Under God's Sky. The story of a cleft in Marland

Part I

A WOMAN'S WILL. _ PAGE I. Prologue ... ... ... ... ... 3 II. Heath and Rock ... ... ... ... 6 III. Man and Woman ... ... ... ... 14 IV. A Dark Evening ... ... ... ... 20 V. Abiram, Overseer ... ... ... ... 31 VI. A Woman's Rage ... ... ... ... 39 VII. A Woman's Resolve ... ... ... ... 48

Part II. The Dark Shore

I. Contrary Echoes ... ... ... ... 53 II. A Girl's Life ... ... ... ... 06 III. The Spending of the Oil ... ... ... 72 IV. The Lamp goes out... ... ... ... 77 V. Death in the City ... ... ... ... S3

Part III. Grey Light

I. Facing Reality... ... ... ... ... 91 II. Black Masque ... ... ... ... 97 III. The Marble and the Music ... .,. .., Contents VI PAGE IV. Her Testimony ... ... ... ... ... 106 V. Marland Critics ... ... ... ... 115 VI. Her Escape ... ... ... ... ■•• 123 VII. Marland Salts ... ... ... ... i-9

Part IV. Miss Winborne Sees And Hears

I. Her own Camt Fold ... ... ... ... 137 II. A Parish Doctor a Vear Old ... ... 14S III. Voices ... ... ... ... ... ... 151 IV. The Heart of Life ... ... ... 154 V. A Baptist "Wool-dyed" ... ... ... 162 VI. Riddles, One and Anothlk ... ... 167 VII. The Parish of Blackmeregate ... ... ... 177

Part V. The Ripening Of

A HARVEST. I. Mother and Son ... ... ... ... 187 II. A Tea-party ... ... ... ... 194 III. The Arrival of a Dream ... ... ... 200 IV. A Purchased Possession ... ... ... 211 V. The Glory of Slack ... ... ... ... 217 VI. A Chain for a Neck ... ... ... 223

Part VI. Prayers And Schemes

I. A Message of Fate ... ... ... ... 233 II. Between Gentlemen ... ... ... 245 III. Love— All for Love ... ... ... ... Contents. VII

Part VII

A WISSENTIDE WEEK. J'AGK I. Inter-act ... ... ... ... ... 261 II. "Laking" ... ... ... ... ... 265 III. Prescribing for Neuralgia ... ... ... 272 IV. Mr. Carling again ... ... ... ... 278 V. "He's your Son" ... ... ... ... 282 VI. The Iron Collar ... ... ... ... 288 VII. Twopenny — a Clever Fool ... ... ... 294

Part IX. What Is

LOVE? I. The Good of a Dream ... ... ... ... 325 II. In Duke's Gardens ... ... ... 332 III. Old Letters ... ... ... ... ■•• 337 IV. A Thunder-cloud ... ... ... ... 339 V. Sarah and Abiram meet ... ... ••• 346 VI. " Keeping a Cool Head " ... ... ••• 355 VII. The Day draws Near ... ... ... ••• 36° VIII. Not for the Carnal Life ... ... ... 366 IX. " Life takes Two " ... ... ... ••• 37° A WOMAN'S WILL B

Part I

A WOMAN'S WILL. i. prologue. Westward from Beldon, over a league or so of rolling moorland, you come to Latstone Pike, to the head of Deilsden, to the ribs of the Ryder clough and a new line of Edges, the cliffs of Marland looking on to those of Shroggland. Between these there runs a valley, narrower, wilder, greener than that which separates Beldon and Scratterden Brows — a ravine less populated, though it has little hives of labour and strange economies of space. South-east it joins the larger glen at Stanshaw Bridge, and this brimming river of smoke cuts down to the last rampart of the highlands, to the great plain where " men in kingdoms" gather themselves, spinning, year in, year out, their own grey and ragged cocoon. It is by the Scratterden Valley and Stanshaw Bridge that you reach the smaller and more romantic glen, if you take to the low roads.

