Chapter 10

No sooner did Mr. Penrose look out on this new earth than a feeling of _lostness_ came on him, and, linking his arm in that of the old man, he said:

'Can you find the way, Malachi?'

'Wheer to, Mr. Penrose?'

'Why, to Rehoboth, of course. Where else did you think I wanted to go at this time of night?'

'Nay, that's what I wur wonderin' when yo' axed me if I knew th' way,' replied the old man.

'Oh! I beg your pardon; I thought perhaps the snow might throw you off the track.'

'Throw _me_ off th' track, an' on these moors and o'? Nowe, Mr. Penrose, I hevn't lived on 'em forty years for naught, I con tell yo'.'

'But when you cannot see your way, what then?'

'Then I walks by instink.'

And by instinct the two men crossed the wastes of snow towards the Green Fold Clough, through which gorge lay the path that led to the village below.

Just as they traversed the edge of the Red Moss, old Malachi broke the silence by saying:

'Well, Mr. Penrose, what do yo' think o' yon?'

'Think of what, Malachi?' asked the perplexed divine, for neither of them, for some moments, had spoken.

'Think o' yon lad as has getten killed, and o' his mother?'

There are times when a man dares not utter his deepest feelings because of the commonplace character of the words through which they only can find expression. If Malachi had asked Mr. Penrose to write the character of God on a blackboard before a class of infants, he would not have been placed in a greater difficulty than that now involved by the question of Malachi. Already his mind was dark with the problem of suffering. Little Job's cry for 'the candle of the Almeety' had reached depths he knew not were hidden in his heart; while the look in the mother's face, as she stood snow-covered in the doorway of the farmstead, and as the firelight lent its glare to her blanched and pain-wrought face, continued ceaselessly to haunt him. And now Malachi wanted to know what he thought of it all! How could he tell him?

Finding Mr. Penrose remained silent, Malachi continued: 'Yon woman's supped sorrow, and no mistak'. Hoo buried her husband six months afore yon lad wur born. Poor little felley! he never know'd his faither.'

'Ah! I never knew that. Then she _has_ supped sorrow, as you call it.'

'Owd Mr. Morell used to say as he could awlus see her deead husband's face i' hers until th' child wur born, and then it left her, and hoo carried th' face o' th' little un hoo brought up. But it'll be a deead face hoo'll carry in her een naa, I'll be bun for't.'

'How was it his mother sent him to work in the pit?--such a dangerous calling, and the boy so young.'

'You'll know a bit more, Mr. Penrose, when yo've lived here a bit longer. His fo'k and hers hev bin colliers further back nor I can remember; and they noan change trades wi' us.'

'But why need he go to work so young?' asked the minister.

Malachi stopped and gazed in astonishment at the minister, and then said:

'I durnd know as he would ha' worked in th' pit, Mr. Penrose, if you'd ha' kep' him and his mother and o'. But fo'k mun eat, thaa knows. Th' Almeety's gan o'er rainin' daan manna fro' heaven, as He used to do in th' wilderness.'

Mr. Penrose did not reply.

'Yo' know, Mr. Penrose,' continued Malachi, 'workin' in a coile-pit is like preychin': it's yezzy (easy) enugh when yo' ged used to 't. An' as for danger--why, yo' connot ged away fro' it. As owd Amos sez, yo're as safe i' one hoile (workshop) as another.'

'Yes; that's sound philosophy,' assented Mr. Penrose.

'Mr. Morell once tell'd us in his preychin' abaat a chap as axed a oracle, or summat, what kind of a deeath he would dee; and when he wur towd that he would happen an accident o' some sort, they couldn't geet him to shift aat o' his garden, for fear he'd be killed. But it wur all no use; for one day, as he wur sittin' amang his flaars, a great bird dropped a stooan, and smashed his yed. So yo' see, Mr. Penrose, if yo've to dee in th' pulpit yo'll dee theer, just as little Job deed i' th' coile-pit.'

As Malachi delivered himself of this bit of Calvinistic philosophy, a sound of voices was borne in on the two men from the vale below, and looking in the direction whence it came, the old man and Mr. Penrose saw a group of dark figures thrown into relief on the background of snow.

The sounds were too distant to be distinctly heard, but every now and then there was mingled with them the short, sharp bark of a dog.

