Though there was more than one snug little room at Bracefort which
other people might have turned into a schoolroom, yet Lady Eleanor
always preferred, in the summer at any rate, to take the children with
her to the hall for their lessons. Her favourite seat was by the great
mullioned window, which shed light on everything in the rooms, and her
favourite teaching was to make every old picture or helmet or weapon on
the walls tell its story to the children. So on the day after
Salamanca Day she was sitting as usual in her corner by the window, on
a very stiff high-backed chair; for people did not lounge in those
days, and children were taught at meals to keep their thumbs on the
table to make them sit upright. Little Elsie sat by her on a smaller
but equally stiff chair, stitching diligently at her sampler, and Dick
stood before her glancing furtively over his shoulder. The blue sky
outside was so great a distraction to him that Lady Eleanor had turned
his back to the window, and set before him an old steel morion of the
time of Queen Elizabeth; and with this to inspire him, Dick was
struggling with the ballad of the Brave Lord Willoughby.
"Come, Dick," Lady Eleanor was saying, "we can do better than that.
Try again. 'For seven hours to all men's view--'"
But just at this moment the Corporal came in.
"If you please, my Lady, Betsy Fry's just come up. She's in a terrible
taking about her boy, and she's brought him up to see you."
"Very well. I'll come out and see her directly," said Lady Eleanor.
"Come, Dick,"--but Dick had turned half round and was smiling at the
Corporal.
"Come, sir," said the Corporal returning, "heels together. Little
fingers on the seams of the overalls. Eyes to the front," and he
placed the boy's hands gently in position by his sides, and went out.
"Now, Dick," said Lady Eleanor. "'For seven hours--'" and the boy
began, with much prompting,
"_For seven hours to all men's view
This fight endured sore,
Until our men so feeble grew
That they could fight no more._"
Then his memory seemed to return, and he went on with great gusto:
"_And then upon dead horses
Full savourly they eat,
And drank the puddle water--
They could no better get._"
Then there was a dead stop. "'When they--'" said Lady Eleanor. "Oh,
Dick."
"I always remember the puddle water, mother," said Dick reproachfully.
"Elsie," said Lady Eleanor; and Elsie folded her hands over her work
and began:
"_When they had fed so freely,
They kneeled upon the ground,
And praised God devoutly
For the favour they had found._"
"Then," broke in Dick triumphantly--
"Then beating up their colours
The fight they did renew,
And turning on the Spaniards,
A thousand more they slew."
"There, I know it now, mother, mayn't I go now and tell the Corporal to
saddle Prince for me? And mayn't Elsie come too?"
So away the children ran, and there was the Corporal waiting outside
the door, as anxious to be off as themselves; while Lady Eleanor made
her way to see Betsy Fry, who was waiting by the old gate-house a few
yards away from the front door.
"Well, Betsy, what is it?" she said kindly, coming up to a woman of
rather hard features, who stood patiently in the shade with her
sun-bonnet fluttering in the breeze.
"'Tis about my Tommy, my Lady," said the woman curtseying. "Here,
Tommy, come 'vor, and take off your hat to her Ladyship," and she
pulled forward a frightened shrinking boy in a suit of corduroy, who
had hidden himself behind her. "Look to mun, my Lady, he that was the
most rompageous boy in Ashacombe, so quiet as a snail. And he can't
spake, my Lady, he can't spake."
"Can't speak?" said Lady Eleanor.
"I can't make mun spake, my Lady. I don't know if your Ladyship was to
try--"
"Why, Tommy," said Lady Eleanor, bending down towards the boy, in her
sweet winning tones, "what's the matter with you? Come along and tell
me, like a good boy."
The lad came forward, for no one could resist Lady Eleanor's smile, and
opened his mouth confidently to speak; but he made only a few
inarticulate sounds, and then thrust his knuckles into his eyes and
began to cry.
"Come, come, don't be frightened. Try again," said Lady Eleanor
kindly; but the boy only continued sobbing and remained speechless.
Nor could all her endeavours succeed in making him utter a word.
"He must recover his speech presently," she said, much puzzled. "He
has not lost the power of uttering sound."
"No, no, my Lady," said Mrs. Fry very confidently. "He can scream and
holly loud enough. I bate mun last night, poor soul, because he
wouldn't spake, and he scritched so loud that Mrs. Mugford come in, and
asked me what I was 'bout killing a pig at that time o' night; though
she knows very well that it was my pig that was drownded in the
mill-leat back along in the spring. So I says to her, 'Mrs. Mugford,'
I says, 'if those that talks about pigs would look to their own boys,
they wouldn't run off to sea and come home with the shakums,' I says;
'and if they would keep their fowls from scratting about in their
neighbours' gardens,' I says, 'they wouldn't run about crying for lost
chimases.' For there's hardly a day but I drive her fowls from my
garden, my Lady. And you mind her son, my Lady, him that went for a
marine, and what terrible shakums he had when he comed back from the
Injies. And I consider that they stolen chimases is a jidgment, my
Lady, a jidgment for the mischief her fowls have done in my garden--"
"Stop, stop," said Lady Eleanor, whose eye had wandered to a shady spot
under the trees where the Corporal was lunging a steady old Exmoor pony
round and round, while Dick, with a pair of long gaiters added to his
attire, sat firmly on its back, though without saddle or stirrups.
