every day since he returned, the mother and Griff had had a long walk
together. The man's zest for the moors was increasing apace; the more
heather he got, the more he wanted, and the two of them found so much
to talk about, that Kate Strangeways, the quarry-master's wife, went
clean out of the old lady's head. Their cross-country tramp this
morning, however, chanced to bring them in sight of Peewit House.
"Were you ever in that house up there?" asked Mrs. Lomax.
"Never; but I have often thought of exploring it. Who lives there? Some
one must do, as there is smoke coming out of the chimney."
"The worst-assorted couple you can imagine; a husband who ought to be
horse-whipped every day of his life, and a wife who is, in my judgment,
as fine a woman as I know anywhere. I want to drop in, by the way; Mrs.
Strangeways has been ill for a long while, and I stop for a chat now
and then. Will you come?"
"Of course I will. I happen to be in search of a type of the genuine
moor woman, too, and perhaps she will oblige me."
"Griff, Griff! Always on the hunt for people to dip your brush into. I
sometimes wish you were not quite so full of your work."
"It's all right, mother," laughed the other, as he made her take
advantage of his arm up the side of the brae; "I try to keep a tight
hand on it, and only let it out when it _ought_ to be let out."
But the laugh died on his lips: they were close to the bit of intake
that guarded Peewit from the moor, and Kate Strangeways was leaning
over the gate. Griff had dreamed of that pure-bred moor woman of his
for many a year, and it seemed to him that he had found her at last in
the flesh; she had the lissom strength of figure, the lips that were
clear-cut for tenderness or scorn, the resolute hazel eyes, all just as
he had imagined them.
"Mother, she is beautiful!" he whispered.
The old lady looked hard at him; then laughed, a dry, uncertain laugh.
"Let her be just a type, Griff, dear; don't dwell too much on the flesh
and blood."
Once the first shock of surprise was over, Lomax was disposed to laugh
at himself touching his half-second of emotion. He warmed to the
thought of canvas and palette; he saw fine capabilities in the handling
of this moor woman by a man who had the same peat salt in his fibres.
"Well, mother, I have my chance at last," he said, as they came away.
"That type is absolutely new in art; I can only pray that I may not
spoil her in the drawing."
Her laugh had no uneasiness in it now; she saw that Kate Strangeways,
the actual, had very little to do with that swift light of enthusiasm
on Griff's face.
"If you are a very good boy, I may bring you again--but I warn you that
her husband is jealous; are you afraid for your skin, Griff?"
"Not I; I would not forego that model if there were fifty husbands,
each with a hundred jealousies. When will you bring me again?"
"Just like your father, just! You must take life at a gallop. We will
see; perhaps at the end of the week."
When Joe Strangeways went to the kitchen sink that night for his
evening wash, Hannah, the maid of all work, took care to be at hand.
Hannah had lost no whit of her spite against her mistress, and she saw
that something was to be made out of that morning's visit.
"It's a doiting bird 'at leaves its nest for another," she observed,
polishing a knife on a leather board.
"If tha's getten owt to say, speak up, lass, an' doan't go dithering
an' mumbling to thyseln."
"Mrs. Lummax war playing th' grand lady here again the morn."
"Oh, she war, war she? A limb o' th' devil, I call her, and a limb o'
th' devil I say she is, choose who hears me. Hast 'a nowt else to say?"
"She warn't by herseln. That long-legged son of hers came along wi'
her. Seems like as if he fancies hisseln, thinks hisseln fearful fine,
wi' his Lunnon slithery spache; he'd mak a likely pair o' tongs, yon,
I'm thinking."
"Lang i' th' leg an' short i' th' heäd, as t' saying is," chuckled Joe.
"What wod my fine gentleman be after, think ye?"
Hannah tossed her head, and her thin black hair stood up straight from
her forehead in token of outraged scruples.
"What should fine gentlemen be after, when they cross three miles o'
moor to see a man's wife--and him away all th' day at th' quarries?
Some fowk are fearful slow to see which way their noses point."
Joe reflectively washed the soap-suds from his face and buried his head
in a towel. He was indebted to Hannah for a suggestion that might bear
fruit in the near future.