CHAPTER X. THE WOMAN OF SORROWSTONES SPRING.
Between Marshcotes and Cranshaw the highroad runs for a mile and a half. From Cranshaw to Ludworth in Lancashire is a very good six. The hill rises sharp after you pass Cranshaw Church and the wild, wind-swept burial ground; and well towards the top, soon as you gain the open moor, a grim line of "stoups" guards the right hand of the way. It is an eerie road to travel, especially if night has fallen and brought you no company. The stoups, huge blocks of millstone-grit, white-washed at the base, blackened at the top, seem to stand out from the darkness, to move towards you almost. Year after year they have stood there, pointing the way to travellers: if snow be thick on the highway, their black crowns show clear against the white; if the moor lie black, their white bodies point the way of safety. Year after year, with frost and rain and snow, the rough moor weather has made sport of the stoups; they are workers of charity, and buffets are their fit reward. It is vain to call them senseless stone, and pass them by, and think no more of it; they stop you, willy-nilly, with their rough-hewn, tragic faces; they have lived in the silent places, and the mystery of a long loneliness is theirs. A true man done to death by the cold was the cause of their being, and many a true man killed by harsher foes has gone to swell the tale since then. More than once, or twice, or thrice, has murder walked beside those silent, ghostly stoups, and the bogs to right of them could tell some fearsome stories if they chose.
It was then some five and twenty years since Joshua Lomax, Griff's father, tried to cross from Ludworth one bitter winter's night; they found him a mile from the highroad, dead from exposure, and his widow, as soon as she could bring herself to read other people's welfare through the crystal of her own trouble, made haste to build the sentinel line of stoups, lest more good lives should be sacrificed. Griff could not bear to walk that road for many a long day after the tragedy, and even now he shuddered as he gained the outposts.
Tinker's Pool glooms down in the hollow, just beyond the last of the stoups, and the gamekeeper's house stands at the top of the road; between the two lies Sorrowstones Spring—a two-roomed, crumbling cottage that gets its name from the well-spring at the door. Rachel Strangeways, the quarrymaster's grandmother, had lived here time out of mind, and she would have found it hard to chance on a dwelling more to her liking. Rachel was reputed a witch throughout the countryside; maidens came to her, in fear and trembling, to have their fortunes told, and burly farmers sought her aid whenever the Evil Eye was working havoc among their cattle. She dealt in drugs, too, and great virtue was attached to an infusion she prepared of a certain bitter herb which only grew on the marsh that hugged her door. Her eighty-five years had bowed her body to the proportions of a hunchback's, and there was an evil light in her blue-green eyes that did not fit ill with her reputation. Whenever Joe found himself in straits he repaired to the maternal roof-tree, for Mistress Strangeways could show good common sense on occasion.
Joe walked over to the cottage on the night following Griff's stay at Peewit House. He entered the living-room without knocking, and found Mistress Strangeways huddled over the embers of a poverty-stricken fire.
"Well, mother," said he, "I'm i' a queer way."
Rachel gibbered over her ashes awhile, then looked up. Her blue-green eyes grew almost soft as they rested on this scrubby-bearded clown, who was yet bone of her bone. For there had been a time when the old witch's hand was not against the world, nor the world's hand against her; that was in the days when she and her man had a spruce little cottage at the edge of the moor, and a strip of garden where the peonies and the sweet marjoram and the ladslove grew, and one little lass to fend for. The little lass had grown up into a slim, well-favoured maid, and the mother had loved her after the profligate fashion of these rough-speeched, tender-hearted women of the uplands. And Mother Strangeways' heart was broken, once for all, when the girl died in bringing Joe to a shameful birth; she did not rail against her daughter, but against the world that had wronged her, as the way of her class is; and she hardened herself against all men living, and buried her husband in due course, and came to this battered, wind-swept cottage to live out her days. And Joe Strangeways, who had inherited neither his mother's fearlessness nor his father's breeding, was all she had left in the world to cherish and frame plans for.
"So tha'rt come to me?" she muttered, still with her eyes on Joe's face. "So tha'rt come to me? Ay, it brings men to their women-folk, does trouble; year in an' year out, I niver see thy black face, Joe, without there's trouble agate. Sit thee dahn, lad; sit thee dahn, and let's know what's toward."
"Just this—my wife's gone wrang wi' a gentleman. I could ha' borne it better if he'd hed rough talk an' a rough pair o' hands."
Rachel stiffened her dwarfed old body.
"An' who may it be, Joe?"
"Griff Lummax, out to Marshcotes Manor. I knew how it 'ud be when th' mother—th' girt, ugly man of a figure—got coming it ower Kate."
The blue-green eyes shot fire.
"Then why didn't tha get him by t' throat, and squeeze th' life out on his body?"
"'Cos he's ower strong," growled Joe.
