Forest folk

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. FROM SOMEWHERE UP’ARDS I

II. BY THE FIRESIDE . 14

Chapter I

It was on a day in the early years of the just defunct century; a horseman with some marks of travel upon him was riding after a leisurely fashion, which seemed to show that his journey was either of no pressing importance or was nearing its end, northwards from the county town of Nottinghamshire. His way lay through the southern portion of Sherwood Forest, which nominally was almost as extensive as in the reckoning of the Doomsday Book and still had its full staff* of officers, the Lord Warden with his bow-bearer, ranger and steward, his verdurers, keepers and woodwards; but in reality had been sadly despoiled at the hand both of enclosure and of illiberal waste. The noble trees which a hundred years ago had made a thick unintermittent shade from Mansfield to Nottingham had gone and left no trace, save here and there a clump of scrubby oak, here and there a solitary veteran naked to every wind. Arnold and Calverton were being fast brought under cultivation, and though much of Bestwood and Papplewick was still barren moor, it was not until the traveller left the Mansfield road just after the fifth milestone that he came upon a scene of unreclaimed wildness.

It was a day of an ever-varying greyness, as the days are grey in November under a brisk southwest wind, when the sun is never quite successful in breaking through the clouds, never completely in prison behind them. Snow had fallen the day before, rain in the night ; there were reminders of both in the dull glimmer of the wayside puddles, in the narrow strips of white by hedge and bank, under furrow and bush, or occasionally in larger patches on the sunless side of a hill. The afternoon of such a day did not show such a country to the best advantage; an undulating expanse covered as far as the eye could reach with green gorse, brown bracken, grey ling. A horseman’s cursory glance would hardly be caught by the scanty gleam of yellow amid the gorse, which true to the proverb that it goes out of bloom only when kissing goes out of fashion, showed here and there the peep of a warmer colour between its sombre spikes. There was no shelter anywhere from the keenness of the wind. The fallow deer, which when the then old men were young had browsed the sward in large herds, were gone, as the trees under which they had harboured were gone. But there were plenty of rabbits.

The occasional little movements of the traveller’s shoulders under the cape of his great-coat may have been shiver as much as shrug, but there could be no mistaking the disapprobation of the quick critical glances which he cast about him. Probably he was comparing the outlook with more genial scenery which he had lately quitted; a country possibly of better roads for one thing. The road he was then following was much like a sheep-trail, being nothing more than a trodden track, sometimes sandy, sometimes grassy, winding between gorse and gorse. He began to fear that he had missed his way. There was no house in sight, no wayfarer on the road, no shepherd on the hills, no sound of labour ; only the whistle of the wind and the wail of the never-resting peewheep. He was the better pleased therefore, when he had ridden thus some three or four miles, to see before him a carrier’s van travelling in the same direction as himself. He put his horse to a quicker motion in order that he might overtake it and make inquiry of the driver. But when he was yet some thirty yards distant suddenly half a dozen fellows rudely masked with black, two or three of them having pistols in their hands and one a blacksmith’s sledge-hammer, jumped out of the bushes and surrounded the van. The horseman hastily pulled up, astonished at what had every appearance of being an act of highway robbery.

There was no loss of time. One pair of hands stopped the carrier’s horse, another pair dragged the carrier himself down from his seat, while two or three of the ruffians jumped in back and front and forthwith began to pitch the contents of the cart out into the road ; some heavy sort of hardware they appeared to be, parts of machinery or the like. But the men’s purpose, it seemed, was destructive rather than thievish, for as each article fell with steely glitter to the ground, the man with the sledge-hammer smote it to shivers. The rider particularly noticed that man, the man indeed was particularly noticeable ; a tall lithe fellow with hair red or reddish, of a frame magnificently proportioned and to judge by the ease with which he did his destructive work of remarkable strength. The driver stood by, apparently more chagrined than surprised. So far as could be heard not a word was uttered either by him or his despoilers.

