Six White Horses and a Coach
The cow-house was dim, like night, when a cloudy moon is shining, although the clock had just struck four. Through a small window the grey light stole and vaguely lit up the horned heads of the cattle. It showed Jan Straw sitting in a corner.
Rain beat on the roof like the trampling of heavy feet; it fell in a sheet from the eaves, and spouted like a waterfall from the drip-stone; the noise of the beck increased until it became a roar.
With a heave and a snort Cushy, Barbara's favourite cow, got up. She feared! she did not know what she feared; but perhaps in those days when the earth was new-made and cataclysms were frequent occurrences, her forbears had learnt to dread the sounds of a rising flood. She stirred the other beasts into restlessness, although they had borne the thunder and lightning with timid resignation.
Jan Straw sat motionless. He had stopped muttering, and his eyes were half-closed. His hands were cold as ice. The flame of life was burning very low. To him had come a presentiment that death was on his way to put it out. Once he had seen a play acted upon the village green in which Death came by with all his bones a-jangling, and the memory of it had not faded. His intellect was too beclouded to fear. The dogged stolidity, that had made him an unrepining drudge through manhood to old age, now made him a placid watcher for the fleshless form that would extinguish his little candle.
Lucy heard the trampling and snorting of the beasts, and she came to the cow-house door. Peter Fleming was with her, for he had reached Greystones just in time to take shelter there. The sudden change from the brightly lit kitchen, where the candles were burning, to the dimness of this place at first bewildered him; he could not distinguish anything clearly—the cattle looked like ungainly shadows, and their horns like the bare and twisted branches of trees. Then one by one the forms took shape, and his eyes fell upon the old man.
"Hulloa," he cried, laying his hand on Jan's bent shoulder, "What ho, Jan! how goes thyself? Why! I believe you've been asleep in the midst of all this racket. It's loud enough to waken the dead."
The old man roused himself from his lethargy, gathered his scattered wits, and looked at the countenance bending over him for some moments without replying.
At last he asked in a voice that trembled away into silence:
"Will it waken her?"
Peter knew of whom he was thinking.
"Nay," he said kindly, "her bed is a bed of peace."
The grey face fell, and the young man saw that he had not anticipated Jan's desire.
"I shouldn't wonder," he replied, "if she doesn't hear it in her sleep, and dream of you."
"I thought as how she might waken and be watching," answered Jan.
"M'appen she is," Lucy spoke with tenderness, for she was fond of the old man. "She'll certainly be looking out for thee, Jan. She'll never sleep so heavily but she'll hear thy step when thee goes."
"I's going soon."
His head sunk upon his breast; he was old, forlorn and weary.
"Nay, Jan, nay," said Lucy, "you mustn't leave us yet. Barbara and me. We'd be so lonesome sitting by the winter fire, wanting thy face that's smiled on us ever since we were born."
"We's o' comers and gangers," he replied. "There's new faces coming to take the place of the old ones. I's ganging. He'll soon pass by."
"Who, Jan?"
"Him with the reaping-hook."
Lucy laughed his words away, though she shivered.
"It's a coach and six white horses that'll come for thee, Jan. Thee shall ride on velvet cushions, the horses will be shod with gold, and the bits will be made of silver."
"Aye, that's the manner of it," said Peter cheerfully.
"Six white horses and a coach," repeated the old man, then he shook his head. "Coaches is for gentry folk. I'll have to go away with him, the man of the bare bones. He's like me the way he gets his bread, reaping the harvest from the fields, and no' finding mickle fatness in it nouther."
"Come to the fire," said Peter. "You're cold here, come and get warm."
He helped Jan to his feet, and supported the tottering footsteps to the kitchen, where the old man sank into his seat in the ingle-cheek.
The rain was still clattering overhead, and sweeping down the windows in a solid sheet of water, so that nothing could be seen through the glass. Peter went to the door, and looked out.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "the beck has wakened up with a vengeance."
"It won't sweep away the house, will it?" asked Lucy. She felt much relieved to have Peter by her side, and even dared to cast her eyes upon the angry stream, swirling under the garden wall.
Her great-grandmother laughed.