'I welly think that's Oliver o' Deaf Martha's dog,' excitedly cried Malachi. 'Surely he's noan poachin' a neet like this? He's terrible lat' wi' his wark if he is.'

'If I'm not mistaken, that is Moses Fletcher's voice,' replied Mr. Penrose. 'Listen!'

'You're reet; that's Moses' voice, or I'm a Jew. What's he doin' aat a neet like this, wi' Oliver's dog? I thought he'd bed enough o' that beast to last his lifetime.'

The two men were now leaning over a stone wall and looking down into the ravine below. Suddenly Malachi pricked up his ears, and said:

'An' that's Amos's voice an' all. By Guy, if it hedn't bin for Oliver o' Deaf Martha's I should ha' said it wur hevin' a prayer-meetin' i' th' snow. What's brought owd Amos aat wi' Moses--to say naught o' th' dog?'

Just then an oath reached the ears of the listening men.

'No prayer-meeting, Malachi,' said Mr. Penrose, laughing.

'Nowe--nobbud unless they're like Ab' o' th' Heights, who awlus swore a bit i' his prayers, because, as he said, swearin' wur mighty powerful. But him as swore just naa is Oliver hissel--I'll lay mi Sunday hat on't.'

By this time the moving figures on the snow were approaching the foot of the hill whereon the two men stood, and Malachi, raising his hands to his mouth, greeted them with a loud halloo.

Immediately there came a reply. It was from Oliver himself, in a loud, importuning voice:

'Han yo' fun him?'

'Fun who?' asked Malachi.

'Why, that chilt o' mine! Who didsto think we wur lookin' for?'

'Who knew yo' were lookin' for aught but--'

'Which child have you lost?' cried Mr. Penrose, for Oliver had a numerous family.

'Little Billy--him as Moses pooled aat o' the lodge.'

'Come along, Malachi, let us go down and help; it's a search party.'

* * * * *

Everybody in Rehoboth knew little Billy o' Oliver's o' Deaf Martha's. He was a smart lad of eight years, with a vivid imagination and an active brain. His childish idealism, however, found little food in the squalid cottage in which he dragged out his semi-civilized existence; but among the hills he was at home, and there he roamed, to find in their fastnesses a region of romance, and in their gullies and cloughs the grottoes and falls that to him were a veritable fairy realm. Child as he was, in the summer months he roamed the shady plantations, and sailed his chip and paper boats down their brawling streams, feeding on the nuts and berries, and lying for hours asleep beneath the shadows of their branching trees. He was one of the few children into whose mind Amos failed to find an inlet for the catechism; and once, during the past summer, he had blown his wickin-whistle in Sunday-school class, and been reprimanded by the superintendent because he gathered blackberries during the sacred hours.

A few days previous to his disappearance in the snow he had heard the legend of Jenny Greenteeth, the haunting fairy of the Green Fold Clough, and how that she, who in the summer-time made the flowers grow and the birds sing, hid herself in winter on a shelf of rock above the Gin Spa Well, a lone streamlet that gurgled from out the rocky sides of the gorge. The story laid hold of his young mind, and under the glow of his imagination assumed the proportions of an Arabian Nights' wonder. He dreamed of it by night, and during the day received thrashings not a few from his zealous schoolmaster, because his thoughts were away from his lessons with Jenny Greenteeth in her Green Fold Clough retreat. On this, the afternoon of the first snowfall of the autumn, there being a half-holiday, the boy determined once more to explore the haunts of the fairy; and just as Mr. Penrose turned out of his lodgings to kill the prose of his life, which he felt to be killing him, Oliver o' Deaf Martha's little boy turned out of his father's hovel to feed the poetry that was stirring in his youthful soul. The north wind blew through the rents and seams of his threadbare clothing; but its chill was not felt, so warm with excitement beat his little heart. And when the first flakes fell, he clapped his hands in wild delight, and sang of the plucking of geese by hardy Scotchmen, and the sending of their feathers across the intervening leagues.

Poor little fellow! His was a hard lot when looked at from where Plenty spread her table and friends were manifold. But he was not without his compensations. His home was the moors, and his parent was Nature. He knew how to leap a brook, and snare a bird, and climb a tree, and shape a boat, and cut a wickin-whistle, and many a time and oft, when bread was scarce, he fed on the berries that only asked to be plucked, and grew so plentifully along the sides of the great hills.