But presently the latter appeared to remark and resent the presence of an onlooker. A couple of them made towards him armed with pistols ; townsmen they looked like, of the artisan sort, in ragged cloth coats and greasy breeches. Evidently the horseman thought it more prudent not to await their coming, for he turned about and galloped off. But as soon as he was fairly out of pistol-shot he again reigned in and looked back. The two men stood watching him, and with threatening wafts of the hand seemed to be bidding him continue his retreat. He did so, and soon a dip in the road hid them completely from his view.

What should he do ? The day was on the wane, the country was unknown to him, there was nobody to question. He did the best he could, he continued his backward course until the road divided, and then turned off down a sandy trail, on his right hand as it happened. Again and again he turned — tracks were plentiful, of sheep or men — hoping by so doing to recover his former direction ; but there was still the gorse upon every hand and never a sign of a house. Many a time he spoke ill of a country which had neither road nor inhabitant, nor anywhere a friendly finger-post for the information of belated travellers.

At length he came where a rain-swollen brook crossed his path. On his right its waters were held up by a dam, and widened out into a marshy pool bordered by willows and overgrown with rush, sedge and persicaria, the haunt of waterfowl. The opposite bank was for a short distance at any rate impracticable, being the almost precipitous termination of a low spur from the more considerable hills beyond. His way being thus indicated for him he pulled his left rein, gave his back to what there was of the sun, and followed the stream’s course. After a while he saw straight before him a curl of smoke and a roof ; the roof low* and humbly thatched, the smoke issuing from a single dilapidated chimney, but both a welcome sight in such a wilderness. At his approach he found it to be a wayside alehouse of the meanest, a one-storied w mud and stud ” erection, situated at the crossing of two ways somewhat better marked than those he had for the last hour been finding and losing.

A man was coming out of the door as he drew up to it, a man of the town artisan sort, in clothes much worn and begrimed with swarth. He did not carry a pistol nor wear crape on his nose, yet the rider immediately bethought himself of the lawless gang who had driven him from the road. But the man seeing him had at once drawn back into the house. The stranger did not like the look of the house any the better for the sample offered him of the company it held \ but while he hesitated between calling for the host and passing on, another man came to the door, a sturdy thick-necked, low-browed, burglarious-looking fellow. If he were the host, he had nothing of the host about him but his dirty white jacket and his red nose.

u How far am I from Blidworth, pray ? ” asked the horseman.

The man seemed disinclined to answer at all, but after a look and a pause said surlily :

u I’m i’ Blid’orth, yo’re i’ Cauverton ; an’ if yo want ayther Farnsfield or Oxton, they’re the t’other side the road.”

M Thank you. And which is the way to the village of Blidworth ? I presume there is more village than this.”

The man uncrooked a surly grimy reluctant finger and pointed ; the horseman again thanked him and rode away. But he had not gone twenty yards before he heard a loud voice behind him, another voice :

w Tek the first turn to the raight.”

He looked quickly round, and even as he looked what he saw in the doorway of the inn vanished from it ; the tall youthful figure of a man finely formed and crowned with long red or reddish hair. He was almost sure he had seen it before ; there wanted but a sledge-hammer and a bit of crape to complete his recognition. He put his horse to the quick trot, willing to change his neighbourhood as soon as might be. In five minutes he came where an ill-defined track crossed that which he was pursuing. He doubted whether he should go by the innkeeper’s finger or the correction of the younger man; but the view to his right on the top of a straight-chined hill, perhaps two or three miles away, of a church and a mill standing out with grey indistinctness from the cloudy horizon determined him; he turned to the right up a sandy rise. On either side of him the gorse and heather had recently been fired. Their charred remains and grey sodden ashes made a sorry contrast with the snow that glimmered in the hollows. After that there was a stretch of land from which the gorse-roots had been grubbed and part of it brought under the plough. Then where the descent began there were fences, crops of turnips, winter tares, potatoes and peeping wheat ; and down in the hollow a farmhouse, or it might be two adjacent cottages of different altitudes, the higher thatched, the lower tiled. The horseman rode down towards the house, but as he was about to pass through a field-gate leading thereto, he saw on the other side of the way a plough-boy turning his team of three near the hedge. He was partly obscured by the smoke which issued from a row of burning heaps in the adjacent enclosure, and swept over ridge and furrow at the wildly capricious pleasure of the wind ; sometimes like a thick scudding mist barely a man’s height above the ground, or rarified to a diaphanous veil ever shifting, ever varying. As the horseman was about to address the plough-boy there was a momentary lull, the smoke rose straight into the air, the field was clear before him ; he could see the scarlet glow of some of the heaps, the brown smouldering of others, and the labourer plodding to and fro tending them. Beyond which there was an inconsiderable breadth of plough-land, then moor until it touched the November sky persistently, varyingly grey. The plough-boy had turned his team on the headland, and now stood resting on the hales and looking at him ; the stripling who acted as driver but just indicated by the projection of a long whip over the back of the leader.

