The Crazy Parson
Mrs. Julaper had grown weather-wise, living for so long among this noble
and solitary scenery, where people must observe Nature or else
nothing--where signs of coming storm or change are almost local, and
record themselves on particular cliffs and mountain-peaks, or in the
mists, or in mirrored tints of the familiar lake, and are easily learned
or remembered. At all events, her presage proved too true.
The sun had set an hour and more. It was dark; and an awful
thunder-storm, whose march, like the distant reverberations of an
invading army, had been faintly heard beyond the barriers of Blarwyn
Fells throughout the afternoon, was near them now, and had burst in
deep-mouthed battle among the ravines at the other side, and over the
broad lake, that glared like a sheet of burnished steel under its
flashes of dazzling blue. Wild and fitful blasts sweeping down the
hollows and cloughs of the fells of Golden Friars agitated the lake, and
bent the trees low, and whirled away their sere leaves in melancholy
drift in their tremendous gusts. And from the window, looking on a scene
enveloped in more than the darkness of the night, you saw in the
pulsations of the lightning, before "the speedy gleams the darkness
swallowed," the tossing trees and the flying foam and eddies on the
lake.
In the midst of the hurlyburly, a loud and long knocking came at the
hall-door of Mardykes. How long it had lasted before a chance lull made
it audible I do not know.
There was nothing picturesquely poor, any more than there were evidences
of wealth, anywhere in Sir Bale Mardykes' household. He had no lack of
servants, but they were of an inexpensive and homely sort; and the
hall-door being opened by the son of an old tenant on the estate--the
tempest beating on the other side of the house, and comparative shelter
under the gables at the front--he saw standing before him, in the
agitated air, a thin old man, who muttering, it might be, a benediction,
stepped into the hall, and displayed long silver tresses, just as the
storm had blown them, ascetic and eager features, and a pair of large
light eyes that wandered wildly. He was dressed in threadbare black; a
pair of long leather gaiters, buckled high above his knee, protecting
his thin shanks through moss and pool; and the singularity of his
appearance was heightened by a wide-leafed felt hat, over which he had
tied his handkerchief, so as to bring the leaf of it over his ears, and
to secure it from being whirled from his head by the storm.
This odd and storm-beaten figure--tall, and a little stooping, as well
as thin--was not unknown to the servant, who saluted him with something
of fear as well as of respect as he bid him reverently welcome, and
asked him to come in and sit by the fire.
"Get you to your master, and tell him I have a message to him from one
he has not seen for two-and-forty years."
As the old man, with his harsh old voice, thus spoke, he unknotted his
handkerchief and bet the rain-drops from his hat upon his knee.
The servant knocked at the library-door, where he found Sir Bale.
"Well, what's the matter?" cried Sir Bale sharply, from his chair before
the fire, with angry eyes looking over his shoulder.
"Here's 't sir cumman, Sir Bale," he answered.
"Sir," or "the Sir," is still used as the clergyman's title in the
Northumbrian counties.
"What sir?"
"Sir Hugh Creswell, if you please, Sir Bale."
"Ho!--mad Creswell?--O, the crazy parson. Well, tell Mrs. Julaper to let
him have some supper--and--and to let him have a bed in some suitable
place. That's what he wants. These mad fellows know what they are
about."
"No, Sir Bale Mardykes, that is not what he wants," said the loud wild
voice of the daft sir over the servant's shoulder. "Often has Mardykes
Hall given me share of its cheer and its shelter and the warmth of its
fire; and I bless the house that has been an inn to the wayfarer of the
Lord. But to-night I go up the lake to Pindar's Bield, three miles on;
and there I rest and refresh--not here."
"And why not _here_, Mr. Creswell?" asked the Baronet; for about this
crazy old man, who preached in the fields, and appeared and disappeared
so suddenly in the orbit of his wide and unknown perambulations of those
northern and border counties, there was that sort of superstitious
feeling which attaches to the mysterious and the good--an idea that it
was lucky to harbour and dangerous to offend him. No one knew whence he
came or whither he went. Once in a year, perhaps, he might appear at a
lonely farmstead door among the fells, salute the house, enter, and be
gone in the morning. His life was austere; his piety enthusiastic,
severe, and tinged with the craze which inspired among the rustic
population a sort of awe.
"I'll not sleep at Mardykes to-night; neither will I eat, nor drink, nor
sit me down--no, nor so much as stretch my hands to the fire. As the man
of God came out of Judah to king Jeroboam, so come I to you, sent by a
vision, to bear a warning; and as he said, 'If thou wilt give me half
thy house, I will not go in with thee, neither will I eat bread nor
drink water in this place,' so also say I."
"Do as you please," said Sir Bale, a little sulkily. "Say your say; and
you are welcome to stay or go, if go you will on so mad a night as
this."
"Leave us," said Creswell, beckoning the servant back with his thin
hands; "what I have to say is to your master."
The servant went, in obedience to a gesture from Sir Bale, and shut the
door.
The old man drew nearer to the Baronet, and lowering his loud stern
voice a little, and interrupting his discourse from time to time, to
allow the near thunder-peals to subside, he said,
"Answer me, Sir Bale--what is this that has chanced between you and
Philip Feltram?"
The Baronet, under the influence of that blunt and peremptory demand,
told him shortly and sternly enough.
"And of all these facts you are sure, else ye would not blast your early
companion and kinsman with the name of thief?"
