Peter Fleming
The swift night came down; fells and dales were folded in purple gloom. Stars began to shine, and Barbara, eating her supper of coarse bread, let her eyes wander from group to group with meditative enjoyment. To her the sky was no vast abyss dotted with a formless multitude of shining points, but a field of wonderful fiery things, each following its own appointed course. Yonder glittered Leo, there swung the Great Bear and the Dragon; and, there on a mountain peak, shimmered the Northern Crown. It led her thoughts to Timothy Hadwin's prophecy, when he cast her horoscope; for she should wear a crown, he said, and though Barbara was too wise to put a strict construction upon his words, nevertheless, she found pleasure and inspiration in them, wondering what they might mean.
She flung an extra armful of wood upon the fire, for the night air nipped frostily. Then, taking her lantern, she went among the sheep to see that all was well with them and their lambs. The little orphan had been adopted, and nestled with its foster-brother against a warm woolly side. A sense of placid well-being lay over the fold, so the girl returned to the fire. As she sat in silence, her fingers busy making a withy basket, and her mind active, there came from over the tarn a sudden burst of melody, ethereal as elfin music. It was echoed to and fro from cliff to cliff, now it danced overhead, then it stole like a whisper out of a dale far away. The shores of the tarn were ringed with sounds, so haunting that they seemed to be unearthly. Barbara listened in amazement.
Someone was playing a flute from the Rock of the Seven Echoes.
Again the music came rippling across the water and was tossed about from hillside to hillside in airy phantasy. When at last it died into silence, Barbara became conscious of the other sounds of the night—the tinkling of distant waterfalls, the cropping of a sheep close by. She listened expectantly, but the sounds were not repeated.
"It must be Peter," she thought, "only Peter plays the flute hereaway, except Jake, the ratter, and only Peter would play it at such a place."
Her eyes brightened when she thought that he was back again in the dale. Between him and the sisters lay a good fellowship. Often he spent hours with Barbara among the sheep, reading to her stories of old combats and great doings from the Iliad and Odyssey. But he was equally at ease when he helped Lucy to top and tail gooseberries, or sought among the bracken for the nest of the laying-away hen.
Barbara stirred her fire to a brighter glow. She knew that he would see it on the other side of the tarn, and perhaps he might come round to the cave and greet her after his long absence.
Peter was the only son of John Fleming, the miller—called Dusty John in the village—who was a man of some substance, plain habits and little education. But he gave his son every advantage. The boy was sent to school, and afterwards, proving himself apt beyond expectation, went to St. Bees, from which ancient seat of learning he won a scholarship to Oxford. The miller's ambition was to see his son in the church, where he did not doubt Peter would soon be promoted to the highest office. In dreams he beheld him Archbishop of York or Canterbury. But the lad said neither yea nor nay to his father's wishes. He enjoyed himself to the full, coming home for vacations with a light heart, accepting the truckle bed in the mill-house and the homely fare with as lively a humour as he did the varied life of Oxford.
He reached the cave just as the moon was rising, and leaned his back against the cliffs to watch the light sparkle on the water.
"When did you get home?" asked Barbara, putting her withies aside, and bringing him a cup of milk.
He laughed.
"I've not got home yet," he said, "for I left the coach early in the afternoon to come over the tops. But they were too deep in snow, so I had to take the Girdlestone Pass instead. I stayed at the Shepherd's Rest for an hour. Now here I am, late as usual."
Then he plied her with eager questions about his father and mother, the village folk, and the welfare of all at Greystones.
"How goes the studying, Barbara?" he asked. "Have you read the book I sent you?"
She shook her head.
"Nay; it's not that I haven't the will, but there's no time. Jan Straw is grown so old, and the new hind hasn't got into the way of things yet, so that the heavy end falls on me." Then she added with a smile, "There's such a lot of me to get tired, Peter."
He looked at her. Though he could not see the calm eyes and the corn-coloured hair, the outlines of her form were splendid in the silvery light. He felt dwarfed beside her, not physically, but morally. Hers was the finer spirit. He acknowledged it with a glow of generous feeling, for he was given to hero-worshipping.
"We'll make a pact, Barbara," he said, "while I'm at home I'll shepherd the sheep, and you shall read."
