THE CUTTING OF PEATS.
The Marshcotes Moor was bounded, on the side remote from the village,
by a broad stretch of "intake"--sparsely covered grass land, wrested
from the heath by long years of sweat and perseverance. Beyond this
again was an undulating valley, scarcely more than a dip in the moor
plateau, which was full of rushes and swampy tracts, with here and
there a bog. Above this valley lay Gorsthwaite Moor, where ling and
bilberry-plants had less of their own way than on the Marshcotes side;
great patches of gorse dotted the moor, and the sun never rose, summer
or winter, without finding at least a few outstanding spots of yellow
on which to shine.
At one corner of this moor, some two miles away from Marshcotes
village, stood Gorsthwaite Hall, a fine specimen of the grim
architecture in which the old moor squires delighted. The rectangular
windows peered out at you, watchful and cold, from under their rugged
brows of blackened sandstone. The door, plainly fashioned and massive,
seemed to grudge the wonted breadth of entry, though its narrowness was
more in appearance than in fact. The round-topped walls that guarded
its paved courtyard harboured few of the kindly green sorts of mosses,
but they were friends with bleak, grey lichens. The very chimney-stacks
looked stiff and unbending, as if they had little to do with the roof
that supported them; and the water-butt under the eaves, with its round
black belly, was suggestive, in some vague, elusive way, of tragedies
half-forgotten.
Yet Griff and his wife were as merry as the old house was sad. The
spring had come and gone, and summer had run well on into August, and
still they would hug themselves, these two, in the thought of their
isolation. There were a couple of attics at the top of the house,
well-lighted from the roof, which Griff had knocked into one room and
fitted up as a studio. The itch for painting had taken hold of him
with more than its old-time vigour, and the one perpetual ground of
disagreement between Kate and himself was the fact that he would insist
on making some fresh sketch of his wife's face every other day or so.
"What do you find to talk about all your time?" Roddick had snarled one
day.
"We live; we don't talk much about it," Griff had assured him, with a
laugh that was entirely one of satisfaction.
That was just it. He had known wittier women than Kate, and some that
were more beautiful in their own way; but Kate--well, she rounded off
his life for him, and there was an end of it.
Mrs. Lomax, who often ran across from the Manor to spend a night or two
with them, was speedily convinced that Griff's foolhardy experiment had
proved a success. Now and then, indeed, she would throw out tentative
warnings to "the children," a suggestion that they should see more
people, or a doubt lest presently they might find themselves suffering
from an overdose of a very good thing; and to all these hints Griff
always made the same response--that they would fly in search of outside
help directly the first symptoms of weariness set in.
But the Marshcotes doctor, who had grown grey in friendship with the
Lomaxes, used to shake his head when he came away from his periodical
visits to Kate. It was no use bothering Griff about it--or, at least,
he could find no heart to do it--but not all Kate's brightness of
spirits served to hide that underlying weakness of hers from the old
man's eyes. Sometimes, as he recrossed the moor to Marshcotes, he would
swear softly to himself, in a way ill-befitting the whiteness of his
hair, and would murmur that it was a damned shame young Lomax had not
come into Kate's life in time to save her.
Griff, when he was not at work, or at play, with his wife, was
generally to be found somewhere about the farm. There had been a farm
attached to the Manor for many years after his father's death, and
he had picked up a good deal of practical knowledge as a lad, which
Simeon, his farm-man at Gorsthwaite, helped him to furbish up from day
to day. Simeon distrusted his master's interference in these matters,
as being "one what nobbut laked at wark," but he was bound to admit,
underneath all his sneers, that Griff must have been to the manner
born, so kindly did he take to the details of his education.
It was in the middle of August that Lomax, taking a short cut home one
morning, discovered a pleasing fact in connection with Gorsthwaite
Moor. The moor folk know well enough that gorse never grows on a peaty
soil, and few of them guessed that Gorsthwaite, for all its splashes
of yellow bloom, had a rich peat-bed on the side away from Marshcotes.
Griff, chancing this morning to have his eyes on the bilberry clumps,
to see if the second crop of berries would be worth the gathering, saw
a rusty spade on the ground in front of him--a long, narrow spade,
turned over at the right-hand side perpendicularly to the main face.
A little further some crumbling peats were scattered on the top of a
reddish-brown gash in the cheek of the moor.
