CHAPTER XXXVIII
A FIT OF THE SULKS
Jove, wasn't it just ripping to think that at last a chap could gowhere he liked, and do what he liked--all that horrid lot at the Grangebeing either dead or with the locksmith's fingers between them and theoutside world! Ripping? Rather! It was like a new earth.
All the same, you have no idea what a show place the ruined Grangebecame. Old Bailiff Ball stayed on and made a pretty penny by showingthe people over. Especially the weaving-room, and where old Hobby sat,and the keyhole through which Elsie peeped to see her grandfather as ifpraying over the loom, with Jeremy's knife hafted between his shoulderblades! I think they would have had a magic lantern next! But finallythis was stopped by the police people. For Miss Orrin was still to betried, and all the money that could be got out of the grounds of DeepMoat Grange was to be given back to the friends and relatives of thepeople who had been "arranged for." But the mischief was, nobodywanted to buy, and the whole place was in danger of going to rack andruin.
As for me, I took to wandering about a good deal there. Maybe I waslove-sick--though I hope not, for my good name's sake. At least, itwas about this time father said that we were far too young for anythought of marriage, but that Elsie could stay on in our house. ThenElsie was not happy, and was all the time wanting to go back to NanceEdgar's and her teaching at Mr. Mustard's--because my mother had gotaccustomed to the Caw girls, Harriet and Constantia, by this time, andcould not bear the thought of parting with them. So Elsie, of course,would not stay, and go she did, as you shall hear.
We could have had some pretty good times, she and I, but for thisworry. Father was about as fond of Elsie as I was (owing to the timebehind the Monks' Oven). But, of course, he would not go openlyagainst mother--that is, not in the house. It was not to be expected.If it had been anything to do with the shop or business, he wouldsimply have told mother to mind her own affairs. And mother would havedone it, too. But with the house it was different.
Well, all this made me pretty melancholy--with no more stand-up in methan a piece of chewed string. I read poetry, too, on the sly--suchrot, as I now see--never anything written plain out, but all the wordstwisted, the grammar all tail foremost, and no sense at all mostly. Idon't wonder nowadays people only use it in church to sing--and eventhen never think of bringing away their hymn books with them.
So what with the poetry, and the melancholy brought on by the thoughtof Elsie going back to have that old bristly weasel-faced Mustardbreathe down her neck when she was doing sums, I brought myself to apretty low ebb. Elsie was sorry for me, I think, but said nothing.She had aches of her own under the old blue serge blouse (left sidefront) when Harriet Caw went past her on our stairs rustling in silkunderthings and an impudent little nose in the air as if she smelt adrain.
At any rate I spent a good deal of time in the woods that summer.Woods are most sympathetic places when you are young and justdesperately sad, but can't for the life of you tell why. Doctors, Ibelieve, know. But when mother asked old Doc McPhail, he only grinnedand said she had better "let the kail-pot simmer a while longer. Thebroth would be none the worse!"
But my mother could make nothing out of that, nor I either for thatmatter. Yet through the glass of the office door I actually saw thedoctor grin at my father, and my father--yes, he actually winked back!Old brutes, both of them--fifth commandment or no fifth commandment!
"No books--no office!" said old McPhail, "not for a while. Let thecolt run till he tires!"
So the colt was, as it were, turned out to grass. The officialexplanation was that between nineteen and twenty there occurred adangerous period--twenty-one was a yet more dangerous age. _And I hadovergrown my strength!_
I liked that--_I_ who could vault the counter twenty-five times backand forth, leaning only on the fingers of one hand!
Something during the long summer days drew me persistently to the DeepMoat Woods. Some magnet of danger past and gone for ever--something,too, of nearness to the little schoolhouse, to which, spite of myfather and myself, Elsie had carried her point and returned. I wassulky and jealous about this--much to Elsie's indignation.
"Mr. Mustard--Mr. Mustard!" she said, with her eyes cold andcontemptuous; "I can keep Mr. Mustard in his place--ay, or ten ofhim--you too, Joseph Yarrow, mopping about the woods like a sick cat!You are not half the man your father is!"
And, indeed, I never set myself up to be.
The day I am telling about was a Saturday. Elsie was to have gone fora walk with me; I expected it. But, instead, she informed me in themorning, when I met her setting out to go to the school-house for anextra lesson, that she had arranged to spend the afternoon with fatherin his office, going into her grandfather's affairs.
"Mr. Yarrow," she said, "thinks that everything which my grandfatherpossessed _before_ he began to kill people is quite rightly mine. Hehad weaved hard for that. It would have been my mother's, and it oughtto be mine, too. Even a bad man, your father says, ought to be allowedto do a little good after he is dead, if it can be arranged honestly.That is what your father says."
"My father!" I repeated after her bitterly, "it is always my fathernow."
"And good reason!" cried Elsie, firing up, "he gives the best andwisest advice, and it would tell on you, Master Joe, if you took it alittle oftener."
