THE MYSTERY OF LORD BRACKENBURY: A NOVEL.

Auckland Star, Volume XI, Issue 3240, 8 December 1880, Page 3

THE MYSTERY OF LORD BRACKENBURY: A NOVEL.

By AMELIA B. EDWARDS,

Author of " Barba a'> History" " Debcn ham's Vow," (&_.

CHAPTER XXI,

THE "DARK FOLK." Truk to his promiao, Lancelot took his guest for a long day's tramp across the moor—a long day's tramp moaning a circuit of Somo twenty miles or so over a bleak sandy plateau, all furze and heather, with out-croppings of limestone rock on the higher levels. It was a day such as wo get frequently iv October, but rarely iv midNovembor. A brisk north-east wind was blowing. The sky overhead was full of light; and there was a pleasant scent as of freshly-turned turt upon the air. The moor was wonderfully open, and lonely, and high; intersected, apparently, by one tolerably good road, from which a rough cart-track diverged occasionally to right or left. A ruined shed, a atone fence a bit of cultivated patch here and there, a puff of smoke in a sheltered hollow far away were for miles the only visiblo Bign of human habitation.

Now and then they met a sand-carrier trudgins besides his laden ass; or an old man stooping under a bundle of cut furze ; or a horde of shy little flaxen-polled savages beating tho bushca in quest of a few late blackberries ; but sometimes they went for two or three miles without encountering a soul. More than"onco, a|covcy of partridges rose whirring from the heather almost beneath their horses feet; and once they saw a hawk circling high agaiust tho keen blue sky overhead. Once, too, they turned aside at a little farm, crossed a fallow field, and came to a bit of marsh-meadow, in ono corner of which a tiuy spring bubbled up through the lush gras and slipped away unseea in a channel ]of its own making. .This was the source of the Trent.

At length, mounting continually into a more and more barren regiou, they came to a group of fantastic rocks ranged in single file along thn summit of a solitary ridge. ■ " These," said Lancelot, " are the ' Wicking Stones;' the Alpine peaks of our Northcountry Oberlnnd." " Wicking ?" repeated Cochrane. " Ay—that's one of our old words—' wicking ' being supposed to come from the AngloSaxon ' cwic/or 'quick,'meaning the living, or uncut rock. One hears plenty of these queer, primitive words here on the moor. But you mustdo abitof mountaineering now, and survey the country." They leaped a fence and made for the rocks, each of which had its rude local name —the Castle Stone, the Hog's Back, the Mitre Stone, and so on. Ihe Mitre Stone a peaked and cloven mass lifted high upon a rugged baso in which the popular fancy detected some vague resemblance to a grotesque face—was the highest of the group. In a few moments the friends were comfortably seated between the Peaks of the Mitre Stone, enjoying the rest they had so fairly earned. 'A.more wild and solitary eyrie it would have been hard to find south of the Scottish border. The moor was all around them— one undulating sea of hill and hollow, here green with gorse, there reddening with fastwithering bracken ; breaking yonder into crests of barren rock ; dipping fartKer away into less sterile levels ; and melting at last into a bine horizon.