"Ower strong, ower strong!" flashed the crone. "I didn't talk i' that way when I hed th' use of my body an' wits. Tha'rt noan o' my flesh, Joe—no, nor bone o' my bone, nawther—shame on thee, lad, for a shammocky nowt of a man." She pushed her skinny face close up to his. "Dost mind what Joshua Lummax, Griff's father, did to thy mother five an' thirty year agone?" Her voice crackled and hissed like the fall of water on live coal. "Dost mind how he came wi' his fine airs, just same as th' son hes done to thy wife, an' witched th' heart out on her? Dost'a know i' what fashion I sarved him?"
"Tha did nowt," muttered Joe, surlily; "tha gabbled an' gabbled for a fearful deal o' years, an' th' cold took him off i' th' end. Dunnot thee talk to me till tha's getten summat to show for t' to-do tha'rt making."
Still closer the lean face pressed to his. She whispered something in his ear, and he glared at her with an admiration touched by fear.
"Art 'a leeing, mother?" he demanded.
"Leeing? No, by God! I hed my rights i' th' end, an' th' lass sleeps quiet i' her grave. Thee see to thy own porridge, Joe. I'm ower owd to cook for other fowk."
"Tha'rt a sight fuller i' th' wit nor me, owd or young. What mun I do, mother?"
"Do? Kill him, I tell thee, an' off wi' them Lummax peacocks for gooid an' all. That's th' porridge tha hes to cook."
"She came it high an' mighty ower me, did Mrs. Lummax; reckoned she'd gie me a bit o' stick, she did. More nor once her son hes hed th' laugh on me, i' sight o' all th' Marshcotes fowk. I owe him a two or three hard knocks—ay, that I do."
"Then gie 'em, tha lout! Childless am I this day—not counting a six ha'porth o' copper like thee—an' childless tha'll mak th' Lummax woman. Ower strong, is he? Lig i' a hedge-bottom, then, an' crack his skull wi' a pickaxe."
Joe kicked at the smouldering peat, but his face showed no responsive enthusiasm.
"Tha itches to see me dangling at th' end on a hangman's rope, that's easy to be seen. Dost 'a think a plain man can kill gentlefowk same as he'd lake at a bit o' pigeon-shooiting, an' niver hear no more on't?"
"Hes Mother Strangeways swung for Joshua Lummax? Nay, tha shames me, Joe, tha shames me. I mun ha' kept thee ower long at th' bottle; tha'rt a mammy's lad, a right mammy's lad." She rose from her bench, and her hands moved swiftly, the claw fingers keeping time to her thoughts. "Christ! if I war only young again!" she shrieked. "If I could han'le a knife—or an iron bar, mebbe—I'd hev my rights o' yon Lummaxes." She fell once again to a sitting posture, making hideous mouths at the fire. Then a fresh train of ideas was started, and she looked up at Joe with a cunning leer. "Blood's blood," she crackled, "but swinging's swinging; an' happen tha can hurt him war nor even killing 'ud do. They're fearful proud, them Lummaxes; break 'em, lad, break 'em wi' law; set their names on th' housetops, an' mak 'em a bye-word i' th' land. Ay, hev th' law on 'em, an' bide thy own time for th' rest."
"Th' law?" snarled Joe. "Th' law is a matter o' brass, an' nowt but brass. Him 'at's getten th' fattest purse can allus best a poor man. Nay, doan't thee talk to me about law."
"Wilt 'a hearken to sense, or willun't 'a? Thee go to-morn, i' th' dinner-hour, to Lawyer French i' Marshcotes. He's a sharp un, yon, an' he kep' me my bit o' freehold when Squire war minded to set me, bag an' baggage, on th' roadside. Ay, Lawyer French bested th' Squire an' proper."
"An' charged thee a pretty penny, I'll be bound."
"Not more nor a poorish woman could pay; an' he'll noan charge thee more nor tha can pay."
"Well, I mak nowt o' sich things. What sort of a figure should I cut i' th' witness-box, afore judge, jury an' all, swearing away my pride i' my own wedded wife?"
"Oh, ay, tha's showed thyseln mighty proud on her, hesn't 'a, Joe?" snapped the mother. "It'll break thy heart, willun't it, to lose thy lass? What tale didst 'a come to me wi' a four months back? That she wouldn't do this, an' she wouldn't do that, an' tha wert main weary o' th' sight on her."
"But I'm noan for making her free to marry this Lummax lad."
"Marry, sayst 'a? He'll noan marry her, if I know th' gentry. Tha'll hev one less mouth to feed, an' Kate 'ull hev to set to an' fend for herseln."
"Begow," muttered her son, after a lengthy silence, "tha allus did gie a chap a bit o' gooid, straightforrard sense. I'll off to this lawyer chap to-morn, dang me if I don't!"
Rachel crouched over her fire after he had left her.
"To hev a babby like yon for a grandson," she grumbled. "Cannot move hand nor foot by hisseln. Eh, eh, to hev the free swing o' my own arms again, an' young Lummax at t' other end on a mattock! But I'm owd, owd; nawther spells, nor muscles, wark as they once did. Almighty God, if tha'd only mak me strong for a day—just for a day!"