'TWIXT WYNYATES AND LING CRAG.
It was nine o'clock of the next evening when Lomax, remembering his
arrangement with the preacher, went to saddle his good mare Lassie.
Lassie had almost forgotten what a gallop was like during the year
that her master had been away from Marshcotes. The preacher came now
and then to give her a turn, and the groom took perfunctory rides on
her, but none save Griff could move the mare to the least show of
enthusiasm. Gabriel thought her a dull nag, and wondered what Lomax saw
in her; the groom voted her "a quarrelsome, skew-natured beast"; but
Lassie could do a good deal when she felt Griff's legs astride of her
and knew that it was worth while.
She whinnied, and arched her black neck, and kicked splinters out of
her stall, when Griff came to her to-night.
"We're off for a scramble, old girl," he explained. And the mare, who
had long ago guessed as much, almost harnessed herself, so eager was
she to be off.
She didn't want to pull up at Gabriel's door, but a touch of the
curb gave her a broad enough hint that she was to subdue inclination
for once. The preacher came to the gate; he looked worth two of his
usual self, what with the light of anticipation in his face, and the
spick-and-span riding togs which replaced his sober gear of the morning.
"Are you ready?" Lomax shouted.
"Ay, and waiting," answered Gabriel, in a clear, ringing voice. "The
chestnut has been saddled this half-hour past."
Away they went at a swinging pace along the good hard road that leads
across the Lancashire border. They rattled down the hill and up again
on the other side, past the wooded rise where Wynyates hamlet looks
over Scartop Water. They slackened half-way up the hill, and Griff
jerked his whip towards Wynyates Hall as they went by.
"A fine old place, that. It's taken at last, so Jack o' Ling Crag tells
me."
"Taken, is it? I wouldn't change places with whoever is going to live
there," muttered the preacher.
"Why, Hirst, I believe you're as bad as the rest of them. Do you put
your trust in that ridiculous ghost of a brandy-bottle which Jack is
always talking about?"
"There were men who came to an evil end up there," said Gabriel,
slowly, "and it stands to reason they won't rest quiet in their
graves." He drew his horse close up to Lassie, and peered into Griff's
face. "Lad, it's all very well to talk and laugh and joke when you're
above ground: but what is it when you've got six feet of earth above
you, and there comes a rap-rap at the coffin-lid, and you ask who's
knocking--and a voice comes out of the blackness and whispers of
Judgment Day--and your body is mad to move, and can't--and your spirit
breaks clean through for very suffering, and walks the earth till the
world's end, thinking on the vengeance of the Lord----"
Griff looked out over the moor, quiet as death, with the moonlight
dappling the hollows, and the road stretching on, on before him, a
streaky grey, far as the silent sky. He trembled at the preacher's
imagery; ghosts and another world seemed the only realities in this
night-girdled land. Then he felt the mare's belly under his legs, and
the breath of life in his body.
"Gabriel," he laughed, "you've got a fine imagination. Damn your
superstitions!"
"Lad, you're over proud in your strength of limb," groaned Hirst. "Give
a thought to the soul that can be burned in hell fire for ever----"
"I won't!" snapped Griff, digging his heels into Lassie.
Both riders and horses were content to take things easily by the time
they re-passed Wynyates. The exercise had driven out half Gabriel's
morbid fancies, and his thoughts were set on Greta.
"Griff," he ventured at last; "have you seen the miller lately?"
"Yes--and the miller's daughter, too; which is more to the point, I
take it. I looked in this morning on my way through Hazel Dene."
A long silence. A light that was not of spiritual worries came into the
preacher's face--a hot, ugly light of jealousy.
"She's a lass in a thousand, Griff, and you're a better man to look at
than I; do you mean to play me false?"
"Gabriel Hirst, if you want me to think you drunk again, go on in that
strain," cried the other, harshly.
Gabriel winced.
"Sober or drunk, lad, I fear you," he said, quietly.
"Then you're a fool for your pains. Haven't I eyes in my head, old
chap? Didn't I watch you two the other night, and see the hide-and-seek
in her eyes, and hear her cut you to ribbons with her little red
tongue?"
"What of that? I don't see that it helps me."
"No, of course you don't see, because you know as much of women as you
did the day you were born. It means just this--you can go in and win
her. Only you won't; you're so damnably humble in the wrong places, and
cock-a-whoop when soberness would fit you better."
"Do you mean that, Griff? Do you think--nay, nay, it's too good; it
can't be. She as much as tells me I'm a canting fool--and sometimes she
almost makes me believe it," he added reflectively.
"Do you good. What an ass you are, old fellow, somehow."
