Back o' the Moon, and Other Stories/Lad-lass
LAD-LASS.
The white walls of the farmhouse were hot and blinding to look upon in the sunlight, and the row of scoured dairy-pans and vessels that leaned against them blazed in spots like the sun himself. The hills across the narrow Dale quivered in the June afternoon as if seen over a furnace of charcoal, and no sounds were heard but the soft clucking of poultry and the heavy droning of the bees as they spun in and out of the bass-hives. The sky was of a bleached blue; the dripping from the spout of the pump dried where it fell on the baked earth; the smell of hay and hot dust filled the air; and in the grey limestone village lower down the valley not a soul was to be seen abroad.
Harriet Stubbs stood in her dairy at an upright churn. The lime-washed walls glowed with imprisoned sunlight, and only a narrow strip of shade lay without the door. She was six-and-thirty, too tall, too thin, too quick-moving. Rusty freckles gathered thickly over the bridge of her nose and spread over a face that was of the hue of washleather. Her lips had no red; the lower one was dented with an old frost-bite, now healed; and over the upper one a few straggling hairs showed. Her arms as she churned were sinewy as those of a man; and her bluntly-lidded grey eyes were searching and shrewish.
A rank whiff of tobacco came on the hot air, and a man of fifty crossed the bright yard and entered the dairy. She did not stop churning.
“Put that pipe out, Henry Butler; I'll ha' no reek i' my dairy,” she cried; “I had a kern o' butter as rank as owd hippins last week wi' one o' yon gormless wenches settin' a stinkin' cheese o' th' shelf; th' De'il himself couldna watch some o' ye.—An' what brings ye up fro' th' Cotes?”
“I put a owd apron ower th' horse's head an' rade up,” said the farmer, mopping his brow with an old snuff-handkerchief; “it's blistering hot!”
“If ye cam' thro' th' Cotes to tell me that I'm obliged to ye, but I kenned it, thank ye.”
“Nay, I come for a bit crack wi' ye, Harriet, aboot yon lad o' mine.”
“Ay?—Tak' a turn at th' kern, for ye could wring my shift.”
The farmer took the poss-stick in his knotted hands, and she mopped her freckled brow with her apron; then she sat a-straddle on the corner of the stone table and said: “what's wrang wi' Harry?”
“Wrang?” said the farmer, making the churn rock with his energy. “And what should be wrang wi' short o' ane-and-twenty but ye perdition women?”
“Ay,” said Harriet composedly, “we're winsome things, an' ye canna resist us; not that I've seen ye sweat overmuch wi' trying. Is't?”
“Ay, is't: yon black-haired besom, Bessie Wyatt; but th' sullen trash is packing to-neet.”
“Packin'! An' what's Harry say?”
Farmer Butler scowled out over the hot stackyard.
“'Tis what I cam' to talk to ye aboot.—Now i' one word, Harriet: wad ye ha' him?”
A little blood came into her dry cheeks.
“Ha' him? Dost mean wed him?”
“Ay, and join the farms—there wadna be another property like it this side o' Pateley Brigg.”
“He's not sent thee?—Not he,” she said sourly; “I'd liefer he did his own courtin'.”
The farmer churned angrily, and she watched him keenly.
“Then by , he shall,” he cried, “or I'll sell out and build a kirk!”
“Th' Butlers'll build a lot o' kirks,” she remarked drily. “Wad I ha' him? Well, I'll answer him that when he asks me; but I'll answer ye this now, Henry: They say th' De'il likes to muck o' a gurt lump, an' th' twa farms wad mak' a pretty property; but a bonnie thing 'twad be to hear th' love he'd whisper to th' flawpin' Lad-lass Harriet Stubbs! 'My own four-hundred acre! My darlin' twenty-score head o' beasts! My lovely farm an' house an' first mortgage o' three rows o' cottages i' Pateley Town!' A bonnie wooin'!—When he whispered 'Bessie!' at th' side o' me at neet I'd say: '’Tisna Bessie, love; 'tis thy precious ninety pund a year i' th' bank; kiss thy owd Skipton market; kiss thy butter an' eggs; kiss thy bit o' horse-trade!' A pretty wooin'!—Happen I'd see him lookin' yonderly-like i' th' chimley-corner, thinkin' why I didna bring him a bairn; I'd say, 'There's young blood an' bairns enow; we'll adopt one, an' thou can call it Bessie.'—Tch!—'Tis naughbut ye owd nontkates that thinks all women's th' same i' th' dark! Wadna I ken? Wadna I ken when I were his Bessie? Wadna I brak my heart, bein' his Bessie? Wadna I brak all three o' we'r hearts?—Not I, as it chances, for I'm any kind o' a fool but that kind, so get thy kirk built, Henry. They ha'na named me Lad-lass for naught.”
