AT THE SIGN OF THE DOG AND GROUSE.
The bar of the Dog and Grouse hostelry at Ling Crag was very noisy
on Wednesday night. The serving-maid was beginning to show signs of
temper, for orders were being hurled at her with confusing rapidity,
and with reiterated requests that she should hurry. From the girl's
snappishness, and the density of the tobacco-smoke that filled the bar,
an _habitué_ of the inn could have guessed the time--close upon ten
o'clock--with almost as much certainty as if he had used the ordinary
form of chronometer.
The clatter of mugs, the burr of weather-roughened voices, ceased
on a sudden. The men took their pipes from their mouths and gaped
interrogatories one at the other. For they had heard a horse ridden up
to the door at a gallop, and a stamp of feet on the sanded floor, and
an abrupt demand on the part of some unknown male to see the landlord.
"Begow, there's summat agate!" said a burly carter. "What dost think it
mud be, Jim?"
"Nay, how should I know?" muttered Jim, scratching his head.
"There's summat i' th' wind, for sure, but it's noan for me to say what
it mud be."
"Murder, happen, or high treason, an' yon's a constable chap come i'
search o' th' fugitive!"
This suggestion, made with an air of wise importance, came from the
village cobbler.
A thrill went through the company. Murder was a fearsome thing,
yet they knew exactly what it was; but that ingenious touch of
the cobbler's set their minds working on an unknown quantity. High
treason might mean anything, and, "if it war, so to say, at their own
doorstuns, a man mun look to hisseln and not be ower rash wi' his
tongue."
So, in wonder and trepidation, they crowded to the door of the bar,
the less valiant peeping over the shoulders, or between the arms, of
their comrades in front. One and all felt aggrieved when the stranger,
who was still standing in the passage, showed himself to be much
like other men. He wore no special dress, save the customary one of
a gentleman who has reached his destination on horseback, and there
was about him no trace of any peculiar odour, such as might have been
associated with high treason or other of the black arts. Furthermore,
when the landlord at last stepped in from the mistal at the rear of
the house, he was met by the commonplace request that he would get
ready a room for the night. By dint of setting the serving-maid to
sleep on a sofa downstairs--her ruffled temper was not soothed by the
inconvenience--the landlord was able to oblige his guest, and the horse
was led round to the stables.
The company in the bar returned to their mugs. They felt hurt that
the stranger had offered so little excitement, though the cobbler
hinted darkly that, when a man fell quiet-like and tried his hardest
not to make a fuss, it was a safe thing to suspect him of having some
deep-laid project on hand.
Perhaps the cobbler was right; but the stranger's plans, whatever they
might be, seemed to be confined just now to the matter of substantial
food. "Something hot, landlord, and plenty of it!" he said briskly.
"I've ridden twenty miles since my last meal."
"Right, sir; I'll see to it. Will ye have it in this little room here,
sir, or in th' kitchen? Th' kitchen is a sight snugger, and it's none
ower warm at neets for th' time o' year."
"The kitchen, by all means. This way? Don't be long with the cooking,
my friend, or I shall starve."
The stranger, who certainly found the Ling Crag temperature none too
high on this night of early September, retired to the ingle-nook after
supper, and lit a pipe.
Ten sounded across the valley from Marshcotes parish church, and the
occupants of the bar slouched out one by one; each, as he reached the
passage, turned his eyes towards the kitchen.
"What's his business, think ye?" murmured Dick the cobbler.
The landlord, with his hand on the street door, grinned pleasantly.
"Tha'rt a sight too curious, Dicky. Maybe he's some sort of a
land-agent--Squire Daneholme's, happen. I remember, now I come to
think, tha wert boasting a neet or two back about a matter of a
hare--tha'd best be keeping a quiet tongue in thy heäd, Dick the
Cobbler."
"Begow!" said Dick, laying an arm on his host's sleeve. "Dost 'a think
that?"
"Out ye get, the lot of ye! Do ye think I want Constable Lee i' my
public, an' th' magistrates on Friday?" cried Boniface, not heeding
Dick's frightened appeal.
"Constable Lee knows which side on his mug th' beer is, and I'm
thinking he'll noan be hard on ye," put in one of the departing crowd.
The landlord joined in the laugh that followed, and locked his door
for the night. "He's a bit of a softy, is Cobbler Dick," he observed.
"They're a sight too thin-skinned, this younger breed o' poachers.
