Read Ebook: The Long Hillside A Christmas Hare-Hunt In Old Virginia 1908 by Page Thomas Nelson

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A MAN OF THE MOORS.

THE MOOR MAN COMES BACK TO HIS OWN.

Joe Strangeways the husband was called; and if roughness could make any man a diamond, then he was emphatically of the purest water. But, apart from his roughness, the untrained eye could detect few good qualities in him; his wife had searched, with tears and prayer, for any redeeming point in his character, and now, at the end of five years, she found herself further than ever from the goal. A harsh man he was, indifferent when not jealous, callous when not actively cruel: his speech was coarse, his voice harsh and raucous, and he was in a perpetual state of growing a beard--a thick, black scrub, as rough as his uncouth tongue. Once a week he got very drunk, and his wife, before she learned to know the signs of the times and to prepare herself accordingly, was apt to suffer physical discomfort.

Kate Strangeways, the wife, was in all things the opposite of her husband: strong, while he was blustering; sensitive, while he was callous; careful of speech and of her personal appearance, while he cared not a pipeful of shag for these things. She was of the fine moor breed, and she had grown up under the eye of the great God who dwells between the hill-summits and the clouds. Why she had married Joe Strangeways, it would have been hard to say; his position as master-quarryman of the works at the edge of the moor was not one to tempt the recognized belle of a country that knew how to rear fine women; his manners did not atone in any way for deficiencies of appearance; her own folk were opposed to the marriage. Perhaps it was just because he had everything against him that the woman in her drove her into his arms.

If you leave the village of Marshcotes behind you, and strike straight across the moor, at the end of three miles or so you will see a biggish house frowning down on you from the top of the ridge which divides the counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire. It had been a roystering spot once on a time, this Peewit House, when a race of sturdy moor squireens held it; but the old breed had died out, and people were not eager, even in those days, to cross three miles of heath in search of a dwelling. Joe Strangeways had obtained a long lease of the place at a nominal rental; he liked to think his wife had no neighbours, for his cur-bred kind of jealousy resented the thought that she was able to hold converse with her fellows while he was away at the quarries.

The tale of Kate Strangeways' life might have run so to the end, had it not been for a certain charitable old lady who lived in the Manor House at the end of Marshcotes village. Mrs. Lomax had the reputation of being mad; but, so long as her madness took the form of distributing money, wine, and food broadcast through the district, no one resented it. She certainly was eccentric, this gaunt old lady: she made a practice of walking at least ten miles every day of her life, winter and summer alike, and the habit had reduced her to an extraordinary leanness of person; her clothes were always too large for her, and her voice was harsh as a man's, through constant exposure to wind and rain. But she was a lady, and a soft-hearted one to boot, despite her gauntness and her shabbiness; and her one consuming pride lay in the fact that the Lomaxes had held the Manor since Marshcotes was a village, a matter of some five hundred odd years.

Kate Strangeways fell ill one spring, and Mrs. Lomax chanced to drop in during one of her lengthy walks.

"H'm," observed the old lady, as she rose to take her leave, "you want fattening. Good red port is the thing for you, and I shall bring you some to-morrow."

"Oh, there is nothing the matter with me!" protested the sick woman. "I won't think of your troubling."

"Now, my dear, you are falling a victim to pride, which is a bane. I have had my own way for sixty-three years, and I shall not submit to dictation from a child of twenty-five. You will see me again to-morrow."

Strangeways looked black when he heard of the visit; he had no pride in the matter of accepting good red port--he was, in fact, already drinking it in anticipation--but it was a shock to him to learn that Mrs. Lomax and his wife had seen as much of each other in the past as Kate admitted, in a thoughtless moment, to have been the case.

"Keep thyseln to thyseln, and let other fowk do th' same!" he growled, betaking himself to the kitchen sink for a wash.

Hannah, the maid-of-all-work, was washing a dishcloth when Strangeways entered; she was no friend of Kate's, because they both happened to be women with wills of their own, and she never wearied of insinuating spokes into her mistress's wheel.

"There's a sight o' fuss an' clatter, to my thinking, when some fowks is poorly," she said, settling her square jaw into firmer lines. "Th' missus, just becos she feels a bit out o' sorts, like, gets a notion that she's going to dee: she mun hev this, an' she mun hev that, an' Mrs. Lummax, th' girt gawk, comes an' fal-lals her to th' top on her bent, till there's no doing nowt wi' her nohow. Gie me a man to live wi', says I, what doesn't sicken becos his little finger hes a pimple on't."

"Hod thy din, woman, an' let me wash myseln!" muttered Joe, thrusting her aside, and taking his place at the sink. Hannah's little speech, however, had had its effect, and Strangeways already found himself doubly aggrieved at the intrusion of Mrs. Lomax into his home. "There'll no good come on it," he said, as he buried his brawny arms in the soapsuds: "what does she, a lady born, want to mak free an' easy wi' my wife for? Comes here for a cup o' tea now an' then, does she, when she gets tired o' trapesing about th' moor? Well, I'll be heving summat to say to that i' a while."

Mrs. Lomax, however, true to her word, brought a basket of good things to Peewit House on the following morning; and the sight of two cobwebby bottles did much to put Strangeways in a better humour, when he came home at the end of the day's work. After the tea-things had been removed, he settled himself in the ingle nook, lit his pipe, and took one of the bottles in his hand.