44 Is that Blidworth yonder ? ” asked the horseman.

44 Eh ? Blid’orth ? Ah, yon’s Blid’orth,” answered the plough-boy.

44 Thank Heaven for that ! ” said the horseman heartily.

The lull was brief, the wind boisterously renewed its sport, the fires crackled and roared or smoked and smouldered ; the air was filled with the puther. The plough-boy, leaving his plough, came to the hedge-side and fixed a pair of remarkable grey eyes upon his questioner.

44 Yo’re from somewheer up’ards, I reckon? ” he shouted in shrill competition with the wind.

The rider did not understand or did not choose to answer, but pointing to the building on the other side of the road said :

44 What may the name of that house be ? ”

44 My question’s as good as yourn, / reckon,” said the plough-boy.

There was a certain shrill unusualness in the ploughboy’s style of address ; the rider did not ride on, as one might have expected ; he was pleased for the moment to amuse himself.

u Somewhere upwards ? I don’t quite know — I know what c uppishness ’ means. Perhaps ”

“Let it stan’ at that,” said the plough-boy with unexpected promptitude. Apparently he was willing to take his own question as answered, for he continued :

u It’s the Low Farmhouse, that is.”

u The Low Farmhouse ? And I am in search of the High Farm. Can you direct me ? ”

The plough-boy pointed out a conspicuous white house about half a mile off, on the crown of a slope which rose behind the Low Farmhouse.

“ And how shall I best get there ? ”

“Turn to the raight when yo get to the Bottoms.” The plough-boy pointed to a little cluster of houses at the foot of Blidworth Hill. “From theer yo may cross the fields ; as straight as yo like; it’s their own land. Mebbe yo’re the new man at High Farm ? ”

But the horseman’s complaisance was exhausted ; he made no answer; with a jerk of the reins he put his steed to a walk. Just at that moment — his careless eyes were still on the plough-boy — a sudden gust blew the boy’s hat off* ; boy’s hat or man’s, but immediately there fell about its wearer’s shoulders such a mass of fine long hair as only women are permitted to display, lustrous waves of that eloquent hue which is nearest to red but not red. Whereupon the rider also saw through the smoke and the hedge what had escaped him before, a short breadth of womanish skirt between the hem of the old blue smock-frock and the drab cloth gaiters. Whether it were out of curiosity or a larger courtesy, he again reined his horse in and made answer :

“ I have come to walk over the farm.”

The woman in plough-boy’s guise let her hat lie, and holding back her wind-blown hair with both hands looked him over as though she began to take an interest in him. She saw a quick-eyed, well-dressed young man, rather slightly made but remarkably vigorous and alert-looking. He was clean-shaven but for the small close whiskers half down the cheek, and his dark brown hair was neatly tied up in a club that hung below the nape of his neck. He appeared to be about twenty-five years of age, and was mounted on an excellent roadster. His broad-brimmed hat, his long-skirted riding-coat and cape, his top-boots and chamois-leather gloves, his silver-mounted whip and spurs, all in good unpretentious style, gave him the appearance of a man of considerable taste and means j if a farmer, certainly one of the bettermost, fit to rank next to the squire himself. Did her scrutiny take in so small a feature as his nose, she would perceive it to be slightly finely aquiline.

