Produced by Al Haines.
*RED SPIDER*
BY
SABINE BARING-GOULD
THE AUTHOR OF 'JOHN HERRING' 'MEHALAH' &c.
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1887
[_The right of translation is reserved_]
*PREFACE.*
Fifty years ago! Half a century has passed since the writer was a child
in the parish where he has laid the scene of this tale.
There he had a trusty nurse, and a somewhat romantic story was attached
to her life. Faithful, good creature! She was carrying the writer in
her arms over a brook by a bridge elevated high above the water, when
the plank broke. She at once held up her charge over her head, with
both arms, and made no attempt to save herself, thinking only of him, as
she fell on the stones and into the water. _He_ escaped wholly unhurt,
owing to her devotion.
Many years after, the author read a little German story which curiously
recalled to him his nurse and her career. When a few years ago he
revisited the scenes of his childhood, he thought to recall on paper
many and many a recollection of village life in the south-west of
England in one of its most still and forgotten corners. So he has taken
this thread of story, not wholly original in its initiation, and has
altered and twisted it to suit his purpose, and has strung on it sundry
pictures of what was beginning to fade half a century ago in Devon. Old
customs, modes of thought, of speech, quaint sayings, weird
superstitions are all disappearing out of the country, utterly and for
ever.
The labourer is now enfranchised, education is universal, railways have
made life circulate freer; and we stand now before a great social
dissolving view, from which old things are passing away, and what is
coming on we can only partly guess, not wholly distinguish.
In revisiting the parish of Bratton Clovelly, the author found little of
the outward scenery changed, but the modes of life were in a state of
transition. The same hills, the same dear old moors and woods, the same
green coombs, the same flowers, the same old church, and the same
glorious landscape. The reader will perhaps accept with leniency a
slight tale for the sake of the pictures it presents of what is gone for
ever, or is fast fading away. Coryndon's Charity, of course, is
non-existent in Bratton parish. The names are all taken, Christian and
sire, from the early registers of the parish. Village characteristics,
incidents, superstitions have been worked in, from actual recollections.
The author has tried to be very close in local colour; and, if it be not
too bold a comparison, he would have this little story considered, like
one of Birket Foster's water-colours, rather as a transcript from nature
than as a finished, original, highly-arranged and considered picture.
*CONTENTS*
*OF*
*THE FIRST VOLUME.*
CHAPTER
I. THE BROTHERS-IN-LAW
II. THE MONEY-SPINNER
III. WELLON'S CAIRN
IV. THE WHITE HARE
V. 'TIMEO DANAOS ET DONA FERENTES'
VI. THE PROGRESS OF STRIFE
VII. CORYNDON'S CHARITY
VIII. A MALINGERER
IX. CHARLES LUXMORE
X. ON THE STEPS
XI. IN THE LINNEY
XII. LANGFORD
XIII. THE REVEL
XIV. THE LAMB-KILLER
XV. A BOLT FROM THE BLUE
XVI. KEEPING WATCH
XVII. MRS. VEALE
XVIII. TREASURE TROVE
*RED SPIDER.*
*CHAPTER I.*
*THE BROTHERS-IN-LAW.*
Heigh! for a badger-skin waistcoat like that of Hillary Nanspian of
Chimsworthy! What would not I give to be the owner of such a waistcoat?
Many a covetous glance was cast at that waistcoat in the parish church
of Bratton Clovelly, in the county of Devon, on Sunday, where it
appeared during public worship in a pew; and when the parson read the
Decalogue, many a heart was relieved to learn that the prohibition
against covetousness did not extend to badger-skin waistcoats. That
waistcoat made of the skin of a badger Hillary Nanspian had himself
drawn and killed. In colour it was silver-grey graduating to black.
The fur was so deep that the hand that grasped it sank into it. The
waistcoat was lined with red, and had flaps of fur to double over the
breast when the wind lay in the east and the frost was cruel. When the
wind was wet and warm, the flaps were turned back, exposing the gay
crimson lining, and greatly enhancing its beauty. The waistcoat had
been constructed for Hillary Nanspian by his loving wife before she
died.
Hillary Nanspian of Chimsworthy was a big, brisk, florid man, with light
grey eyes. His face was open, round, hearty, and of the colour of a
ribstone pippin. He was, to all appearance, a well-to-do man. But
appearances are not always to be trusted. Chimsworthy, where he lived,
was a farm of two hundred acres; the subsoil clay, some of the land
moor, and more bog; but the moor was a fine place for sheep, and the bog
produced pasture for the young stock when the clay grass land was
drought-dry. Hillary had an orchard of the best sorts of apples grown
in the West, and he had a nursery of apples, of grafts, and of
seedlings. When he ate a particularly good apple, he collected the pips
for sowing, put them in a paper cornet, and wrote thereon, 'This here
apple was a-eated of I on ----,' such and such a day, 'and cruel good he
were too.' (_Cruel_, in the West, means no more than 'very.')
The farm of Chimsworthy had come to Nanspian through his wife, who was
dead. His brother-in-law was Taverner Langford of Langford. Taverner's
mother had been a Hill, Blandina Hill, heiress of Chimsworthy, and it
went to her daughter Blandina, who carried it when she married to her
Cornish husband, Hillary Nanspian.