The preacher bit his lip, and seemed minded to retort; but he thought
better of it, and struck off into a fresh channel of talk.
"There are changes in the countryside," he ventured presently. "The old
mill is taken, Frender's Folly is taken, and now Wynyates----"
"Frender's Folly let?" echoed Griff. "I thought it was past hope by
this time. Who has taken it?"
"Some sporting chap that has his pockets lined with gold."
"Frender's pockets were lined with gold, too, when he set out to build
the Folly. I wish to the deuce these foreigners would spend their money
elsewhere, instead of building palaces in the middle of the moor; the
moor doesn't want them."
"_Foreigners_, Griff?" said the preacher, with a good, hearty laugh.
"It's easy to tell that you come from hereabouts."
"Well, so they are foreigners. What does a moor house want with a
couple of ball-rooms, terraces and gardens and hot-houses? Thank
goodness, it lies outside Marshcotes moor, at any rate; they must make
the best of it on the Cranshaw side."
"Captain Laverack--the man who's taken it--has a daughter, and they say
she is pretty to look at," observed Gabriel, after another long pause.
Griff laughed to himself; he could read very clearly what was in the
preacher's mind--his clumsy attempt to divert his rival's attentions to
other quarters.
"Oh, has he? Does she ever stray as far as Ling Crag?"
"Now and then she rides this way. There's something queer about the
business--so folk say--for the lass goes about with a face as long as a
fiddle, and now and then she rides her horse shamefully hard, as if the
devil was in her. Month in and month out they live at Frender's Folly,
the girl and her father, and never get away for a holiday, as great
folk mostly do."
"Gabriel, it does one good to hear you talking gossip! Man, you're
changing in spite of yourself."
"I was thinking," went on Gabriel, in his honest, stubborn way, "that
perhaps she is not as happy as she might be, and--it's time you were
settled in life, Griff."
The other did not reply. His eyes went out across the moor again. The
preacher's homely phrase had brought a host of sudden longings to the
front. _Settled in life_, he muttered to himself; was that what was
amiss with him? Then the thought of Kate Strangeways came to him--the
picture of her husband, as he had last seen him with his head on the
flagstones of the Bull doorway--the quick understanding that he had
met no other woman who could grip his fancy just as Kate did. Then he
remembered the husband again.
"Don't talk rot," he said, and fell into silence.
Another horseman showed round the bend in the road that hid Ling Crag.
He drew rein as he neared them.
"Can you direct me to Wynyates?" he asked.
Griff started and looked at the stranger's face twice before he could
make up his mind on some question suggested by the voice and figure. He
put out his hand at last.
"Why, Roddick!" he cried. "How the mischief do you come to be scouring
the country at this time of night?"
"What, it's never you, Lomax? Here, let me get a closer look at your
face. By the powers it is, though! You've pulled me up with one
question, and I'll pull you up with another; how the mischief do _you_
come to be here?"
"I live here; and that is more than you can say for yourself, at any
rate," Griff chuckled.
"There you're wrong, my boy. I've taken Wynyates, and am at this moment
on my way to it."
"Then, why ask your road? You didn't take the place on trust, did you,
without ever seeing it?"
"Yes, but I did. The road seemed as plain as a pikestaff, while
the landlord at the inn there was giving me directions; but these
bothersome moors of yours put a man off--from sky-line to sky-line they
never vary, and they upset one's notions confoundedly."
Lassie began to show signs of impatience; she wanted to be back in her
stall again, and it did not fit with her ideas of good sense that her
master should keep her waiting while he talked to a casual stranger on
the highroad.
"All right, Lassie, all right," said Griff; "a mile or two out of our
way, and then home in good earnest. I'll see you as far as Wynyates,
Roddick." Then, remembering the preacher, "Hirst, you won't mind my
leaving you here? We must have another ride before long."
"As soon as you like, old fellow; it has done me a world of good,"
returned the preacher, cheerily.
"Now, Roddick, what on earth brings you here?" said Griff, as they went
down the hill.
"Honours easy," retorted the other nonchalantly. "I thought you were in
town, at the tail of Sybil Ogilvie; what brings _you_ here?"
"Sybil Ogilvie herself, and a longing for fresh air." There was a
testiness in Griff's voice.
"Ah--she played a little _too_ fast and loose with you, did she? Well,
I commend your sense, Lomax; she was worth about as little as any woman
I ever saw, and that is saying a good deal."
"You still don't tell me why----"
"A longing for fresh air--and a few other trifles with which I won't
burden you just now. Enough that I'm here, and here I mean to stay
until it pleases Providence to kick me out."
"Then you've given up London, and political economy, and the writing of
tracts for the People?"