"Tell me; has anything happened to the boy to frighten him?"
"Well, my Lady," answered Mrs. Fry, "I consider myself that the boy's
overlooked."
"Overlooked?" said Lady Eleanor.
"Yes, my Lady. For they do tell me that the woman that comed through
the village yesterday with the mazed body told my Tommy, 'You don't
spake again,' she says, 'till I tell 'ee.'"
"Oh! nonsense," said Lady Eleanor, "don't think of such stuff."
"But she _did_," persisted Mrs. Fry, "and sure enough the boy can't
spake. She's overlooked mun! she's awitched mun, you may depend, my
Lady. And I'm sure if you'd a known who they two was, you wouldn't
never have let mun go. She's the old witch to Cossacombe, that's what
she is, though she a'nt never been this way afore, and the man's as bad
as she is, I'll be bound, though I never heard tell of he afore."
"Why, it was easy to see that he was but a poor half-witted creature,"
said Lady Eleanor, "as harmless as a child; his mother told me that she
hardly let him out of her sight."
"Well, my Lady, 'tis all very well to say that the man's mazed,"
answered Mrs. Fry almost forgetting her manners in her excitement, "but
what took mun down among the boys? Why, to take the ale from them!
And what is ales but sarpints, my Lady?" said Mrs. Fry throwing out her
hands, "and what makes the man so friendly with sarpints, that he must
come to save mun? _We_ know, do you and I, my Lady, who is the old
sarpint and the father of sarpints. And then what was he doing with
that strange baste on his shoulder, my Lady?"
"Why, it was only a tame squirrel," said Lady Eleanor.
"Squirrel, my lady," said Mrs. Fry mysteriously. "Aye, 'twas a
squirrel; but who knows but what it mayn't be a dragin when it gets
'oom?"
"A squirrel turn into a dragon?" said Lady Eleanor. "I never heard
such childish stuff in my life; and I wouldn't have believed that a
sensible woman like you could have thought of such a thing."
"Well, I won't say as it _was_ a dragin, my Lady," said Mrs. Fry, a
little abashed, "but they do say that the witch has to do with dragins.
She comes from out over the moor some place, she doth; and though she's
a seen on times about Cossacombe, no man can tell where she liveth nor
dare go sarch for mun. Jimmy Beer went out to look for mun two year
agone in the dimmet after Cossacombe revel, but the fog came down so
thick as a bag; and while he was a-wandering, a dragin (for so he saith
it was, though I never seed a dragin myself) passed so close to mun as
I be to you, my Lady, and when he looked to the ground he saw the mark
of his cloven hoof so plain as could be. And he was pixy-led all that
night, my Lady, was the old Jimmy, and when he come home all his money
was gone; so I reckon that the pixies is in league with the witches."
"I suspect that Jimmy had drunk too much cider," said Lady Eleanor
severely; "he should have kept sober or stuck to the road, and then he
would not have brought back foolish stories about pixies and witches.
I wonder that you can believe in such things."
"I know mun too well, my Lady," said Mrs. Fry mournfully. "There was
my pig back in the spring, so rasonable a pig as ever ate mate, until
the white witch to Gratton overlooked mun. And I never did the white
witch no harm, nor the pig didn't neither; but as they was driving the
pig along the road--and you know what pigs is, driving, my Lady,--the
white witch comes riding on his one-eyed donkey; and the pig runned
against the donkey, and the old man[1] muttered something or 'nother--"
"But the old man is dead, I was told," said Lady Eleanor.
"'Eas fai! and so he is, my Lady, and a terrible job they had to bury
mun--thunder, lightning and hailstones so big as sloes. Dead he is,
and I won't jidge mun--but not afore he'd a doed the mischief, for but
three weeks afterward my pig falls into the mill-leat. So there's my
pig a drownded, and my Tommy so dumb as a haddock--can't go to school,
can't do nought but ate his mate and sit in the corner for all the
world like a moulting hen. Ah, they witches! I wish they was
a-burned, I do." And she hid her face in her apron and sobbed.
"Hush, hush!" said Lady Eleanor gently; but just then she was startled
by a little cry from Elsie; and there was Dick, who had just leaped his
pony over a low bar, tilted right forward on the pony's neck. "Sit
fast, sir, sit fast," cried the Corporal, as Dick floundered to regain
his seat; and with a desperate effort the boy recovered himself and sat
up, flushed and smiling. Elsie clapped her hands with delight, and a
strange man's voice shouted "Bravo!" at the sound of which Lady Eleanor
started and coloured for a moment.
"'Tis surely his lordship from Fitzdenys Court," said Mrs. Fry, who had
lowered her apron a little. "'Eas, 'tis. Now, my Lady, do 'ee plase
to spake to mun about my Tommy; for it's a poor job if his lordship
can't do something for the boy, and he the lord-lieutenant as can call
out the milishy any time."
And as she spoke two gentlemen came cantering up through the park; so
Lady Eleanor bade Mrs. Fry take Tommy to the back-door and get
something for him and herself to eat.
[1] It is a fallacy to suppose that a white witch, in Devon, at any
rate, is necessarily a woman. The few that I have known were men.