Taverner Langford was unmarried, getting on in years, and had no nearer
relative than young Hillary Nanspian, his nephew, the only child of his
deceased sister Blandina. It was an understood thing in the parish of
Bratton Clovelly that young Hillary would be heir to his uncle, and
succeed to both Langford and Chimsworthy. Taverner said nothing about
this, and took no particular notice of Hillary junior, but, as Hillary
senior and the parish argued, if Taverner does not leave everything to
the young one, whom can he make his heir? Hillary was a warm-blooded
man. He suffered little from cold; he liked to live in his
shirt-sleeves. When rain fell, he threw a sack over his shoulders. He
drew on his cloth coat only for church and market. He was an imposing
man, out of his coat or in it, big in girth, broad in beam, and tall of
stature. But especially imposing was he when he rode to market on his
white cob, in his badger-skin waistcoat turned up with crimson. The
consciousness that he was, or ought to be, a man of substance never left
him. His son Hillary would be a wealthy yeoman, and he--he Hillary
senior--was the father of this son, this wealthy yeoman prospective. On
this thought he puffed himself up. Considering this, he jingled the
coins in his pocket. Boasting of this he drank with the farmers till he
was as red in face as the lappets of his waistcoat.
Adjoining the house was a good oak wood covering the slope to the brook
that flowed in the bottom. Fine sticks of timber had been cut thence,
time out of mind. The rafters of the old house, the beams of the
cattle-sheds, the posts of the gates, the very rails ('shivers,' as they
were locally called), the flooring ('plancheon' locally), all were of
oak, hard as iron; and all came out of Chimsworthy wood. An avenue of
contorted, stunted limes led to the entrance gates of granite, topped
with stone balls; and the gates gave admission to a yard deep in dung.
The house was low, part of cob--that is, clay and straw kneaded and
unbaked--part of stone laid in clay, not in lime. In the cob walls,
plastered white, were oak windows, in the stone walls two granite
windows. The house was shaped like the letter T, of which the top
stroke represents the stone portion, containing the parlour and the best
bedroom over it, and the stairs. The roofs were thatched. There was
more roof than wall to Chimsworthy, which cowered almost into the
ground.
At the back of the house rose the lofty bank of Broadbury, the highest
ridge between Dartmoor and the Atlantic. The rain that fell on the Down
above oozed through the shale about Chimsworthy, so that the lane and
yards were perpetually wet, and compelled those who lived there to walk
in wading boots.
In shape, Broadbury is a crescent, with the horns east and west, and the
lap of the half moon lies to the south. In this lap, the nursery of
countless streams, stands Chimsworthy, with a bank of pines behind it,
and above the black pines golden gorse, and over the golden gorse blue
sky and fleecy white clouds. The countless springs issue from emerald
patches of bog, where bloom the purple butterwort, the white grass of
Parnassus, the yellow asphodel, and the blood-tipped sundew. The
rivulets become rills, and swell to brooks which have scooped themselves
coombs in the hill slope, and the coombs as they descend deepen into
valleys, whose sides are rich with oak coppice, and the bottoms are rank
with cotton grass, fleecy and flickering as the white clouds that drift
overhead.
Chimsworthy had originally belonged to the Hills, a fine old yeoman
family, but the last of the Hills had carried it by marriage to the
Langfords of Langford. How it had gone to Hillary Nanspian by his
marriage with the daughter of Mrs. Langford has already been told.
Langford had been owned for many generations by the Langfords, once a
gentle family, with large estates both in Bratton Clovelly and in Marham
Church, near Bude in Cornwall. Nothing now remained to Taverner but the
ancestral house and the home estate of some four hundred acres.
Chimsworthy had been united with it by his father's marriage, but lost
again by his sister's union with the Cornishman Nanspian.
Something like twenty-four months of married life was all that poor
Blandina had; and since he had lost his wife, Hillary had remained a
widower. Many a farmer's daughter had set her eyes on him, for he was a
fine man, but in vain. Hillary Nanspian had now lived at Chimsworthy
twenty-two years. His son Hillary was aged twenty.
Langford was a different sort of place from Chimsworthy, and Taverner
Langford was a different sort of man from Hillary Nanspian. Langford
stood higher than Chimsworthy. It was built on the edge of Broadbury,
but slightly under its lea, in a situation commanding an extensive and
superb view of Dartmoor, that rose against the eastern horizon, a wall
of turquoise in sunshine, of indigo in cloudy weather, with picturesque
serrated ridge. The intermediate country was much indented with deep
valleys, running north and south, clothed in dark woods, and the effect
was that of gazing over a billowy sea at a mountainous coast.
Not a tree, scarce a bush, stood about Langford, which occupied a site
too elevated and exposed for the growth of anything but thorns and
gorse. The house itself was stiff, slate roofed, and with slate-encased
walls, giving it a harsh metallic appearance.
Taverner Langford was a tall, gaunt man, high-shouldered, with a stoop,
dark-haired, dark-eyed, and sallow-complexioned. He had high cheekbones
and a large hard mouth. His hair was grizzled with age, but his eyes
had lost none of their keenness, they bored like bradawls. His eyebrows
were very thick and dark, looking more like pieces of black fur glued on
to his forehead than natural growths. He never looked any one steadily
in the face, but cast furtive glances, with which, however, he saw
vastly more than did Hillary with his wide grey-eyed stare.
