Deep Moat Grange Part 24

Besides, I had been to Moat Grange House before. I knew that Mr.

Ablethorpe went there regularly, and that he had services with the poor mad folk. So I was not nearly so afraid of Aphra Orrin as I had been.

It was bright and clear still, though the morning was overcasting a little, as we pa.s.sed through the meadows. There is a private road most of the way till you enter the woods of Deep Moat. The people of the Moat Grange, therefore, never had any need to cross Brom Common or go the way that we had always taken--Joe and I--on our expeditions and researches.

All the way Miss Orrin talked incessantly of my grandfather, of how that he had been like a saviour to her poor sisters and herself, receiving them when they would have been shut up in an asylum, and of a certainty would have died there. She spoke also of his kindness to herself.

"They call him the Golden Farmer," she said. "And of a truth that is what he has been to us, for his heart is of pure gold."

I ventured to suggest that the folk of the countryside held a very different opinion of Mr. Stennis. But I could not have made a more unfortunate remark. In a moment the fire of madness flashed up from her eyes. The colour fled her lips. Her fingers twitched as if drawn by wires. She was again the mad woman I had seen leading the procession of the little coffins. "The folk of the countryside!" she screamed. "Ranging bears, wild beasts of the field! Oh, I could tear them to pieces! Gangs of evil beasts, slow bellies, coming here roaring and mouthing, trampling my lily beds, uprooting everything, laying waste the labour of years. Oh, I would slay them with my hands--yes, root out and destroy, even as Sodom and as Gomorrah!"

And suddenly lifting up her hands with the action of a prophetess inspired, she chanted--

O daughter of Babylon, Near to destruction, Bless'd shall he be that thee rewards As thou to us hast done.

Yea, happy, surely, shall he be, Thy tender little ones, Who shall lay hold upon, and them Shall dash against the stones.

I trembled, as well I might, at the fury I had unwittingly kindled.

We were now in the woods, the main travelled road far behind us, a complexity of paths and rabbit tracks all about, and before us a green walk, dark and clammy, upon which the snow had hardly yet laid hold.

On one side rose up the wall of an ancient orchard, which they said had been planted and built about by the monks of old. On the other was the moat, still frozen, only divided from us by an evergreen fence, untrimmed, thick, and high, probably contemporary with the orchard.

Suddenly, at the entrance to this green tunnel, Aphra Orrin turned and grasped me by both wrists. Her face, as it glowered down at me, had become as the face of a fiend seen fresh from the place of the Nether Hate.

"Jeremy, Jeremy!" she cried. And at the sound of her voice it came to me that of a certainty I had fallen into a trap. This was not the road to the House of Deep Moat. I ought to have known better. I had been drawn hither solely to be murdered. I tried to scream, but could not.

As in a dream, when one is chased by terrible things out of the Unknown, speech left me. I felt my knees weaken. And, indeed, had I been as strong as ever I was in my life, of what use would my strength have been? For there, at the entrance of the green tunnel, stood Mad Jeremy, smiling and licking his lips.

Meantime Aphra Orrin held me, shaking me to and fro as a terrier might a rat. She was as strong as most men--stronger, indeed, with the madness that was in her.

"Slay the daughter of Babylon! Slay her! Slay, and spare not!" she cried.

And while I stood thus, trembling violently, with that dreadful woman gripping my wrists so that she hurt them, Jeremy came leisurely up with his hands in his pockets--sauntering is the word that will best express it. He bent down and looked at me. For he was very tall. And I looked up at him with, I dare say, wide and terrified eyes. How indeed, could they be otherwise?

"Where is your knife?" cried Aphra Orrin. "Quick! Make an end--do as with the others! This is the last seed of iniquity. She will take from us our riches--all that should be ours--hard earned, suffered for, all that lies under the green turf--all you have won, Jeremy, and I have paid for twice over with weary nights of penance. That old man would steal it from us, from us who gained it for him, to give it all to this pretty china doll he calls his granddaughter!"

Had it been the will of Aphra Orrin at that moment, the opportunity would have been wanting for me to fill this copybook with these notes, to pa.s.s the weary time. For she loosened one hand, and s.n.a.t.c.hed at the knife in Mad Jeremy's belt--the same we had once seen in his teeth when he swam the Deep Moat to get at Joe and me.

But happily, or so it appeared at the time, Mad Jeremy was in another humour. He thrust his sister off, and, as it seemed, with the lightest jerk of one hand he took me out of her clutches.

"Na, na," he said; "this dainty queen is far ower bonnie for a man like me to be puttin' the knife into as if she were a yearling grice. The knife for the lads that winna pay the ransom, if ye like. But a bonnie la.s.s, and the heiress to a' the riches at the Grange--auld Hobby's h.o.a.rds--I tell ye, her and me will do fine, Aphra! Let her be, Sis, or you and me will quarrel. Ay, ay, and maybe ye will find oot what the blade o' my gully knife is for. We will see if ye hae ony bluid o'

your ain in your veins, Sis--you that's sae fond o' seein' the colour o' ither folks'!"

"Never--never! You lie, Jeremy!" cried Aphra. "I know nothing about that. I swear I am ignorant. As to Elsie Stennis, I did but jest. At any rate, she must not see her grandfather. He is in a foolish mood, and might take us from house and manor, roof and shelter, house and bedding--ay, all that by right belongs to us. Besides"--here she moved up closer to her brother--"she knows too much. She might prove a telltale, and then you, Jeremy, would be hanged--hanged by the neck till you were dead!"