"No wonder mother prefers Harriet Caw!" I muttered. And the nextmoment I would have given all that I had in possession to have recalledthe words, but it is always that way with a tongue which runs tooeasily.
Turning, Elsie gave me one long look, hurt, indignant, almostanguished. Then she went slowly up the stairs, and in ten minutes herlittle chest and bundle of wraps were out on the yard pavement. I sawher bargaining with Rob Kingsman to take them across to Nance Edgar'sfor her. And I think she took a shilling out of her lean purse to givehim. I tell you I felt like a hog. I was a hog. I knew it and,shamefaced, betook me to the woods as to a sty.
I had wounded Elsie to the quick, and wronged my father also.... I didnot believe that either of them would ever forgive me. For, of course,she would go straight and tell father. I did not feel that I couldever go back. At the wood edge I turned and looked once at the smokecurling up from the chimney of "the Mount" kitchen. It was so hotthere was no fire in any of the other rooms. Ah, '_home, sweet, sweethome_'!
Then I peeped at the schoolhouse, and saw Mr. Mustard and Elsie walkingslowly up to the front door together. She had had that extra lesson,the nature of which she had not thought fit to tell me. Then she wouldgo--well, no matter where. It was all over between us at any rate.
Did you ever know such a fool? Why, yes--there was yourself, dearreader--that is, if you have been wise. If not, it may not even yet betoo late to be foolish.
I wasted the day in the woods. That is, I took out my pocket-book,jerked my fountain pen into some activity, and scribbled verses. I wastoo proud to go back home. And I knew well that my father had acceptedin its fullest sense the doctor's advice, "Let him run!" He wouldneither send after me himself nor allow anyone else to meddle with mycomings and goings.
It was curious and fascinating to linger about the Deep Moat Woods,once so terrible, now become a haunt of the sightseer and the daytripper. But I who had seen so much there, and heard more, who withbeating heart had adventured so often into these darkling recesses,could not lose all at once the impression of brooding danger they hadgiven me, ever since that first morning when Elsie and I crossed theroad and plunged into them on the day of poor Harry Foster's death.
I suppose it was the moody state of my mind (Elsie unkindly calls it"sulks") which led me to stay on and on till the afternoon became theevening, and the shadows of the trees over the pond became more andmore gloomy--mere dark purple with blobs and blotches of fire where thesunset clouds showed between the leaves.
I stood leaning against the trunk of a tree, the branches bending downumbrella fashion all about me. In those days I was a limber youngfellow enoug
h, and could have acted model for an illustrated-paper heroquite fairly--Childe Harold, the Master of Ravenswood, or one of thoseyoung Douglases to whom they brought in the Black Bull's Head in theCastle of Edinburgh, as a sign that they must die.
Of course, I had no business to be there at that time of night, but myown loneliness and Elsie's desertion made me stay on and on--miserableand cherishing my misery, petting my "sulks," and swearing to myselfthat I would never, _never_ give in--_never_ forgive Elsie, _never_return to those who had so ill used and misunderstood me.
Yes, what a fool, if you like! But I wasn't the first and I won't bethe last to feel and say just the same things.
Then, quick and chillish, like the breaking of cold sweat on a man,though he doesn't know quite why, there passed over me the thrill whichtells a fellow that he is not alone. Yet anything more lonely than theMoat Pond ruins, with what remained of the square hulk of the towercutting the sky--the same from which Jeremy had hurled himself--couldnot be imagined.
Nevertheless I did not breathe that night air alone. I was sure ofthat. The bats swooped and recovered, seeing doubtless the white blurof my face in the dusk of the tree shadows.
Before me I could see the green lawn all trampled that had been MissOrrin's pride. The lilies were mostly uprooted to allow of theperquisitions of the law. But whether it was something supernatural(in which at the time I was quite in a mood to believe), or merelyowing to the moving of a soil so pregnant with the exhalations of themarsh--certain it is that I saw the distinct outline of a man's body,with limbs extended, lie in the same place where each of Miser Hobby's"cases" had been interred. They were marked out with a kind of mistyfire, like the phosphorus when a damp match won't strike--not brightlike the boiling swirl in a vessel's wake. Each of them kept quitestill. There was no movement save, perhaps, that of a star, when yousee it through the misty air low on the horizon of the west, and kindof swaying, which after all may only have been in my head.
I don't think I was particularly frightened at first. I had had somechemistry lessons with Mr. Ablethorpe, and we had gone pretty faron--boiling a penny in one kind of acid, and making limestone fizz withanother--nitrochloric, or hydrochloric, I think. So I knew enough notto be frightened--at least not very badly. But what I saw next scaredme stiff. I don't hide the fact. And so it would have scared you!
_There was something on the lawn, dabbling among the shiny glimmer ofthe uprooted lily plots, crouching and scratching!_
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