“Well, well?”—impatiently.
“It’s Eph.—an’ them Bradburys. Leastwise, th’ young ’un.”
“But Tom o’ Bill’s a married man, with a family at that—what can he want with Miriam?”
“Oh! mostly to spite thee, aw reckon. He wants none o’ th’ lass. He’s his hands full at whom; but he’d hit thee through Miriam if he can.”
Now that was a very long speech for the taciturn Burnplatter, and ’twere wearisome to tell at large how, bit by bit, like getting gold out of quartz, I got from Daft Billy the story he had to tell.
It would seem, then, that my old friend and later rival and foe, Ephraim, aforetime poacher and horsedealer, had now quite cast in his lot with the gamekeepers at the Moorcock Inn. He was persuaded, too, that by right divine he was now King of the Burnplatters, in joint succession with Miriam to old Mother Sykes, whom, it appeared, that unruly tribe had regarded as their rightful Queen and head. Ephraim was not disposed to take his kingship lightly. He had exacted an oath of fealty from the Burnplatters, and trusted to his new-born friendship with the Bradburys to secure them a certain immunity from the ministers of the law, But he felt, as the most intense conviction of his being, that Miriam was destined alike by Nature, by kinship—he knew nothing, of course, of Mr Garside’s revelation—by their upbringing, and, he believed, by her own predilection, to be alike his bride and queen consort of the Burnplatters. Daft Billy often came across him on his wanderings over the moors that lie between Greenfield and Pole Moor, and had, as I could well imagine under no great pressure, accepted Ephraim’s invitations to drink. Ephraim would begin on ale, of which he would quaff great draughts, without appearing a penny the worse, and then, declaring that ale lay too cold on his stomach, would call for brandy. Now, though I am not learned in these matters, as how should I be, I have always understood that no greater error can be made than to mix your liquors. I cannot understand how this should be, for one would have said that alcohol is alcohol whether derived from the grain or vine. But so I am assured it is; and Daft Billy left me no room to doubt that when Ephraim had got well under way with the brandy bottle all the baser and more repulsive nature of the man betrayed itself. He would begin by boasting, bragging of his own good looks, and strength, and prowess, and skill as a judge and swapper of horse flesh; then he would fall to maudlin talk of his and Miriam’s childhood days, and of her girlish awe and admiration and affection for him; then he would flare up into wild denunciations of myself: he would cut my liver out and throw it to his dog to eat; he would set fire to Mitchell Mill and break every loom to stivers and burn every piece; he would break me in body and in fortune; he would mar me that no maid would look on me but with loathing; he would show Miriam which was the better man: he would—and this was really the gravamen of Daft Billy’s story—beguile her from the safe keeping and, as he deemed them, evil and corrupting influences of Pole Moor, and, will she nill she, make her his wedded wife.
“But all this,” I commented, “is but the raving of a drunken sot. People who really intend mischief don’t go babbling their designs over a pot. They lie low and keep their mouths shut. Then their blow falls like lightning out of a summer sky. Besides, there’s law in the land. As for the mill and our pieces, Jim and I can look after them. And as for Miriam—why, we aren’t in the Highlands of Scotland, where such things might be, but in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and, anyway, Miriam is not the girl to be forced into marriage by Ephraim Sykes and all the Burnplatters put together.”
But Daft Billy was not to be moved by all my eloquence.
“Yon lad means mischief,” he said. “He’d care not a snap of his fingers for all th’ law i’ England. He’s just out of his senses, what wi’ brandy an’ what wi’ jealousy, an’ what wi’ longing for the maid hersen. An’ when a man’s mad, he’s mad; an it s just sheer nonsense argeying about him as if he were i’ his reet senses. He’ll stick at nowt an’ damn the consekences.”
“But what’s to be done?” I asked with some impatience, for to tell the truth I attached mighty little importance to Daft Billy’s story. “Jim and I can’t put Mitchell Mill in our pockets and carry it about with us. And we can’t keep Miriam under lock and key till we’re wed—and that won’t be for many a long day, worse luck. And it would never do to breathe a word to Miriam about the matter. The girl’s happy enough now. Why, Billy, you would scarce know her for the same girl. Why don’t you come to Pole Moor and drink a dish of tea with my father like a Christian man? Then you can see for yourself what a change has come over the dear lass.”