Chapter XV. The Old Man on the Fell,

Otago Witness, Issue 1653, 28 July 1883, Page 24

Chapter XV. The Old Man on the Fell,

Having made up his mind to stay at Fellside until after Easter, Maulevrier settled down very quietly— for him. He rode a good deal, fished a little, looked after his dogs, played billiards, made a devout appearance in the big square pew at St. Oswald's on Sunday morning*, and behaved altogether as a reformed character. Even his grandmother was fain to admit that Maulovrier was improved, and that Mr Hammond's influence upon him must be exercised for good and not for evil. " 1 plunged awfully last year, and the year before that," said Maulevrier, sitting at tea in her ladyship's morning room one afternoon about a, weel? after Bib return, when she bad

expressed her gracious desire that the two Mary was in charge of the teapot and brass kettle, and looked radiant and as fresh as a. summer morning. A regular Gainsborough girl, Hammond called her, when he praised her to her brother; a true English beauty, unsophisticated, a little rustic, but full of youthful sweetness. . , "You see I didn't know what a racing stable meant," continued Maulavrier, mildly apologetic; "in fact, I thought it was a fine way for a nobleman to make as good a living as your City swells, with their soft goods or their Brummagem ware, a respectable trade for a gentleman to engage in. And it was only when I was half ruined that I began to understand the business ; and as soon as I did understand it I made up my mind to get out ,6f it, and I am happy to say that I sold the very last of my stud in February, and Tony Lnmpkin is his own man again. So you may welcome the prodigal grandson and order the calf to be slain, grandmother ! ' Lady Maulevrier stretched out her left hand to him, and the young man bent over it and kissed it affectionately. He felt really touched by her misfortunes, and was fonder of her than he had ever been before. She had been somewhat hard with him in his boyhood, but she had always cared for his dignity, and protected his interests : and after all she was a noble old woman, a grandmother of whom a man might be justly proud. He thought of the painted harridans, the bare-shouldered skeletons, whom some of his young friends were obliged to own in the same capacity, and he was thankful that he could reverence his father's mother.

"That is the best news I have heard for a long time, Maulevrier ; better medicine for my nerves than any of Mr Horton's preparations. If Mr Hammond's advice has influenced you to get rid of your stable I am deeply grateful to Mr Hammond."

Hammond smiled as he sipped his tea, sitting close to Mary's tray, ready to fly to her assistance on the instant should the brazen kettle become troublesome. It had a threatening way of hissing and bubbling over its spirit lamp. " Oh, you have no idea what a fellow Hammond is to lecture. He is a tremendous Radical, and he thinks that every young man in my position ought to be a reformer, and to devote the greater part of his time and trouble to turning out the dirty corners of the world, upsetting those poor dear families who like to gig together in one room, ordering all the children off to school, marrying the fathers and mothers, thrusting himself between free labour and free beer, and interfering with the liberty of the subject in every direction." ■

" All that may sound like Radicalism, but I think it is the true Conservatism, and that every young man ought to do as much if he wants this fiimeworn old country to maintain its strength and prosperity," answered Lady Maulevrier, with an approving glance at John Hammond's thoughtful face. "Right you are, grandmamma," returned Maulevrier, "and I believe Hammond calls himself a Conservative, and means to vote with the Conservatives."

Means to vote, an idle phrase surely, thought her ladyship, where the young man's chanoe of getting into Parliament was so remete.

That afternoon tea in Lady Maulevrier'a room was almost as cheerful as the tea-drink-ing in the drawing-room, unrestrained by her ladyship's presence. She was pleased with her grandson's conduct, and therefore inclined to be friendly to his friend. She could see an improvement in Mary, too. The girl was more feminine, more subdued, graver, sweeter; 'more like that ideal woman of Wordsworth's, whose image embodies all that is purest and fairest in womanhood. Mary had not forgotten that unlucky story about the fox hunt, and ever since Hammond's return she had been, as it were, on her beat behaviour, refraining from her races with the terriers, and holding herself aloof from Maulevrier's masculine pursuits. She sheltered herself a good deal under Miss Kirsch's substantial wing, and took care never to intrude herself upon the amusements of her brother and his friend. She was not one of those young women who think a brother's presence an excuse for a perpetual tete-a-tete with a young man. "Yet when Maulevrier came in qnest of her and entreated her to join them in a ramble she was not too prudish to refuse the pleasure she so thoroughly enjoyed. But afternoon 'tea 1 was her privileged hour— the time at which Bhe wore her prettiest frock, and forgot to regret her inferiority to Lesbia in all the graces of womanhood.

One afternoon when they had all /three walked to Easedale tarn and were coming back by the side of the force, picking their way among the gray stones and the narrow threads of silvery water, it suddenly occurred to Hammond to ask Mary about that quaer old man he had seen on the Fell nearly a fortnight before. He had often thought of making the inquiry when he was away from Mary, but had always forgotten the thing when he was with her. Indeed Mary had a wonderful knack of making him forget everything but herself.

" You Beem to know every creature in Grasmere, down to the two-year-old babies," said Hammond, Mary haying just stopped to converse with an infantine group, straggling and struggling over the boulders. "Pray, do you happen to knew a man called Barlow, a very old man ?" " Old Sam Barlow," exclaimed Mary, " why, of course I know him "

She said it as if he were a near relative, and the question palpably absurd. x "He is an old man, a hundred, at least, I should think," said Hammond. "Poor old Sam, not much on the wrong side of eighty. Igo to see him every week and take his week's tobacco, poor old dear. It is his only comfort." "Isit ?" asked Hammond. • ' I should have doubted his having so humanising a taste as tobacco. H looks too evil a creature ever to have yielded to the softening influences of a pipe." "An evil creature ! What, old Sam ? Why he is the most genial old thing, and as cheery — loves to hear the newspaper road to him — the murders and railway accidents. ' He doesn't care for politics. Everybody likes old Sam Barlow."