"Simeon," said he to his farm-man, directly he got home, "there's peat
to be had for the asking a mile away. Why should I go on paying for the
stuff they bring from Cranshaw Moor?"
"It's noan o' th' best, isn't th' Cranshaw peät, but I niver heärd tell
on there being peäts just hereabouts. Besides, it's ower late i' th'
year to dry 'em now."
"We'll see about that. The time of year doesn't matter a button, so
long as there is sun enough to dry them. Our stack is not big enough, I
fancy, to last us through the winter."
Simeon growled. Your upland labourer is a terrible radical in respect
of persons, but hopelessly conservative whenever farming operations are
in question.
"Cut peäts i' August? Ye mud as weel mak hay at Kersmas: th' back-end
o' May, or th' for-end o' June--that's when Simeon Hey leärned to cut
an' dry an' stack 'em; nay, ye cannot get ower what is, an' is to be."
"Can't I? Just go and hunt up a spade, Simeon; I saw one in the lathe
not long ago--back of the turnip-chopper, if I remember rightly. We'll
go this afternoon."
Mid-day dinner over, Simeon slouched along at his master's heels, like
a dog that is loth to accompany an indifferent sportsman. Griff took
the spade and set to work at the peat-bed. First, he removed a few
inches of the top layer of heather stumps and bilberry roots; then he
drove the blade straight down, prized out the sod, and so moved along
the whole line from left to right, the upturned perpendicular edge and
flat back of the spade shaping clean faces to the peats.
"Ye may know nowt about th' time to cut, but ye frame weel at th'
cutting," muttered Simeon, with grudging praise, as he picked up the
falling peats and spread them out on the heather.
"And the sun will frame well at the drying, if the sweat of my body
just now is anything to go by. Why, man, you don't often get a dry heat
like this in June."
"Well, I'm noan saying th' peäts willun't dry. What I says is, it isn't
nat'ral; an', dry 'em or no, there'll no gooid come on't. They willun't
burn like good Chirstian peäts what's been led i' June."
But Griff only laughed, and shed his waistcoat, and went on with the
cutting. The crack-crack of guns came to their ears from over Cranshaw
way.
"Part shooiting about," dropped Simeon.
"Yes, that must be some of the Frender's Folly party. How far does
Captain Laverack's shooting come, Simeon?"
"Fair across to a mile this side o' Wynyates. He's by way o' heving us
know he's a tip-topper, is th' Captain; so he mun needs tak Gorsthet
Moor, an' a slice out o' Ling Crag Moor, too, as if his own waren't
big enow for fifty sich. _Sport?_ Ay, he knows a sight about sport,
does yon. I seed him ower this way a two or three day back, an' I fair
laughed to see th' legs on him--as thin as a bog-reed, wi' a smattering
o' striped stocking ower 'em to keep th' wind fro' bending 'em
double-ways."
Griff leaned on his spade, and laughed as he watched Simeon's
dispassioned face.
"But he doesn't shoot with his legs. Come now, he may be a decent shot,
for all that."
"What, driving th' birds an' sich? Nay, there's no mak o' sport i'
driving. He mud as weel sit i' his own back parlour, an' hev th'
grouse driven in at th' door. I reckon nowt o' your new-fangled,
snipper-legged sporting chaps."
Griff's trust in the weather seemed likely to be justified. In a very
few days the peats were dry enough to be set up on end, two and two,
one leaning against the other in the form of an upturned V; and, as
Simeon had to go to Saxilton to buy six head of cattle, the master saw
to the work in person. August was more than half through, but there was
no diminution of the heat. Griff had again doffed coat and waistcoat
alike; the sleeves of his coarse woollen shirt were rolled up to the
shoulder, and a broad leather strap held up his corduroy trousers. He
had his back to a man who was approaching him, with a gun under his arm
and a dog at his heels; the first Griff heard of his approach was a
thin, querulous shout.
"Here, I say, my man. Damn it all!" piped the voice.
Griff arranged his couple of peats to his satisfaction, and turned
slowly round.
"I beg your pardon?" he observed. Then he smiled, rather broadly, as he
saw the legs of the spokesman, and thought of Simeon's version of the
reed shaken with the wind.
"I said, _damn it all_!"
"Not a particularly original remark, but I don't see why you shouldn't
make it. Is that all, sir?" Griff knew, quite as well as his assailant,
what was amiss, but he had no intention of relinquishing his peats.