On the one side, a brooding cloud of very distant smeke marked the site of the great pottery district; on the other were visible the massed tree-tops of Brackenbury Park ; while to the noith-east, pale and ghost-like, as though outlined upon the transparent air, towered one solitary peak-the Peak of Derbyshire, more than forty miles away. Sign or sound of human toil ud here there was none. A forlorn-looking gnat was cropping the scant herbage round about the Wicking Stone 3, and a few sheep were scattered over a bare hill-side about half-a-mile away; but these were the only livtag thing 3in sight. No moving figure quickened the waste ;no rumble of wheels, no ploughbny's whistle, no homely farm-house sounds stirred the wide silence. Enjoying the rest, the solitude, the tarstretching landscape, Lancelot and his friend demolished with disproportionate appetite some biscuits and a flaik of sherry with which Church, the butler, had provided them on starting, " And now," said Cochrane, when they had arrived at the end of this unsubstantial entertainment, "what about these good folks whom we have come so high to see ? Where do they live and have their being?" "Well, they live here," replied Lancelot, drily. " The deuce thoy do ! Are they ( cavedwellers— earth-burrowers—gnomes?" "Gnomes, undoubtedly. You see that hollow where there are some bushes and a fenc* ?' "Yes." "And behind the bushes, a thatched roof ?" " I see the thatch. I took it for the top of a haystack." "That is the roof which shelters your venerable fiiend, Mr Isaac Plant. Near it, but lower down, are two or three more cottages. You can't see them from here. And over yonder, at the other side of that long hill, there is a whole colony of dark tolk. We can go on there by and by. if you like ; but I think when you have paid your Tespects to those close at band, your ethnological curiosity will be sufficiently gratified. They are chaiming people ; but a little of them cocs a long way." " Do they preserve any tradition of their origin ? Have they any peculiar manners and customs? May one question them freely ?" Lancelot laughed heartily. " Manners !' he said. "My dear fellow, they have no manners ; and as far their customs, they are more honoured in the breach than the observance. You are going to be awfully 'ddsillusionneV Instead of characters out of ' The jTalisman' or ' The Arabian Nights,' be prepared to see a brood of lawless settlers just a shade more respectable than gipsies. Perhaps, after all, they are gipsies whose forefathers happened to take root up here a few centuries back. Who knows ? We have but a vague oral tradition to show for the Crusading part of the story." " Oral tradition, handed down through many generations of an ancient family, is not to be despised," said Cochrane. "At all events, I am not dispoied to give up my Saracens." "Your Saracens, anyhow, indulge in a truly Oriental passion for colour," replied Lancelot. " You will notice how it breaks outinshowv kerchiefs and cheap trinkets, and in the blues and reds, with which they make their hovels gaudy." They had clambered down by this time from their perch, and were saunteriug towards the cottages, four of which—mete shanties plastered outside with mud—lay snugly hidden away at the bottom of a steep pilch under the lee of the hill. The young men stood for a moment on the brink of the bank above, looking down upon the weedgrown roofs; the patched and broken windows; the rags hung out to dry upon the bushes. On a rough bench outside the door of tho nearest, cottage there sat an old man intently at work upon something which Lancelot's expeiienced eye at once recognised as a gin. "There's aniniauitousold fox for youl" said he. " And that poulterer at Singleton swears he has never seen a feather of a Brackenbury pheasant!— Hang the curs, how they bark! I would have liked to come upon him unawares.