"You are good and kind, Peter," replied she, "but I remember how you helped me once before. If it wasn't a rainbow, it was a flower, and if it wasn't a flower, it was a bird, but never the sheep-salving or the cattle-herding. The kye got into the barley-field—do you mind?"
They both laughed.
"What a careless brute I am to be sure," said he. "But if you won't let me look after the farm, I'll come and read to you, when you have time to listen. I've brought you a new book; you'll like it."
He unstrapped the pack he carried, and took out a stout volume. In the light of the fire he showed it to her. It was Pope's Homer.
"Some warm day," he continued, "we'll sit on the fellside and wake again echoes of great deeds, and old battles. Thundergay shall be Olympus, and you shall be Athene, the azure-eyed maid. Listen to this——"
He bent down by the fire and held the book so that he could read by its light.
"'Now heaven's dread arms her mighty limbs invest,
Jove's cuirass blazes on her ample breast....'
"I can see you in them, Barbara."
'The massy golden helm she next assumes,
That dreadful nods with four o'er shading plumes;
So vast, the broad circumference contains
A hundred battles on a hundred plains.
The goddess thus the imperial car ascends;
Shook by her arm the mighty javelin bends,
Ponderous and huge; that when her fury burns,
Proud tyrants humbles, and whole hosts o'erturns.'"
He closed the book and put it into the girl's hands.
"I've never seen you roused up to do battle," he laughed, "but you'll look like that when the spirit moves you. Good-night, Barbara."
Something stirred her like the call of a trumpet heard by her spiritual ears alone. Was her placid life upon the mountains going to end? Would she have to fight with her desires, because Duty still pointed a stern finger towards the sheep-paths, while another road opened before her—a broad and pleasant road. Peter always roused this restlessness in her heart. She was glad, yet sorry, when he went singing home, leaving her to the night-loneliness with her book of old battles.
The next morning Peter Fleming was walking up and down the cobbled path of the mill-garden between flowering currant bushes, and sheaves of lent-lilies, whose buds were still encased in their pale-green sheaths. Everything sparkled in a sudden burst of sunshine. From the mill-wheel the water fell like a glittering fringe, and the beck raced merrily by, clutching at the weeds and grasses on its rim, and drawing them down to make them gorgeously green under its clear surface. On the other side of the stream stood Cringel Forest.
The mill-house was a tall building with the date, 1600, carved over the door under a coat of arms of a wheat-sheaf and a sickle. The Flemings, or De Flemings, as they were then called—had been millers in the dale since the reign of Elizabeth, a fact which Dusty John prided himself upon, although he was as simple an old man as ever spoke the vernacular.
The kitchen door was open at the end of the cobbled path, and in its hot and sunny atmosphere, Peter's mother stood ironing. Her muslin kerchief—as fine as ever came from the looms of the East India Company—her gown of russet, and white apron were the essence of cleanliness and order.
"Get away with thy blandishments," she said, for Peter had paused on the threshold to tell her that she looked like a ripe hazel-nut, her face was so brown and rosy and round. "Thee'd witch the wisdom out of my old head with thy flattery. And as for thy dadda—he cannot walk for swaggering, thee's lillied him up so handsome!"
She smiled proudly into the clear-eyed face looking so affectionately into her own. Peter made her feel that she was still young and worthy of admiration. When he came home she always wore white stockings—though she thought them an extravagance at other times—and placed a flower or a bow of ribbon under her chin.
She held up a kerchief that she was ironing, and said tenderly:
"It will be a great day for thy father and me when we see thee consecrated, Peter."
He stepped across the floor where the sunshine lay in a broad band, and kissed her.
"And a blessed day when I does up thy lawn sleeves, my son. Thee must never let anyone do up thy sleeves but me, lad, not even thy wife when thee gets one. There's nobody kens the art of clear starching and ironing better than thy old mother."
The young man sat on the edge of the table and swung his legs.
"You'll be disappointed, mother," he said, "but I never can see myself—in spite of your dear visions—in bishop's sleeves. I'm a lazy beggar, and more likely to be lying under a tree, finding sermons in stones and books in the running brooks than beating the pulpit cushions of Durham or Carlisle."
She shook her head indulgently.
"Time enough, time enough," she said. "Thee's too young yet to know thy own mind."
Peter looked round the kitchen and laughed.