"Lucy's a timid lass," she said. "Before you came she thought it was the last day, but I knew the good God was a better landlord than that, and would want more market out o' his green fields than he's gotten so far, before he burnt them into ashes. Now she's afraid Greystones will fall! Hoots-toots, bairn. Greystones will stand as long as there's a Lynn to care for it. I've seen many a worser storm than this."
The old woman talked on. When her mind got back to bygone days she was garrulous. Some of her stories offended the fastidious tastes of Lucy, but Peter liked them. Strange customs and coarser habits did not blind him to the fact that life and its passions are much the same in every age, only wearing a different garb.
Lucy and Peter still stood, one at each side of the doorway, looking out. The beck raced below them, spluttering and foaming, and they could hear the grinding of rocks under its feet. It rose rapidly higher. Even as they watched it snatched at a bush on the opposite bank, twisted it as a child might twist a blade of grass, rooted it up, and swept it away.
"Barbara will get wet!" said Lucy. "She's at Ketel's Parlour. There's a crack in the roof, and the rain sometimes gets in."
Peter cast a glance at the still teeming clouds. He had not seen Barbara for a long time, and he was half inclined to venture forth, make his way up the dale, through a hundred spouting waterfalls, and share her lonely vigil.
Lucy divined his thoughts. She shut the door hastily and drew him to a seat.
"We'll have tea; you'd like tea, Peter? And great-granny is dying for a cup," she said. Then she whispered so that the old woman could not hear: "I'm so thankful you came—I really was frightened."
Peter allowed himself to be ruled by her, making only a laughing protest. The prospect outside was not enticing, and the prospect within was comfortable and bright.
Lucy stepped lightly about her duties, spreading the table with clap-cakes, butter and honey. Peter's presence excited her; her eyes sparkled; her movements were lively. She dulled her ears to the roar of the torrent, and the rushing of the rain—though both were deafening.
Jan Straw wakened from the sleep into which the kindly warmth of the kitchen had thrown him, and followed her with a steady gaze. He thought that she was a being between an angel and a fairy. Her eyes were blue like flowers with the morning dew in them, her skin was soft and white as the breast feathers of a swan, her cheeks were like roses. He had a confused remembrance of a story, still told in the dale, about the man who had seen the last of the fairies. He had disturbed them at their play, and they had run up a ladder into a cloud, shutting a door after them. No one ever saw them again among the tarns and meres, dancing by moonlight. "Her o' the white fingers" had, also, gone up into a cloud, and been seen no more. But she was an angel. Looking at Lucy he forgot the man with the reaping hook.
Lucy masked the tea, and called Jan to the table. They tried to forget that awesome sound of rushing water outside. Mistress Lynn could be a jovial companion when she chose, and she liked to cross wits with Peter. He dared to contradict her—such a rare experience she appreciated, for it was done good-humouredly. The old woman had a purpose in unbending to him. She wanted him to marry Lucy.
She wanted it for several reasons—because she liked him and knew he was no fortune-hunter, because she wished to see Lucy settled before Joel came back—she had other plans for Joel—because she was sorry for the girl's disappointment: she knew what blighted hopes felt like when the heart was young. Though she would not have scrupled to add disappointment to disappointment had it suited her purpose, in this case she was at one with her great-grand-daughter, and determined to bring about that which they both desired.
When tea was finished Peter bent over Lucy's chair to read her cup.
"Health and wealth and happiness," he said.
"I've heard it many times," said she, with a light laugh. "I've got the first, and dreamed of the last, but I've still to catch a glint of the other. Read Jan's," she handed him the old man's mug. "Perhaps you'll find something worth having there."
"Nowt but the rheumatics has ever come out o' my cup," said Jan gravely.
"But I see six white horses and a coach," replied Peter.
"Do 'ee now?" Jan put his finger into the empty mug and sorted the tea-leaves one by one, counting them aloud. "So there be," he said.
Lucy began to wash up the dishes, childishly pleased to bare her round, white arms, when there was someone to see them.
Throughout the meal, which had been a merry one, they had tacitly ignored the rain, although it was still coming down—as they say in the dales—whole watter. Now they were suddenly silent. But on the slates it clattered, on the walls it slashed, on the ground it spluttered, through the air it fell hissing. Over and above it the beck thundered.