The dusk was falling, and the snow beginning to lie thick, as he entered the dark gorge of the Clough; but to him darkness and light were alike, and as for the snow, it was more than a transformation-scene is to the petted child of a jaded civilization. He watched the flakes as they came down in their wild race from the sky, and saw them disappear on touching the stream that ran through the heart of the Clough. He gathered masses of the flaky substance in his hand, and, squeezing them into balls, threw them at distant objects, and then filled his mouth with the icy particles, and revelled in the shock and chill of the melting substance between his teeth as no connoisseur of wine ever revelled in the juices of the choice vintages of Spain and France. Then he would shake and clap his hands because of what he called the 'hot ache' that seized them, only to scamper off again after some new object around which to weave another dream of wonder.

The dusk gave place to gloom, and still faster fell the snow, white and feathery, silent and sublime. The child felt the charm, and began to lose himself in the impalpable something that, like a curtain of spirit, gathered around. He, too, was now as white as the shrubs through which he wended his way, and every now and then he doffed his cap, and, with a wild laugh of delight, flung its covering of snow upon the ground. Then, out of sheer fulness of life and rapport with the scene, he would rush for a yard or two up the steep sides of the Clough and roll downwards in the soft substance which lay deeply around.

The gloom thickened and nightfall came, but the snow lighted up the dark gorge, and threw out the branching trees, the tall trunks of which rose columnar-like as the pillars of some cathedral nave. Did the boy think of home--of fire--of bed? Not he! He thought only of Jenny Greenteeth, the sprite of the Clough, and of the Gin Spa Well, above which she was said to sleep; and on he roamed.

And now the path became narrower and more tortuous, while on the steep sides the snow was gathering in ominous drifts. Undaunted he struggled on, knee-deep, often stumbling, yet always rising to dive afresh into the yielding element that lay between himself and the enchanted ground beyond. In a little time he came to a great bulging bend, around the foot of which the waters flowed in sullen sweeps. Here, careful as he was, he slipped, and lay for a moment stunned and chilled with his sudden immersion. Struggling to the bank, he regained his foothold, and, rounding the promontory of cliff which had almost defeated his search, he turned the angle that hid the grotto, and found himself at the Gin Spa Well.

He heard the 'drip, drip' of falling waters as they oozed from out their rocky bed, and fell into one of those tiny hollows of nature which, overflowing, sent its burden towards the stream below. He looked above, and saw the fabled ledge--its mossy bank all snow-covered--with the entrance to Jenny Greenteeth's chambers dark against the white that lay around. Tired with the search, yet glad at heart with the find, he climbed and entered, the somnolence wrought by the snow soon closing his eyes, and its subtle opiate working on his now wearily excited brain. There he slept--and dreamed.

* * * * *

As soon as Mr. Penrose and Malachi reached the search party, and heard how the boy had been missing since the afternoon, the minister suggested they should search the Clough, as it was his favourite haunt. His advice was at first unheeded, Oliver declaring he had been taken off in a gipsy caravan, and Amos capping his suspicion by speaking of the judgments of the Almighty on little lads who gathered flowers on Sunday, and blew wickin-whistles in school, and refused to learn their catechism. Second thoughts, however, brought them over to Mr. Penrose's mind, and they set out for the Clough.

The descent was far from easy, the banks being steep, and treacherous with their covering of newly-fallen snow. Once or twice Amos, in his declaration of the Divine will, nearly lost his footing, and narrowly escaped falling into the defile, the entrance to which they sought to gain. Oliver manifested his anxiety and parental care in sundry oaths, while Moses Fletcher, who had loved the child ever since saving him from the Lodge, said little and retained his wits.

When the search party entered the heart of the Clough, Oliver's dog began to show signs of excitement, that became more and more noticeable as they drew near to the Gin Spa Well. Here the brute suddenly stopped and whined, and commenced to wildly caper.

'Th' dog's goin' mad,' said Amos.

'It's noan as mad as thee, owd lad,' replied Moses. 'I'll lay ought we'n noan so far fro' th' chilt.'

'It is always wise to stop when a dog stops,' assented the minister.

'Yi; yo' connot stand agen instink,' said Malachi.

