Chapter Nine.
Gleaning.
Once more Andrew Fisher, aged ninety years, sat in his beehive chair facing the western window in Warren House. The sun was sinking, and seemed to hang over the distant vale, towards which the old man’s countenance was turned. Once more the sickle had done its work, and the golden grain was garnered. For the shadow of the days had gone forward upon the dial, whose ancient graven circles, dimmed with green rust, timed the equinox and the march of the firmament. The merry barley was laid low; and the acorns—first green, then faintly yellow—were ripening brown in their cups upon the oaks.
On the ledge of the chimney, where the level rays came warmest, and stone and tile radiated heat, the last lingering swallows twittered a long farewell. For the oxen had already felt the drag of the heavy plough. The ivy flowered on the wall, blossoming for winter, and there was a buzz of flies gathering on the pane towards the sun. As a ripe pear that waited but the rude shock of the wind, the full year was bending to its fall. Overhead the rooks were floating idly home down towards Thorpe Wood. The long files of the black army streaked the sky with streaming thousands far as the eye could see, and filled the air with the strange rush and creaking of their wings and the goblin chuckle of the noisy jackdaws. The feathery heads of the reeds by the mill-pool bowed mournfully; and in the hush of the dying day came the monotonous chaunt of the mill-wheel, ever round and round, without haste and without rest; and with it mingled the sounding rush of the race, of its foam and bubble and spray as of human life.
The sunbeam on the chamber-wall—stained azure and purple by the painted escutcheon of “Fischere” on the pane—travelled slowly as the sun sank lower. There was a picture almost opposite the beehive chair—a picture old and darkened by the thickening of the oil and varnish. It was the portrait by a rude hand of a sturdy boy in breeches and buckles, and with bare head, fishing in the brook. The portrait was that of Andrew himself in his boyhood, painted to please a doting mother. Was there a tear in his dull eyeball at the thought of her—heartbroken by his evil so many, many weary years ago? Was he wiser, happier, now in the fullness of his days, than when, with peeled white willow wand, a thread and crooked pin, he angled in the bend of the brook where the eddy scooped out a deeper hollow?
“Caer-wit! caer-weet!” It was the call of the partridge yonder, in the mead at the foot of the hill; and a distant answer came from the stubble lower down. Ah, the joy of the brown twist barrel and the eager dogs. His sight is dull and sinews stiff; never again will Andrew Fisher mark a covey down as they skim across the uplands.
The blue-stained sunbeam moved onward, the sun declined, and the wearyful women came homeward from the gleaning and the labour of the field. Their path passed close beneath the great window, and their stooping shadows for a moment shut out the sunshine. Such paths used by the workers, and going right through the grounds of the house, may be found still, where the ancient usage has not yet succumbed to modern privacy, and were once the general custom. It was the season of the harvest, the time of joy and gladness. Do you suppose these women moved in rhythmic measures to Bacchanalian song and pastoral pipe, as the women came home from the field with corn and grape:
In Tempé and the dales of Arcady?
Do you suppose their brows were wreathed with the honeysuckle’s second autumn bloom, with streaked convolvulus and bronzed ears of wheat?
Their backs were bowed beneath great bundles of gleanings, or faggots of dead sticks carefully sought for fuel, and they carried weary infants, restless and fretful. Their forms had lost all semblance to the graceful curve of woman; their faces were hard, wrinkled, and angular, drawn with pain and labour. Save by their garments none could distinguish them from men. Yet they were not penned in narrow walls, but all things green and lovely were spread around them. The fresh breezes filled their nostrils in the spring with the delicate odour of the flowering bean-field and the clover scent; the very ground was gilded with sunshine beneath their feet. But the magic of it touched them not, for their hearts were pinched with poverty. These are they to whom the old, old promise bears its full significance: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
They trooped past the window, and saw the old man sitting in his chair; and one said to another, “Thur be thuck ould varmint. He never done nought all his time, and have got more vittels than a’ can yeat. Thaay says a’ drinks a’ main drop of gin moast days. He wur a bad un, he wur, time ago. What be the matter with thuck you? How he do howl—it sounds main unkid!”
“Come on, you,” said another; “I be terrable tired, bean’t you? Wonder how long it wull be to the Judgment Daay?”
