Author Of ‘Aunt Rachel,’ ‘The Weaker Vessel,’ Etc.
I
In the year eighteen hundred and twenty, and for many years before and
after, Abel Reddy farmed his own land at Perry Hall End, on the western
boundaries of Castle Barfield. He lived at Perry Hall, a ripe-coloured
old tenement of Elizabethan design, which crowned a gentle eminence
and looked out picturesquely on all sides from amongst its neighbouring
trees. It had a sturdier aspect in its age than it could have worn when
younger, for its strength had the sign-manual of time upon it, and even
its hoary lichens looked as much like a prophecy as a record.
A mile away, but also within the boundaries of Castle Barfield parish,
there stood another house upon another eminence: a house of older date
than Perry Hall, though of less pleasing and picturesque an air. The
long low building was of a darkish stone, and had been altered and added
to so often that it had at last arrived at a complex ugliness which was
not altogether displeasing. The materials for its structure had all been
drawn at different periods from the same stone quarry, and the chequered
look of new bits and old bits had a hint of the chess-board. Here Samson
Mountain dwelt on his own land in the midst of his own people.
The Mountain Farm, as it was called, and had been called time out of
mind, was separated from the Perry Hall Farm by a very shallow and
narrow brook. The two houses were built as far apart from each other
as they could be, whilst remaining in their own boundaries, as if the
builder of the later one had determined to set as great a distance as
he could between his neighbour and himself. And as a matter of fact the
Reddys and the Mountains were a sort of Capulets and Montagues, and had
hated each other for generations. Samson and Abel kept up the ancient
grudge in all its ancient force. They were of the same age within a week
or two, had studied at the same school, and had fought there; had at one
time courted the same girl, had sat within sight of each other Sunday
after Sunday and year after year in the parish church, had each buried
father and mother in the parish churchyard, and in the mind of each the
thought of the other rankled like a sore.
The manner of their surrendering their common courtship was
characteristic of their common hatred. Somewhere about the beginning
of this century a certain Miss Jenny Rusker, of Castle Barfield,
was surrounded by quite a swarm of lovers. She was pretty, she was
well-to-do, for her time and station, she was accomplished--playing the
harp (execrably), working samplers in silk and wool with great diligence
and exactitude, and having read a prodigious number of plays, poems, and
romances. What this lady’s heart forged that her mouth did vent, but no
pretty young woman ever looked or sounded foolish to the eyes or ears of
her lovers. Mountain and Eeddy were among her solicitors. She liked them
both, and had not quite made up her mind as to which, if either of them,
she would choose, when suddenly the knowledge of the other’s occasional
presence in her sitting-room made the house odious to each, and they
surrendered the chase almost at the same hour. Miss Jenny satisfied
herself with a cousin of her own, married without changing her name,
had children, was passably happy, as the world goes, and lived to be a
profoundly sentimental but inveterate widow. Mountain and Eeddy married
girls they would not otherwise have chosen, and were passably happy
also, except when the sore of ancient hatred was inflamed by a chance
meeting on the corn exchange or an accidental passage of the eyes at
church. They had no better authority for hating each other than that
their fathers had hated each other before them. The fathers had the
authority of the grandfathers, and they, that of the greatgrandfathers.
It was Saturday afternoon. There was a bleak frost abroad, and even the
waters of the brook which divided the two farms were hard frozen. The
sun hung low in the western sky, lustreless as a wafer, but ruddy. The
fields were powdered with thin snow, and the earth was black by contrast
with it. Now and then a shot sounded far away, but clear and sharp, from
where the guests of my lord of Barfield were killing time in the warren.