“Thou doesna ken right what thou's sayin',” said the farmer.
“No? So we live and learn, but I thought I did,” she replied imperturbably. “Now thou's had thy bit crack, an' there'll be a mug o' ale for thee at th' loupin'-stane.—When wilt call an' mak love o' thy own account, Henry? 'Twad be a rare thing to be wed i' your ain kirk.”
The farmer passed out, and she turned to the churn again.
The butter would not come, and now and then she muttered a man's oath. The strip of shade outside the door became narrower as the sun crept round. A burnished cock mounted a fence and shrilled out a call that rang over the hot valley, and she unbuttoned her bodice at the throat and fumed.
Suddenly the figure of a girl appeared in the doorway.
She was heavily, moodily handsome, and her coal-black hair escaped from a cotton bonnet that had been pink but was now almost white with washing and exposure to the sun. Her lad's clogs were white with dust, her round arms were brown and bare above the elbow, and her dark beauty showed brilliantly in the cool light of the dairy.
“I ha' come to say good-bye, Miss Stubbs,” she said timidly; “I leave to-night.”
Harriet pursed her faded, cracked lips, and blinked her eyes at the other's shrinking loveliness.
“And thou's come to say good-bye to me? Well, God grant we may al'ays ha' more friends nor we ken; I thank ye.”
“I'm Bessie Wyatt, an' I've slipped out unknown o' purpose to see ye.”
“An' that's a jade's trick, dodgin' th' last o' your wark instead of straightenin' up for them that's to follow ye.”
“'Tis what I wad do—straighten up for her that's to follow me—wi' Harry.”
The last words were almost inaudible, and Harriet Stubbs let go the poss-stick.
“My garters, but here's a coil about this Harry to-day! First his father wi' his kirk-building, an' then a milkin'-wench comin' to say good-bye to neist to a stranger!—How'st mean, to follow ye wi' Harry?”
Bessie's bosom rose rapidly.
“An' if a milkin'-wench makes bold for once wi' th' mistress o' her own house an' lands, 'tis that I ha' lile time to waste. Miss Stubbs, ye'll be—oh!—ye'll be kind to him!” She buried her face in her sleeve against the white wall, and Harriet, bewildered, seized the poss-stick again.
“Is th' lass gane daft? Here's another doin' thy courtin' for thee, Harriet; thou'll dee a wed woman yet, th' next earthquake or th' next after that.—Now, thou foolish wench, when thou's done greetin' happen thou'll gi'e thy tongue a chance?”
“I am na' greetin',” said the girl, raising her big eyes that were quite dry, “an' I'll tell ye i' four words. He wad ha' borne me on to Rigg village, i' Scotland, where Davie Laing th' blacksmith weds 'em for a crown; but I wadna. He maun wed wi' his father's goodwill, if it braks my heart; an' I ken who that is. 'Twad be a sin to lo'e him, another's; I winna think mair o' him, an' I'll see him na mair.”
Harriet bent her eyes on her.
“So that's it? Thou's like Joss Tait, th' cobbler, who says fowk's welcome to what he doesn't want. I'm obliged to ye, Miss Elizabeth Wyatt.—Why, thou hussy,” she broke out suddenly, but she looked away from Bessie, “hast th' face to come here wi' thy handin's-on? Daur ye tell me I canna choose where I like? D'ye tell me I'm six-and-thirty, an' ha' packthread o' my lip, an' maun be thankful for what I can get?—Ay, but I ken Harry Butler better nor ye, an' he's a bonnie 'un to ken—a bonnie 'un to ken!”
“Ye ken na wrang o' him!” the girl said, flashing her handsome eyes suddenly.
“Tch, ye baggage, dinna tell me what I ken, chance I fetch ye a thwack wi' th' poss-stick! I maun tak' ower thy cast-off an' be kind to him!—Are his kisses o' thy lips this day?”