Mistress Lynn sat upright in her bed, and listened with an expression of awe upon her grim old countenance; Lucy drew nearer to Peter, her eyes wide and panic-stricken; Jan Straw left the ingle.
"Hark!" said the old woman.
Peter went to the door and looked out.
Down the bed of the stream came a foaming, boiling cataract. Seen through the gloom it was suggestive of flying, riderless horses, tossing their manes in the air, and chafing at their bits.
"Six white horses and a coach," muttered Jan, stumbling bare-headed into the rain.
"Come back," cried Lucy.
"Come back," cried Peter.
"Jan, Jan, you old fool," said Mistress Lynn, leaning out from her great bed, and peering across the candle-lit room to the darkness framed by the open door.
But Jan was gone. The garden wall fell and the water rolled up to the doorstep, where it seemed to pause before slowly withdrawing. It did not go back alone. Lucy, regardless of her own safety, impulsive to recklessness where her affections were concerned, followed it, and thinking that she saw Jan but a few steps ahead, ran forward.
The ground gave way under her feet, and the beck had its grip on her in a moment.
The incident happened so swiftly that Peter was already struggling with the flood for the possession of the girl before he realised what had taken place. When he tried to recall it afterwards he could remember nothing save that his hand, by its own sense and cunning, had snatched at her frock as she was being swept past him. He dragged her from the water, and carried her into the house, laying her drenched form down before the fire. She was not unconscious, and stumbled to her feet, crying:
"Jan, save Jan, Peter!"
She would have followed him out again into the slashing rain, but Mistress Lynn called her back peremptorily.
The old woman was terribly upset. She had had to lie in the four-poster and know that something dreadful was taking place outside. She had watched Jan rush out, then Lucy, then Peter; but she had heard nothing save the roar of waters, and seen nothing save a faint white gleam as they foamed by. Now she strove for composure, and wiped the tears that had come unbidden upon her cheeks.
"Go and fettle thyself," she said to the shivering girl. "Then you'll be fit to look after the old man if he needs looking after any more."
Peter raced the beck through the copse where it was ploughing among the tree-trunks; he sought along the basin by the falls, but he could not find a trace of Jan Straw. He shouted, but he could not hear his own voice among the roaring of the waters, much less a cry for help were it uttered. He followed the flood through Cringel Forest to the village, where he told what had happened. Then, knowing that there was no chance now of finding the old man alive, if there had ever been a chance, he retraced his steps to Greystones.
He found Lucy kneeling before the fire drying her hair. A sob broke from her when he returned alone for she had hoped against hope.
"You couldn't find him?" she said.
He shook his head sorrowfully.
"Poor old Jan is gone," he replied.
Lucy covered her face with her hands, but the old woman leaned back upon her pillows, a red patch on each cheek.
"Gone!" she said, "gone! Jan Straw gone! The last link with my ain generation." She was silent, seeing the years which he had kept alive for her, fading away. "So Jan's gone, the old, old, creature, but younger than me by twenty winters. Poor Jan."
Then she turned upon Lucy. She must find some vent for the choking emotion of age.
"This o' comes of your fairy-tales," she said. "Six white horses and a coach! You'd better have left him sitting in the cow-house, waiting for the man with the reaping-hook."
"Don't blame me," cried the girl. "I would have saved him if I could."
"You'd have drownded yourself to no purpose. What could a lass like you do when the beck's in spate? It would have twisted you up like a windle-straw."
Lucy turned to Peter with entreaty in her eyes.
He took her hand and stroked it.
"I think you were very brave," he said.
He saw again the water with its tigerish lips, the crunching rocks, the broken body of a sheep tossing among the foam; he looked at the girl, at her tearful eyes, her damp hair hanging in jetty rings round her face; she seemed to be but a child, a forlorn, unhappy child, seeking for sympathy.
Hardly realizing what he did he bent down and kissed her.
"Old Jan was glad to go, Lucy," he said. "You must remember that, and not grieve for him. He had a long life and a lonely one. But he is now walking beside still waters with her o' the white hands."
Night came, the rain ceased, and the moon reaped the stars with a golden sickle. The sky was calm, but the fells and dales were still roaring with the sound of many waters, and streaking the darkness with silver threads. Peter went home, stirred to the depths of his being.