Taverner Langford had never married. It had never been heard in Bratton
that he had courted a girl. His housekeeping was managed by a
grey-faced, sour woman, Widow Veale. As Hillary Nanspian was people's
churchwarden, Taverner Langford was parson's churchwarden. The Reverend
Mr. Robbins, the rector, had appointed him, at the Easter vestry five
years before the opening of this tale, because he was a Dissenter. He
did this for two reasons: first, to disarm Langford's opposition to the
Church; and secondly, to manifest his own tolerance--an easy tolerance
that springs out of void of convictions. The two wardens were
reappointed annually. They and two others acted as feoffees of an
estate left in charity for the poor. They let the land to each other
alternate years at a shilling an acre, and consumed the proceeds in a
dinner at the 'Ring of Bells' once a year. The poor were provided with
the scraps that fell from the feoffees' table.
Taverner Langford was respected in the place and throughout the
neighbourhood, because he represented a family as old as the parish
church, a family which had once owned large possessions, and maintained
some state; also because he was an exceedingly shrewd man, whom no one
could overreach, and who was supposed to have amassed much money. But
he was not a popular man. He was taciturn, self-contained, and shunned
society. He drank water only, never smoked nor swore; with the farmers
he was unsociable, with the labourers ungracious, in all his dealings he
was grasping and unyielding. Dishonourable he was not; unscrupulous he
was not, except only in exacting the last penny of his bargains.
Hillary Nanspian's presence was commanding and he was fond of his glass,
smoked and swore; the glass, the pipe, and an oath all links of good
fellowship. Nevertheless, he also was not a popular man. In the first
place he was a foreigner--that is, a Cornishman; in the second, he was
arrogant and boastful.
The brothers-in-law got on better with each other than with others.
Each knew and allowed for the other's infirmities. Towards Taverner
Hillary bated his pride; he had sufficient discretion not to brag in the
presence of a man to whom he owed money. Hillary was a bad man of
business, wasteful, liberal, and careless of his money. He had saved
nothing out of Chimsworthy, and, after a run of bad seasons, had been
forced to borrow of his brother-in-law to meet current expenses.
Taverner and Hillary were not cordial friends, but they were friends.
Taverner felt, though he did not acknowledge, his isolation, and he was
glad to have his brother-in-law to whom he could open his lips. Knowing
himself to be of a good old gentle family, Taverner kept himself from
terms of familiarity with the farmers, but he was too close with his
money to take his place with the gentry.
There was one point on which Hillary irrationally sensitive; there was
also a point on which Taverner was tender. Each avoided touching the
delicate and irritable spot in the other. Once, and only once, had
Nanspian flared up at a word from Langford, and for a moment their
friendship had been threatened with rupture.
Hillary Nanspian was, as has been said, a Cornishman, and the rooted,
ineradicable belief of the Devonians is that their Celtic Trans-Tamarian
neighbours are born with tails. The people of Bratton Clovelly persisted
in asserting that Nanspian had a tail concealed under his garments.
When first he entered the parish, rude boys had shouted after inquiries
about the caudal appendage, he had retaliated so unmercifully, that
their parents had resented it, and the chastisement, instead of driving
the prejudice out, had deepened it into indelible conviction. 'For
why,' it was argued, 'should he take on so, unless it be true?'
He was annoyed at church by the interested attention paid to him by the
women and children when he seated himself in the Chimsworthy pew, and
when riding to market, by the look of curiosity with which his seat on
the saddle was watched by the men.
The only occasion on which the friendship of Langford and Nanspian
threatened a cleavage, was when the former, whether with kindly
intention or sarcastically cannot be determined, urged on Hillary the
advisability of his publicly bathing in the river Thrustle, one hot
summer day, so as to afford ocular demonstration to the people of the
parish that they laboured under a delusion in asserting the prolongation
of his spine. This proposition so irritated Nanspian, that he burst
into a tempest of oaths, and for some weeks would not speak to his
brother-in-law. Though eventually reconciled, the recollection of the
affront was never wholly effaced.
The sensitive point with Taverner Langford was of a very different
nature. Not being a married man he was obliged to engage a housekeeper
to manage his dairy, his maids, and his domestic affairs generally. His
housekeeper, Mrs. Veale, was a vinegary woman, of very unpleasant
appearance. She managed admirably, was economical, active, and clean.
The mere fact, however, of her being at Langford was enough to give rise
to some scandal. She was intensely disliked by all the servants on the
farm and by the maids in the house.
'Why don't Mr. Langford get rid of the woman, so ill-favoured, so
sharp-tongued, so unpleasant, unless he can't help hisself?' was
reasoned. 'You may depend on it there's something.'
Taverner was touchy on this matter. He broke with Farmer Yelland for
inquiring of him flippantly, 'How goes the missus?'
Langford detested the woman, who had a livid face, pink eyes, and a
rasping voice; but as scandal attached to him with such a creature in
his house, he argued: How much more consistency would it assume had he a
better favoured housekeeper!
'Moreover,' he reasoned, 'where can I get one who will look after my
interests so well as Mrs. Veale? If she be bitter to me, she's sloes
and wormwood to the servants.'
*CHAPTER II.*
*THE MONEY-SPINNER.*
A little spark will burn a big hole--a very little spark indeed was the
occasion of a great blaze of temper, and a great gap in the friendship
of the brothers-in-law. Langford possessed this disadvantage: it lay so
high, and was so exposed, that it lacked cosiness. It had nowhere about
it a nook where a man might sit and enjoy the sun without being cut by
the wind. Broadbury was the meeting-place of all the winds. Thither
the wind roared without let from the Atlantic, and to the back of it
every tree bowed from the north-west; thither it swept from the east
with a from the rocky crests of Dartmoor, sparing the intervening
park-like lowlands.