But going that way, you will spend a morning in doing what you could do in two hours by crossing " the tops." That is, if you are able to cross the tops. The flanks of the wilderness rise broadly from Scratterden ; it is a hard climb to Beldon Slack and a further pull to the rocks upon the ridge. A thousand feet above the sea-level you cross the open grass heath and then have the rough plunge by grey scaur and thin plantings, by roadway and "rake," to one of the villages in Ryder vale. At the end you have proven your heart and sinews pretty well, you have breathed deep of tonic air and of a singular charm, half wild, half homely. At the end, if you are not in love with this humped and riven land under the near grey sky, go your ways by the iron roads to the south, where the high limp poplars bind the weedy fields, and stranded clusters of red roofs peep over the willows of invisible watercourses.

The charm of the north-western moors and glens may not be for you. In that case go — pass on ! For me, I remain. But you will stay, also ? Then I will tell you one of the stories that are folded among these ridges of wild hill. There are many, and they are like the country : they partake the rudeness and romance of the great upland sweeps, the cleaving glens, the stern and sharp outlines, the pressure and the freedom. They made themselves where man and nature are alike, and, because they are alike, contend with each other daily. They made them selves but yesterday, as history counts time, and the yesterday is not ours, it already belongs to another age. There are people living, not at all old, whose youth was bred in that day, and some of them have forgotten, others remember a dream and look back with a mist in their glance.

Was it so ? It was only yesterday . . . and yet how far, how strange it seems ! Owen Schofield is one of our " well-known " men, a late, yet not a very late success; Phenice is still pursuing — herself; is not afraid yet to look in her mirror. Sarah Ashworth lives with her husband — an old man— in the village where she once sought him as if he were a mere acquaintance. And Sarah's memory is good ; she forgets Prologue. 5 nothing of her own ; she tells the whole tale in shards and pieces, relishing the flavour of each. It involves the story of several other people, but to Sarah that is a mere accident. As she lives it over and over, in the lengthy winters of a retired life, it is her story and hers only — the play of A Woman and Her Revenge. A lost revenge it is, quite lost and spilt on the ground ; yet Sarah never allows that.

She rings the curtain down every night upon her own unbroken will, her own clever purpose. And it all began, you may say, that cool September afternoon when Sarah came from Penshup Head to meet Abiram Ashworth at the Were-Stones above Ryder vale. heath and rock. The day had been like many days in that part of the world — more or less a cloudy supposition. The sun had risen, else the valley rifts and the scaurs would not have been visible as a concrete world. Indeed they had been well visible, in a quiet grey and brown clearness, like a sepia drawing or an etching in two tones. The valleys had rumbled and smoked their usual way through the hours, the reek of them had risen to the crests and there dispersed about another region altogether. On the heights there had been cool, colourless autumn peace — one brooding hush from the High Cross of Beldon to Latstone Pike in Marland, to St. Bell in the Wilderness away south-east — broken by no gleaming lights, no drifting glooms, only quickened by the circling cries of the heath fowl .

It may be doubted if a single human being drank of the silence of the upland all the morning. One girl, at any rate, knew nothing of it, though she spent the hours till afternoon sewing in a cottage in one of the highest settle ments of the whole region. Perched on the top of a promontory is the wee town of Penshup Head, and in a room at the very point of the town this young woman drove her needle through woollen stuff, while an eight-day clock passed from eight to four. She scarcely spoke during the whole time, yet silence there was none. Another woman's tongue whirred steadily with the whirring of the clock, and the one who had nothing to say audibly was hearing and answering another voice— not her housemate's, not her own, but a man's— a hard masculine voice. She heard it speak, and replied to it all day while her needle wished through the stuff and Jane, old Cousin Jane, phrased on.