So they went by the window, and each as she passed dropped a lowly curtsey to “Measter” in the beehive chair. Then at last the great blood-red rim of the sun went down, and a wondrous glory of light rushed over the earth. A fiery blaze surged up into the sky, shooting from the west to the zenith, and thence to the east in the twinkling of an eye; like the glow of a grand aurora, but ninefold more brilliant, a deep-tinted crimson. Men stayed and looked up, amazed at the beauty and the awe of it; for the world was changed, as if it were on fire, and the flames like a flood sweeping up from the western edge. Into the chamber came the reflection—as of the last conflagration that we dare not think of, when the sky shall roll away as parchment—and the place was filled with a luminous glamour. Listen! faintly up from the silence of the ages comes the chaunt of the monks:
Dies irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeclum in favilla.
The day of wrath seemed nigh at hand. Away down in the vale, and yonder, over the everlasting hills, flowed the wonder of the light; but the old man’s face gave no sign, dazed, maybe, by the grandeur of it. But Felix St. Bees, riding towards Warren House once more, as he reached the first slopes of the hills, was suddenly bathed in the glory, and drew rein and gazed about him. A dome of fire above reflected by the dull earth—a faint, phosphoric, shimmering rosiness among the grass blades. Upon the margin of the world a thicker vapour swelling upward with a deeper red, as of smoke tinted by the furnace under. On the sunset side of the tree-trunks a streak of crimson, and every leaf gleaming on its shiny smoothness; through the thickets a warm haze pouring, and the whiteness of the road before him reddened, as by the breath of flame. He paused, rapt in the deep marvelling which is prayer, and watched till it passed away. Then he pushed on among the hills.
Coming slowly up a steep ascent, where on the summit, among the thorn thickets and the gnarled ashes, was a little lonely inn, he saw a dozen or more men, labouring hard and shouting by the side of the road. The highway had worn itself a gully or hollow, lessening the pull of the hill somewhat, and leaving a low but steep bank of coarse chalky rubble. On the sward a tinker’s donkey was peacefully grazing, heedless of the excitement.
“We’ve got un!”
“Heave un out, you!”
“Lay on, Jim!”
“Let I try!”
“Peach un up!”
“What is it you are trying to do?” asked Felix, guiding his horse up to the group.
“Aw, I seed his toes a’ sticking out,” cried a plough-boy, eager lest his share of the discovery should be forgotten.
“It wur thuck heavy rain as washed the rubble away,” said a man with a leathern apron, doubtless a blacksmith. Nothing ever happens without a blacksmith being in it.
“Mebbe a rabbit a-scratching, doan’t ee zee?” said the landlord of the inn, leaning on his spade and wiping his forehead; for much ale is a shortener of the breath.
“Well, but what is it, after all—a treasure?”
“Us doan’t ’zactly knaw what it be,” said the man nearest the bank, pausing, after swinging his pickaxe with some effect. “But us means to zee. Jim, shove thuck pole in.”
Jim picked up a long stout ash-pole, and thrust one end, as directed, into a cavity the pickaxe had made under a large sarsen boulder, the earth above which had been previously dug away.
“Zumbody be buried thur, paason,” said the landlord. “Mebbe you knaws un? Thur never wur nar a church here as we heard tell on.”
“Hang on, you chaps!” cried the blacksmith, throwing the weight of his body on the pole. The landlord, the plough-boy, and the tinker did the same; Jim and an aged man on the bank heaved at the great stone from above.
“Peach un up!” (i.e. lever it)
“He be goin’.” Felix saw the boulder move.
“One, two, dree!”
“War out!”
They spread right and left. Felix, who did not for the instant comprehend that “war out” meant “clear away,” had much ado to save his horse; for the boulder came with a rush, bringing with it half a ton of rubble, thud on the ground, which trembled.
“Aw, here a’ be!”
“This be uz yod!” (head.) “Warn this be uz chine!” holding up a part of the vertebrae.
“He wur a whopper, you!”
“The gyeaunt Goliar’, I’ll warn,” said the aged man on the bank.
“Don’t disturb the skeleton!” cried Felix, anxious to make scientific notes of the interment; whether the grave was “orientated,” or the knees drawn up to the chin; but in the scramble for the bones his voice was unheeded, and the skeleton was disjointed in an instant. The bones were as light as pith, ready to crumble to pieces and little better than dust, yet still retaining, as it were, a sketch of human shape.