Chimsworthy had no prospect from its windows; but it stood at the source
of an affluent of the Tamar, and beyond its granite gates, across the
lane that led up to Broadbury, was a stile, and beyond the stile a slope
with a view down the valley to the setting sun and the purple range of
Cornish tors above Liskeard, Caradon, Boarrah, Kilmar, and Trevartha.
On Sunday evenings, and whenever the fancy took him, Taverner Langford
would descend Broadbury by the lane, cross the stile, and seat himself
on a rude granite slab on the farther side of the hedge, that had been
placed there by one of the Hills--it had been the 'quoit' of a great
prehistoric dolmen or cromlech, but the supporters had been removed to
serve as gateposts, and the covering-stone now formed a seat. On this
stone Taverner Langford spent many an hour with his chin on the handle
of his thorn stick, looking over the wood and meadows and arable land of
Chimsworthy, and scheming how money might be made out of the farm were
it profitably worked. He noted with jealous eye the ravages caused by
neglect, the gaps in the hedges, the broken roofs, the crop of thistles,
the choked drains bursting many yards above their mouths, bursting
because their mouths had not been kept open. The farm had been managed
by Taverner's father along with Langford, and had been handed over on
Blandina's marriage, in excellent condition, to Nanspian, and had gone
back ever since he had enjoyed it. This angered Langford, though he
knew Chimsworthy would never be his. 'This is the sort of tricks to
which young Larry is reared, which he will play with Langford. As the
bull gambols, so capers the calf.'
Hillary did not relish the visits of Taverner to the Look-out Stone. He
thought, and thought rightly, that Langford was criticising unfavourably
his management of the estate. He was conscious that the farm had
deteriorated, but he laid the blame on the weather and the badness of
construction of the drains, on everything but himself. 'How can you
expect drains to last, put down as they are, one flat stone on edge and
another leaning on it aslant? Down it goes with the weight of earth
atop, and the passage is choked. I'll eat a Jew without mint-sauce if a
drain so constructed will last twenty years.' Chimsworthy could never
go to Taverner, what right then had he to grumble if it were in bad
order?
When Langford came to the Look-out Stone Hillary soon heard of it, and
went to him in his shirt-sleeves, pipe in mouth, and with a jug of cyder
in his hand. Then some such a greeting as this ensued:
'Trespassing again, Taverner?'
'Looking at the land over which I've walked, and where I've weeded many
a day, with my father, before you was thought of in Bratton Clovelly.'
Then Hillary drew the pipe from his lips, and, raking the horizon with
the sealing-waxed end, said, 'Fine land, yonder.'
'Moor--naught but moor,' answered Langford disparagingly.
'No cawding of sheep on peaty moor,' said Nanspian triumphantly.
'No fattening of bullocks on heather,' replied Taverner. 'It is wet in
Devon, it is wetter in Cornwall.'
'Wetter! That is not possible. Here we live on the rose of a
watering-can, pillowed among bogs.'
'There are worse things than water,' sneered Langford, pointing to the
jug.
'Ah!' said Hillary in defence. 'Sour is the land that grows sour apples
and sour folks.'
'Heaven made the apples--they are good enough. Man makes the
cyder--which is evil. Thus it is with other good gifts, we pervert them
to our bad ends.'
This was the formula gone through, with slight variations, whenever the
brothers-in-law met at the granite seat. A little ruffle of each other,
but it went no further.
Hillary Nanspian was a talker, not loud but continuous. He had a rich,
low, murmuring voice, with which he spoke out of one side of his mouth,
whilst he inhaled tobacco through the other. It was pleasant to listen
to, like the thrum of a bumble-bee or the whirr of a winnowing fan. The
eyes closed, the head nodded, and sleep ensued. But every now and then
Hillary uttered an oath, for he was not a man to wear a padlock on his
lips, and then the dozing listener woke with a start. When that
listener was Taverner, he uttered his protest. 'The word is uncalled
for, Hillary; change it for one that sounds like it, and is inoffensive
and unmeaning.'
There was much difference in the way in which the two men behaved when
angered. Hillary was hot and blazed up in a sudden outburst. He was
easily angered, but soon pacified, unless his pride were hurt.
Taverner, on the other hand, though equally to take umbrage, took it in
another fashion. He turned sallow, said little, and brooded over his
wrong. If an opportunity offered to resent it, it was not allowed to
pass, however long after the event. One evening the brothers-in-law
were at the Look-out Stone. Hillary was standing with his foot on the
block on which Taverner sat.
'I'll tell you what,' said Nanspian, 'I wish I'd got a few thousands to
spare. Swaddledown is for sale, and the farm joins mine, and would be
handy for stock.'
'And I wish I could buy Bannadon. That will be in the market shortly,
but I cannot unless you repay me what you have borrowed.'
'Can't do that just now; not comfortably, you understand.'
'Then what is the good of your scheming to buy Swaddledown? A man
without teeth mustn't pick nuts.'
'And what is the good of your wanting Bannadon when you have as much as
you can manage at Langford? A man with his mouth full mustn't take a
second bite till he's swallowed the first.'
Then neither spoke for a few moments. Presently, however, Hillary drew a
long whiff, and blew the smoke before him. Slowly he pulled the pipe
from between his lips, and with the end of the stem pointed down the
valley. 'It would be something to be able to call those fields my own.'