At four Jane went to a shop a few yards away to get butter and the bread she was too busy to make ;— a good Penshup housekeeper should make her own bread. As soon as she had passed the window the girl rose, gave two sharp folds to her work and laid it down, pulled from a hook behind the door a large dark shawl and threw it over her head. Then she slipped from the cottage toward the upper end of the street, where the small compressed town — it is more complete than Beldon : it has a grammar school and other fixtures — dwindled to the open wilderness. At first she went as though merely freshening herself after a close day ; then, her calculation as to Jane's delay proving correct, and her steps bringing her to the detached outposts of the settlement, she wandered on to the open ground by a path which left the headland and fell with a falling of the moor behind it From this pronounced " slack " the road struck right across toward the trend of the Ryder vale, which runs almost due north for a little before taking its main direction of north-west.

Away to the left, in a deep corner, lay Stanshaw Bridge ; on the right the free rude moor undulated to its neighbour, the sky; across the space of this upland loneliness went a small, quick, brown figure. Dwellings, in ranks, piled themselves up the steep at Stanshaw Bridge, but they were invisible from the moor ; only the smoke of them and of what lay below them crept along the wilderness upon the southern side, staining the grey of the dull sky wall. A sulky brown drift went lazily on to the west and dim fringes overhung the Ryder hollow. The girl went quickly now. There was hardly a rise on the road after getting out of the depression behind the town ; it travelled the heath lightly for a mile or so, and the young woman from Penshup went lightly with it, carrying an excited round face in the frame of the brown shawl.

In a quarter of an hour she had clean escaped her little world — the needle and thread, the eight-day clock, the exacting customers, and Jane's whirring tongue. They were behind ; they might topple over the Edge if they liked, and go down the valley. Before her there was something else ; she was going to meet her luck and secure it. Not her freedom, perhaps. At least she did not use that word to herself. But before her, across this shelving wedge of moorland, there was another life than the one she left behind. And she should have started an hour earlier, to go leisurely. She had trusted to make some errand into the street, or that Jane would have gone out herself; but Jane sat and sewed and " yammered " till the girl could almost have cut out her good-natured, droning tongue with the big scissors.

Did Jane think she was the only one who had experiences? Why, she sat coddling an old-gathered fire that would never be hot again, while Sarah's burned strong and fresh and needed a whole hearth to itself. She meant well, old Jane, but what did she know ? The girl drew her shawl over her breast. Within there was a flame of purpose and of will that Jane had never felt in all her life. It was within bars : did it leap the less for that ? Nay, it was about to leap out. Some day, soon — yes, soon, now. How long she had been kept down ! said the girl to herself. But now she was on the way to her luck, and though it were not all she could wish, it would be at least her own. " Yo've had two men, an' yo think yo know everything, Jane. Yo' dunnot ! " said a sharp, low voice upon the moorland road. " Yo dunnot know how to warstle with a man and win.

Yo never did it i' yor life ! They allus mastered yo, and so yo say it's nature to let 'em. ... I reckon it's nature to get wed to 'em, and then to have a whoam of yor own ; yor own, choose who sits i' th' armchair." She fixed her eyes upon the far rise of the hill over Deilsden, and her feet followed each other quickly. Her slight frame was well-knit ; though she had the look of a town girl and a dressmaking girl, the touch of delicacy was only external. She was neat and " wick," and her thin face, which fell in a little under the high cheek-bones, had a firm, clean skin — a few minutes in the open air gave to it a pretty rose tint. Her eyes, looking out so definitely, were not beautiful, nor even pretty, but they were eyes of a character, small, round, and pale under a tight, low fore head, and fixed closely upon a world which they meant to wring something out of, to their own satisfaction.