"All, all? No, it is not all. What are you doing on my moor? What do
you mean by digging here while the shooting season is on? No wonder
we've had poor sport this morning, with you here to frighten every
bird for a mile round. Didn't you hear our shots?"
Another figure appeared on the crest of the rise some two hundred yards
away, and moved towards them.
"I believe I did, but they seemed a good distance off, and I was too
busy to trouble. It is a serious matter, you see, to be short of peats
for the winter, and a poor man must make the most of the weather."
The little man in knickerbockers began to jerk himself up and down. The
stiff grey hair, close-cropped round the crown of his head, seemed to
stick up straighter than ever. For the stranger was not only furious,
but a little non-plussed; he could not reconcile Griff's speech and
bearing with his occupation and his clothes.
"Do you know who I am, my man?" he sputtered at length.
"Rather too well. Captain Laverack, if I am not mistaken?" Griff's
voice was quiet, but the smile had died from his lips, and his eyes
showed hard.
"Yes, I am Captain Laverack. Perhaps you know, then, that I have rented
the shooting over this moor?"
The little man was tempering wrath with an air of faint irony.
"I know that you played my father one of the lowest tricks I ever heard
of. I am pleased to meet you, Captain Laverack; it will do me good to
tell you what a rascally little cad I think you."
Laverack was speechless with amazement. Before he could find words, the
second stranger had come up. Griff looked hard at the new-comer, and
looked again; then he held out his hand.
"How do you do, Dereham?" he said nonchalantly.
Dereham hesitated a moment, then shook the proffered hand with as near
an approach to warmth as he ever exhibited.
"Lomax--Griff Lomax--by all that's wonderful! I didn't recognize you at
first--how could I, when I suddenly came upon you masquerading as a
son of toil? I always thought you were as mad as a hatter, Lomax, and
now I know it."
"Lomax? Was Joshua Lomax your father?" interrupted Laverack. His
self-assertiveness had crawled away out of sight.
Griff neither looked at him nor answered. The man was too much his
senior, he felt, to admit of his knocking him down, and the temptation
bore rather heavily on him just now. Dereham stared at them both, and
wondered. Laverack shuffled his feet noiselessly among the peat-rubble;
twice he made as if to speak, then thought better of it; finally, he
turned on his heel, whistled to his dog, and set off across the moor.
He turned after awhile.
"Are you coming, Dereham?" he asked.
"Directly. If we miss each other we shall meet at the lodge for lunch?"
Again Laverack hesitated, glancing from Dereham to Lomax, and making a
rapid mental calculation as to the chances of Griff's silence.
"All right, one o'clock, sharp," he said, and went forward.
"What the deuce are you playing at, you and Laverack?" asked Dereham.
"Nothing; we don't like each other, that's all. If he asks you, when
you rejoin him, how much I have told you--he is sure to do that--say to
him from me that the Lomaxes carry their own burdens and never gossip
about other people's."
Dereham laughed easily.
"By Jove, it sounds intense; but you always had a twist for intensity,
Lomax, so I'm prepared for it.--Do you know, by the way, that Sybil
Ogilvie is staying at Laverack's place?" he added, with a swift glance
of inquiry.
Griff caught the glance full, but seemed untroubled. Then he looked
down at his corduroys, and tightened his leather belt with a pleased
chuckle.
"I hope we may meet; she would like me in this sort of rig. There's a
good deal of stable-manure on my boots, too, which would round off the
idyll. Bah! Dereham, you wasted me a lot of my time, you little people
in London."
Dereham lit a cigar before responding, and perched himself on a
heathery knoll.
"I always did like you, Lomax," he drawled at last. "You're such an
engaging original, and this last piece of foolery suits you better than
any you've tried yet. Still that air of the Almighty about you, only a
little more so. Where's the poor devil of a woman?"
Griff's face took an ugly shade.
"Whom do you mean?"
"Why, the cattle-dealer's wife--quarryman's--what was it? It would have
done your vanity good--or your love, was it? only a matter of terms--to
see the way Mrs. Ogilvie sickened when the affair became common gossip
in our set."
"Dereham!"
Dereham removed his eyes from their lazy contemplation of the
heat-waves dancing across the heather. Something in the other's voice
startled him--some odd mixture of trouble and resentment.