“Ay, are they!” the girl replied proudly, “an' wad they were branded there wi' a coal if I could remember him th' longer for it!”
Harriet winced, and fixed her shrewish eyes on Bessie.
“So that's thy forgettin' him that's another's! Well, I bless th' Lord for every freckle I've got, for ye red and black witches, good men losses their heads at th' blink o' th' de'il i' your een! Scotland! Are ye na feared o' Rebecca an' her Sweepin's, then?”
“I'd ha' feared naught; but 'tis ower.”
“Nor th' men-women ye mought meet at any Pike?”
“I'd ha' feared naught; but I'm leavin' him.”
“An' ye cam to say good-bye to me?”
Bessie turned half away, and spoke over her shoulder.
“Ay, an' to tell one that I thought were a woman that which if onnybody told it to me wad ha' been gentler ta'en, an' happen a tear betwixt th' two on us.”
Harriet laughed a short, dry laugh.
“I kenned it when I saw ye come in, bairn; an' now here's a makkin' o' butter settled an' spoiled. Nay, nay; ye cam' to gi'e me naught; ye cam' to greet o' this bosom o' mine, if I naughbut had one. Well, greet, bairn.—Thou fool!” she whispered, as Bessie laid her cheek, sobbing, on her flat breast, “up-saddle to-neet, an' off wi' him! De'il tak' me, he lo'es thee; up-saddle an' off! Rebecca wadna mell on ye; 'tis for the poor fowk she sweeps—th' poor fowk that bides at home an' pays under th' Pike Act for th' roads that th' rich gads about on. Has—has he said he lo'es ye?”
“Ay, a thousand times!” Harriet closed her eyes for a moment.
“Then, up an' off, wer't i' thy sark! Harry wad never ha' had me, e'en if I'd ha' had him; I'm naughbut an owd shoe to fling at others' weddings; I'm ... up an' off, to-neet, Bessie; 'tis odds a blacksmith can weld as strong a hoop as a parson!”
*****
The hot June night had fallen two hours back, and the full moon bathed a dozen dales in a soft brilliance. The hills swam in mysterious shadows, and not a breath stirred the tall field-flowers in the meadows. Now and then the cry of a nightjar was heard or that of a corn-crake; and now and then a tree would seem to sigh gently of itself in the still night. The road, of a silver-grey, dipped and wound and disappeared, reappearing a mile or two ahead where it crept over the shoulder of some moonlit moss.
The young man drove the quick-trotting mare in the trap with his right hand, and his left held the girl. Her face was heavy with drowsiness. From time to time she glanced at the trees and fields and shapes of hill and dale in the dreamy moonlight; and as they passed under the dark hawthorn hedges she murmured: “Th' flowers looks like spirits.... How far are we now, love?”
“Yon's Newton Moss, an' ower it Lang Preston. We'se be at Litton Pike i' an hour, an' Horton by day-leet. We'll put up i' Sedbergh till to-morn th' neet.—What is't, love?”
She drew closer to him.
“I tell'd Harriet I wadna be feared, but Rebecca dresses i' women's clothes, an' blacks her face, an' burns yetts an' toll-houses.—Hark! Dost hear naught at th' back o' us?”
“Again, my precious! Nay, there's naught; an' I doubt Rebecca wadna sweep as far as Litton. True, she might; she's busy these nights; but 'tis time enow to meet trouble when it meets ye. Sitha; thou can see into Lancashire; yon's Pendle.”
The girl took a sharp breath at the sight of the great valley on the left flooded with moonlight, and at the dim mountain rising fifteen miles away; then she pressed close to Harry and said: “I'se gan to sleep awhile; I can scarce keep my een oppen.”
“Then sleep, sweetheart.”
He kissed her, and she slept almost immediately. Slowly the moon touched the summit of her arc and began to decline; the hour of midnight came faintly over the hills from some distant church-tower; and the mare sped tirelessly along the road towards Litton Turnpike.
*****
The setting moon showed no more than half her shape over the crest of Litton Wood, and the old grey stone village under the Brow was lost in night. No sound broke the profound stillness of the Dale, not so much as the rustle of a stalled beast nor the moving of a bird in its nest; and the Bear lay low over the dark fell across the valley. The single stroke of a bell broke from the church belfry, pealed, spread away and failed over the Dale as ripples spread over a still pond; and the silence closed in again.