They were neither bright nor deep, they were certainly not coquettish, but they were strong and steady. A small, compressed mouth, a hard little chin fulfilled the face of this human creature alone in the wide wilderness. It knew its loneliness, it knew the travail in the glens below, it saw the cold, grey canopy over the sere heath — and a will said : " Whether God or man hinder, a woman shall strive for her own ; being ' wick,' though not strong, she shall come to her own." And so she walked on. In the north a band of pale light had been growing between the neutrals of earth and upper sky. It was keen and clear as a topaz, and against it ran the long swell of the moor, as if shaped with a tool ; away in the north-west a crag rose up sprinkled with rocks, and throned itself darkly upon the last of the day.

The rocks were like dour misshapen gods, sitting there to plan a night's mischief in the valleys below ; they might well be thought of, in those valleys, with a hovering fear, as strange forms of existence, as the shelter and shape of beings whose will was to prank with man — witches, hobgoblins, and ghosts. It was well known — was it not ? — that if you durst linger in the neighbourhood of the Were-Stones after dark, and be there at midnight, you would hear sounds and see sights fit to turn a mortal brain. The girl from Penshup Head knew this. Some had seen, some had heard. Who wanted to share their experiences ? She did not. " I'm late, an' there's a black neet coming down," she muttered as she pressed on, facing that long topaz gleam and the bleak Olympus raised against it. " And if 'Biram's to be back i' Deilsden afore th' factory looses he cannot set ma whoam over th' tops."

She arrived at a fork of the road and glanced along the branch that came from the edge above Stanshaw. The person she was to meet had been at Manchester market that day. Instead of going on by train to the station from which he set out in the morning, he was to leave the rail at the junction and climb by steep, short cuts to the top of the cliffs, and so to the Were-Stones : there Sarah was to find him. They had trysted in this way often through the summer, but summer was over, autumn passing, the black nights drew on, when no young woman nor anybody who believed in " marlocks " and " boggarts " (witches and ghosts) might travel the moor alone after working hours. Was that why the girl said sharply, under breath, as she glanced southwards, "I wunnot come this fool errand agen ! — nay, I wunnot"?

There was no human figure between herself and the rim that ended in smoky drift. She gave one glance and turned to the slope of rough, withered ling rising to the Stones. The band of pale light was already paler, fading off from the edge of the world every minute and becoming a faint, far loneliness beyond the loneliness of earth. The rude, grey gods would soon be too weird to approach. A thin, metallic vibration came up the valley, another, and three more, making the ear aware not only of them selves, but also of a dull under-note, or murmur, which came with them and remained after. Five o'clock struck in the old square tower of Stanshaw church, and the pent labour all around it breathed to the crags, "Yet another hour till the nightfall and the hush ! " "Five o'clock. He'll be up theer waiting, and he'll noan be sweet to speak to," said the girl at the fork of the roads.

She turned and looked to the moor. She could fancy that she saw a figure seated on one of the rocks. If that were 'Biram he could see her plainly, must have watched her for some time along the exposed moorland path, and was now, as she said to herself, hindering time away up there, instead o' coming to meet her. It was like 'Biram, that sort of obstinacy ; it was particularly like him as he had been of late. The girl had "monkey" in her too. She waited a minute before she moved northward. He was there : the dark crest of one of the rocks shifted a little upon the pale breadth of sky. But it remained. She was to be dragged to the very top, and by the time she reached the Stones they would be wrapped in the mist of the early night. What did Abiram mean? All that nonsense of not being seen together lest folk should talk must come to an end now.

She set herself to the moor, but with a grudge. Her step had been alert so far, upon the easy road, now it dragged through the knotted ling and the irregularities of the hillside. She breathed short and stumbled often as she went. " A man's a leathery bargain at best," she muttered, " and I wer a fool to let him come over ma with his wiling tongue, when I might ha' lived peaceable. I wer a reet soo' ! " The figure upon the rock became more evident. It looked her way. There was something demonic about it — the small black human shape up there, watching her approach while the spaces of sky and earth grew shadowy. "It's a bonny way, this'n, o' going to meet ma lad an' settle fur buying furniture an' gettin' into a home o' ma own. But as things are, sin' I've fair done for mysen, I mun get ma half-risen dough baked, and eat it.