"Would you like to live in a palace, mother?" he asked.
"A palace! And what would I do there?" she replied, seeing no further than the lawn sleeves which she would wash and iron.
The kitchen of the mill-house was small, clean and simple. Brass fire-irons, two or three candlesticks, a burnished copper warming-pan reflected the strong sunshine, but otherwise the puritanical severity of the white-washed walls was unrelieved. The floor was strewn with river sand, and the chairs and dresser glistened with constant oiling and rubbing. On the dresser was a pile of newly-made clap-cakes, and round the fire stood an oak maiden hung with clean linen. The place had a kindly, homely smell, and Peter sniffed it with enjoyment. He loved the towers of Oxford, and the shadow of his college cloisters, but this small and sunlit kitchen, where his mother baked and ironed, and his father smoked his evening pipe, brought him back to those primitive passions of man out of which the strength of his life springs.
Peter returned to the garden and continued his walk up and down the cobbled path.
He was thinking of his future, and wondering what he would be able to make of it. He had almost decided that he would not take orders when his college days were done, which would be at the summer vacation. The prospect of becoming a curate, or even a North Country vicar did not attract him; on the other hand, he had no particular leanings in any other direction. That which would have suited him down to the ground, he sometimes told himself whimsically, was the position of a country gentleman, with a good library, a well-stocked stable, plenty of dogs and troops of friends. His was a genial, breezy nature; he had a firm hand, a just mind, and a clear brain, added to a boyish love of the unusual and adventurous. Peter was a favourite in the village. He liked pretty faces, and flirted openly, but he left the lasses' hearts none the worse. He fished and hunted with the lads; he talked politics with the tailor, religion with the cobbler, and with Jake, the rat-catcher, spent many a long afternoon. It was Jake who taught him to play upon the flute, and though he never managed to charm the rats with his music—as the strange little man did—he had the young men and maids capering on the bit of green before the inn door on summer evenings, long after they ought to have been abed.
His meditation was interrupted by a horseman calling from over the wall:
"Halloa! Peter, back again?"
It was Joel Hart.
"I'm glad to see you," said he.
"I thought you'd made up your mind to go abroad and seek your fortune," replied Peter, shaking hands heartily.
"So I had, but I broke it again. I couldn't be quite sure where to find the fortune."
They both laughed, but Joel had a note of envy in his mirth.
"You're a lucky dog, Peter," he exclaimed, "to have money in your pockets and a fond father ready to supply more. How long are you home for?"
"Six weeks. It's the Easter vacation."
"Good! we'll have some fishing and wrestling—eh? We'll make a damned fine holiday of it. I want something to take my mind off the worry of wondering where my bread and butter is to come from. You don't want to work, I bet; had enough of that sort of thing down yonder—eh? Come and have a glass at the Wild Boar."
He alighted and leading his horse by the bridle walked down the village street with Peter.
When they were boys they had gone nutting and fishing together, and the memory of many a hairbreadth escape still bound them with the links of affection, though in mind and character they had long since drifted apart.
Joel Hart was a handsome man. Beside him, Peter with his homely face, honest grey eyes, and loosely built figure looked rough-hewn—looked, indeed, that which he was, the off-spring of clean-living, hard-working peasant forefathers. The two men were of a height, but the one carried himself proudly, looking neither to right nor left; the other with an easy swing, that could stoop to give pennies to a crying child, or lift a bundle for an old woman. There was an expression of arrogance and dissatisfaction on Joel's features that marred their beauty. He had dark curling hair, which he wore rather long, his eyes were large, well-shaped, full of a smouldering fire or melting sadness as his mood chanced to be.
The world had dealt hardly with him, and he could not forgive it. His father, the son of that ill-fated Joel Hart whom Annas Lynn had hidden in the wool-barn, had married late in life, and died shortly after, leaving his infant to be brought up by the widow—a vain and foolish woman. She had been indifferent to his discipline and education, and when she died, left the estate—it was a very small one—burdened with debts, a burden that increased rapidly, owing to extravagance and bad management. Joel was not competent to deal with it. A habit of indolence, fostered by his up-bringing, had become second nature to him; his temper was uncertain; yet he cared deeply for two things—Forest Hall and Lucy Lynn. To preserve the one, and gain the other was a wild dream that he dreamed, but made only fitful attempts to realise. He felt that he was bound by invisible bonds which he could not break.