"I fancy the Grasmere idea of revered and amiable age must be strictly local. I can only say that I never saw a more unholy countenance." , " You must have been dreaming when you saw !him," said Mary. " Where did you meet him?" " On the Foil, about a quarter of a mile from the shrubbery gate." "Did you? I shouldn't have thought he could have got so far. I've a good mind to take you to see him, this very afternoon, before we go home." " Do," exclaimed Hammond, "I should like it immensely. I thought him a hateful looking old parson ; but there was something so thoroughly uncanny about him that he exercised an absoluto fascination upon me; he magnetised me, I think, as the green-eyed cat magnetises the bird. I have been positively longing to see him again. He is »■*£"* °* human moteter, and I ho^e someone wiU hay«

a big bottle made ready for him and preserve him in spirits when he dies." "What a horrid idea. No, sir, dear old Barlow shall lie beside the Rotha, under the trees Wordsworth planted. He is such a man | as Wordsworth would have loved." Mr Hammond shrugged his shoulders and said no more. Mary's little vehement ways, her enthusiasm, her lovo of that valley, which might be called her native place albeit her eyes had opened upon heaven's light far away, her humility, were all very delightful in their way. She was not a perfect beauty, like Lesbia ; but she was a fresh pure-minded English girl, frank as the day, and if the had bad a brother he would have recommended that brother to chooße just such a girl for his wife. Mr Samuel Barlow occupied a little old cottage, which seemed to consist chiefly of a gable end and a chimney stack, in that cluster of dwellings behind St. Oswald's Church, which was once known as the Kirk Town. Visitors went downstairs to get to Mr Barlow's ground floor, for the influence of time and 4 advaucing civilisation had beeu to raise the pathway in front of Mr Barlow's cottage until hie* parlour had become of a cellar-like aspect. Yet it was , a very nice little parlour when one got down to it, and it enjoyed winter and summer a pprpe'ual twilight, since the light that crept through th« leaded o.isemenfc was tampeied by a screen of flmverp ts, which wero old Barlow'^ jpartioular c.u-e. There were no finer ge.i animus jin all G-iMHtiiete tliau Barli.w'.s, no bigger c*r- —' naiioiits or picotee«<, a.->ters or arums. It was about 5 o'clock in the March after noon, when Mary ushered John Hammond into Mr Barlow's dwelling, and in the dim glow or a cheery little fire, and the faint light that filtered through the screen of geranium lt^v-e-, the visitor looked for a moment or s« doubti ally at the owner ot the cottage. But only for a moment. Those bright blue eyes and apple cheeks, that benevolent expression, bore no likeness to the strange old man he had seen on the Fell. Mr Barlow was toothless and nut-cracker like of outline, he was thin and shrunken, and bent with the burden of long years ; but his healthy visage had none of those deep lines, those cross markings and hollows, which made the pallid countenance of that other old man as ghastly as would be the abstract idea of life's last stage embodied by the bitter pencil of Hogarth. " I have brought a gentleman from London to see you, Sam," said Mary. "He fancied he met you on-the Fell the other morning." Barlow rose and quavered a cheery welcome, but protested against the idea of his having cot bo far as the Fell. " With my blessed rheumatics, you know it isn't in me, Lady Mary. I shall never get no further than the churchyard ; but I likes to sit on the wall hard by Wordsworth's tomb in a warm afternoon, and to see the folks pass over the bridge, and I can potter about looking after my flowers, I can. But it would be a dull life now the poor old missus is gone, and the bairns all out at service, if it wasn't for someone dropping in to have a chat, or read me a bit of the news sometimes. And there isn't anybody in Grasmere, gentle or simple, that's kinder to me than you, Lady Mary. Lord bless you, I do look forward to my newspaper. Any more of them dreadful smashes ?" "No, Sam, thank heaven, there have been no railway accidents." " Ah. we shall have 'em in August and Sep tember," said the old man cheerily. " They're bound to come then. There's a time for all things, as Solomon says. When the season comes the smashes will come. And no more of these mysterious murders, I suppose, which baffle the police and keep me awake o' nights thinking of 'em." " Surely you do not take delight in murder, Mr Barlow," said Hammond. " No, sir, I do not wish my fellow creatures to make away with each other ; but if there is a murder going in the papers I like to get the benefit of it. I like to sit in front of my fire of an evening and wonder about it while I smoke my pipe, and fancy I can see the murderer hiding in a garret in an out-of-the-way alley, or as a stowaway on board a big ship, or as a miner deep down in a coal pit, and never thinking that even there the police can track him. Did you ever hear of Mr de Quincy, air?" "I believe I have read every line he ever wrote." " Ah, you should have heard him talk about murders. It would have made you dream queer dreams, just as he did. He lived for years in the white cottage that Wordsworth once lived in, just behind the street yonder — a nice neat little gentleman, in a housefull of books. I've had many a talk with him when I was a young man." " And how old may you be now, Mr Barlow?" " Getting on for eighty four, sir." " But you are not the oldest man in Grasmere, I should aay by twenty years ?" " I don't think there's many much older than me, sir." "The man I saw on the Fell looked at least a hundred. I wish you could tell be who he iB ; I feel a morbid curio&ity about him." He went on to describe the old man in the gray coat as minutely as he could, dwelling on every characteristic of that singular looking old person ; but Samuel Barlow could not identify the description with any one in Grasmere. Yet a man of that age seen walking on the hill side at 8 in the morning, could hardly have come from far afield. (To be continued.)