“Drow um in this here,” said the landlord, as the buzz subsided, and holding out a stable-bucket which he had fetched. So skull and femur, radius and ulna—all the relics of poor humanity—were “chucked” indiscriminately into the stable-bucket.
“A’ warn a’ wur buried in th’ time o’ Judges,” said Jim. “Um set up stwuns for memorials, doan’t you mind? Thuck sarsen be all five hunderd weight.”
“Mebbe a’ fowght Julius Caesar,” said the aged man on the bank above. “I’ve heard tell as Julius wur a famous hand a’ back-swording. You med see as uz skull wur cracked with a pistol-bullet—one of thaay ould vlint-locks—and here be th’ trigger-guard.”
From the disturbed earth above he picked up a small crooked piece of brass, which might or might not have been connected with the interment. It passed from hand to hand, till the landlord, rubbing it on his sleeve, found some letters.
“Paason ull tell uz what it means,” said he, giving it to Felix, who spelt out slowly, as he removed the clinging particles of earth.
“G.a.u.d.e.a.m.u.s.”
“What be thuck?”
“‘Let us rejoice.’”
“Sartinly.”
“My friends,” said Felix solemnly, “this is a fragment from an ancient Roman trumpet—a trumpet sounding to us from the tomb. Let us rejoice in the certainty of the life to come.”
“I be main dry,” said the blacksmith.
“Mebbe you’ll stand us a quart, paason?” said Jim, touching his forelock.
“Will you sell me this little piece of brass?” said Felix.
“Aw, you med take un; he bean’t no vallee to we.”
Felix gave them half-a-crown for the relic, and rode on slowly, while the group adjourned to the inn to drink it, leaving the donkey, their tools, and the bucket by the roadside among the thistles.
“I knaws it bean’t nothing but the trigger-guard of one of them ould hoss-pistols,” the patriarch persisted, “them vlint-locks with brass-barrels—I minds um.”
Felix, as he rode away saddened, thought to himself: “That we should come to this—made in the Divine image, and thrown at last into a stable-bucket! The limbs that bounded over the sward, the nostrils that scented the clover, and the eyes that watched and pondered, perhaps as mine did but now, over the sunset! Ah, the tinker’s ass, browsing on the thistles, is thrusting his nose into the bucket, I see, to sniff contemptuously at it! ‘Let us rejoice’—what a satire—”
“Hi, there! Hoi, you, measter!”
He looked back, saw the landlord panting after him, and drew rein and waited till he came up. What he wanted was to know whether Felix could tell him any further particulars respecting the sudden death of Valentine’s dark horse that had taken place very early that morning, during a private trial upon the downs. One of the men at the inn had recognised Felix as a friend of Valentine, and the landlord said everybody about there was so mixed up and interested in the horse that he had made bold to ask. Felix was quite taken by surprise. The news had not reached Greene Ferne when he called; probably Valentine, after the accident, had been too occupied to come down from the training-stables some miles up among the hills.
“What was the cause?” he asked, after explaining that he knew nothing of it.
“A’ believe a’ broke a blood-vessel. A’ wur auver trained, bless ee, and auver rode. Zum thenks it wur done a purpose by thuck black chap, the trainer.”
“Why should you suspect him?”
“Aw, a’ be a bad un; a’ can’t look ’ee straight in the face; a’ sort of slyers (looks askance) at ee. Thur be a main lot of money gone auver thuck job.”
“Well, this is news,” said Felix. “Good evening.”
The landlord touched his hat, and went back, much delighted to have been the first to tell the “paason” the story. Felix was much concerned at the event, because he knew that Valentine’s disappointment, apart from pecuniary loss, would be extreme; besides which almost all their circle had more or less backed the horse—Geoffrey, Squire Thorpe, and all. He had done his best to persuade them not to bet; but now they had lost he was deeply disturbed. He felt half inclined to turn back, thinking the event would very likely put the irascible old man Fisher into a furious state, as he was believed to have “invested” largely. These delays, too, had brought on the twilight, and already the new moon was gleaming in the west; but, unwilling to return, he finally resolved to go through with his journey.
When he rode into the outskirts of the little scattered hamlet at the Warren, it was dark, and lights were shining in the cottage-windows. He looked for a boy to hold his horse, but, seeing none, dismounted at the bridge over the mill-pool, and threw the reins across the palings. As he crossed the bridge, which vibrated beneath him, he saw the stars and crescent-moon reflected in the pool, and heard the rush of the falling water. A dog howled mournfully as he approached the porch, and knocked with the butt of his riding-whip on the door, which stood ajar. There was no answer. He knocked again, and the dog chained in the courtyard set up his woeful howl.