"I'm getting to the end of my resources, Peter," he said as they stood in the inn parlour, drinking. He often make a joke of his poverty; it was too well-known to be hidden; and he did not care that folk should see how much he felt it. "I've only one hope left."
"I trust it's a substantial one," remarked Peter.
Joel flung back his head and laughed.
"Ha, ha," he cried, "ha, ha. It's the old great-grandmother up at Greystones."
"You're not thinking of marrying her—are you?" said Peter, his eyes twinkling.
"'Pon my soul I never thought of it! What a pity. She'd have had me, Peter, for the love she bore my grand-dad. I needn't have waited till she was dead, then, to have got her money."
"She's rich—is she?"
"Must be! an old miser! She told me she was going to leave the little she had—little, mind you, and Greystones is the most prosperous farm for miles round—she said she was going to leave it to be divided between Barbara, Lucy, and me. She's ninety-five now, and can't live much longer, though she looks as hale and hearty an old sinner as ever laid up treasure in this world. I hope she'll not forget her promise."
"Court her," replied Peter, briefly.
"Her or her great-granddaughters?" Joel shot a sharp glance at his companion. He sometimes thought that Peter had a warm side for Lucy as well as himself. "All the same," he continued, tossing off another glass, "I'm breeding dogs, as a stand-by, in case she dies without leaving me a shilling. You must come and see them. I've got a litter of the prettiest pups you ever saw. I keep 'em in the parlour because the kennels are all out of repair. It's a comedown, eh, for the master to sup his porridge in the kitchen, but feed his dogs under the very noses of his forefathers in their gilt frames?"
They talked a little longer, made plans to join the fox-hunt next morning, then Joel mounted his horse and rode away, while Peter retraced his steps up the village street.
He thought that Joel was changing. The man looked unhappy and restless in spite of his gay demeanour. He talked too much, and he drank too much. He might be as poor as he asserted, but he rode a fine horse—Peter was a judge of horse-flesh—and his clothes were dandified beyond the fashion of the times. Yet there was something in him that appealed to Peter, who thought he looked like a gay bird in a trap. And what trap could be worse than one made out of family pride, poverty, and lack of education?
Pondering upon his friend's character and circumstances, he passed through the village.
High Fold, in the midst of which the mill stood, was a cluster of houses on the fringe of Cringel Forest. They were built of grey stone, roofed with rough-hewn slates, where the yellow stonecrop ran riot, hung with queer little balconies, giving them a foreign air. They stood at all angles on either side of a steep road, at the foot of which was the inn, at the top the church. Except for the house known as Forest Hall, the farm of Greystones and a few solitary cots, High Fold marked the limit of human habitation in that direction. Beyond it were many miles of heathy moorland, a wild expanse of mountain, barren ravines, each with its own gushing beck, and wild marshes. The people were a healthy, thrifty race, lacking little—and those things not necessities—working hard and simply, and living to a good old age. Many of them herded sheep on the common lands; a few wrought in a silver mine some distance off; others spun and carded wool; a tailor, a weaver, a rat-catcher and a blacksmith were respected members of the community. They owned a large flock of geese, each bird was smit with its owner's private mark, and a goose-girl, in the common employ, led them daily to their feeding-grounds. There were few idle hands in the village, even the old men knitted stockings, sitting on the inn bench of a spring or summer evening.
Peter followed the road beyond the village, where it turned into a cart-track, and wound through Cringel Forest, leading to Forest Hall, and then on up the dale to Greystones.
As he lay under a beech-tree, watching the birds fluttering among the smooth branches, a little old man came wandering through and sat beside him.
The hair of the little old man curled on his shoulders, like a child's—though it was grey instead of golden—and his eyes were also like a child's, bright and questioning. He was primly dressed in a flowered waistcoat buff breeches and blue stockings, but the garments were faded and threadbare. On his knee he held a basket of roots and leaves.
"Meditation," he said, "is the mother of great thoughts, and repose fosters them till they be well-grown."
"That's comforting to my lazy soul," drawled Peter.
The thin old voice continued, carefully choosing the words as though, even in meditation, nothing slipshod or ill-fitting was allowed to pass.