'Good lad! good lad! find him!' sobbed Oliver to his dog; and the brute again whined and wagged its tail and ran round and between the legs of the men.

'There's naught here,' impatiently cried Amos.

I'll tak' a dog's word agen thine ony day, owd lad,' said Moses.

'Well, thaa's no need to be so fond o' th' dog. It once welly worried thi dog, and thee into th' bargain.'

'Yi; it's bin a bruiser i' id time, an' no mistak'; but it's turned o'er a new leaf naa--and it's noan so far off th' child;' and Malachi, too, commenced to encourage it in its search.

'It looks to me as th' child's getten up theer somehaa;' and so saying, Moses pointed to the ledge of rock where Jenny Greenteeth was said to slumber through the winter's cold.

'What mut th' child ged up theer for?' asked Amos. 'Thaa talks like a chap as never hed no childer.'

At this rebuff Moses was silent; for not only was he a childless man, but until the day he saved the very child they were now seeking from the Green Fold Lodge, children had been nothing to him. Now, however, he had learned to love them, and none better than the little lost offspring of Oliver o' Deaf Martha's.

While the two men were wrangling, Mr. Penrose stepped aside and commenced the climb towards the ledge. The snow lay white and undisturbed on the shelving surface, and there was no sign of recent movements. Looking round, he discovered the mouth of the recess. There it stood, black and forbidding. In another moment the minister stooped down and looked in; but all was dark and silent, nor did he care to go further along what to him was an unknown way.

'Have any of you a light?' asked he of the men below; and Malachi handed him his collier's candle and matches, with which he commenced to penetrate the gloom.

It was a small cavernous opening out of which, in years past, men had quarried stone. Damp dripped from the roof, and ran down its seamed and discoloured sides. Autumn leaves, swept there by the wind, strewed its uneven floor, and lay in heaps against the jutting angles. A thin line of snow had drifted in through the mouth, and ran like a river of light along the gloomy entrance, to lose itself in the recesses beyond.

The feeble flicker of the candle which Mr. Penrose held in his hand flung hideous shadows, and lighted up the cave dimly enough to make it more eerie and grotesque. The minister had not searched long before he was startled by a cry--a faint and childish cry:

'Arto Jenny Greenteeth?'

'No, my boy; I'm Mr. Penrose.'

'It's noan th' parson aw want; aw want th' fairy.'

And then the chilled and startled boy was carried down to the men below.

In a moment Oliver o' Deaf Martha's seized his boy and wrapped him in the bosom of his coat, hugging and kissing him as though he would impart the warmth of his own life to the little fellow.

'It's noan like thee to mak' a do like that, Oliver,' said Amos, unmoved, 'but thaa shaps (shapes) weel.' And as the child began to cry and struggle, Amos continued, 'Sithee! he's feeard on thee. He's noan used to it. He thinks he ought to hev a lickin' or summat.'

But Oliver continued his caresses.

'Well, Oliver, I've never sin thee takken th' road afore.'

'Nowe, lad! I've never lost a chilt afore.'

VI.

MIRIAM'S MOTHERHOOD.

1. A WOMAN'S SECRET. 2. HOW DEBORAH HEARD THE NEWS. 3. 'IT'S A LAD!' 4. THE LEAD OF THE LITTLE ONE.

I.

A WOMAN'S SECRET.

On a little mound, within the shadow of her cottage home, and eagerly scanning the moors, stood Miriam Heap. An exultant light gleamed in her dark eyes, and her bosom rose and fell as though swept with tumultuous passion. Ever womanly and beautiful, she was never more a queen than now, as the wind tossed the raven tresses of her crown of hair, and wrapped her dress around the well-proportioned limbs until she looked the draped statue of a classic age. There was that, too, within her breast which filled her with lofty and pardonable pride, for she awaited her husband's return to communicate to him the royal secret of a woman's life.

Miriam and Matthias--or Matt, as she called him--had been seven years married, the only shadow of their home being its childlessness. Matt's prayers and Miriam's tears brought no surcease to this sorrow, while the cruel superstition that dearth of offspring was the curse of heaven and the shame of woman, rested as a perpetual gloom over the otherwise happy home.