Well, well, I'd like to know, myseln, what the gent's business might
be."
The landlord felt that he had a right to be the first recipient of
any news whatsoever; for was he not named Jack o' Ling Crag, and had
he not the reputation of being able to see further into the heart of
a haystack than any man in the parish? They are much given, these
dwellers on the uplands, to naming a man after the house or cottage in
which he lives; and since the Dog and Grouse was in a sense--the most
cheerful possible sense--the representative building of the village,
Jack was accredited with the proudest surname a man could have up
there.
And before another hour had passed, Jack did become partially
enlightened as to the stranger's object in coming to Ling Crag. His
visitor asked him to join him in a pipe, and he sat down on the other
side of the hearth. They talked of indifferent topics for awhile--the
crops, the grouse shooting, the fishing in Scartop Water--until the
stranger turned abruptly in his seat.
"Do you know of a house to let anywhere near? I want to be out on the
moors, and yet not too far from a village like this of yours."
"It's a bit o' shooiting, likely, ye'd be after?" insinuated the host.
The stranger paused a moment before replying, and smiled a little to
himself. "Yes, that's just what I want--some good shooting. Any house
will do, but it must have shooting attached to it."
The landlord already had his eye on exactly the place required, but he
was not disposed to give away the situation too lightly; he felt that
Ling Crag ought to uphold its motto of "keeping itseln to itseln."
"There's none too many houses hereabouts," he observed slowly; "and
what there is is fearful sought after."
"Are they, now? I should have thought, being so far away from a town,
and----"
"Ay, sir, but--begging your pardon--it's a fine thing to be able to say
ye come fro' Ling Crag: there's a sort o' respect goes with th' name
in fowks's minds, an' we stay on here fro' generation to generation,
seeing as how we could nobbut exchange for th' war. An' that maks
houses scarce, like."
The stranger, beginning to understand his man better, laughed easily.
"I shall try to be worthy of the honour, landlord, if you'll only find
me the house."
The host rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then slapped his thigh with a
great show of impromptu delight.
"Now that's queer; all th' time ye've been talking I niver once thought
o' Wynyates Hall. Why, it's just th' place for ye, sir; two score acre
o' shooiting, an' a regular old-fashioned sort o' house--just such as
th' painter chaps come for to paint."
"That sounds all right. How far is it from here?"
"A mile an' a bittock; an' a good highroad from there to here. First ye
pass Scartop Water--as I was telling ye about--an' then ye come right
to Wynyates Hall, standing i' a bit o' wood of its own, wi' th' moors
just aboon. Oh, ay, it's a grand place, is Wynyates!"
"Any houses near?"
"Well, there's what we call Wynyates hamlet a quarter-mile away, but
it's nowt mich to crack on--just a two or three cottages an' a farm or
so."
"It is to let, is it, this Wynyates Hall?"
"Ay, it's to let right enow, sir. But I mind me there's some queer
tales abroad; happen ye're not feared o' ghosts?"
A shadow passed over the stranger's face, and seemed more at home there
than his previous air of cheery carelessness. "Ghosts?" he muttered.
"I've got too many of my own to be afraid of other people's." His face
cleared again, and he laughed a denial at his host.
But the grizzled old man shook his head doubtfully.
"Best not laugh at 'em, sir, an' that's my belief," he said gravely.
"There's been some fearful goings-on up at Wynyates. Two brothers there
war lived up at th' Hall, an' they'd been trained in a school ye don't
find i' these ower-eddicated days. Ay, they war of th' owd breed, for
sure; as lusty an' devil-paced limbs as ye'd light on th' countryside
through."
"You seem to be rather proud of them, if one may judge from the look in
your eyes," said the stranger, breaking into a reflective pause on the
part of his host.
Boniface chuckled.
"Well, the fact is, sir, they war a tidy pair at th' poaching, an' my
heart allus did go out to a poacher, God bless 'em! I war fifty, an'
they war nobbut a bit th' wrang side o' thirty i' those days, but I
could teach 'em nowt--nowt at all. Sakes alive, they hadn't no call to
poach! They'd plenty o' brass an' land o' their own; but it war just
i' th' blood, so to say, an' they did it for plain love o' sport. Ay,
they war likely chaps, them two."
"And what was the end of them? End there must have been, or Wynyates
would not be to let."
