Deep Moat Grange

Somehow I knew at once that that was Daft Jeremy's elder sister, Aphra Orrin, the one who was not so mad as the others, and kept house for Elsie's grandfather.

She came quite near. We could have tossed a dog biscuit to her feet – could, that is – somehow, I didn't want to. It might have startled the poor lady, and besides I hate making oneself conspicuous.

Over the lily patches and the flower beds we got glimpses of a red-tiled house, low and old, all overgrown with ivy about the gables and porches. It had small windows with criss-cross panes, and smoke was coming out of one of the chimneys, though it was yet so early. That I took to be the kitchen of Deep Moat Grange.

The canal seemed to go all the way round, and to join on to the pond which we could see glimmering beyond the house, looking gray through a fringe of willows.

The place was nested in woods and water, like a dabchick's nest, yet for all that comfortable and fair to see with its lawns and greenery set about it. I looked at Elsie to see if she was feared. But not she. Instead, there was a queer, eager look, and her eyes kept glittering, as if you could have struck a match at them. Then all at once it struck me that Elsie was going to be pretty; but I resolved to say nothing about that for the present.

It was thinking about her mother that did it, I expect. And that is a funny thing, too. For I care about my mother, and sometimes look eager, like Elsie; but it is when I tease her to tell me what we are going to have for dinner. Elsie was different. She said "S-h-h-h-!" whenever I moved; and once, when a stick cracked underfoot, turned and gave me a look, which would have speaned a foal.

"You fidgety worm —can't you be quiet," that look said.

We went on watching the house and the woman watering the flower beds. Nance had told us that the old housekeeper always did that herself. No hireling was allowed to put a spade in the soil of the Grange garden. Very soon we had proof that she was quite mad. The Lent lilies grew about in great clumps, flourishing strong and high – a brave show. The gaunt old woman waved the rose of her watering can over each with a kind of ritual, like what I have since seen the priests use in Catholic churches. Then she kneeled down and prayed – yes, prayed to the lilies. Actually I saw her – and so did Elsie.

But that was not all. Out of the house there came a company of three other women, one behind the other. They had their hair down their backs, and long cloaks with gold and silver patches covered them. Each was carrying something narrow and black in her arms. At first they were too far away for us to see clearly, but as they came nearer, I gasped and caught at Elsie's hand. The long black things were little, tiny coffins, neatly modelled, and covered with black cloth all complete with fringe, name-plates, and cords. A little to the side, capering and dancing, flinging his legs high in the air, and blowing a merry marching tune on a soldier's clarionet, pranced Daft Jeremy. Every now and then he would stop blowing to give the brass instrument a shake. Then he would laugh and egg on the women with the coffins to dance also. But they went along quite peaceably, keeping their countenances wonderfully, and making quaint signs with their hands. They marched round and round, the idiot laughing and blowing while the elder woman with the gardening spud went on praying, paying no attention whatever to them, till they came to a rude altar, just two upright posts and a stone laid across them, quite at the end of the garden, opposite to where we were.

Upon this they laid the coffins down, and the women-creatures kneeled. But the monster with the clarionet leaped up between the coffins nimbly as a jackanapes, crossed his legs, and began to play.

Now I cannot tell whether it was because of the little elevation on the crossbar of the altar which enabled him to spot us, or if I moved; but in another instant Mad Jeremy seemed to spring down, swift and unexpected, and before we could move, he had jerked out a big "gully" knife, and rushed to the canal bank, leaped into the middle, driving the black scum of the water every way, and almost before we could think he was upon us.

The madman made for me first with the big knife uplifted, and but for my ducking and running in, there would have been an end of me on the spot. We fell, and his weapon now being in his way, he let go, and I felt the grip of immense hands about my neck. That had almost been my last memory on earth. For though Elsie had seized the knife and was about to kill the madman, it would have been too late so far as I was concerned.

But out of the undergrowth, as if he had been watching, came a little quick-tripping old man, bow-backed and wizened, who called, "Jeremy! Jeremy!" in a high, piping key.

At the sound the madman lifted himself up from my neck, as if moved by a spring, and stood before the little man smiling and sucking his thumb – for all the world like a child caught stealing sugar.

The little old man pointed to the moat. "Go back as you came!" he said.

The "mounster" threw himself into the black water without a complaint. I saw him come out on the opposite side dripping, and with long threads of green scum trailing about him. He never looked round once, but made for the house.

Then the little old man turned fiercely upon Elsie and me, with a kind of cold hateful sneer on his face.

"And now, my pretties," he said, "what may you be seeking in Deep Moat Hollow?"

CHAPTER VI

THICKER THAN WATER

Now I do not deny that I was frightened out of my life by the sudden appearing of the Golden Farmer. But it was different with Elsie. Perhaps it ran in the blood. For, though most people in Breckonside were feared of my father and his long arm, I am not – no, nor ever could be. And so, in that moment of panic, it was given to Elsie to be able to speak serenely to her grandfather.

