Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

THE BREAKING DAM

(The Narrative continued by Joe Yarrow.)

I have given this part of Elsie's diary in full, as she wrote it out, both because she was so far from the truth as to what was happening above ground, and because her style of writing is so literary—far before mine, with words that I should have to look out in the dictionary.

Why, of course, there was no end of a rumpage. The whole country rose. It is the third time that tells. You never saw anything like it. Farmers and their men flocked in from the field, and took shot guns and hay forks, or tied scythes to poles, making ugly enough weapons. The village of Breckonside emptied itself. It chanced that a little boy, Frankie Leslie, on his way to school, had seen "eour teacha," as he called Elsie, in the company of a tall woman in black going through the pastures towards the woods of the Deep Moat.

That was enough. That was evidence at last. There was to be no pausing this time. The place was to be ransacked, if not sacked. And what would have happened to the poor mad sisters if it had not been for the presence of mind of Mr. Ablethorpe, it is better not surmising. I don't believe that the idea of compelling witches by torture to release their victims is extinct—at least, not in such a place as Breckonside. That mob of angry men and furious women which flocked out towards the house of the Golden Farmer would have taken to the red-hot knitting needle and the flat-irons as naturally as their ancestors two hundred years ago on Witches' Hill, a little beyond the Bridge End. They would have burned, too, only that they were afraid of the police—I don't mean old Codling, but the real police, who would come up from East Dene and Longtown.

I had seen the first surprise about the empty mail gig which had been escaladed by the murderers of poor Harry Foster. I had seen the midnight levy when my father's mare came home without him. But far beyond either was the sight of that silent flood of people, at the noon of a winter's day, when in the ordinary course of things they would have been sitting down to dinner: breaking barriers, throwing down gates, and spreading over the fields in the direction of Deep Moat Grange! It fairly took the breath from me.

Once I had even been a leader at that sort of thing. I had found the traces of the crime that had been committed in the case of poor Harry. I had been my father's son on the second occasion. People had deferred to me. Even Ebie the blacksmith, with his fore-hammer over his shoulder, had asked my advice. But now I was nobody. No one was anybody. A force which no one could control had been set in motion. I understood better what is that Democracy of which they speak. It is the setting in motion of destructive forces, always most dangerous when most silent.

The idea in the hearts of all was that this must end. There was no saying whose turn might come next. So the rush was made in the direction of that sinister house in the depths of the woods, surrounded by its moat, and looking out upon the gloomy pond, dark grey under the shadow of the pines.

But those of Breckonside who had imagined that there was nothing but processioning and incensing about Mr. Ablethorpe had their opinions considerably altered that day. Mr. De la Poer was with him. They had been—I forget the word—confessing or cross-examining each other. Oh, no, spiritually directing each other—that is the correct phrase. And when the roar of the village rising en masse against its formidable neighbours of the Grange came to their ears, they had just got the job done for the month, and were sitting down to a good cup of tea, which Miss Ablethorpe, the Hayfork's sister, had brewed for them.

Immediately divining the cause, Mr. Ablethorpe dashed across the fields, leaving Mr. De la Poer to act as a drag to the armed villagers. It was evident that he had been successful in his mission; for when the mob poured over the drawbridge, which was hospitably down as if to invite them across, they found at Deep Moat Grange a house empty, swept, and garnished.

In the house they found spotless chambers, which testified to the good housekeeping of Miss Aphra Orrin—full pantries, well-filled larders, the milk standing to cream on the stone slabs of the dairy, butter in lordly dishes on great squares of Parton slate, the quietest, the most innocent house in all the parish of Breckonside.

Nor did they find anything suspicious in all the chambers of the house, though they went everywhere—into Mr. Stennis's workroom, which had the windows tightly barred, but which, when thrown open, revealed nothing but a spare wooden settle in a corner, and on a wonderful hand loom a half-worked pattern, such as only Hobby could weave, with crowns of flowers, roses and lilies, and on a scroll the words: "To Elsie Stennis, on her marriage. The gift of her affectionate grandfather."

But the rest was wanting. I stood and wondered as the tide ebbed away to other rooms—first to whom Elsie Stennis was to be married, and whether the inscription on that half-woven wedding present had anything to do with her disappearance in company with the granite-faced woman as reported by Frankie Leslie on his way through the meadows.

I even went so far as to suspect Mr. Ablethorpe. He had always been fond of Elsie. He had always protected her enemies, those whose interest it was to deprive her of her heritage. Perhaps his very pretence of celibacy was only a cover for a deeper design of getting hold of the riches of the Golden Farmer!

But all the turmoil, and the thundering blows of the fore-hammer wielded by Ebie McClintoch discovered nothing—not one of the mad sisters, not their leader and protectress, Miss Orrin, not Mad Jeremy himself. And, of course, no one expected to see anything of Mr. Stennis. He would be far away, as usual, with an alibi obviously provided on purpose.