"To tell ye t' truth, sir, I doan't like to speak on it. They war i'
drink one neet--summat about a woman, for young 'uns will be youngs
'uns th' world ower----"
"You're right there," interrupted the stranger, and shut his lips down
on his tell-tale mouth.
His companion glanced shrewdly at him, but made no comment.
"As I war saying, they war i' their cups, an' they fell a-fighting.
Th' younger he shied a brandy-bottle, an' caught t' other fair on th'
forehead, an' killed him deäd as a door-nail. Then he hanged hisseln to
one o' th' parlour rafters, an' that war th' end of th' owd family. Ay,
sad, sad, for sure; but they war bonny lads at a bit o' poaching."
"And their ghosts haunt the old Hall?"
"So fowks say, an' I've no reason to doubt it. Dirt cheap th' owd place
is going; for them two brothers, being Ling Crag born, doan't part in
a hurry, an' they mak it fair too hot to bide in for them as comes to
live there."
"They won't trouble me, at any rate. It will be a little excitement.
What sort of ghosts are they?"
The landlord frowned on the other's levity, and dropped his voice to a
whisper.
"They do say--and what am I to deny it?--that th' ghost o' th'
brandy-bottle is th' hardest to bear; it shooits up i' th' air, an'
dithers around, an' then strikes t' other ghost so as to bring a bloody
stream from his forehead.--But idle chaps will allus be telling idle
tales," he finished, replenishing his pipe.
The discrepancy between the opening of his speech and the finish was
easily accounted for. Pride in the village ghost had led him on to
wax eloquent in description, but monetary interest induced him not to
put hindrances in the way of a good bargain. Doubtless there would be
pickings for himself if his guest took Wynyates Hall.
A long silence followed.
"Ye come fro' th' low country, I'm thinking?" said Boniface at length.
"From--from the low country?" repeated the stranger.
"Ay--from t' South, as some fowk call it."
"Oh, yes, I'm from the South."
"I thowt as mich fro' your spache. Happen, then, ye'll know Miller
Rotherson, what's ta'en th' mill i' Hazel Dene?"
"No, I don't know him."
The stranger was trying to realize a new point of view. Evidently the
people of Ling Crag regarded themselves as one village, and the rest of
England as another. They expected all South-country people to know each
other, just as the landlord here knew Betty Binns, or Gabriel Hirst, or
Dick the Cobbler. Such isolation took the stranger's breath away.
Another silence.
"I mind me that th' agent what looks after Wynyates Hall--an' a sight
more property, too--comes here to-morrow to collect th' rents," said
the landlord. "Him an' ye might come to an agreement."
"I think we might. What time is he due?"
"Fro' nooin onwards to six o' th' clock."
"Very well. Call me at nine, will you, and give me bacon and eggs for
breakfast. It's high time we turned in."
The stranger took his candle and slowly mounted the stairs. As he went,
he muttered softly to himself, "Such isolation--it is fatuous--it
is magnificent. I have come to the right kind of place. Gossips, of
course; but so there are everywhere. Do I know Miller Rotherson from
the low country? Ha, ha!"
A draught at the stair-head blew out his candle, but the door of his
room stood open, and a flood of moonlight came across the landing to
show the way. He did not trouble to relight the candle, but clashed the
door to after him and went to the uncurtained window. He had a clear
view across the moors; one after another the dark rises swept to the
broken sky-line, striding the misty hollows, till his eye caught that
queer sense of _endlessness_ which the moor people know from their
birth. His face went grey as he watched, and through the greyness
leaped a wild expectancy. Like a boy this man of forty stretched out
his arms to the heath, and talked as if it had ears to hear him.
"Janet--I wonder if you're there. In the heart of the moor, you told
me--it must be down in one of those white hollows." Then he paused, and
his voice went out again in one yearning cry of "Janet!"
The stranger pulled himself together. He laughed bitterly, as men do
who have once safely passed these things and find it hard to have to
go back again. Then he kicked off his boots, undressed, and lay for an
hour on his back, watching the moon through the window. _One_ boomed
from Marshcotes church, and every hollow of the moors seemed to catch
the sound, to pass it on, till the heath was to the already dozing man
one everlasting succession of striking clocks.
"Get to sleep, you fool!" he muttered drowsily. "Curse the bells--they
sound uncanny; it'll be long before they ring for _that_ wedding. God
knows she's taken the heart clean out of my body--_one_, _one_, _one_;
curse the bells!"