Choose how, 'Biram is a wick lad and bound to get on ; and that's allus to a woman's credit. It's a queer world this'n, wheer a female's nowt, howiver wick hoo may be " — however capable she may be — " nobbut hoo yokes on to a man. It beats ma to see the sense o' that." She rebelled against her woman's lot, rebelled and " could not see the sense of it ; " and yet, in the moment began to re-arrange the facts and devise how to make them serve her main end and purpose. She projected her game of life once more and doubted not it should succeed. " I did say, when I came to Penshup, that if he'd leave ma to mysen I'd niver seek him — an' I meant it ; I did so ! " Yes ; and she knew why she very soon ceased to mean it. " I could ha' bided wi' Jane and fended for mysen. . . . For sure, hoo's just owd Cousin Jane, an' nowt else. . . .

An' Abiram '11 not halt till he's a master. That's th' sort o' felly for me ! " she told herself with some pride. " Choose how good-natured a lad might be, I could never abide him unless he got on and showed 'at there wer summat in him. I should be mad to be seen wi' him i' th' market and know 'at folk called him a size o' a chap an' a stick-i'-th'-mud : I should so ! " Her tone proved it ; her eyes went up to the Were-Stones. " But there mun be an end o' this, Abiram. Thou mun set ma back to Penshup to-neet ; an' then Jane '11 see ma felly at last. If thou'll mak' half th' fuss thou once did hoo'll think a's reet — poor owd Jane ! Thou'rt unconverted, hoo'll say, but then thou matches Sarah." She came into the shadow of the rocks ; they grew out of the hillside, grim and black and cold. The figure on the top of one of the larger, higher masses leapt to its feet and disappeared from the sky.

In a few seconds it appeared in the hollow that made the centre of the group — a little grassy slope all dusky now with night and eerie possibilities, and creeping away on each side under hanging shelves and flanks of rude wall or cave. The man who had been waiting came a few steps down and stood under a penthouse that hid the sky. The rock shelved out above him ; he leaned against the wall of it, only his figure was distinctly seen, and that was large, squarely built. On the top of the rock he had looked small ; not so now, not so to the young woman who arrived in front of him. They had both glanced over the hill before entering this rude bower : no other human being was there upon the whole side of it. What ever they had to say, these two, might be said in space and seclusion. man and woman.

The girl was more visible to the man than he to her : the last of the daylight touched her round face with a pale glimmer : she might have crept out of the heath to confront him — a part of the rock. He did not speak. " Well, lad," she said at last. "Well, lass." A pause. Then, from her — " Is that all thou has to say ? " " What dost expect ma to say ? If there's a deal to speak of, why hast a lingered so long on th' road ? " They used the same vernacular, and yet his speech was ruder every way than hers. "Lingered! Who sat perked up on a rock till there wer scarce light eno' to watch somebody else climb a long hill ? " " It's nobbut wimmen 'at think o' makkin' an appointment fur one place an' time an' keeping it at another. I wer to meet thee at th' Were-Stones at four o' th' clock." " Thou knows well enough, 'Biram, that I said if I wer a bit late, as I might be, I'd noan come so far as th' Stones.

Thou wer to look for ma at th' top o' th' rake. But that's o'er near to houses for thee." " I bide by whatten I've said : that's my manner." " Is it? Do yo' mind all yo've said to me — do you bide by it ? " Man and Woman. 15 So far her tone was not stronger than any girl of her country and habits, in the Marland of that day, would use if somewhat displeased and remonstrant. To his ear it even sounded mild, as though she were not, as he would say, angered at all. He did not reply to her question, but stood looking into space from the rock against which he leaned. " Nay, yo've forgotten a deal ! Happen yo forget that we wer to meet here, or that there's owt to settle atween us. Yo're here by chance, happen ? " " Nay, lass, I am not." " I think yo are. Going back this way fro' Manchester, an' I'm detaining yo, that's it !