"We should find time to be idle," he said. "When the soul is possessed by tranquillity, there enters in an angel called thought—a mysterious being, whose birth and origin is far beyond our knowledge or understanding. But we can give her housing, care for her like kind folk, and she will reward us abundantly. Her presence with us is her reward."
Peter chewed a blade of grass, basking in the warm light. For a little while neither spoke. The last week had shaken off all the appearance of winter from the forest. The trees were budding, a tall poplar rose purple as a plum, yonder a group of larches were turning green, and a sycamore had all its tips dipped in crimson. The blackthorn thicket was white, and the lesser celandines were golden on the banks. In the forest lay a deep blue silence—the silence of old wise trees, but on the topmost branches, gay and giddy birds were pouring out their hearts to the spring sunshine in a wild burst of melody.
"It's all very beautiful," said Peter; "that light on the beech-stems—it might be a splash of pure gold. The trees seem to be aware of it too—if only their leaves were out they would be clapping their hands for joy." Then he turned to Timothy Hadwin. "I'm becoming a convert to your Faith," he said. "I believe the earth has a soul and every living thing."
"You feel it, then?" replied the old man, eagerly. "You feel a magic in the woods which only comes from the communion of souls? You and I and the trees are not alone here. You feel that other minds are reaching out to touch you, as you are reaching out to touch them? You have in your own mind this vision of the truth—the kinship of the living world?"
"Perhaps it's imagination after all," said Peter.
"Imagination does not lie."
"It may deceive."
"No, no. What we imagine is true for ourselves, though no one else may see it to be so. We each of us have senses, feelings, thoughts of our own. Were you to tell me that you saw a hamadryad coming out of yon beech-tree, I should not contradict you because I could not see it. But if you plucked a buttercup, and said it was only coloured matter, I should say you were wrong, for I know it to be something more. The greatest blessing of life is sight, and the commonest ill is blindness." He laid his hand upon the ground and continued. "We are all akin, because we are all the children of the Earth. Her great mind is made up of our little minds. She knows us better than we know ourselves—do we know ourselves at all? I love to think of the Earth, a personality, a great angel rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, rushing along through the dark night or the bright day, through clouds and through sunshine, never halting or stumbling or going astray, carrying upon her bosom a multitudinous life, caring for it, as a thoughtful mother."
After this conversation the two men were silent for a while, each following the trend of his own thoughts. Then Timothy got up and went away. But Peter remained under the beech-tree.
Peter had capacity for the full enjoyment of life, and a boundless curiosity concerning it. As he lay on the ground he seemed to feel the heart of the Earth-mother beating under his own, and he was filled with a sense of her teeming vitality and his individual share of it. He opened his mind to the sounds and sights around. It delighted him to follow with his eyes the stems of the trees as they sprang straight from the bosom of their universal mother into the blue air. He listened to the whistling of the birds, the hum of the bees, and watched a rabbit leap among the ferns—pleased with such simple demonstrations of life. Perhaps a change was working in his own nature, for never had the common things about him seemed to be so full of absorbing interest as now; never had he been so conscious of the sap running up the branches of the trees, and of his own vitality. At present he did but enjoy the sense of power, which he could use if he desired. But soon, he told himself, he would labour, singing in the light of the sun.
Then through the forest came Barbara Lynn, driving her primitive cart home from market. She did not see the figure under the beech-tree, for her eyes were dreaming, neither did Peter try to draw her attention. She sat with her hands lying loosely on her lap, the reins hanging slack as the old pony took its own pace home. Her fine, large features were composed, and she kept her jolting seat with unconcern. There was something patriarchal in the cart, and its rough-cut wooden wheels, and the regal form of Barbara, deep-bosomed, yellow-haired and clear-eyed as the off-spring of shepherd kings should be.
She passed on, while the over-arching trees dropped lights and shadows across her face. Peter watched her till the blue distance of the forest closed round the cart, and the creaking of its wheels died into silence.
He came back to a knowledge of himself with a rush. For the time being his mind had been merged in the mind of another. The forest, too, was waking as from a trance. Barbara had seemed to hold it in the spell of her own dreaming. Now the wind blew down the track, trundling dead leaves before it, and drawing a low chiming from the branches overhead. The birds burst into renewed twittering, and the rabbits leaped among the fern.