'That would be pulling on boots to hide the stocking full of holes,'
sneered Taverner. Hillary coloured, and his eyes twinkled. 'There is no
picking feathers off a toad, or clothes off a naked man,' he muttered;
'and if you squeeze a crab-apple you get only sourness. If I were not
your brother-in-law I shouldn't put up with your words. But you can't
help it. Sloes and blackberries grow in the same hedge, and their
natures are as they began. Older they grow, they grow either sweeter or
sourer.'
'Ah!' retorted Taverner, 'out of the acre some grow wheat and others
nettles.'
'It is all very well your talking,' said Hillary, putting his thumbs in
his waistcoat arm-holes, and expanding. 'You, no doubt, have made
money, one way or other. I have not; but then, I am not a screw. I am
a free-handed, open man. God forbid that I should be a screw!'
'A screw holds together and a wedge drives apart,' said Taverner.
'I don't know,' said Hillary, looking across lovingly at the Swaddledown
fields, 'but I may be able to find the money. My credit is not so low
that I need look far. If you will not help me others will.'
'How can you raise it? on a mortgage? You cannot without young Hillary's
consent, and he is not of age.'
'Luck will come my way some time,' said Nanspian. 'Luck is not nailed
to one point of the compass, brother Langford. Don't you flatter
yourself that it always goes to you. Luck veers as the wind.'
'That is true, but as the wind here sets three days out of four from the
west, so does luck set most time towards the thrifty man.'
'Sooner or later it will turn to me.'
'I know what you mean. I've heard tell of what you have said to the
farmers when warmed with liquor. The wind don't blow over a thistlehead
without carrying away some of its down and dropping it where least
wanted. I've heard your boasts, they are idle--idle as thistledown. Do
you think you'll ever succeed to Langford? I'll live to see your
burying.'
'My burying won't help you to Chimsworthy,' retorted Hillary. 'My Larry
stands in your way. Heigh! I said it! The luck is coming my way
already!' he exclaimed eagerly. He put down his foot, placed both palms
on the slab of granite, and leaned over it.
'Not a moment before it is needed,' said Taverner. 'You've had some bad
falls, and they'd have been breakdown tumbles but for my help. I
suppose you must let Swaddledown go; it's a pity too, lying handy as the
button at the flap of your pocket.'
'She is coming my way as fast as she can!'
'What, Swaddledown?'
'No! Luck! Look! running right into my hands. The money-spinner!'
'The money-spinner!' Taverner started to his feet. 'Where? Whither is
she running?'
'Stand out of the sunlight, will you!' exclaimed Hillary. 'How can I
see and secure her with your shadow cast across the stone?'
'Where is she?'
'I tell you she is making direct for me. I knew the luck would come if
I waited. Curse you! Get on one side, will you?'
'Don't swear,' said Langford, standing at the other end of the granite
slab, and resting his hands on it. 'The money-spinner is a tickle
(touchy) beast, and may take offence at a godless word. I see her, she
has turned. You've scared her with your oaths, and now she is running
towards me.'
'She's going to fetch some of your luck and bring it to my pocket; she's
on the turn again.'
'No, she is not. She is making for me, not you.'
'But she is on my stone. She has brought the luck to me.'
'She may be on your stone now, but she is leaving it for my hand, as
fast as her red legs can carry her.'
'You're luring her away from me, are you?' cried Hillary, blazing as red
as any money-spinner.
'Luring! She's running her natural course as sure as a fox runs before
the wind.'
'Stand out of the sun! It is the ugly shade you cast that chills her.
She goes where she may be warmest.'
'Out of thine own mouth thou speakest thy condemnation,' scoffed
Langford. 'Of course she goes to the warmest corner, and which is
warmest, my pocket or thine?--the full or the empty?'
'The spinner is on my stone, and I will have her!' cried Hillary.
'Your stone!--yes, yours because you got it and Chimsworthy away from
me.'
'The spinner is by your hand!' roared Nanspian, and with an oath he
threw himself across the stone and swept the surface with his hands.
Langford uttered an exclamation of anger. 'You have crushed--you have
killed her! There is an end of luck to you, you long-tailed Cornish
ourang-outang!'
Hillary Nanspian staggered back. His face became dark with rage. He
opened his lips, but was inarticulate for a moment; then he roared, 'You
say that, do you, you ----, that let yourself be led and tongue-lashed
by your housekeeper.'
'Our friendship is at an end,' said Langford, turning livid, and his
dark bushy brows met across his forehead. 'Never shall you set foot in
Langford now.'
'Never! It will come to my Larry, and I'll drink your burying ale there
yet.'
'Larry shall never have it.'
'You can't keep him out,' exclaimed Hillary.
'Do not be so sure of that,' said Taverner.
'I am sure. I have seen the parchments.'
'I know them better than you,' laughed Langford. Then he went to the
stile to leave the field.
'I'll have the law of you,' shouted Hillary; 'you are trespassing on my
land.'
'I trespassing!' mocked Langford; 'this is a stile leading to
Swaddledown.'
'There is no right of way here. This is a private stile leading only to
the Look-out Stone. I will have the law of you, I swear.'
Thus it was that the friendship of twenty-two years was broken, and the
brothers-in-law became declared and deadly enemies. The friendship was
broken irremediably by an insect almost microscopic--a little scarlet
spider no larger than a mustard-seed, invested by popular superstition
with the power of spinning money in the pocket of him who secures it.
*CHAPTER III*
*WELLON'S CAIRN.*
Whilst Hillary Nanspian and Taverner Langford were falling out over a
minute red spider, Hillary junior, or Larry as he was called by his
intimates, was talking to Honor Luxmore in a nook of the rubble of
Wellon's Cairn.