He returned her direct gaze so candidly resolute with a glance which was amused rather than interested, of which indeed the most noticeable quality was perhaps an air of careless superiority. And yet even to criticism so negligent as his it seemed strange that such a face should be associated with a labourer’s threadbare frock, none too clean, a labourer’s shoes and gaiters all patched and mired, a labourer’s old leathern gloves. The labourer’s hat lay under the hedge whither the wind had blown it. He noticed the broad brow with a scattering of freckles about the temples, the healthy weather-tanned cheeks, the lips of glowing red, the largish mouth, the straight nose, the stature above the mean, and with equal accuracy and coolness how the wind brought the smell of the burning heaps and a few flakes of whitey ash.

“That’s a middling hoss of yourn ; what price do yer put upon him ? ”

She spoke as self-collectedly as though she had been all the time examining the animal and not his master.

u He is not for sale,” answered the latter rather stiffly.

“ Well, he’s nubbut a hack when all’s said and done.”

The sun must have forced a rift in the clouds, for over her head he distinctly saw the under-wings of a flock of peewheeps flash white as they wheeled and wheeled again in elaborate manoeuvre, flash like a thousand little mirrors set to catch the sun. But its rays did not directly strike the ground ; the disconsolate snow by the hedge showed bluely grey in the waning light. Again he was starting as she called shrilly after him :

“Well, I hope yo’ll be easier to get on wi’ nor he was.”

The rider again stayed his horse, though there seemed little or no reason for his so doing, and fixed his dark eyes keenly upon her.

“ Why,” he asked, u do you express such a hope ? ” u Becos we’re none so easy to get on wi’ oursens, so we look to hae extry good neighbours.”

w In what respect did you find the late tenant not easy to get on with ? ”

w In respect of a gate, first and foremost.” w In respect of gates probably I shall do as he did.” w Then probably we shall do as we did.” u What was that ? ” w Smash ’em.”

His dark fiery eye threw a menace forth. u Madam, I beg leave to hope you won’t.”

He raised his hat, but when he seemed to be going for the fifth or sixth time, yet he did not go. Perhaps there was the not unmanly dislike to leaving a woman with a threat upon his face. He pointed with his whip to the springing wheat on the other side of the road, among which intrusive beans were thickly showing.

“ If that’s your wheat, I see your beans shelled a good deal this year.”

Which apparently she resented more than cause was. u Mebbe yourn don’t on light land i’ dry seasons.”

There seemed nothing then to stay his going in reality ; but on the sudden as it appeared to him, for his perception of it was sudden, the part of the sky furthest from the sun was lit up with a glare which loaded the atmosphere with an eye-troubling ruddiness. The smouldering heaps of rubii bish on the headland smoked purple ; the restless peewheeps still circling in the sky flashed red instead of white; the wan snow in the furrows put on a blush. But even while he looked on this and that a flood of crimson glory poured through the break in the clouds, growing and growing, as overflows do once the little rift is made, until the whole west was ablaze with orange, purple and violet. Clouds might have been inflammable, and the torch of the sun a near danger. The slant splendour slid down to the cold earth and rested on it.