" His attitude, his reserve, gave sharpness to her tone. Noting that, he answered her, with a singular deliberation : " I've forgotten sa mich, have I ? Whatten may it all be, lass ? I dunnot mind being ' detained,' as yo say, fur a bit, 'specially as there is summat important to settle." She was silent now, turning over his words and endeavour ing to see through them to his thought. " Yo're cracking riddles to-neet. Whatten is it I've forgotten ? " he demanded. " Ony thysen, 'Biram. That's all th' riddle. And thou mun find th' answer : I cannot," she answered, holding her shawl about her and her eyes to what she could see of his face. " I've no time to spare fur riddling," said he, out of the shadow of the rock. "'Riddling!' — 'Time!' Which on us two is framing to mak' a fool o' th' other?

Answer me that ! " " Answer me that, lass. It's the very thing I'm waiting here for, up at th' Were-Stones, this neet." She leaned forward a little, peering towards him, her face glimmering pale in its tight-drawn frame. There was a sharp interval before she said, in a low dry voice — " I might ha' known as mich ! I did know it when thou made me come up here." She turned as if to leave him. " Bide yo a minute ! I said there wer summat important to settle." " It's kept long : it can keep agen ! " said she. " I've a frock to finish to-neet. When yo're i' th' mind to do a little courting, yo can step as far as Penshup Head." "I con, con I? An' find thee up by th' churchyard, carrying on wi' another felly ? I wonder thou'dst want Abiram theer ! " She whipped round, came close to him, and set her face in front of his.

" Say that agen, Abiram Ashworth. Say that word agen ! '' " Nay, I'll say another 'at's more to th' point. Nobbut one at a time when I'm the one, lass ! " She stood perfectly still, watching the dark mask of his face. The eyes were covered by shadow ; she knew and yet hardly knew the set of his lips. Was it for a smile ? She seemed to have heard things about a smile like that. "Ay!" she said slowly. "Thatten's the game, is it? A gradely plan, for sure ! But thou's o'er clever, lad ; thou need not give thysen sa mich trouble. Say plainly 'at thou'rt tired — nobbut that ! — and th' job's done. I'll know mysen for a leatherhead, that's all, and that's a middling low price to pay for freedom." " Ay, yor freedom ! Yo want to get shut o' one bargain that yo may dance after another. Not so fast, lass !

" It would have been difficult for any listener, however acute in the ear and the inward sense, to guess the relation between these two persons, or to infer the purpose which the man had in view. " Yo dunnot deny 'at yo were wi' Jim o' Bracks th' other neet," he went on. She did not reply, and he pursued his purpose — whatever it was. The one quite evident thing was the existence of some motive governing every word, every point of speech or silence. Man and Woman. 17 "And it's noan th' first time yo've bin seen in his company." What singular note, as of a sort of pleasure, made the words like bruises? He heard the woman's quick, hard breathing and he waited, considering what she might say and how the interview might end. When she did speak it was as though she would every syllable were a nail struck into the flesh.

" Deny it ! I'll wait till a man speaks of summat he believes. , . . It's a black neet here, and owd Nick himself is taking a turn out." " Happen thou knows him. But fine words wunnot wash off smuts ; mind yo that, lass ! " Again the terse low voice out of the unmoving figure. " I made mysen as black when I took up wi' thee as I ever coa wi' owt i' this world. That's my answer to thee and thy muck-rake, Abiram Ashworth. It'll be a long day afore I'm as smutty as thou'rt framing to be. Tha can go thy ways ! " She turned again, but he made one stride from under the rock and caught her arm. "Thissen's a different tale from owt we've heard afore," said he. "It's allus bin 'When will yo tak' ma whoam ?' ' When are yo to have a house ready ? ' And now, to-neet, I can go ma ways. Yo've heard of a chap that's to make brass quicker than Abiram will."