Wellon's Cairn is a great barrow, or tumulus on Broadbury, not far from
Langworthy. Its original name has been lost. Since a certain Wellon was
hung in chains on a gallows set up on this mound for the murder of three
women it has borne his name.
The barrow was piled up of stones and black peat earth, and was covered
with gorse, so that the old British warrior who lay beneath may indeed
be said to have made his bed in glory. The gorse brake not only blazed
as fire, but streamed forth perfume like a censer. Only on the summit
was a bare space, where the gallows had stood, and Wellon had dropped
piecemeal, and been trodden by the sheep into the black soil.
On the south-west side, facing the sun, was a hollow. Treasure-seekers
had dug into the mound. Tradition said that therein lay a hero in
harness of gold. The panoply that wrapped him round was indeed of gold,
but it was the gold of the ever-blooming gorse. Having found nothing
but a few flint flakes and broken sherds, the seekers had abandoned the
cairn, without filling up the cavity. This had fallen in, and was lined
with moss and short grass, and fringed about with blushing heath and
blazing gorse.
In this bright and fragrant hollow, from the world, and sheltered from
the wind that wafted down on her the honey breath of the furze, and
exposed to the warmth of the declining sun, sat Honor Luxmore; and near
her, not seated, but leaning against the side of the excavation, stood
Hillary junior talking to her.
Hillary was like his father, well built, fair-haired, and flushed with
life. His eyes were blue, quick and honest, sparkling with fun; and his
bearing was that of the heir of Chimsworthy and Langford. There was
unmistakable self-reliance in his face, making up, in measure, for lack
of superior intelligence.
Honor Luxmore demands a fuller account than young Hillary.
Some way down the lane from Wellon's Cairn stood a cottage. This
cottage was constructed on the bank or hedge above the roadway, so that
the door was reached by a flight of steps, partly cut in the rock,
partly constructed of stone. A handrail assisted ascent and descent.
The cottage seemed to have taken refuge up the side of the bank to
escape from the water in the lane. Actually the roadway was cut through
shale to some depth, leaving the cottage on the true surface of the
land. The road had no doubt in part been artificially cut, but
certainly it had been also scooped in part by the water, which, issuing
from the joints of the shale, converted it into a watercourse. The
sides of the road were rich with moss and fern, and the moss and fern
were spangled with drops that oozed out of the rock. Below the steps
was a spring, in a hole scooped in the side of the loose, shaley rock.
The cottage itself was of cob, whitewashed, with a thatched roof, brown
and soft as the fur of a mole. The windows were small and low, In this
cottage lived Oliver Luxmore, a man poor in everything but children, and
of these he possessed more than he knew how to provide for. The cottage
was like a hive. Flaxen-haired boys and girls of all ages might be seen
pouring out on their way to school, or swarming home in the evening.
They were all pretty children, with dazzling blue eyes and clear
complexions and fair hair, from the youngest, a little maid of three,
upwards; and what was better than beauty, they were patterns of neatness
and cleanliness. According to the proverb, cleanliness comes next to
goodliness, but these little Luxmores were both cleanly and goodly. The
goodliness they drew from their parents, but the cleanliness was due to
Honor, the eldest daughter of Oliver Luxmore, who stood to her brothers
and sisters in the place of mother, for the wife of Luxmore had died
three years ago, just after the birth of her youngest.
The father was a carrier, who drove a van on Fridays to Tavistock, and
on Saturdays to Okehampton, the market-days at these respective places.
On the other week-days he worked for the farmers, doing odd jobs, and so
earning money for the sustenance of his many children.
Oliver Luxmore was a quiet, dreamy, unenergetic man, who was hampered by
a belief that he was the right heir to a good property, which would
certainly be his if only he were able to find the necessary registers,
but what these registers were, whether of marriage or birth, he was
uncertain. At the extreme limits of the parish, in a pretty situation,
lay a good house of Queen Anne's reign, with some fine trees, and traces
of gardens, and a fishpond, called Coombe Park, which had belonged to
the Luxmoores or Luxmores. But this property had been sold, and Oliver
maintained that if he had had but one hundred pounds wherewith to find
the registers, Coombe Park could not have been sold, and he would be a
squire there, with a good fortune. He had visited a lawyer in
Okehampton, and another at Tavistock, to ask them to take up his on
speculation, but Oliver's ideas were so hazy as to his pedigree, never
resolving themselves into definite statements of fact, that both one and
the other declined to touch his claim unless they were given some
certain ground on which to work.
Then he went to the Rector of Bratton, and with his help extracted all
the entries of births, marriages, and deaths of the Luxmores--pages of
them, showing that from the beginning of the sixteenth century the name
had abounded there, and belonged to or was assumed by persons of all
ranks and conditions. Then Oliver took this list to the Okehampton
lawyer.
'Look here,' said he, 'my eldest daughter is called Honor, and in 1662
John Luxmore, gentleman, and Temperance, his wife, had a daughter
baptised called Honor. That's proof, is it not?'
'Why was your daughter christened by this name?'
'Well, you see my wife was Honor, and so we called our first girl after
her.'
This may be taken as a specimen that will suffice of Oliver's evidences,
and as a justification of the solicitors declining to take up his claim.
'It is one hundred pounds that is wanted to do it,' said Oliver Luxmore.
'If I had that to spend on the registers, it would come right enough. I
always heard my father say that if we had our rights we shouldn't be in
the cottage in Water Lane.'