A faint confused noise, a mile and more away, arose, hardly audible at first. Slowly the noise drew nearer, and snatches of singing could be heard, and a dull thumping on a drum or tub. As it swelled and drew still nearer a light appeared in an upper window, and a man's head was pushed forth from the casement. Candles showed in other windows; more heads appeared; single voices could now be distinguished in the approaching hubbub; and a street door was thrown open and a man in his shirt and trousers shouted: “Th' Rebeccas!”
In ten minutes three-score men had swarmed up the village street.
You would hardly have known they were men save by their voices. Their faces were hideously smeared with soot, all but their eyelids, which showed grotesquely white when they blinked. They wore the petticoats of women, gaping, fastened with belts or hitched up with string, and they carried lighted lanterns. Half of them bore faggots on their shoulders, other brooms of rush and twig. They thumped on tubs, sang doggerel songs, and whooped up at windows; and at the clamour they made many of the Litton folk retired within their houses, barring the doors and watching the commotion from the windows.
“Mun t' poor mak rooads for t' rich to use?” a voice bawled; and in a kind of droning singsong came a chorus of “Sweep, Rebecca, Sweep!”
Their feet caught in their skirts as they capered, and some had rolled their petticoats about their waists, showing their men's legs beneath. Some had shawls tied over their head, others bonnets; and they lighted pipes at the lanterns. A big fellow demanded the name of the toll-keeper.
“'Tis Matthy Lee, an owd man,” a piping voice replied. “What gars Rebecca sweep so far fro' hame?”
“Shoo'll sweep fro' here to London Town afore shoo sets t' broom back i' t' corner.—I wish there were more wind; a bit o' breeze mak's a merry sweepin'.”
“Eh, all's as dry as kin'lin'-wood this weather. Which is t' road?”
“This road; step out, lads.”
The leaders set off through the village towards the pike that lay a little way beyond it. The others followed; the singing sounded fainter and fainter down the road, and a few of the Litton men, half dressed, walked after them at a distance.
The single-storied, white-painted toll-house was in darkness, and the white bar-gate glimmered across the road. The dancing lanterns and the singing drew near it, and the hubbub roused the old pike-keeper, who unbarred his door and peered forth, his nightcap on his head. He had lighted a candle, and his nutcracker face showed scared in the light of it. “The Lord save us!” he said tremblingly; and then the begrimed faces of the Rebeccas, their white eyelids blinking ludicrously, swarmed at the pike.
“Gate! Gate!” they bawled; “three score noblemen's come to pay their gatecloys!” and one fellow shouted: “If thou wants to save thy bits o' sticks, owd man, out wi' 'em into th' road!”
“My garden! My garden!” the old man whimpered. “Dinna walk ower my garden!”
They laughed. He was thrust aside, and a dozen men climbed the gate and poured into the toll-house. They began to strip walls, to tear up matting, to bundle out bed and bedding, tables and chairs, and pans, and crockery. Others set faggots against the bar-gate, the wooden window-shuts, and the fuel-shed at the back of the house; and the old man sat among his chattels in the road and moaned: “My garden, my garden!”
Soon every faggot was disposed, and the men stood round.
“Ready?” they cried; and fire was laid to the twigs and faggots in a dozen places at once.
*****
“Listen!” said Bessie Wyatt fearfully; “I'm sure there's wheels at th' back o' us, Harry—I ha' heard 'em this half-hour!”
“Ay, I hear 'em,” Harry replied grimly; “but th' mare's doin' th' best she can, an' it's what's afore us that's troublin' me, sitha!”
She caught her breath.
“Yon's never th' dawn, Harry!”
“Not wi'out th' dawn's come i' th' north for once,” he muttered. “Come up, then, Polly!”
The mare sprang more quickly forward at the trailing of the whiplash over her quarters, and the dark hedges made a long blur on either hand. The odd brightness rose and sank over the distant fell.
“Rebecca afore, an' th' father ahint,” he said to himself, “an' we canna hide th' trap; we maun chance it. Come up, Polly!—Hark!—Ay, yon's Beeswing; I ken her trot; thou canna leave Beeswing, Polly, poor lass; we can but go forrard. Polly's my own, but I ha' borrowed th' trap. Come closer, Bess.”