A labouring man, smock-frocked, billy-cocked, gaitered, and hob-nailed,
was clamping down the frozen lane, the earth ringing like iron under
iron as he walked. By his side was a fair-haired lad of nine or ten
years of age, a boy of frank and engaging countenance, carefully and
even daintily dressed, and holding up his head as if he were a lord of
the soil and knew it. The boy and the labourer were talking, and on the
frosty silence of the fields the clear treble of the boy’s speech rang
out clearly and carried far. A burly man, with a surly red face, who had
stooped to button a gaiter, in a meadow just beyond the brook, and
had laid down his gun beside him the while, heard both voice and words
whilst the speaker was a hundred yards away.
‘But don’t you think it’s very wicked, Ichabod?’
The labourer’s voice only reached the listener in the meadow. He spoke
with the Barfield drawl, and his features, which were stiffened by the
frozen wind, were twisted into a look of habitual waggery.
‘Well,’ said he, in answer to his young companion, ‘maybe, Master
Richard, it might be wicked, but it’s main like natur.’
‘I shan’t hate Joe Mountain when I’m a man,’ said the boy.
The surly man in the field, hearing these words, looked on a sudden
surlier still, and throwing up his head with a listening air, and
holding his ankle with both hands, crouched and craned his neck to
listen.
‘May’st have to change thy mind, Master Richard,’ said the labourer.
‘Why should I change my mind, Ichabod?’ asked the boy, looking up at
him.
‘Why?’ answered Ichabod, ‘thee’lt niver have it said as thee wast afraid
of any o’ the Mountain lot.’
‘I’m not afraid of him,’ piped the engaging young cockerel ‘We had a
fight in the coppice last holidays, and I beat him. The squire caught
us, and we were going to stop, but he made us go on, and he saw fair.
Then he made us shake hands after. Joe Mountain wouldn’t say he’d had
enough, but the squire threw up the sponge for him. And he gave us two
half-crowns apiece, and said we were both good plucked uns.’
‘Ah! ‘said Ichabod, with warmth, ‘he’s the right sort is the squire.
And there’s no sort or kind o’ sport as comes amiss to him. A gentleman
after my own heart.’
‘He made us shake hands and promise we’d be friends,’ said Master
Richard, ‘and we’re going to be.’
‘Make him turn the brook back first, Master Richard,’ said Ichabod. The
two were almost at the bridge by this time, and the listener could hear
distinctly.
‘Turn the brook back?’ the boy asked. ‘What do you mean, Ichabod?’
‘Ax thy feyther, when thee gettest home,’ answered Ichabod. ‘He’ll tell
thee all the rights on it. So fur as I can make out--and it was the talk
o’ the country i’ my grandfeyther’s daysen--it amounts to this. Look
here! ‘He and the boy arrested their steps on the bridge, and Ichabod
pointed along the frozen track of the brook. ‘Seest that hollow ten rods
off? It was in the time o’ Cromwell Hast heard tell o’ Cromwell, I mek
no doubt?’
‘Oliver Cromwell,’ said Master Richard. ‘He was Lord Protector of
England. He fought King Charles.’
‘Like enough,’ said Ichabod. ‘In his daysen, many ‘ears ago, there was
the Reddys here and the Mountains there’--indicating either house in
turn by pointing with his thumb--‘just as they be now. The Reddy o’ that
day--he was thy grandfeyther’s grand-feyther as like as not--maybe
he was _his_ grandfeyther for aught as I can tell, for it’s a
deadly-dreadful heap o’ time long past--the Reddy o’ that day went to
the wars, and fowt for Cromwell. The Mountain o’ that time stopped at
hum. Up to then they’d niver been misfriended as fur as I know. That’s
how it’s put about, anyway. But whilst the Reddy was away what’s the
Mountain do?’
The boy was looking at Ichabod, and Ichabod, stooping a little to be the
more impressive, was looking at him. The surly-faced man with the gun
had hitherto been concealed by the hedge beside which he had knelt to
fasten his gaiter, and neither of the two had suspected his presence. It
was natural, therefore, that both of them should start a little when his
voice reached them.