Oliver spent money and wasted time over his ineffectual attempts to
prove his descent and establish his rights, but he had not the slightest
idea what to search for and how to search. He did not even know his
grandfather's Christian-name, but believed it began with a J, for he had
an old linen shirt that was marked in the tail with J. L., and was so
strong and sound that he wore it still. J. might stand for John, or
James, or Joseph, or Jeremiah. But then he was not _quite_ sure the
shirt had belonged to his grandfather, but he had heard his mother say
she believed it had.
On days when he might have been earning money he would wander away to
Coombe Park, prowl round the estate estimating its value, or go into the
house to drink cyder with the yeoman who now owned and occupied it, to
tell him that his claim might yet be established, and to assure him that
he would deal honourably and liberally with him when he turned him out.
The yeoman and his wife regarded him as something of a nuisance, but
nevertheless treated him with respect. There was no knowing, they said,
but that he might prove in the end to be the heir, and then where would
they be? Oliver would have liked to see the title-deeds, but of these
he was not allowed a glimpse, though he could not have read them had he
seen them, or made his claim the clearer if he had been able to read
them.
We have said that Oliver Luxmore worked for the farmers on the days of
the week on which he was not carrying between Bratton and Tavistock and
Okehampton; but Thursdays and Mondays were broken days. On Thursdays he
went about soliciting orders, and on Mondays he went about distributing
parcels. Thus he had only two clear days for jobbing. The work of a
carrier is desultory, and unfits him for manual labour and for
persevering work. He gets into idle, gossiping ways. When he picks up
a parcel or a passenger he has to spend a quarter of an hour discussing
what has to be done with the parcel, and has to settle the passenger
comfortably among the parcels, without the passenger impinging on the
parcels, or the parcels incommoding the passenger.
Oliver was an obliging, amiable man. In the front of his van was a
seat, the top of which could be raised on hinges, and in which he
deposited watches that went to be cleaned, books of the Reading Club
that travelled between subscribers, medicine bottles and boxes of pills,
ribbons, brooches, and other delicate goods. The lid of this box was
sat on and kept secure by Oliver. He was devoid of humour. To every
commission, to every joke, to every reprimand, he had but one answer,
'Certainly, certainly, very true.'
'Oliver,' said Nanspian one day, 'I can suggest to you a means of
increasing your income. Put a sitting of eggs under you when you go to
market, and sell the young chickens when you get there.'
'Certainly, certainly, sir, very true,' was his civil reply, without a
muscle of his face moving.
'Oh, Mr. Luxmore!' exclaimed Mrs. Robbins, the rectoress, 'this is the
same book you brought me last month from the parsonage at Maristowe. I
have had it and returned it, and now you bring it me again. Mind it
goes back on Friday; and you shall not be paid for your trouble, as I
cannot be expected to read the same book over twice.'
'Certainly, certainly, ma'am, very true.'
'Oh, Mr. Luxmore,' said Mrs. Veale, 'you are to mind and match me the
silk, cut on the cross, and if the shade be out, I won't take it, you
must return it, and pay for it from your own pocket.'
'Certainly, certainly, ma'am.'
'The Vivid,' as Mr. Luxmore's van was called, belied its name. There
was no vividity (pass the word) about it. It went slowly up hill,
because the horse had so much to draw. It went slower down hill, because
it had to back against such a prodigious weight, descending by natural
velocity. There was not a mile--not half a mile--of level road between
Bratton Clovelly and the market-towns.
The carrier's horse was a rough creature, brown, with a long tail, thick
mane, and coarse hair about the fetlocks, of the colour of tow. It lived
in a precarious manner; the children cut grass in the hedges for it, and
it was sometimes turned out on Broadbury, with hobbles on its feet. It
ate the refuse of Luxmore's vegetable garden, the turnip-tops, the
potato parings, the maggot-nibbled outer cabbage leaves, and the decayed
apples from his trees. Once, when the horse had knocked his nose, and
Luxmore had put a linseed poultice over it, in a bit of sacking tied
round the head with four stout tapes, when his back was turned the horse
curled his tongue out of his mouth, detached the poultice, and ate it,
linseed, sacking, and tapes, to the last grain and thread. There was
nothing but stones that horse would not eat. He bit away great pieces
from his manger. He took a bite out of Luxmore's trousers, he gnawed
the bark off the cherry-tree by his gate, he gobbled up nettles,
thistles, furze, as though his appetite were as vitiated as an East
Indian's.
Oliver Luxmore had to put up with a good many bad debts: his business
did not bring him in much money; he was never able to lay by a penny:
how could he with so many mouths to feed at home? Honor would have been
unable to make both ends meet unless she had been a manager. The family
would have been better off if Charles, the eldest son, two years the
senior of Honor, had fulfilled his duty to his own. But Charles, having
reached the full wage-earning age, had enlisted, and was away on foreign
service. His father and sister did not even know where he was, for he
had not troubled himself to write since his departure. Charles had
always been a wild and headstrong boy who needed a firm hand over him to
direct him right. But Oliver Luxmore's hand was weak, and the mother, a
shrewd, painstaking woman of decided character, had made the boy
obstinate and sulky, by exerting over him the authority which should
have been exercised by his father.