She repeated the words with a s.p.a.ce between each, sinking her voice till it ended in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"Na, na!" cried Jeremy. "I but helpit the puir craiturs oot o' their misery. They cried na long. And then they wad be that pleased to hae nae mair trouble, but juist to lie doon agang the lily beds and forget a' the cares o' the warl'!"

"Hush, hush, Jeremy!" cried Aphra. "Think what you are saying, brother. But bethink yourself, brother dear, you must make an end now.

The girl has heard too much, and that from your own lips."

Mad Jeremy ran his fingers through his long, glossy ringlets with something like a smirk.

"Na, na," he said, "I can better that! She shall bide in the cove behind the muckle oven, where three times a week Jeremy bakes the bread. She will be fine and warm there. Nothing to do but set her soles against the waa', and in a trice she will be as comfortable as a ha'penny breakfast roll. No like yin I could name--ha, ha!--freezin'

in the----"

But this time Aphra fairly sprang upon him, putting her hand over his mouth to stop his speech.

"Oh, that I should be troubled with fools that know not their own folly," she cried--"I, that have given more than my life, almost my soul, for these poor things, my sisters and my brother, yet who will not be guided by me!"

Mad Jeremy laughed cunningly, or rather, perhaps, emitted a cackling sound.

"Be guided by you, Aphra?" he said. "No, and I don't think! Jeremy may be mad, but he kens a trick worth two of that. He will keep this little ladybird safe--oh, very safe, till the wedding dress is ready!

Heiress if you like, sister. But then Jeremy will be the heir. And a bonnie, bonnie bride he will hae into the bargain. Come your ways, hinny--come your ways!"

He spoke to me with a curious, caressing voice, bowing low like a dancing master, with his broad bonnet in his hand, and making all sorts of ludicrous gestures to prove that I would be safe with him.

I did not know what to do. From the woman I had nothing to expect but a knife at my throat, and yet to accompany Mad Jeremy! That I could not do.

Suddenly I screamed aloud at the top of my voice, hoping that some one would hear me and come to my a.s.sistance. But Mad Jeremy only put his arm about me and covered my mouth with one great hairy paw.

"Gently then, la.s.s--nane o' that, noo! It wanna do," he said, not angrily at all, but rather like one soothing an infant; "ye see there's nae workers in the fields thae winter days. And if there were hail armies, they wad kep wide o' the Deep Moat Wood, for they hae seen Jeremy gang in there a gye wheen times--ech, aye!"

And picking me up in his arms as easily as a babe, Mad Jeremy carried me into an ivy-covered ruin, and after that all was a labyrinth of pa.s.sages and tunnels till I found myself in the place where I wrote these notes.

CHAPTER XXIII

WITHIN THE MONKS' OVEN

The chamber into which Jeremy led me was small, but it had evidently been used for a sleeping-room before. A couch was placed in the corner. There were chairs and even a table. But I saw at the first glance that the window, placed high in the vaulted roof, was unglazed, but barred.

"It is not precisely a palace, so to speak," said Jeremy, shaking his long snaky curls, and smiling his unctuous thin-lipped smile; "but in comparison wi' some--mercy me, but ye should be content. Ye will be braw and warm here. This was never aught but a cosy corner--see, bonnie la.s.s! There's the auld monks' wark--the oven where they baked their pies!"

And taking my hand in his great one he slapped the wall which ended my prison vault, cutting it, as it were, into two parts. It was, in fact, quite as warm as the fingers could bear, and most of the time since has kept an equal temperature--though, if anything, a little stifling on baking days.

"Here ye shall bide," said Jeremy, standing dark and lithe in the doorway; "I myself shall be your keeper, but think not but that Jeremy Orrin kens bravely how to behave himself to a leddy. Ye will wait here, sacred as St. Theresa, till the wedding gown is prepared and the table spread. But Jeremy will feed his ladybird with his own hand three times a day--nor shall his sister Aphra put so much as a pot stick in the cooking, for fear of mistakes! She's a fine la.s.s, Aphra, when ye ken her, but little to trust to when she has a spite against ye. Stick you by Jeremy, leddy, and he will stick by you!"

After he was gone, and the silence had re-established itself, listening intently, I caught the sound of water flowing somewhere near, and lifting up a little square of wood let into the stone floor in the angle behind the couch, I saw black water creeping sullenly along underneath my dungeon--probably the outlet of the Moat Pond on its way to join the Brom Water. And I could not keep thinking of the fate of those "others," who had not the doubtful but yet puissant protection of Jeremy. The trapdoor was certainly large enough to take a man, and the water, creeping ice-free down to the Moat Pond, would tell no tales.

As it was I tore one or two little notes sent me by Joe into the smallest pieces, and watched them float away--that I might in no way connect him with the miseries into which my foolish confidence had brought me.

I was altogether alone. On the table Jeremy had put a candle with matches. When he brought my evening meal of porridge, cooked in the monks' bakery by himself, he asked if I wanted anything to read.

"I canna aye gie ye my company," he said. "What wi' the maister bein'

no well, I hae great stress o' business--but can ye read?"

I told him that I could, and awaited with some curiosity the books which Mad Jeremy would bring me. His choice was better than I could have expected. It comprised _Driver's Complete Farriery_, _The Heather Lintie_, (poems), a book of sermons with the t.i.tle _In Hoc Signo_--or something like that--_Markham's Complete Housewife, Cavendish on Whist_, and two huge volumes of _Pinkerton's Voyages_.