"I _am_ sure," said Sir Bale grimly.
"Unlock that cabinet," said the old man with the long white locks.
"I've no objection," said Sir Bale; and he did unlock an old oak cabinet
that stood, carved in high relief with strange figures and gothic
grotesques, against the wall, opposite the fireplace. On opening it
there were displayed a system of little drawers and pigeon-holes such as
we see in more modern escritoires.
"Open that drawer with the red mark of a seal upon it," continued Hugh
Creswell, pointing to it with his lank finger.
Sir Bale did so; and to his momentary amazement, and even consternation,
there lay the missing note, which now, with one of those sudden caprices
of memory which depend on the laws of suggestion and association, he
remembered having placed there with his own hand.
"That is it," said old Creswell with a pallid smile, and fixing his wild
eyes on the Baronet. The smile subsided into a frown, and said he: "Last
night I slept near Haworth Moss; and your father came to me in a dream,
and said: 'My son Bale accuses Philip of having stolen a bank-note from
his desk. He forgets that he himself placed it in his cabinet. Come with
me.' I was, in the spirit, in this room; and he led me to this cabinet,
which he opened; and in that drawer he showed me that note. 'Go,' said
he, 'and tell him to ask Philip Feltram's pardon, else he will but go in
weakness to return in power;' and he said that which it is not lawful to
repeat. My message is told. Now a word from myself," he added sternly.
"The dead, through my lips, has spoken, and under God's thunder and
lightning his words have found ye. Why so uppish wi' Philip Feltram? See
how ye threaped, and yet were wrong. He's no tazzle--he's no taggelt.
Ask his pardon. Ye must change, or he will no taggelt. Go, in weakness,
come in power: mark ye the words. 'Twill make a peal that will be heard
in toon and desert, in the swirls o' the mountain, through pikes and
valleys, and mak' a waaly man o' thee."
The old man with these words, uttered in the broad northern dialect of
his common speech, strode from the room and shut the door. In another
minute he was forth into the storm, pursuing what remained of his long
march to Pindar's Bield.
"Upon my soul!" said Sir Bale, recovering from his sort of stun which
the sudden and strange visit had left, "that's a cool old fellow! Come
to rate me and teach me my own business in my own house!" and he rapped
out a fierce oath. "Change his mind or no, here he sha'n't stay
to-night--not an hour."
Sir Bale was in the lobby in a moment, and thundered to his servants:
"I say, put that fool out of the door--put him out by the shoulder, and
never let him put his foot inside it more!"
But the old man's yea was yea, and his nay nay. He had quite meant what
he said; and, as I related, was beyond the reach of the indignity of
extrusion.
Sir Bale on his return shut his door as violently as if it were in the
face of the old prophet.
"Ask Feltram's pardon, by Jove! For what? Why, any jury on earth would
have hanged him on half the evidence; and I, like a fool, was going to
let him off with his liberty and my hundred pound-note! Ask his pardon
indeed!"
Still there were misgivings in his mind; a consciousness that he did owe
explanation and apology to Feltram, and an insurmountable reluctance to
undertake either. The old dislike--a contempt mingled with fear--not any
fear of his malevolence, a fear only of his carelessness and folly; for,
as I have said, Feltram knew many things, it was believed, of the
Baronet's Continental and Asiatic life, and had even gently remonstrated
with him upon the dangers into which he was running. A simple fellow
like Philip Feltram is a dangerous depository of a secret. This Baronet
was proud, too; and the mere possession of his secrets by Feltram was an
involuntary insult, which Sir Bale could not forgive. He wished him far
away; and except for the recovery of his bank-note, which he could ill
spare, he was sorry that this suspicion was cleared up.
The thunder and storm were unabated; it seemed indeed that they were
growing wilder and more awful.
He opened the window-shutter and looked out upon that sublimest of
scenes; and so intense and magnificent were its phenomena, that Sir
Bale, for a while, was absorbed in this contemplation.
When he turned about, the sight of his £100 note, still between his
finger and thumb, made him smile grimly.
The more he thought of it, the clearer it was that he could not leave
matters exactly as they were. Well, what should he do? He would send for
Mrs. Julaper, and tell her vaguely that he had changed his mind about
Feltram, and that he might continue to stay at Mardykes Hall as usual.
That would suffice. She could speak to Feltram.
He sent for her; and soon, in the lulls of the great uproar without, he
could hear the jingle of Mrs. Julaper's keys and her light tread upon
the lobby.
"Mrs. Julaper," said the Baronet, in his dry careless way, "Feltram may
remain; your eloquence has prevailed. What have you been crying about?"
he asked, observing that his housekeeper's usually cheerful face was, in
her own phrase, 'all cried.'
"It is too late, sir; he's gone."
"And when did he go?" asked Sir Bale, a little put out. "He chose an odd
evening, didn't he? So like him!"
"He went about half an hour ago; and I'm very sorry, sir; it's a sore
sight to see the poor lad going from the place he was reared in, and a
hard thing, sir; and on such a night, above all."
"No one asked him to go to-night. Where is he gone to?"
"I don't know, I'm sure; he left my room, sir, when I was upstairs; and
Janet saw him pass the window not ten minutes after Mr. Creswell left
the house."
"Well, then, there's no good, Mrs. Julaper, in thinking more about it;
he has settled the matter his own way; and as he so ordains it--amen,
say I. Goodnight."