"Yes, the whole lot. Political economy palls after fifteen years of it,
and Socialism is stale. I have taken a turn for sport, and that's the
truth of it; they tell me there is good shooting to be had round about
Wynyates."
Roddick's face wore a guilelessness that was far from convincing his
companion.
"I don't believe a word of it. You always were a secretive beggar,
Roddick; if you won't tell me your motive, though, you won't, and
there's an end of it. You're looking seedy," he added, taking a long
look at his face.
"Possibly; it would be funny if I didn't.--Is this Wynyates? The place
looks gloomy enough, in all conscience."
"Yes, that's Wynyates. Are you afraid of ghosts, by the way? They are
said to simply swarm hereabouts."
"So I've been told. Let 'em swarm." Roddick dropped his exaggerated
listlessness; he leaned over to Griff, just as the preacher had done
not long ago. "Lomax," he said, gruffly, "have you ever _touched_ a
ghost--not a filmy white affair, decently clothed, but a sort of hag
from hell-pit, with lips that are wet and cling, and a body that--ugh!
Don't babble to me about your country ghosts; they fight with a
brandy-bottle, don't they, that pretty pair of brothers in there? Well,
they can fight till Doomsday, for all I care. You don't mind good clean
ghosts when once you have seen what I see every other day or so."
"Roddick," said Griff, slowly, "it is no affair of mine, I suppose,
but you're in a bad way. The man who just left us is great on hell-pit
and these sinuous terrors of yours; I'm trying to bring him round to
sanity."
Roddick gave a great guffaw, and set his voice to a rasping shout.
"You baby, you unutterable fool, to come and preach sanity to me, after
your Samson-and-Delilah farce with Sybil Ogilvie! I believe in my
ghost, I tell you, because it won't let me forget; go home to your bed,
and pray for experience."
Griff sat quietly in his saddle; he was undismayed by the outbreak,
though Lassie was growing restive again.
"Damned hospitable you are," he murmured.
The other came to himself.
"Come in, and have something to drink. I told the old ruffian at
the inn to send me some whisky, and if he's failed me, we'll amuse
ourselves by going back and breaking his senile neck."
"You can, if you like," grinned Lomax, as he slipped out of the saddle;
"for my part I would rather tackle Jack o' Ling Crag another day. Wait
till you have seen him with two keepers in front, and three more coming
up hot-foot behind him."
"Have you?" Roddick demanded, turning sharp on his heel.
"Well, once or twice; and we licked them all to pieces."
"I didn't think you had it in you. That Ogilvie woman must have rotted
you more than we dreamed of. You really are a bit of a man, are you,
Lomax?"
"Just a bit, when the fit is on me. Moonlight seems to be good for
your temper, by the way; I wish you would not be so absurdly polite,
Roddick."
Griff had thought little of the preacher's gossip touching Frender's
Folly; but as he rode home from Wynyates, in the small hours of the
morning, the name of its new owner came to his mind, and stuck there
with irritating persistency; there was some elusive, half-remembered
association with the name, but he could not focus it. The matter was
still troubling him--as trifles sometimes will--when he came down to
breakfast.
"Mother, where have I heard the name _Laverack_ before?" he demanded.
Mrs. Lomax was pouring him his second cup of tea at the moment, and a
sudden nervous movement of her hand flooded saucer and tray alike.
"There, Griff, you always were so abrupt! You know how I hate spilling
things," cried the old lady, with an uneasy laugh.
Griff, seeing her trouble, came very near to gripping his fugitive
memory fair and square.
"Never mind the tea; who _is_ Captain Laverack?"
"I had rather you left that question alone, dear," she said slowly;
"but if you must have an answer, you must. Long before you were born,
there was a certain lying rumour set abroad; it was said that Joe
Strangeways' mother had--had suffered at your father's hands; every one
believed it at the time."
"I know now. And it was this same Captain Laverack who had really done
the harm?"
"Yes, he got into difficulties soon after, you may remember, and went
away to America. Your father wrote to him just before he sailed,
asking him to put matters straight so far as he could; and Captain
Laverack wrote back that he had enough discovered sins to face, without
gratuitously adding to the list. This was the last we heard of him."
"Well, he has returned, it seems, with a mint of money. Gabriel told
me yesterday that he had come to live at Frender's Folly."
Mrs. Lomax frowned; her memory seemed to be busy with things of long
ago.
"I remember your father taking him to see Frender's Folly one day," she
said at last. "He was curiously attracted by the place, and bored me
for a whole hour that evening by describing how he meant to buy it as
soon as he could, and the alterations he intended to make. I am sorry
he has come, Griff; it will open up the old sores."