“Be quiet, Jip,” he said. He had heard the name of the dog from May, and love remembers trifles. Hearing his voice, the dog howled again, and another at a distance caught up and prolonged the cry.
“This is a dismal place,” he thought. “No wonder May prefers to be with Margaret. How gloomy the shadowy hill looks, and the black mass of the mill yonder, and the tall trees over the white ricks!” He knocked a third time, and his blow echoed in the hall. “They must be out,” he thought, giving the heavy door, studded with broad-headed nails, a push. It creaked like the gate of those dark regions which Dante explored, and swung slowly back. He listened on the threshold; there was no sound save the ponderous halting tick of the stair-clock. He called “Jane!” recollecting the housekeeper’s name; his voice wandered in hollow spaces, and was lost. It occurred to him that perhaps she and the servants had taken advantage of the old man’s helplessness and May’s absence to go out for a gossip, and he became indignant. He stepped into the hall, and felt his way along a stone-paved passage, which he knew led to the great parlour; then reflected that he was intruding, and called again.
“Mr Fisher!” The words came back to him, distorted by a broken echo from the hall. The dog without howled piteously. Felix, in the dark passage, felt a strange creeping sensation come over him. He shook it off, and groped his way to the door of the parlour. The great apartment was full of shadows, gloomy, cavernous; but a dim light, from the faint glow still lingering in the west and the moon, came through the window enabling him to see the beehive chair, with the back towards him.
“Excuse me, sir; but I could not make any one hear,” he said, advancing. He looked into the hollow recess of the chair, and saw the old man sitting there with the glint of the crescent-moon upon his eyeball.
“I am afraid I have been rude,” he began; but suddenly stopped, stretched forth his arm, and touched the old man’s hands, which were folded upon his knee. Cold as a stone—he was dead!
Felix recoiled, awe-struck, shuddering. It was, indeed, a terrible moment in that empty gloomy house; the dog howling; the moonlight glittering on the glassy eye. He was a brave man; he had faced disease and danger in the exercise of his office, yet never before had the presence of death so awed him. The atmosphere of the room suddenly seemed stifling—his first instinct was to get out. He did get out, and the cool night air in the porch revived him. Then he unchained the dog, who whined and fawned upon him. His natural impulse was to run for assistance; but the thought came to him that perhaps Fisher was not really dead—quick attention might save him, and he possessed considerable medical and surgical skill. He went back to the parlour—the dog sniffed at the threshold, but would not enter. He struck a match, and lit a large wax candle on the mantelpiece. With this he approached the beehive chair, felt the wrist, looked in the face, and knew that Andrew Fisher had gone to his account. On the carpet by his feet was a crumpled piece of pinkish paper. Felix picked it up, and found that the telegram referred to betting transactions. Then he understood that the shock of the loss he had sustained by the death of Valentine’s horse had extinguished the flickering light of life in the old man.
Felix took off his hat reverently, went to the great window—unconsciously drawn towards the light—knelt and prayed earnestly. Then he covered the face with a bandana handkerchief which was lying on the knee of the deceased, and asked himself why the countenances of the very aged are so repellent in death, as if they had outlived the hope of immortality. To send for a doctor was evidently useless, nor was there one within several miles, but it was necessary that some one should be called. He went out and walked to the nearest cottage; a shepherd, with a pipe in his mouth, answered the door.
It was some time before his slow intellect could grasp the idea.
“Dead! be he dead? Missis (to his wife within), missis! The Ould Un have got measter at last.”
“Hush!” said Felix angrily. “Have you no respect?”
By the light of the candle his wife brought to the door, the man saw it was a clergyman, and asked pardon.
“But nobody won’t miss he,” he added, nevertheless; and thought Felix, as they walked back to the house, feeling the little piece of brass in his pocket, “‘Let us rejoice’—they are actually glad that he is gone. But how comes it that no one knew of this?”