Most of all, the silence of the place was disquieting. The door of the barn was open. Within, all trace of the ridiculous gauds of a former time had disappeared. It had been restored carefully, with knowledge and discretion, to its first use as a chapel. A crucifix hung above the communion table. The twin sets of commandments, written in gold on blue, were against the wall on either side. The Bible, on the little lectern, behind a gilt eagle no bigger than a sparrow, was open at the lesson for the day. The Breckonside people, though in their Presbyterian hearts condemning such signs and symbols, paused open-mouthed, taken with a kind of awe, and as Mr. De la Poer dropped on one knee to make his altar reverence, all filed out bareheaded and a little ashamed of themselves.

None thought of going farther. Though I knew very well that behind the hanging of dull purple at the lectern was the door by which Mr. Ablethorpe had saved his strange parishioners, and so cheated the hasty angers of Breckonside.

Nor did I tell them of it. Somehow I was no longer a leader. And deep in my heart I felt sure that if Elsie were indeed there, Mr. Ablethorpe would give his life rather than that any harm should come to her. Besides Elsie and I had been so many times in danger of our lives, in that very place even, that I knew somehow she would come back to me unhurt. At any rate, the actual prison house where she was hidden was far beyond our ken. None of us thought of searching on the other side of the moat, where was the underground oven of the Cistercians, in which Elsie (as she has already told) was interned.

Perhaps I did wrong in not revealing the secret of the passage. But then if there had been bloodshed—and our folk were quite in the mood for it—the death or ill-usage of these poor innocents (I do not speak of Miss Orrin or Mad Jeremy) would have been on my head. On the whole, I am still convinced that I acted wisely. And I am sure also that Mr. Ablethorpe did so. For he had, there was no doubt, hurried the sisters Honorine, Camilla, and Sidonia, with their eldest sister Miss Orrin, from the chapel where he had known he would be sure to find them at that hour, by the passage along which I had chased him, and had finally hidden them safely in the range of underground buildings that had been the store and treasure-houses of the monks in the days of the border moss-troopers. For then each good wife of a peel tower sent her husband to "borrow" from the holy clerks of the Moated Abbey as often as the larder and money bag were empty. And her way was a woman's way. She served him at dinner time with only this—a clean spur upon an empty plate, which being interpreted meant, "If thou would'st eat, good man of mine, rise and ride."

They lived in dangerous territory, these good monks, and it is small wonder if after their departure the moated island kept its repute. The very wealth of "hidie-holes" conduced to deeds that feared the light.

Mad Jeremy in his outcast days had sheltered there. He had explored them, and that knowledge had been abundantly utilized since the purchase of the Grange by Mr. Stennis. The whole situation was most favourable for his traffic, and even now when its good repute was blown upon, the Cistercian abbots' "hidie-hole" still showed itself capable of keeping its secrets.

Our Breckonsiders were proverbially slow of belief, but they could not get over the facts. There before us was the house of Deep Moat, all open to the eye, silent like a church on week days, prepared as for visitors from floor to roof tree. And nothing to be found, neither there, nor in the numerous out-buildings of which Mr. Bailiff Ball, a man of approven probity, had the charge.

There was nothing for it therefore but to go home. Or rather the villagers had almost arrived at that decision when Miss Orrin, escorted by Mr. Ablethorpe, walked suddenly into the midst of the crowd of armed country folk.

Her appearance caused an angry roar, pikes and scythes were raised against her. But the presence of a clergyman, the dignity of even an alien cloth, made them turn away a little shamefacedly. Mr. Ablethorpe put up his hand to command silence.

"My friends," he said, "I have lived among you long enough to know that you will offer no indignity to a woman. Miss Orrin is here of her own wish to explain to you all that may be necessary. She does not, of course, make herself responsible for the words or actions of all other members of her family, but so far as she is concerned she is ready to explain."

"Where is Elsie Stennis? Murderess! Burn the witch! The she-devil!" These cries, among others, broke from the crowd, and Miss Orrin was well advised not to attempt any long parley.

"Come with me," she said, "and I will satisfy you! But go gently. For the master of this house is very ill and the doctor is with him even now."

Whereupon she opened with a key a door in the weaving chamber of Mr. Stennis, a door which I had taken for that of a large iron safe, and conveyed us into a smaller chamber, with a barred window looking across the moat. Here Mr. Stennis lay on a bed, very pale and haggard, and with him, his hand upon the sick man's wrist, was Dr. Hector of Longtown, a man whom every one knew and respected—all the more so because of a brusque manner and an authoritative speech that caused people to place great confidence in his judgments.

He looked up astonished and rose to his feet, evidently very angry.

"Hello," he said, "what's this? What right have you to come masquerading here with your pitchforks and hedging tools? Out of this, or I'll put my lancet into some of you! I'll wager that I will let more blood in five minutes than you with your entrenching tools in a week—ay, and take it from the right spot, too!"

He followed the defeated Breckonsiders to the door, made a gesture as if to hasten a few laggards with the toe of his boot, and remarked aloud to Miss Orrin: "I thought you had more sense than to encourage this sort of thing!"