—Why, Isaac, man, do you keep a pack of hounds here?" Mr Isaac Plant, dexteronsly dropped tliP gin between hi knees, kicked it under the bench as he >ose to his feet, and hurried forward to meet his visitors. "Eh, Muoter Brack'nb'ry, mind the gap, sir—them gtoanes is loose to tre'.d on! Doon, Snap! Doon, Growler! How'd thy noise, or I'll fettle thee i Beggin' yer pardon, gentleman loth, butth' doant know no better," "Are the poor brutes shut up in that Black hole there ?" asked Lancelot, pointing to a little boarded shed, with a padlocked door, built up against the en.l of the cotago, " How mauy ot them j" •' Just three or fowr, ntuster Brack'nb'ry, an th' owd bitch, an' the pupi. Tho't be m'aiii snug in there, sir." As snug as herrings in a barrel, I should think. Where's Seth ?" ".Seth's gone to Leek, sir, wi' a few bits o hardware for sale." Then, turning to Cochwith a scrape and a bow:—"Coom to see th' pup, sir ?" He was a tall, sallow man, apparently between sixty and seventy, with lank, grey hair, and quick, furtive black eyes. Hound his neck he wore a red woollen scarf, and in his hands he twirled and squeezed a shapeleoT velveteen cap. Cochrane expressed his wiUiugness to inspect the said pup; whereupon Plant unlocked the shea-door, plunged in his arm. and brought out a very small, fat, bewildered specimen ot the genus bull-dog. " Woant you be pleased t' coom into th1 house to look at un, honourable gentlemen both ?" said he, auxionsly, " Doan't 'cc sit thee doon their in the cowd, Muster Brack'nb'ry, sir. I've a bit o' fire inside." But Lancelot had purposely seated himself on tho.bench just over the gin, and declined to move.. The pup, meanwhile being deposited on the ground was sprawling and blinking with the helpless g.avity incidental to it«i age and position. j, . " A's a prim little pup a-saver,"l said the rat-catcher, admiringly. . " A's the primest little pup as ever I seed or bred—muzzle's as black's1 cwpal. 2 A'rooms on a good stock, sir. T'owd hitch's the ahurtieetS beast- as iver wen,t on fower legs.' A' sticks at nothin " that bitch. Ud 'as lief tackle a boggart as a Christian." To Mr Horace Coohrane, of the Wax and Wafer Department, this North Country tongue was about as intelligible rs a central African dialect. Dimlyapprehendiner, however; that the praises of the pup were being sung, he mutterrda vague absent. That interesting animal, meanwhile, was meandering moodily in the direction of the shed. "A* s a bit gloppened, ye see, sir," said Isaac apologetically. Cochrane cast an imploring glance at his friend. " Arabio, upon my honour—Arabic of the purest water," said Brackenbury, answering the mute appeal,. "How much do you want for him ?" aiked Cochrane, desperately. Old Isaac picked up the pup; balanced it in the palm of his hand as if it were a teniis ball; opened its mouth; pinched its ta.l; turned it this way and that; and finally put it on its legs again. "Lf 11 be worth a matter o' twenty pun' agin's two year owd," said he. " Then you would do, better to keep it." " May happen I woanH; live two year, sir. I'm an owd man/d'ye see 1" " Which being translated, means that the pup hasn't had the distemper," laughed Lancelot. "Come, Isaac, you musn't be too clever." "Eh, Muster Brack'nb'ry, sir; hut pups is a neahG sort o' beases,7 and I'd liefer get shut on 'un as sune as mebbe.B Thot'n but reason." Lancelot, meanwhile, to Mr Plant's evident uneasiness; had picked up a file ! that lay at the end of the hench, and was (absently, as it seemed) trying it upon a piece of old iron hooping, .All at once he stooped and pulled out the gin. |" So this is what you were after just ■now?" said he;"sharpening the teeth of this infernal machine -which, I see, is of home manufacture." " S'elp me, Muster Brack'nb'ry, the gin's not mine, sir I 'Twas my lad Seth, sir, picked unoopi1 the dough, and brought un whoatn. I'm an honest man, sir, an' rat;catchin's my trade, a,n' I niver seVagin ta myloife sin'l war a b,oy an' Ijnowed no better j an' \ wish Lmun drop down dead if thot's not the blessed truth I'm tellin'you 1" Lancelot looked at him, sternly incredulous. • "Now look you here, Isaac," he said, .smashing the gin with his heel ;" if there's a base thing in this world which I despise more than all other base things, its a lie 1 And if there'a a cowardly thing I hate above all other cowardly thiDgs, its cruelty to dum creatures, lf you took your gun, and went out and Bhot my birds like a man, I might be angry j but I wouldn't be hard upon you. But that you Bhoul,d trap them in a hellish thing that breaks their legs and holds them alive for hours, and that you should seek to shield yourselves behind a lip—this is what I cannot forgiye. There I—don't open your