‘Well?’ The voice was sour and surly, like the face, and the word was
rapped out sharp and clear. Master Richard and Ichabod turned with one
accord. ‘Well?’ says the surly man, ‘what does the Mountain do?’
Ichabod, less discomfited by the suddenness of the interruption than
might have been expected of him, rubbed the frozen base of his nose with
a cold forefinger and grinned. Master Richard looked from one to the
other with a frank and fearless interest and inquiry which became him
very prettily. The surly man bestowed a passing scowl upon him, and
turned his angry regard again upon Ichabod.
‘Come, now,’ he said, ‘you backbiting, scandal-mongering old liar! What
does the Mountain do? Out with it!’
‘Why, nayther thee nor me was there at the time, gaffer,’ responded
Ichabod, his frosty features still creased with a grin. ‘So nayther thee
nor me can talk for certain. Can us?’
‘I suppose,’ said the surly, burly man, ‘you’re going to stuff that
young monkey with the old lie about the stream being turned?’
Ichabod made no verbal response, but continued to rub his nose with his
forefinger, and to grin with an aspect of uncertain humour. The surly
man stooped for his gun, threw it over his arm, and stared at Ichabod
and his young companion with eyes of hatred and disdain. Then, having
somewhat relieved his feelings by a curse or two, he turned his back and
went off with a long, heavy, dogged-looking stride, his feet crunching
noisily through the frosty grasses.
‘It eeat for me to talk about my betters, and them as the Lord has put
in authority over us,’ said Ichabod, with an expression which belied
these words of humility; ‘but I put it to thee, Master Richard. Dost
think that old Mountain theer looks like a likeable un? No, no. Might as
well expect cat an’ dog t’ agree as Reddy and Mountain.’
This speech was made in a carefully modulated tone, when he and the boy
were at some distance from the surly man, who was still visible, three
or four fields away.
‘What was it about the brook, Ichabod?’ asked Master Richard.
‘Why,’ said Ichabod, ‘when that old longaway grandfeyther o’ thine was
away a-fighting for Cromwell, ‘tis said his neighbour turned the brook
so as to bring in four-score acres o’ land as ud niver have been his by
right. The Reddy o’ that day died in the wars, and his widder could mek
no head again the Mountain lot; but her taught her son to hate ‘em and
look down upon ‘em, and hated an’ looked down upon is the name on ‘em
from that day to this.’
‘But Joe Mountain didn’t do it,’ said Master Richard.
‘No, no,’ assented Ichabod. ‘But it’s i’ this way. It’s i’ the blood.
What’s bred i’ the bone will come out i’ the flesh. Afore thee makest
friends with young Joe Mountain, Master Richard, thee ax thy feyther.’
Master Richard, lapsing into silence, thought things over.
‘Ichabod,’ he said at last, ‘is a boy _bound_ to be bad if he has a bad
grandfather?’
‘Sure!’ said Ichabod, who was not going to be worsted in argument for
want of corroborative fact if he could help it.
Master Richard thought things over a little while longer, and returned
to the charge.
‘Suppose the boy with the bad grandfather had a good grandmother,
Ichabod?’
‘None of the Mountain lot ever had,’ Ichabod replied. There was no item
in Ichabod’s creed more fixed than this--the Mountains of Mountain
Farm were hateful and contemptible. He had imbibed the belief with his
mother’s milk and his father’s counsel. His grandfather had known it for
the one cardinal certainty of nature.
Just as the serving-men of Capulet hated the serving-men of Montague,
so the oldest servants of the Mountains hated the older servants of the
Reddys. The men made the masters’ quarrel their own. There was a feudal
spirit in the matter, and half the fights of this outlying district of
the parish were provoked by that ancient history of the brook. At this
time of day it mattered very little indeed if the history was true
or false, for neither proof nor disproof was possible, and the real
mischief was done past remedy in any case.
‘Are you sure our side fought for Cromwell, Ichabod?’ Master Richard.
asked, after another long and thoughtful silence.
‘To be sure,’ said Ichabod.