"Me encourage it!" cried Miss Orrin, indignantly facing him—"you are under a great mistake, sir!"

"Well, out of this, anyway, all of you," said Dr. Hector. "I will not have it. If my patient's repose is broken into again, tell them I am armed—I will take my horsewhip to the pack of them!"

And curiously enough the crowd of justicers melted more quickly merely with the shame of looking a good man in the face, and before his horsewhip of righteous indignation, than it would have done before Mad Jeremy, armed to the teeth.

"I went this morning to the school where Miss Elsie Stennis teaches," said Miss Orrin, "and I gave her a message that her grandfather was ill and wishful to see her. Dr. Hector is a witness that such was Mr. Stennis's urgent desire. I merely executed it, and all that I know further is that Miss Stennis has not yet complied with that request."

"Our Frankie saw teacher with you on the meadow pasture at nine this morning," interrupted a gaunt woman with the bent shoulders of the outdoor worker and a look of poverty on her face.

"Then your Frankie lied!" retorted Miss Orrin sharply.

And after this direct challenge it needed both Mr. Ablethorpe and Mr. De la Poer to restore order. But the fury of Frankie's mother contrasted so ill with Miss Orrin's glacial calm, that it seemed possible enough that "Frankie" had indeed invented the little circumstance to add to his importance, after hearing of the loss and disappearance of "teacher."

"Moreover," said Miss Orrin, "since Mr. Stennis is too ill to have his bedchamber and house invaded in this way, in future Dr. Hector will arrange for special protection from the police at Longtown. And after this warning let any one cross the moat at their peril."

There was no more to be done. Aphra Orrin had beaten us completely. The baffled tide ebbed back the way it came, and Deep Moat Grange was left alone once more with the secrets it had been successful in guarding in the teeth of a whole countryside in arms and aroused to a high pitch of curiosity.

The two clergymen waited behind, but the sick man would have nothing to do with them, declaring his intention, if he must, of dying as a good Presbyterian. He was the most intractable of invalids, even threatening to break a bottle over Dr. Hector's head if, as he proposed, he should venture to bring with him from Longtown a minister of his own denomination.

"Hobby Stennis is none so ill as that," he said stoutly, "if only I had my will in a safe place, and had seen the little lass, who is all my kith and kin, I would ask no more from doctor or minister in this world."

"I will take charge of the will myself if no better may be," said Dr. Hector. And so, none saying him nay, he rode back to Longtown with the holograph in his breast pocket, jesting with two farmers riding that way as he went. Had he only known, a few sheets of a folio account book covered with close writing in the hand of Mr. Stennis was considerably more dangerous to carry about with him than the latest discovered high explosive!

It was with considerable astonishment that on the evening of his next visit to Deep Moat Grange, about midway between the edge of the woods and the lonely alehouse where my father had alighted, Dr. Hector was suddenly aware of a noose of rope which circled about his neck with a whiz. The next moment he was dragged from his horse. He lay unconscious for an hour on the road, and then coming to himself turned and walked back to Longtown, very stiff and very angry, but conscious of no other loss than that of several copies of prescriptions which he kept in his breast pocket.

"What they can want with these, I don't know," said the vindictive doctor. "I only hope they will take them all together. There was a triple dose of strychnine in one which I wrote for Garmory's dog!"

Now Miss Orrin was a clever woman, and she grasped at once the immense moral value of having the support of Mr. Ablethorpe and his friend and spiritual director Mr. De la Poer. It was quite evident that for the sisters the situation at Deep Moat Grange would no longer be tenable. Mr. Stennis might die any day. The Longtown doctor gave little hope of ultimate recovery. The will had been removed out of Aphra's reach. True, she might possibly induce the old man to make another, disinheriting his granddaughter. If Elsie died in her prison, doubtless sooner or later all would be found out. There were other things also.

It came as the happiest of solutions, therefore, to the strenuous head of the Orrin family, when, a few days after, Mr. Ablethorpe proposed to charge himself with the care of the three "innocents"—Honorine, Camilla, and Sidonia. He knew of a convent, the good sisters of which gave up their lives to the care of women mentally afflicted. Aphra refused point blank any such assistance for herself, even temporarily. But for her sisters she rejoiced openly, and was indeed, after her fashion, really grateful to the two young clergymen who had taken up the cause of the witless and the friendless.

"I know why you do this," she said, "it is that you may clear the board of those who have neither art nor part in the evil. Then you will strike the more surely. I do not blame you, Mr. Ablethorpe, But for me, I will not go with my sisters, who have done nothing—known nothing. If the guilty are to suffer—and if the guilty are indeed my brother and my master—then I will stand in the dock by their side. No one shall ever say that Aphra Orrin went back on a friend, or refused her full share of responsibility. All the same, Mr. Ablethorpe—and you, Mr. De la Poer—I am grateful from my heart for what you are doing for my poor sisters. For me, I am neither mad nor irresponsible—only as the more notable sinner, in the greater need of your ghostly counsels!"