“Oh, Harry, ha' a care; we were a'most i' th' dike then! Sitha, how th' hills swing!—Yon leet's growin' breeter.”
“We'se see at th' next turn,” he said between his teeth.
“Ho'd me close.”
Again he touched the mare; the sombre fell seemed to close in on them, and then to open out again into a further fold. The luminousness ahead grew brighter, and an outlying barn flashed past. They took the dip at Litton village and the rise on the other side without a check; two of the trap wheels left the ground at the turn, touching again twenty yards further on; the light leaped; they saw the blazing toll-bar and the figures that moved about it; and Harry muttered, “We can but go forrard—nay, we maun stop. I could ha' ta'en yon burnin' yett alone, but wi' lass and trap—we're done!”
He drew up within a dozen yards of the blazing toll-house.
“Where are ye for?” the shape of a woman demanded, laying a man's hand on the bridle.
“Horton—Sedbergh—Carlisle. For God's sake, fling yon yett back!”
“Wi' whose leave?”
“Th' leave o' Rebecca—aught—oppen th' yett! 'Tisna th' likes o' us ye want to keep. We're poorer nor ye, an' followed. Fling th' yett back, an' let's be on!”
The man looked the vehicle up and down.
“A tidy trap an' mare for a poor man! Followed, are ye? Down ye get, both on ye—a lass, begow! We're that mony lasses to-neet a man gits mixed ameng 'em.—Followed, are ye? I'm none so capped at that; poor men doesn't drive traps an' mares like yon; we arena thieves.—Tak' th' mare out.”
The mare was fastened to a tree, and Harry—Bessie wide-eyed at his side—watched the spectacle. Cattle gazed over walls, and moths and buzzards fluttered here and there. The ceiling-baulks of the toll-house bulged beneath the weight of the flagged roof, and the red glare of the fire lighted the filthy faces on which the sweat had trickled and run into the soot. Sparks and flame streamed straight upwards, and a fierce crackling mingled with the shouts of the men. The old toll-keeper on his heap of furniture held his head in his hands and moaned, “My garden, my garden!”
“'Tis awful!” said Bessie, shuddering and pressing closer to Harry.
Suddenly a dozen voices burst forth in a cry of “Heigh, there—stop!” The man who had spoken to Harry turned to him and said, “Yon's som'b'dy after a trap an' mare”; and Farmer Butler roared, “D ye, hands off! Where is he?”
“Rebecca hes him, same as shoo hes thee,” somebody replied; and Farmer Butler and Harriet Stubbs descended from the trap. Harriet's sharp eyes scanned the rabble eagerly; they met Harry's; and while the men-women gathered about Butler with questions she slipped quickly to his side.
“I couldna' set him wrang—there's naughbut one road—ye's get awa' yet,” she said low and rapidly. “De'il be good to us, what a seet!—Get ye amang th' villagers yonder, Harry, an' dinnat be seen; I'se manage for ye. Can th' mare carry th' two o' ye a post or so? Awa', an' dinnat be seen. Wait for me yonder, an' dinnat let him see ye.... Now, Henry, her's ane o' 'em, an' t'ither winna be far off.”
“Bide ye wi' this unskelped hussy while I find him!” cried the farmer.
“Nay—I spy him!” said Harriet. “Yonder he is!” She darted off, and mingled with the men. Her eyes shone, and she seemed to set herself to some effort.
A huge fellow barred her way.
“Where for, i' such a hurry?” and she broke into a shrill laugh.
“My ain gait, my owd love—kiss thy Nancy!” She took the man's bleared face between her hands, and set her own cheek against it.
“Out, ye trollop!”
“An' out yoursel', ye greasy muck-slut; tch, ye filthy dozen! Here's my man.—Doady, come, let's shak' a leg, Doady! Wilt dance wi' thy Nancy? 'Shak' it a little, a little, a little. An' turn ye roundabout!'” she sang, and flung her arms about another fellow. “Nay, thou's beslubbered my face, chuck; never heed; ain muck's sweet, an' thou's my ain Charlie; a kiss, now! Sink, but we're as threng as three i' a bed! Hey, my bonnie black boys!” She turned this way and that among the men, making herself outrageous; and then she slipped out of the ring and sought Harry.