lips, or I may be tempted to say that yon shall turn out to-morrow, and never set foot on these moors again—and if once I say it, by Heaven ! you'll find lmenn it." Then, turning to his friend, " Come Cochrane, ' he said: "you won't care to rieal with this chap, I know; and time's going." They left tlu rat catcher standing stock still, hia lips pressed hard together, his bony fingers nervously twisting and crushing hig cap. Seeiug them stop at the next cottage he clapped the cap on his head ;' flung the pup roughly back iuto the shed ; picked up the broken gin; and, muttering to himself, shambled into his house and bolted the door. In the next cottage, -which stood alone at a. distance of some thirty or forty yards, •heir lived a family named Stan way represented on the present occasion by an unwashed baby, sprawling and crying on the threshold, a middle-aged woman boiling a pot over some sticks on the hearth, and two slatternly girl?, one of whom was making pillow-lace, and the other sitting idle, with her elbow on the table. The men of the family, consisting of a father and three sous, vere out. " Gone t'Mow-Cop arter sand," explained the mother, civiU-/- dusting a chair for " th' master." She was a decent-mannered, untidy body; but the girls were sullen and un. couth, and never stirred till roughly bidden to " adoouO sitten thar afore th' gantlefolk, an' stay th' babbie a-shroikin' I" The young men stayed here but a few minutes—just long enough for Cochrane to note the black hair and eyes and dusky skins or the inmates. The girls were in rags, and looked as if their faces bad Deen left unwashed and their hair uncombed for a week ; yet each wore a string of coloured beads round her tawny throat. Tho house was just as smart as squalid. The floor, the windows, the furniture, were grimmed with dirt; but the walls, which had been freshly gone over witn some sort of blued: whitewash, and the inside of the door and the window frames, which had been pointed bright red, were hideously gaudy. [ji The two la«t cottages adjoined each other, being plticed at a somewhat lower level, and and fenced in by a broken pailing. " No one at home hero, 1 suppose," said Brackenbury; having knocked at the first door, and received no answer. Whereupon a grizzled head, tied up in a staring red and yellow cotton handkerchief, was thrust out of a window in the uext house, and a shrill voice replied : — "Tho' be all gone t' Leek horse-fair, an wunnu' be back afore baggin'-time ;1Q but. If .... Eh, to be s :re, 'tis Muster Brack'nb'ry 1" "Gone to Leek, are tlis\ !" Well, you're, at home, Kachel, at all events; and we were coming to 'see you next. How's the grandmother?" She had hurried from the window to the door, and now stood curtesying on lie threshold—a thin, wiry old woman with keen, black eyes, and a pleasant smile, and a'look of some intelligence and alertness. , "Gradely.l sir, gradely," she replied. "A bit frabbit2 p' times ; but thofs now't; to speak on. Wun yo1 be pleased to coom in?" It was the smallest cottage of the four, but clean and tidy. The bricked floor was freshly sanded ; the furniture was well rubbed ; the plates on the dresser . were scrupulously clean. A Dutch clock ticked in one corner; a cat lay curled up cosily in, front of the fire ; while in a big round wicker chair with capacious arms, there crouched in the chimney-coiner, blinking,, silent, sightless, and bent nearly double, a very aged woman wrapped in a comfortable plaid shawl. . >.! , ... "Thiß.b old Lois Bailey, of whom yon have heard," said Lancelot. " She is supposed to be more than a hundred ; but pur! parish registers, which were never too well kept, took no account of the 'moor-folk' till the beginning of this present century, ishe', was an old woman, at all events,, when .my. grandfather was a boy." " I'm going on for three-score and ten mysel'," said her grand-daughter, "an' she war reckoned an ow'd 'ooman, nigh paßt child-bearin,' when my mother was born. Eh, you mun hollo to 'un, but she. wunno' take no notice." ;;' ■ • '/' " She's more deaf than when I was here last," said Lancelot; having shouted in her ear without eliciting a glimmer of recognition. "Deed; then, I'm noue so sure she .be deaf at a', Muster Brack'nb'ry." " But, my good Kachel, she must be deal, or she would take some notice when spoken to." ''; ■;• .; ; •"; The woman shook her head. :- ;■•'.' " She'll hear a whisper sometimes as well*' nor I do; an' allus when yer least lookinj for un to be listoeD.' She be so ow'd, sir* an' so far away loike," she added, ,witn a touchofunconscionspoetry," that l'vetnbjjfi raony times as how our voices doant allus reach to un." " She must have been borne in the reign' of George the Second," Baid Cochrane j'''inj which case, her great grand-mother might have been a contemporary of Richard the' Third. It reminds one of Walpoie's" ancedoteof the.old Countess oE Desmond !" " She hain't got no cares." continued the grand-daughter, "an' she sleeps o'nights as peaceful as a babby. 