‘I don’t think it can be true, then, about the brook,’ said the boy,
‘because Cromwell won, and everybody who was on his side had their own
way. Mr. Greenfell teaches history at school, and he says so.’
This was nothing to Ichabod, whose intellect was not constructed for the
reception of historical evidences.
‘Then ax thy feyther, Master Richard,’ he answered; ‘he’ll tell thee the
rights on it.’
The boy walked on pondering, as children of his age will do. The seniors
would be surprised pretty often if they could guess how deep and far the
young thoughts go, but, then, the seniors have forgotten their own young
days, or were never of a thinking habit. Ichabod clamped along with
his mind on beer. The boy thought his own thoughts, and each was
indifferent for a while to outer signs and sounds. But suddenly a
little girl ran round a corner of the devious lane with a brace of
young savages in pursuit. The youthful savages had each an armful of
snowballs, and they were pelting the child with more animus than seemed
befitting. The very tightness with which the balls were pressed seemed
to say that they were bent less on sport than mischief, and they came
whooping and dancing round the corner with such rejoicing cruelty as
only boys or uncivilised men can feel. The little girl was sobbing,
half in distress, and half because of the haste she had made, and Master
Richard’s juvenile soul burnt within him at the sight like that of a
knight-errant. He had read a great deal about knights-errant for the
time which had been as yet allowed him for the pursuit of literature,
and he was by nature a boy of much fire and gentleness, and a very
sympathetic imagination. So the big heart in the small body swelled
with pity and grew hot with valour, and, without parley, he smote
the foremost boy, who happened to be the bigger of the two, and went
headlong into fight with him.
Ichabod followed the young master’s lead without knowing, or in the
smallest degree caring, why, and tried to seize the smaller savage, who
skilfully evaded him and ran. The little maiden stood and trembled
with clasped hands as she looked upon the fray. Ichabod lifted his
smock-frock to get his hands into the pockets of his corduroys, and
watched with the air of an old artist standing behind a young one.
‘You shouldn’t work at it so much, Master Richard,’ said Ichabod. ‘Tek
it easier, and wait for him. That’s it!’
The combat was brief and decisive. The youthful savage carried the
heavier metal, but he was slow with it; but suddenly, as if to show that
he was not altogether without activity, he turned and ran his hardest
Master Richard, with blue-gray eyes still glistening and hands still
clenched in the ardour of battle, turned upon the little girl, who was
some two years younger than himself At the sight of her he turned shy
and blushed, and the little girl turned shy and blushed also. She looked
at the ground, and then she looked at Richard, and then she looked at
the ground again. She was slender and delicate, and had very beautiful
soft brown eyes, and the hero of a minute back was abashed before her.
‘You ‘m a Mountain, baint you?’ said Ichabod, looking at her with
disfavour. She looked shyly at him, but did not answer. ‘What’s your
name?’ he asked, stooping towards her.
‘Julia Mountain,’ said the child, in a trembling treble.
‘Ah!’ said Ichabod, ‘I thought so. Come along, Master Richard, or else
we shall niver get hum again afore dark.’
Master Richard walked away with backward glances, shyly directed at the
little girl, and the little girl stood with her cheek inclining to her
shoulder, and the shoulder drawn up a little, as if to shelter her, and
looked after him. This exchange went on until Ichabod and the boy had
turned the corner of the lane, when Miss Julia Mountain ran home as
fast as her small legs would take her, and Master Richard Reddy, with a
vision in his mind, walked alongside his companion.
‘You should tek a lesson or two, Master Richard,’ said Ichabod, ‘and
then thee’dst do a heap better. I’m rusty nowadaysen, but I used to love
it when I was a young un.’
Master Eichard heard nothing of this or of the advice which followed it.
He enacted many times over the small adventure of the last five minutes,
and at the end of every mental history he traced, the little figure
stood in the lane looking shyly at him over one shoulder as he turned
the corner.