She found him, hidden from the leaping of the fire behind the old pike-keeper's heap of furniture.
“Whatever are ye doin' here, Harriet?” he whispered.
“Tch! Dinnat waste a minute,” she replied hoarsely; “come, thy face. There's th' muck o' a dozen greasy rascals here,” she chattered, as she besmirched him. “I'll lend thee brass for another trap i' Horton—whisht! ye gormless fool; tak' it an' owe it! I ha' scarce grime enow; we maun mak' it do. Faugh, what a stock-pot it is! But 'tis worth a crown a scrape. Lig thy cheek agen mine, Harry.—There, there, twa seconds; all th' muck we can!” He felt how she trembled throughout her frame. “Now thou's foul enow for hell-kitchen.—O my heart!—Come, don this, quick!”
Her hands fumbled at her waist, and she thrust a petticoat down hurriedly. He stared like a wittol.
“Dinnat stand there gapin' like a throttled cat; step into 't, an' put this about thy shoulders. De'il tak' me if th' Lad-lass isna mair a man nor onny o' em! But woman maist: O Harry!—Awa' wi' thee now! I'll go smear Bessie, an' ye maun off o' th' mare. Here's brass—an' bless ye!”
She was off with her hand at her breast.
“Where is he?” the farmer roared. He was at Harry's elbow, but did not recognise him; and Harriet drew Bessie towards the tree where the mare stood, and fouled her face. “Up ye get; leave room for him i' front; he can swing up by th' branch. Nay, he'd best lead her ower by yon pasture.” Bessie flung her arms about Harriet's neck.
“Oh, Harriet!” she said chokingly; “whether we get awa' or not, how I lo'e thee!”
“Ho'd thy whisht; dinnat begin to be a fool now! He'll hire a trap i' Horton; ye'll be i' Sedbergh to-morn; nay, to-day, for sitha at th' hills yonder. I'll tak' th' linchpins out o' both traps. Here, rub this bit o' earth on, an' tee th' han'kercher round thy chin! And now kiss me afore I go find him.—Th' hengments! What's yon?”
A sudden new roaring and crackling had broken forth from the toll-house. The roof stones had crashed through the burnt baulks, and from the standing walls fountains of fire and sparks shot high into the sky, as if from a huge Jack-in-the-box. The rioters shouted and danced madly, the old pike-keeper looked up with a dazed look, and the birds hopped in the illuminated trees. “Now I'll send him, while that's amusin' 'em,” Harriet muttered; she pressed Bessie's hand—all of her she could reach—against her cheek for a moment; then she disappeared among the shouting crowd.
*****
The hills in the east were revealed against the grey sky. A light breeze drifted the smoke from the toll-house in the direction of Litton village, and the glow shone luridly on the rolling masses. A cock gave a rousing call, and was answered from farm to farm throughout the grey dale. “Barnaby Bright, langest day an' shortest night,” a farmer muttered; and russet frets appeared over the hills. The fire burned down, and the embers glowed through a white ash. The Rebeccas were gathered together for departure; and Harriet Stubbs, a grimy, ungainly figure, in a short under-petticoat that revealed her sharp tibias, stood a little apart and watched a man in a woman's attire who led a horse with a figure upon it quietly round by a wall and down a pasture to the open northward road. Farmer Butler was cursing here and there, and shouting, “Harriet! Harriet Stubbs!”
The high hills to the east showed a vast and mysterious shape, with an edge that burned. The two figures on the mare waved their hands to Harriet, and disappeared down the road. For many minutes she stood gazing after them; the birds twittered loudly; and then she laughed her short hard laugh.
“A Lad-lass to some purpose!” she muttered. “An' his cheek were agen mine. O my love!—De'il tak' me, I'm whinin' again! Get thy face washed, Harriet Stubbs, an' seek a house an' mak' a decent woman o' thyself, an' cover them shallacky ankles, for thou's a offald thing i' th' dayleet. Speed ye, Harry! Happen he'll call th' bairn Harriet—or Harry—th' Lad-lass wad serve for auther—an' 'tis better nor calling mine Bessie.—Now I'll find Henry.”
The sky flamed in hues of amber and coral, and she turned again to where the last of the Rebeccas were departing from the ruins of the toll-house.