The next afternoon, when the beck had subsided to its normal flow, Jan Straw's body was found in a pool and taken to Greystones. All the village, and shepherds from distant cots among the hills, were bidden to the funeral. Lucy and Barbara had no time for tears. Mistress Lynn would not have it said that she had not shown honour to her old servant, and, two days before the burial, the sisters were busy from dawn to dark baking arval cakes to be given to the guests. These little cakes were made of wheaten meal, and taken piously home, to be eaten in remembrance of the dead.
The ceremony was a solemn one in the mill-house. The old man, Peter's father, ate the arval cake with one hand over his eyes, and his figure bent as though in prayer. Peter's mother wept behind her handkerchief, and nibbled a crumb of it, saying softly:
"In memory o' thee, Jan Straw."
Peter, too, was not unmoved. The simplicity and pathos of the act brought tears to his honest eyes, of which he was not ashamed.
Later on John Fleming sat at one side of the fire smoking, Mistress Fleming at the other side knitting, and Peter lay on the rug between them, telling stories of Oxford, when the old man suddenly took his pipe from his mouth, and said:
"I wish you'd marry, Peter."
"Marry! Good heavens!"
"I want you to settle down. Once I had other views. I thought I'd live till you could read the burial service over me—earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, in sure and certain hope—you know how it goes. Beautiful words, them! They kind o' sum up the big and the little o' life. Well, but now——"
He paused, took out of his pocket a large square of linen and wiped his brow.
"I'm sorry to have disappointed you, father."
"I kind o' expected it," replied the miller. "I used to say to your mother, 'the lad's not the right cut for a cassock. He'd split the skirt o' it with his long legs, rax it down the back with wrestling, and carry puppies and kitlins in the pockets.' But she—she didn't ken you as well as I did. 'Leave him alone,' she said, 'the lad's all right. You can't put an old head on young shoulders.' I wasn't for believing her. 'Zookers!' said I, 'I's an old man, but I's got a young head on my old shoulders. The lad takes after me, that he does!"
"I was hoping," Peter began, but the miller interrupted him.
"Don't be hoping anything, or pluming yourself up that I didn't mind. I've wished ever since—since—you ken when—that I'd brought you up to be a decent honest miller like myself, and had knocked them eddication notions out o' my head and your's too. They've done nowther on us any good."
"If you'd only consent to my going away—not out of the country—but to London, say, I would do something to take the sting out of your disappointment. You'd be proud of me yet."
His mother laid a gentle hand on his arm.
"Whist, lad," she whispered, "list to thy dadda."
"We're getting old," John Fleming began, then stopped to clear his throat. "We're getting old, thy mother and me, and we've no chick nor child left but you, lad. We want you to stay at home with us till we're called away."
"It won't be for long, Peter," said his mother.
"We'd like you to settle down," continued the old man. "There's money enough—the Lord has blessed me with prosperity. You can take a wife, Peter, and bring up a family. I'd like to see a grandson on my knees before I die, and know that the old mill-house will go down to another John Fleming—a sober, God-fearing man I hope he'll be, with no book-learning to spoil his appetite for common labour. Not that I'm blaming you, lad. I couldn't have wished for a better son—in that the Lord has blessed me far beyond my deserts."
Peter grasped his father's hand and shook it without a word. The old man laughed, and slapped him on the back, then snorted, as though tears had got into his throat.
"I always have a cough when the winter comes," he said, tapping his chest.
"So you want me to get married," remarked Peter, after a while. "That's a matter for deep reflection."
"I've always wished for a daughter," replied his mother. "I cried when you were born, but thy dadda was pleased."
"There's a nice lass would just do for you, lad," said the miller, winking at his son. "She's a bonny lass with no silly ways about her. Your mother and me's kind o' fond o' her already. She looks us up whiles, and twists as purty a bow as you could wish to see for your mother's caps and bonnets."
"I guess her name," said Peter.
"It begins with L," replied the old man.
Peter got up and stretched himself.
"I'm going for a walk," he said, "it's a fine moonlight night."
"And you'll think over what I've been saying?" asked the miller.
The young man smiled, kissed his mother, and took his cap down from a nail.
"I'll tell you my decision when it's made," he replied.