"Have I put my foot in it? I'm beastly sorry if I have; I always was
too lazy to think before I spoke. Was it--er--a bit serious?"
"Any man who speaks against _my wife_ runs the risk of getting his neck
broken."
Dereham changed colour; but he held out his hand with unaffected
regret, and--
"Old fellow," said he, "I hadn't the least idea. You'd better kick me
and have done with it."
Griff took the proffered hand and tried to laugh.
"All right, Dereham; only, I wish you hadn't."
"Well, yes; I fancy we both do. Coming, Rover, boy!" This to the
pointer, who, after much uneasiness, had started off on his own account
with a very business-like air.
Dereham, glad of a break in the discomfort, followed hard after the
dog. Presently Rover put up a brace, and Dereham claimed one with each
barrel. He returned to his former seat, and Rover brought the birds to
him, eyeing him the while with encouraging approval.
"I've made my peace with Rover," said Dereham, nodding lazily at the
dog. "You never saw his equal for intelligence, Lomax. Before I sighted
you this morning, he put up three almost under my nose, and I missed
with both barrels. And that dog just turned his head round and said to
me, as plain as could be, 'What a fool of a shot _you_ are.' But I've
retrieved my good name, haven't I, old boy?"
Rover implied an affirmative with his tail, and Dereham, for lack of
certainty as to how he should proceed with his friend, began to stuff
the grouse slowly into his game-bag.
"Well?" said Griff at length.
"Exactly. I was thinking that you've improved since I last saw you.
By Jove, I like the way you flashed out on me just now! You're like
a horse that has been out to grass for a month. Honestly, Lomax, I'm
confoundedly glad you have dropped the Ogilvie nonsense. You didn't
seem either excited or surprised when I told you how near she is at
this moment."
"What is it? There shall the eagles be gathered together--something.
You were always the alternate string to her bow."
"Ah, well, I find her excellent comedy, and that is the most you can
expect from any woman. That was what irritated me, you know, when you
took her in such screaming sincerity. You won't mind my saying, will
you, that you were an astonishing fool in that particular?"
"I shan't mind in the least. I like it."
"Too much fetch and carry, too little compensation, unless you took
it funnily. The fair Sybil was altogether too fond of pets in the old
days."
"Has she changed particularly?"
Dereham grinned pleasantly at his friend.
"She treated you badly, in my opinion, and I'm hanged if I don't give
you your revenge now--even at the price of your modesty. When you left
town suddenly, after making an intolerable bear of yourself for three
months on end, we all prophesied--and Mrs. Ogilvie was sure--that you
would come back. But you didn't, and Sybil began to feel it. The others
said that she merely missed the most pronounced of those delicate
little flirtations of hers, which did no one the least harm in the
world--except the odd idiots who took her seriously. But I fancied
it was more than that, and I've proved it since. The woman is wild
for you; if I were to tell her you were here, she would forget--the
interim--would forget every mortal thing except that she wanted you;
she'd come----"
"Then for God's sake keep her away!" cried Griff, fervently.
"Her husband died in the spring, you know. Sybil is a changed woman,
but she hasn't the heart even to pretend that it is due to his death.
She just mopes, Lomax, and if revenge is any satisfaction to you,
you've got it--as much as a man could want."
Griff went back through those fevered months--recalled how the touch of
her hand had maddened him, how the curve of her baby lips had seemed to
be the end and aim of all things. Yet, for the life of him, he could
not make a substantial working memory of it now. The thing he had
called love showed merely as a spineless, filmy ghost; the thing he
knew to be love stood between him and the woman who had seduced him in
all but the letter.
"Dereham," he said abruptly, "will you come and see my wife?"
"I was going to ask if I might. It's generous of you to suggest it
after----"
"Never mind that. Will you come?"
"Yes; when?"
"To-morrow, if you can get off. Drop in for lunch--I call it dinner
now--and we'll give you mutton and apple-dumplings."
"I bar the dumplings, but otherwise you may depend on me. Is your
quarrel with Laverack serious, by the way?"
"Yes; it goes back to my father, and that means it is unforgivable.--It
will make matters awkward for you?"
"Then let it. Laverack is all very well, but he's not going to stand
between you and me. If he doesn't like it, I'll remove my traps to a
pub, and spend the rest of my time helping you to farm."