The woman had stepped aside to where her hat lay in the ditch, and there she stood gathering the abundance of her hair into a loose coil. The smoke was round and about her like a cloud, but a rose-tinted luminous cloud, sky-born, ever-changing into new beauty. Where it was thicker there was the more colour, and where rarer the more light. And she herself had suffered equal transmutation. The smock frock no longer looked sordid, the leathern gloves uncouth ; but the face ! Surely it was not the same face which he had examined a moment before with the coolest negligence. The freckles and the tan had disappeared. A carmine radiance seemed to issue from the fine curves of her thin cheeks ; but it burned among her hair, which was now red of reds ; flames ran along the silky threads of its twisted tangles. Either ear was a hanging transparency, flame-tinctured ; and behind her surged, ever lessening and increasing, the billows of smoke, from palest rose to darkest purple. Out of such a sea, perhaps, Tyrian dyed but with the effulgence of her own body, Aphrodite first uprose between Cyprus and Cythera; and the air shuddered with a red gladness. But this was no Aphrodite. Her eyes were unchanged, grey and grave.

From her different point of view she evidently did not see in the man the miraculous alteration which he saw in her. His wondering gaze amused her for a little while, then perplexed her, incensed her. At last she cried out :

u Yo mean to know me when yo see me again.”

He awoke ; but as a man awakes suddenly ; the sleep has left his eyes, but not his brain. He muttered a confused word of apology, he turned his horse and rode slowly away.

As he rode, the short-lived magnificence died out. The wind dropped. Grey became the sky again, grey the air; the earth and the snow were mere differences in greyness. The smoke rose straight up, merely brown. He was ashamed of his late enchantment ; he was minded to ride back and disabuse his mind, make sure of the freckles about the temples, the wind-beaten skin, the sordid apparel. He had pulled the off-rein and half turned before he was fully aware of his folly. Besides her eyes would have been unchanged, gravely greyly fixed upon him. Across the field her voice was blown shrilly to him, as she shouted to her driver and her horses :

u Auve, auve a bit! Steady, Tidy! Whitefoot, yo sloomy ! ”

He put spurs to his horse and galloped off in his proper direction. Only for a minute however, for as he reached the turn in the road and the little cluster of houses which she had called the Bottoms, a child ran across before him, and obliged him to rein up hard. The child, a sturdy boy, did not seem in the least concerned either by his danger or his escape; he had been calling an old woman who stood at the door of one of the cottages, and he continued to call her.

“ Witch ! ” he cried with the insolence of a safe distance, “ Witch ! Wheer’s yer broom-stick ? Len’s it ; I should like a ride on’t.”

He approached her and chucked a stone after his words.

*3

But when she turned her almost sightless eyes upon him he fled back; only however to renew his verbal insults.

w Witch ! Witch ! Len’s yer broom-stick, witch ! Do, witch ! ”

An old old woman leaning palsy-shaken on a crutched stick, with snow-white hair, snow-white eyebrows and lashes, snow-white moustache, and a crop of snow-white bristles on her chin. Of a strange whiteness too was the wrinkled skin, both of cheek and of the trembling hand which she held up to shield her eyes, as though even that grey waning light were too much for them. She looked towards the horseman, wagging her head, but whether her attention were directed by sight or hearing was doubtful.

u Witch, witch ! ” cried the urchin. u Who killed Morley’s blue cow ? Gie’s yer mop-stale, I want a ride on’t.”

But a sickly-looking woman issuing from a cottage on his own side of the road came round the corner, took him by the shoulders and soundly berated and cuffed him.

“ Yo little rascad ! ” she said. w I’ll gie yer a bensaling the next time, see if I don’t. If she be a witch, yer soft sawny, the more reason to speak ’er fair. What’s other folks’s cows an’ coughs to huz ? On’y do’t again, on’y do ! ” Amid which confusion of blows, abuse and promise, both disappeared within-doors. The old woman dropped her quaking hand and tottered into her own house. The horseman rode through the fields towards the High Farm, as he had been directed. Dimmer grew the light ; the patches of grey snow looked colder than the white had done. Down across the valley, three-quarters of a mile off, he could still descry the burning heaps, the smoke, the plough and its team, she who directed them appearing just such a crawling earthly animal as they. But in his thought there would needs be yet some ray of that fugitive glory about her plain semblance.