'Tis nobbut babies" food she eats, neither—a drop o'broth.an 1; soup, or amugo'boother-milkploongernight an' mornin'." "That's poor.food for a woman of'her years," said Lancelot. l; I'll send you over some arrowroot, and. a. little wine 'aid, : brandy." "Thankee kindly, Muster Brack'nb'ry—' thof we've still a drop left- o' the last; 'anil'1 a power of good it doon her, Mon Ibe so bowd as to ax if you've happened b' no news* o' my lord ?" ■ ' " t! !"~ Lancelot shook his head, " Eh, then I'm afared we'll never, neir&i'See1 un no more. 'Twar a drees day for him, and for the poor youns; leddy that war his^e^tiheartl" "It was a fatal day, Eachel," said Lance-; lot, in a low voice. "He war a' goodness," continued'.;tjje woman, heedless of the pain her well-meant lamentations might awaken. "Ud nowta' spark o' pride about un. Ud sit un doqiiifl :a poor mon's cottage, an1 listen to's troubles,; ;an' talk to th'chithero" loike one of o.urown pelves. I well mirid the'day I last say! un— a bitter snowy day it war, too, an' nigh to, gloaming ; an' I war strainin' oop the pitc'h^ yonder wi'. a big pailful o' wayter,7; when' my lord cam' oop behind ' Here, Kactifej,' says he, ' gie me th'pail—l'm better aWato carry un nor you are !' An' a' ■whippM'iin^ oop licht. as a feether, an' carried un .to th' house door. Eh, then, I little' thowf Td never see un again i"' . :. ,"'',. ■" 1 hat was f our years ago, Rachel,—nesriy ,fivej" said Lancelot (he had heard thisanecdote every time he came to the cottage in'the? course of those years); and I have given uphope at last;." "'Deed, then, hopes hard 'eno' to gi&'np when for the corpse lies cowd afore', one's eyes," said Eachel ; " but it's harder wMn; ther's nowt but.sorrow a.n' waitjn' to. show1 forit. An,' Muster' Biack'nb'ry,■ ■'yo'rti'not* one to tak' comfort in dead moh's shoes." '! " He's no dead, v said a voice that made' them all start; a voice weak and quavering, but curiously distinct. " What makes you say tfyat, Lois f'cried. Lancelot, Mains' quickly and bending1 over the old woman's chair. " Why do you say that ? Do you think my brother Jives ?" She had all this time been, not only motionless, but apparently unconscious,; just breathing feebly, as in a placid sleep ; but now, although her chin was still sunk on her breast, her hands were, moving vaguely, like the bands of a blind person; and she was rocking her hody; feebly toand fro, v He's no' dead," she repeated twice or thrice. . "You remember me, Lois»" said the young man eagerly. I'm Lancelot—Master Lancelot, you used to. call me, years ago;, when we first came to Brackenbury. Cuthbert was a young man then, and I waa. ft hoy. You were always fond of Cuthbert,' y ©u know. Poor Cuthbert!—he's been four, years lost, and we've given him' .ujj.'.fpt', dead." ■» i " I'd ha' seen his corpse in my dreams 'gin he war dead," quavered the old :woman." "I seed 'ema'—fathers an'sons, generation; arter generation. He's no'dead, 1 tell'ee —he's no dead $' "Godgvant it, Lois 1 But do you dream only of the dead ? Do you never dream of. the living ?" ! Her bands dropped o» her knees, and she seemed to lapse-suddenly back into tlieola torpor, ■ ' i "Lois I Lois I- Listen to me—have ybir dreamed of him living ? Have you dreamed i of him? Have you seen him? Answer me, Lois I" 1! It ant o' no (good axin* her, Muster, Brack'nb'ry," interposed the grana-' daughter anxiously. " She's far away now; an' may happen she 'ont speak again f*r; weeks. The sound o' yer voice in her ear does nowt but mitherß her." : \ ' : : (1) "Gradely "-nicely. (2) " Frabbif'-peevkb.' (8) ''Nobbut"-only. (4) "Boother-mUk ploongef) —water with oatmeal stirred in it. (5) " Dree J —s»d. (6) "Chither."—children. (7) "Waiter —water. (8) "Mither"—Worry, confnßp. : ■ {To he continue*'<m Saturday) ;'~