"Tha needs summat sustaining, lass," he observed, knocking the bottle-neck against the mantel-shelf; "an' happen I'll join thee, for fear tha should feel lonely, like."

"You're not to drink it, Joe; it was only meant just for a glass now and then, and I won't have Mrs. Lomax put on."

"Oh, tha willun't, willun't tha? We'll see about that," retorted Joe, with grim levity.

He reached down a pewter mug from the wall, filled it to the brim, and took a long gulp: then he passed it across to his wife, but she refused to touch it. As the evening wore on, Joe grew mellow with the unaccustomed vintage; he opened the second bottle, and Kate, having exhausted entreaty and abuse alike, left him in disgust. She locked the bedroom door, as her custom was at such times, and left her husband to pass the night as best he could.

A few days later Mrs. Lomax dropped in again.

"Now, my dear, are you feeling any better for the wine?" she asked, in a voice that was more suited to a battle-field than to an invalid's room. "You're not looking one scrap better, at any rate. Come, have you obeyed my orders?"

Kate flushed.

"I--I don't care to drink it," she stammered.

Mrs. Lomax glanced sharply at her; she had some acquaintance with Joe Strangeways' habits, and she read the situation aright.

"You must. Bring out a bottle this moment, and I shall watch you drink two glasses at the least."

Again the younger woman flushed, then grew pale with shame; she could answer nothing, with those two hawk-like eyes looking through and through her. The old lady's lips took to themselves a grim smile.

"About what time does your husband return from his work?" she demanded.

"He leaves the quarries at the half after five--but--you wouldn't be thinking of saying anything, Mrs. Lomax?"

"That is just what I am thinking of, my dear; it is five o'clock now, and I have not walked as much as I should like to-day. I will go towards the quarries and give your husband a straightforward piece of my mind. No, you need offer no excuses for him; when I make up my mind to a thing, I make it up, and there is an end of it." And with this the old lady marched out at the door, her back stiffened, her right hand flourishing the belligerent-looking stick which was her inseparable companion.

Strangeways, crossing the dip in the moor this side the quarries, was aware of a bony figure, three inches his master in point of height, standing across his path.

"Joe Strangeways, I want a word with you."

Joe thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and tried to assume an air of ease; but he did not feel at home with the situation.

"Well, here I stand, my masterful lady; I'm hearkening."

"You have a wife who is a hundred times too good for you; she falls ill through no cause whatever but your treatment of her, and then--you drink the wine which I brought to strengthen her."

"It's a lie!" cried Joe, his face blackening.

"Is it a lie, Joe Strangeways?" said the old lady, that merciless eye of hers driving his own under shelter.

There was a pause; then, "Who telled ye?" he blurted out. "War it Kate?"

"No, it was not Kate. You think me mad, you people hereabouts--oh yes, I know all about it--but, let me tell you, I can see as far as my neighbours into the heart of a stone wall. I am not a fool, my man, and I guessed well enough what would happen if a drunkard and a bottle came together."

Joe's face grew blacker than ever. He half removed one hairy fist from his pocket.

"An' who are ye, I'd like to know, to come telling a man he's a drunkard?"

Mrs. Lomax straightened herself and grasped her stick by the middle.

"I am a woman who can support her own opinions. Joe Strangeways, I'm in two minds whether to give you a sound thrashing or not."

Strangeways became limp. His mind was not quick of movement, and this reversal of a natural law dazed his perceptions; the gaunt figure seemed to tower above him in a way that was uncanny--ehe came, "lipping" down a furrow straight toward us. Uncle Limpy-Jack was on that side of the ditch and Milker-Tim was near him armed only with a stout well-balanced stick about two feet long. As the hare came down the hill, Uncle Jack brought up his gun, took a long aim and fired. The weeds and dust flew up off to one side of her, and she turned at right angles out of the furrow; but as she got to the top of the bed, Milker-Tim, flinging back his arm, with the precision of a bushman, sent his stick whirling like a boomerang skimming along the ground after her.

Tim with a yell rushed at her and picked her up, shouting, "I got her! I got her!"

Then Uncle Limpy-Jack pitched into him: "What you doin' gittin' in my way!" he complained angrily. "Ain' you got no better sense 'n to git in my way like dat! Did n' you see how nigh I come to blowin' yo' brains out! Did n' you see I had de hyah when you come pokin' yer wooly black head in my way! Ef I had n' flung my gun off, whar 'd you 'a' been now! Don' you come pokin' in my way ag'in!"

Tim was too much elated to be long affected by even this severity, and when he had got out of Uncle Jack's way he sang out:

"Ole Molly Hyah, You' ears mighty thin. Yes, yes, yes, I come a-t'ippin' thoo de win'!"

So far the honors were all Uncle Jack's and Milker-Tim's, and it was necessary for the rest of us to do something. Accordingly, the bottom having been well hunted, the crowd struck out for an old field over the hill, known as "the long hillside." It was thick in hen-grass and broom-straw, and sloped down from a piece of pine with a southern exposure on which the sun shone warm. We had not reached it before a hare jumped out of a bush near Charlie. In a few moments, another bounced out before one of the dogs and went dashing across the field. Two shots followed her; but she kept on till at last one of the boys secured her.

We were going down the slope when Peter called in great excitement,

"Heah a ole hyah settin' in her haid. Come heah, Dan, quick! Gi' me your gun; le' me git him!"

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