Yet I could see that the little man was all in a fume of anger, and kept it badly down, too.

"What are the two of you doing here?" he cried, dancing about and shaking his stick at us. "Where do you belong, and what ill purpose fetched ye to Deep Moat Grange?"

"One question at a time," said Elsie, standing quietly before him, with one thumb tucked in a leather strap about her waist. "'Who are we?' say you. I will tell you, grandfather – "

"Grandfather – !"

You should have seen the little wizened man jump at the word.

"Grandfather!" he repeated in a kind of skirl, or scream, as of a bagpipe. "Ye are no blood kin of mine – !"

"Am I no?" said Elsie. "I am Bell Stennis's daughter, and a daughter, too, of one Ensign Stennis, a British officer – "

"A devil – a black devil," cried the wizened little man, shaking his stick, as it were, at the four winds of heaven; "bride-bed or bairn-cot, shroud or bier, I have no word to say to any connected with Bell Stennis or the man that she counted her husband – !"

"Except to give her a decent burial, as ye did," said Elsie. "I have seen her name on the stone in Breckonside churchyard, and the space for your own beneath – !"

"Any one with eyes might have seen as much. But surely I am not expected to own you for a granddaughter just because ye have looked over the cemetery wall!"

"Neither have you a right to be angry because Joe Yarrow and I look across the ditch at the flower beds of Deep Moat Grange – "

There appeared to be some hidden sting in this saying of Elsie's. For a moment the old man looked perfectly murderous. But he quickly recovered himself.

"Faith," he cried, "but it would have been telling your mother, if indeed she be my daughter Bell – if she had had the gift o' the gab like you! But that's no proof. I have ever been a silent man myself!"

"Maybe you had need, grandfather!" cried Elsie merrily, as if it were all a joke, even when I knew that our lives hung, of a certainty, in the balance between his goodwill and his anger at our intrusion. Certainly, however, Elsie had a curious power over the old man, and instead of getting angry, he actually laughed, a queer, crackling laugh, caught perhaps from living so long among mad folk. I have heard doctors out of lunatic asylums laugh like that. There is nothing so catching as crack-brainedness. A lot of people have it at Breckonside – maybe because the East Dene Asylum is so near. Perhaps not.

"I see," said old Mr. Stennis, "that you have upon your body day-linen of my weaving. That is a waste. I only weave now to amuse myself, and sometimes for the great of the land – because no one can weave like Hobby Stennis. Therefore the webs I have sent that old wretch Mrs. Comline in the town of Dumfries, and now yearly to Nance at the bridge-end, ought to have been put carefully away, and not cut up to make fal-lals for a daft hempie of your age! Nance ought to know better. She is old enough and ugly enough for that!"

"Then if I am your daughter's daughter, as I see you admit," said Elsie, taking his words as an admission, "let us go across and view the bonnie flowers over yonder, the bedded tulips, the Lent lilies, and all the flowers of the spring."

Then, for the first time the old man had a look of fear, almost of revolt.

"Lassie," he cried, "ye have no knowledge of what you ask. Bide where you are, and go your way backward from this side of the moat."

He bent toward us as if whispering, though he had no need, all being clear behind and around us for a long way on every side.

"There are folk that are not canny on yon side of the moat!" he said, with the same curious shrinking look over his shoulder. "I can hardly manage them myself!"

"Nonsense," said Elsie, "take us across, and be done with it. Is it not your own land, your own flowers, and I your nearest of kin?"

"Aye," said the old man, shaking his head, "it will be true enough. Ye mind me of Bell's mother – my wife that was. God rest her soul – and her tongue! Ye are never a Stennis. And High Heaven pity the man that is going to run away with you, as I did with your grandam!"

Elsie indicated me with her thumb.

"Joe is," she said coolly.

The Golden Farmer turned and looked me over from head to foot, and I own that with the thought of all we had seen and all that we might yet see, I shook like a leaf. I never had Elsie's assurance, or, more properly, cheek, but followed obediently, and I must own that generally it came out all right when I did as Elsie told me.

"Then I pity him," quoth her grandfather, grimly; "but since you will, follow me."

And he led the way, first to the tree where he had tethered his beast, and afterwards to the narrow wooden bridge, like a drawbridge in chivalry books, which spans the oily black water of the moat.

I came behind with Elsie. All the time I kept putting my hand on her arm to stop her. For I believed that we should never, never cross that bridge again. If Elsie had no fear of her grandfather, I had! And besides, there was Jeremy Orrin with his big knife. Such at least was the idea that kept recurring to my disturbed brain. I could see him swimming the moat with it yet, wild to get at us. There were also the mad sisters, and all the linked terrors of Deep Moat Grange.

But not the least bit of notice did Elsie take. She shook my hand off her arm, and told me that if I was afraid I could go back to the school green and play marbles with the little boys.