Perlycross: A Tale of the Western Hills

by R. D. Blackmore

Moreover the rectory, a long and rambling house, was not a cheerful place to sit alone in after dark. Although the high, and whitewashed, back abutted on the village street, there was no door there, and no window looking outwards in the basement; and the walls being very thick, you might almost as well be fifty miles from any company. Worst of all, and even cruel on the ancient builder's part, the only access to the kitchen and the rooms adjoining it was through a narrow and dark passage, arched with rough flints set in mortar, which ran like a tunnel beneath the first-floor rooms, from one end of the building to the other. The front of the house was on a higher level, facing southwards upon a grass-plat and flower-garden, and as pretty as the back was ugly.

Even the stoutest heart in Perlycross might flutter a little in the groping process, for the tunnel was pitch-dark at night, before emerging into the candlelight twinkling in the paved yard beside the kitchen-door. While the servants themselves would have thought it a crime, if the butcher, or baker, or anyone coming for them (except the Postman) had kept the front way up the open gravel walk, and ventured to knock at the front door itself. There was no bell outside to call them, and the green-baize door at the end of the passage, leading to the kitchen stairs, deadened the sound of the knocker so much, that sometimes a visitor might thunder away for a quarter of an hour, with intervals for conscientious study of his own temper, unless little Fay's quick ears were reached, and her pink little palms and chest began to struggle with the mighty knob.

So it happened, one evening in the first week of August, when Mr. Penniloe was engaged in a distant part of the parish, somebody or other came and knocked—it was never known how many times or how long,—at the upper-folk door of the rectory.

There was not any deafness about Thyatira; and as for Susanna, she could hear too much; neither was little Fay to blame, although the rest were rather fond of leaving things to her. If the pupils had returned, it could not have happened so; for although they made quite enough noise of their own in the little back-parlour allotted to them, they never failed to hear any other person's noise, and to complain of it next morning, when they did not know their lessons.

But the present case was, that the whole live force of the rectory, now on the premises, was established quite happily in the kitchen yard; with a high wall between it and the village street, and a higher wall topped with shrubs between it and the garden. Master Harry, now at home for his holidays (a tiger by day, but a lion at night, for protection of the household), was away with his father, and sleeping soundly through a Bible-lecture. And so it came to pass that the tall dark man knocked, and knocked; and at last departed, muttering uncourteous expressions through his beard.

Even that might never have been known inside, without the good offices of Mrs. Channing, the wife of the baker, whose premises adjoined the rectory garden, and the drive from the front gate.

"'Twas nort but them Gelany fowls," she explained, before she had her breakfast, because her husband was the son of old Channing, the clerk, and sexton; "them Gelany birds of ours, as drew my notice to it. They kept up such a screeching in the big linhay just at dusk, instead of sticking their heads inside their wings, that I thought they must be worriting about a dog, or cat. And so out of house I runs; but I couldn't see nort, till I heers a girt knocking at Passon's front-door. Thinks I—'What's up now?' For I knowed a' wurn't at home, but away to they Bible-readings. So I claps the little barn-steps again your big wall, and takes the liberty of peeping over, just between the lalac bush and old holly. You must understand, Mrs. Muggridge, that the light wurn't very clear; but I could make out a big tall man a-standing, with a long furrin cloak, atwixt the pillars of your porch.

"'Passon's not at home,' says I; 'can us give any message?'

"Then a' turns round sudden like, and stands just like a pictur', with the postesses to either side of him, and his beard falling down the same as Aaron's. But if a' said ort, 'twaz beyond my comprehension.

"'Did you please to be looking for the Doctor, sir?' I said—'the Doctor as is biding now with Mr. Penniloe? I did hear that he was 'gone to Squire Waldron's house.' For I thought that he was more the sort to belong to that old Gowler.