Chapter II

Meanwhile the young woman continued following the plough until she had turned a couple of furrows more ; then she left the driver to unhook Tidy, Whitefoot and their unnamed comrade from the clivvers, and herself strode before them to the small irregular building which we have already heard named as the Low Farmhouse. She entered by the gate, stood in the yard and holloaed, “ Tant, Tant ! ” As soon as she raised her voice dogs began to bark, pigs to squeal, calves to blawt, horses to whinny ; but there was no other answer. It was dusk and the promised rain had begun to fall. Thrice she holloaed, “ Tant, Tant ! ” but as it seemed without any heart in her calling ; then a woman opened the house-door and answered her with loud harsh voice :

u Yo nedn’t call him. And Lambert’s gone home wi’ his gethered hand bad. And Spettigew hain’t coom back yet from the ship. I’ve milked the cows an* suppered the fat beast mysen.”

Again the door was shut ; the only cheerful thing to be seen was the glimmer of a candle through the window next the door. The plough-horses came in before their driver, and with heavy clumsy foot blundered into their proper stalls. The young woman went into the house, brought thence a lighted lantern, set the boy Dick to look after the pigs, and herself proceeded to the stable. From the farthest end of the long dark shed came a gentle whinnying.

u Bide a bit, sweetheart/’ she said with a glance thither- 14 wards and a remarkable softening of the voice. “ Labouring folk moot be sarved ; the quallity can wait.”

At those words a greyhound came dancing delicately down out of the greater into the less obscurity, and offered herself to attention, a beautiful fawn-coloured bitch. She received a kindly smoothing of the silk-clad skin between her ears, and then a “ There, lass, there ! ”

The hound with cold nose uplifted to warm hand seemed to protest against the brevity of the caress.

M Down, Treasure, down ! I’m throng to-night.”

There was something of sternness in the tone. The bitch immediately desisted, and with dainty deliberation tripped back over the rough stones into the dark. The woman set before each of her rough-haired thick-steaming fellow-labourers two or three carrots and a moderate allowance of chaff, which they munched while she carefully rubbed them down. That done she went up to the innermost partition, where an old hunter was stalled. The greyhound lay under his manger.

u Yo were a good oad Hasty,” she said stroking the horse’s fine glossy brown coat, “ to let me tend to the commoners first. I mun hae come, yo know, if yo’d stood on your raights.”

The old horse twisted his lithe thin neck, put his fine muzzle over her shoulder, and with a low deep quavering from the bottom of his chest grunted his contentment.

She had given the calves their hay and carrots when Spettigew came from the sheep ; two of the hogs had been missing from his count, and he had been long in finding them. She left the watering and suppering up of the horses to him and went into the house. The blazing coal fire and the light were a pleasant change from the wet and darkness of without, though the light was but from one home-made tallow dip on the round central table.

i6

“ It’s raining,” she said, and that seemed to express her satisfaction at the change.

w He's none getting wet,” said crustily enough the woman who had spoken to her from the door.

The latter was perhaps some thirty years old, stout and tall and sufficiently like the other in feature and complexion to suggest sisterhood. Her red hair was partly hidden by a white cap with a purple ribbon ; she had a blue kerchief pinned about her ample breast, but her neck was bare. Bare too were her strong red arms from where the sleeves of her dark-brown linsey-woolsey gown ceased at the elbow. She was bustling to and fro, white-aproned, laying the table for supper, like a woman who has much upon her hands. Not another word was said. The newcomer put off her damp soiled outer garments and then in her new slimness appeared much younger than before, being evidently but on the threshold of womanhood. Above her short light-red petticoat she wore in place of bodice a longsleeved snuff-coloured jacket, gathered at her waist with a leathern belt. She changed her miry foot-gear for shoes of a more feminine fashion, and then went straight to the fire which burnt in a huge outstanding chimney-nook, which took up nearly the whole of that side of the room. She sat down on the floor, stretched her legs across the hearth in front of the generous blaze, and leant her head back against the petticoats of an old woman who sat in an ancient armchair in the warmest corner.