Fisher had, indeed, been dead many hours. He had been ailing, as aged persons often are, in the fall of the year; but May had not suspected any danger, nor would there have been, in all probability, under ordinary circumstances. Jane, the snuff-taking old hag, whom May so detested, with low cunning kept the event secret from the household, excepting a crony who acted as nurse, and was glad enough to assist in plunder. Jenny, the dairy-maid, was despatched to visit her friends at Millbourne, and a kitchen-maid had a similar permission. They were easily prevented from entering the great parlour by Jane’s report that “Measter be in a passion, and nobody best go a-nigh un!” This was readily believed, as they knew his illness had made him exceptionally snappish. Something very much like this has been practised at the death of greater men than Andrew Fisher—monarchs, if history tell truth, have been robbed before the breath had hardly left their nostrils. So the two old crones ransacked the house undisturbed. They took the heavy seal-ring from his finger—it was of solid gold, weighing three times as much as modern work. From his fob—for to the last he wore breeches and gaiters—they removed his chain and watch, which last, being of ancient make, would have been worth a considerable sum.
“Thur be a chest under uz bed,” said Jane; “a’ be vull of parchmint stuff—I’ll warn thur be zum guineas in un. This be the key on him.” The chest was of black oak, rudely carved, and strongly protected by bands of iron. It was completely filled with yellow deeds, leases, etc, going back as far as Elizabeth, but mainly of the eighteenth century. These they scattered over the floor, and, as Jane had anticipated, at the bottom, in one corner, was a large bag of guineas. Then they added the great silver ladle, four heavy silver candlesticks, and a number of teaspoons to their guilty bundle, and chopped the gold handle off a cane with the billhook. With this tool they hacked open an inlaid cabinet, of which they could not find the key; but there was nothing within, except old letters faded from age, and a miniature on enamel—a portrait of May’s grandmother.
“Ay, poor theng,” said Jane, “thuck ould varmint ground the life out of her. A’wuver the picter be zet in gould; we med as well have un.”
“A’ wish us could take zum on these yer veather beds,” said the other. “Couldn’t you and I car um zumhow?”
“Us could shove one in a box,” said Jane, “and tell the miller to zend un in his cart. He wouldn’t knaw, doan’t ee zee?” They actually carried this idea into execution, and sent the miller’s cart off with the feather bed. Probably, in all their days, the two old hags had never so thoroughly enjoyed themselves as when thus turning everything upside-down, and rioting at their will. It was a curious fact that not for one moment did they reflect that detection must of necessity quickly follow. They had lived all their lives in the narrow boundary of the lonely hill-parish, and the force of habit made all beyond seem so distant that, if they could but once escape out of the hamlet, they did not doubt they would be safe. At last, seeing nothing else they could lay hands on, they came down into the great parlour just before sunset, and heard the tramp of the wearyful women approaching.
“We’d better go now,” said the nurse. “What had us better do with he?” jerking her thumb towards the senseless clay in the beehive chair.
“Aw, thur bean’t no call to move un,” said Jane; “let un bide. Nobody won’t knaw as a’ be dead vor a day or two. Come on, you,”—making for the back-door.
The wearyful women as they passed the window had curtseyed to the dead. The luminous sunset, filling the chamber with its magical glamour, had lit up the cold, drawn features with a rosy glow. But the dimmed eyeball had not seen the flames of that conflagration sweeping up from the west:—
Dies irae, dies illa.
The wrath, long withheld, must come at last.
“I fear there has been robbery here,” said Felix, as, with the shepherd, he re-entered the gloomy house.
“It do seem zo; the things be drowed about mainly. A’wuver it sarves un right.”
“Hush!” said Felix, and thought to himself, “How terrible it is to be hated even when dead! We will go over the house,” he added aloud, “and see if anything has been taken.”
In the bedchamber they found ample evidence of looting. Felix, even in his indignation, could not resist his antiquarian tastes. He took up an ancient deed, and while he glanced over it, the shepherd pretended to tie his shoe-lace, and pocketed a spade-guinea which the crones had dropped on the floor.
“Who is there that could take charge of the place?” asked Felix presently.
“Thur be the bailie.”
“Go and bring him.”
The shepherd went; and Felix, to pass the time, took a book from an old black chest of drawers, with brass rings and lions’ heads for handles. It was a small quarto, a.d. 1650, a kind of calendar of astrology, medicine, and agriculture, telling the farmer when the conjunction of the planets was favourable for purchasing stock or sowing seed. When, presently, the bailiff came—a respectable man enough for his station—Felix, in his presence, locked the upper rooms and took the keys with him. Then, leaving the house in the bailiff’s charge, he rode through the starlit night, by the lonely highway, homeward.