After the death of his wife, Oliver remained as weak as during her life,
very good-natured, and so pliant as to bend to the wills of his
children, even to that of his youngest, Temperance, aged three. The
family would indisputably have run wild, and his affairs gone to ruin,
had not Honor assumed her mother's place, and ruled the little house
with energy and decision. Her rule was firm but loving, and few of the
children ventured to disobey her, not even the thirteen-year-old Joseph,
or her next sister, Kate, aged seventeen; no, not even her father,
Oliver; indeed he was the least difficult to manage of all. There were
nine children in all. Charles, Honor, Kate, Joseph, have already been
mentioned, so has little Temperance the baby. Between Joseph and
Temperance came Pattie, that is Patience, Willy, Martha, and Charity.
The children were all pretty and well-conducted. Charles was no longer
a child. He was away. He therefore is not reckoned among those who
were pretty and well-conducted.
Honor was tall; her bearing very erect; her well-knit, vigorous frame,
the glance of her clear hazel eyes, her firm mouth, all combined to
inspire respect and insure submission. The respectability of her
father, the honesty of her brothers and sisters were due to Honor, and
to Honor alone. But for her presence in the house everything would have
gone wrong. Kate was too lively and careless to manage it, the others
too young, her father helpless. Had she not been there to keep home
orderly, and the children neat, Oliver would have drifted to the tavern
to bury his troubles in the ale-can, and the little ones would have sunk
into squalor and strife, and struggled out of childhood into misery,
beggary, and vice.
The children had inherited from their father blue eyes and very fair
hair; they had lovely complexions, and clear, bright colour; some of
them had certainly derived from him also an inertness of character which
left them and their futures at the mercy of the persons and the chances
that should surround or fall in their way. This was not the case with
Kate, who had character of her own, though very diverse from that of her
eldest sister. Kate promised to be the beauty of the family. Her blue
eyes twinkled with mirth and mischief, like summer seas. She had a
roguish dimple in her cheeks, and an expression of consciousness of her
good looks on her face.
Honor was different in appearance, as in character, from the rest. She
hardly seemed to belong to the family. She had hair the colour of
barley-sugar, and hazel-brown eyes. She looked every one whom she
addressed straight in the face, and was absolutely void of vanity; she
asked no admiration like Kate. She was contemptuously indifferent to
her looks, and yet she was never untidy. All the rest were better
dressed than herself. She never gave herself new clothes; she had an
old store of her mother's to draw from for her own clothing; but though
her gown was antiquated and often patched, it was never ragged, never
had tape and thread ends hanging from it. She had inherited her
grandmother's scarlet cloak, and was the last person in that
neighbourhood to wear such a garment. This she only wore on Sundays,
but she wore it on every Sunday, summer as well as winter, when she went
to church. She also wore red stockings, and as she was taller than her
mother, and her mother's gowns could not be lengthened, a good deal of
red stocking showed. She wore these stockings simply because they were
her mother's and had to be worn out, and because Kate objected to them
for her own feet. Perhaps it was the shortness of the skirts that gave
to Honor a look of length of red limb below the scarlet cloak a little
grotesque, that occasioned the boys of Bratton to nickname her 'the Red
Spider.'
The mischievous Kate teased her by asserting that she got her name from
her hair; but Honor's hair was not red, it was not even chestnut brown,
it was golden brown, like beech-leaves in autumn--a very rare, but a
beautiful colour. It was all one to Honor what hair she had, all one to
her what the boys styled her. No girl could be jealous of her; she had
no eyes for the lads, her whole heart, her every thought was centred in
home. As the chapter-house of a cathedral is built in a circle and
leans on one central pillar, and as the fall of that pillar would insure
the ruin of the house, so was it with the cottage of the Luxmores--on
her it rested. This she knew, and the little self-consciousness she
possessed was the consciousness that on her all leaned for support, and
to her owed their uprightness.
'What a lot of socks and stockings you have got on the furze bushes
about you,' said Hillary.
'Yes--like to have. There are so many little feet at home that tread
holes.'
'You must be glad that they are two-footed, not four-footed animals,
those brothers and sisters of yours.'
'I am, or I could not darn their stockings, much less knit them.'
Hillary thought a moment; then he said, looking at a pair of very much
darned red stockings hung over a branch of heather, 'You know they call
you the Red Spider, and they say true. The Red Spider brings luck
wherever she goes. I am sure you are the money-spinner in your house.'
'I!' exclaimed the girl, who coloured slightly, and looked up; 'I--I
spin, but never money.'
'Well, you bring luck.'
'I keep out ill-luck,' she answered with confidence; 'I can do no more,
but that is something, and that takes me all my time. I have hardly
leisure to sleep.'
'Why have you brought all these stockings out on the Down? Are you
going to convert Wellon's Cairn into a second-hand mercer's shop?'
'Larry, in spite of proverb to the contrary, I am forced to do two
things at a time. I have Diamond to watch as well as stockings to darn.
The poor beast is not well, and I have brought him from the stable. The
little ones are at school, except of course Temperance, and Kate is with
her cutting grass in the lane for Diamond.'
'What would you do if you lost Diamond?' asked young Hillary.
'O Larry, don't even suggest such an evil. If you whistle you call up
wind, and if you whisper the name of the devil he looks in at the door.
We got into debt buying Diamond, and it took us three years to work our
way out. Now we are clear, and it would be too dreadful to get into debt
again. You know, Larry, what the mothers do with children who have the
thrush. They pass them under a bramble that grows with a loop into the
ground. Like enough the little creatures lose the thrush, but they
carry away scratches. Debt, to my thinking, is like treatment; you get
rid of one evil by sticking yourself full of thorns. So take my advice,
and never get into debt.'
'I'm not like to,' laughed the young man, 'with Chimsworthy behind me
and Langford before me.'