Of late, however, the maternal hope had arisen in the heart of Miriam; nor was the hope belied. To her, as to Mary of old, the mystic messengers had whispered, and He with whom are the issues of life had regarded the low estate of His handmaiden. That of which she so long fondly dreamed, and of late scarce dared to think of, was now a fact, and a great and unspeakable joy filled her heart.

As yet her secret was unshared. Even her husband knew it not, for Matt was away in a distant town, fitting up machinery in a newly-erected mill. Miriam felt it to be as hard to carry alone the burden of a great joy as the burden of a great sorrow. But she resolved that none should know before him, whose right it was to first share the secret with herself; so she kept it, and pondered over it in her heart.

And now Matt was on his homeward journey, and Miriam knew that shortly they would be together in their cottage home. How should she meet him, and greet him, and confess to him the joy that overwhelmed her? What would he say? Would he love her more, or would the advent of the little life divide the love hitherto her undisputed own? Was the love of father towards mother a greater and stronger and holier love than that of husband towards wife? or did the birth of children draw off from each what was before a mutual interchange? Thus she teased her throbbing brain, and vexed her mind with questions she knew not how to solve. And yet her woman's instincts told her that the new love would weld together more closely the old, and that she and Matt would become one as never before. And then a dim memory of a sentence in the old creed came upon her--something about 'One in three and three in one, undivided and eternal'--but she knew not what she thought.

As Miriam stood upon the little mound within the shadow of her roof-tree, eagerly scanning the moors for Matt's return, cool airs laden with moorland scents played around her, and masses of snowy cloud sailed along the horizon, flushing beneath the touch of the after-glow with as pure a rose as that mantling on her womanly face. The blue distances overhead were deepening with sundown, and the great sweeps of field and wild were sombre with the hill shadows that began to fall. In a copse near where she stood a little bird was busy with her fledglings, and from a meadow came the plaintive bleat of a late yeaned lamb. From the distant village the wind carried to her ears the cry of an infant--a cry that lingered and echoed and started strange melodies in the awakening soul of Miriam. Child of the hills as she was, never before in all her thirty years of familiarity with them, and freedom among them, had she seen and felt them as now. A great and holy passion was upon her, and she took all in through the medium of its golden haze. The early flowers at her feet glowed like stars of hope and promise--and the bursting buds of the trees told of spring's teeming womb and dew of youth; while the shadow of her cottage gable and chimney--falling as it did across the little mound on which she stood--recalled to her the promises of Him who setteth the solitary in families.

Then she returned to herself, and to her new and opening world of maternity. No longer would she be the butt at which the rude, though good-natured, jests of her neighbours were thrown, for she too would soon hold up her head proudly among the mothers of Rehoboth. And as for Matt's mother--fierce Calvinist that she was, and whom in the past she had so much feared--what cared she for her now? She would cease to be counted by her as one of the uncovenanted, and told that she had broken the line of promise given to the elect. How well she remembered the night when the old woman, taking up the Bible, read out aloud: 'The promise is unto you, and to your children,' afterwards clinching the words by saying: 'Thaa sees, Miriam, thaas noan in it, for thaa's no childer'; and how, when she gently protested, 'But is not the promise to all that are afar off?' the elect sister of the church and daughter of God destroyed her one ray of hope by saying: 'Yi! but only to as mony as the Lord aar God shall co.' And Matt--poor Matt--across whom the cold shadow had so long lain, and which, despite his love of her, would creep now and again like a cloud over the sunshine of his face--Matt, too, would be redeemed from his long disappointment, and renewed in strength as he saw a purpose in his life's struggle, even the welfare of his posterity. These thoughts, and many others, all passed through Miriam's mind as she stood looking out from the mound upon the sundown moors.

Dreaming thus, she was startled by a well-known voice; and looking in the direction whence the sound came, she saw her husband in the distance beckoning her to meet him. Nor did she wait for his further eager gesticulations, but at once, with fleet foot, descended the slope, towards the path by which he was approaching.

Ere she reached him, however, she realized as never before the secret she was about to confide, and for the first time in her life became self-conscious. How could she meet Matt, and how could she tell him? In a moment her naturalness and girlish buoyancy forsook her. She was lost in a distrait mood. Joy changed to shyness; a hot flush, not of shame, but of restraint, mounted her cheeks. Then she slackened her pace, and for a moment wished that Matt could know all apart from her confession.