CHAPTER VIII
STARVECROW FARM

The company at Mrs. Gilson's, impressed by the appearance of a gentleman of Captain Clyne's position, scarce gave a second thought to the doctor's retreat. But to Tyson, striding homewards through the mud and darkness, the insult he had suffered and the feeble part he had played filled the world. For him the inn-parlour still cackled at his expense. He saw himself the butt of the evening, the butt of many evenings. He was a vain, ill-conditioned man, who among choice spirits would have boasted of his philandering. But not the less he hated to be brought to book before those whom he deemed his inferiors. He could not deny that the landlady had trounced him, and black bile whelmed all his better feelings as he climbed the steep track behind the inn. "D-d shrew!" he growled, "D-d shrew!" and breathing hard, as much in rage as with exertion, he stood an instant to look back and shake his fist before he plunged into the darkness of the wooded dell through which the path ascended.

Two or three faint lights marked the position of the inn a couple of fields below him. Beyond it the pale surface of the lake reflected a dim radiance, bestowed on it through some rift in the clouds invisible from where he stood. A far-away dog barked, a curlew screamed on the hill above him, the steady fall of a pair of oars in the rowlocks rose from the lake. The immensity of the night closed all in; and on the thoughtful might have laid a burden of melancholy.

But Tyson thought of his wrongs, not of the night, and with a curse he turned and plunged into the wood, following a path impossible for a stranger. As it was he stumbled over roots, the saplings whipped him smartly, a low bough struck off his hat, and when he came to the stream which whirled through the bottom of the dingle he had much ado to find the plank bridge. But at length he emerged from the wood, gained the road, and mounted the steep shoulder that divided the Low Wood hamlet from the vale of Troutbeck.

Where his road topped the ridge the gaunt outline of a tall, narrow building rose in the gloom. It resembled a sentry-box commanding either valley. It was set back some twenty paces from the road with half a dozen ragged fir trees intervening; and on its lower side-but the night hid them-some mean farm-buildings clung to the steep. With the wind soughing among the firs and rustling through the scanty grass, the place on that bleak shoulder seemed lonely even at night. But in the day its ugliness and barrenness were a proverb. They called it "Starvecrow Farm."

Nevertheless, Tyson paused at the gate, and with an irresolute oath looked over it.

"Cursed shrew!" he said, for the third time. "What business is it of hers if I choose to amuse myself?"

And with his heart hardened, he flung the gate wide, and entered. He had not gone two paces before he leapt back, startled by the fierce snarl of a dog, that, unseen, flung itself to the end of its chain. Disappointed in its spring, it began to bay.

The doctor's fright was only momentary.

"What, Turk!" he cried. "What are you doing here? What the blazes are you doing here? Down, you brute, down!"

The dog knew his voice, ceased to bark, and began to whimper. Tyson entered, and assured that the watchdog knew him, kicked it brutally from his path. Then he groped his way between the trees, stumbled down three broken steps at the corner of the house, and passing round the building reached the door which was on the further side from the road. He tried it, but it was fastened. He knocked on it.

A slip-shod foot dragged across a stone floor. A high cracked voice asked, "Who's there?"

"I! Tyson!" the doctor answered impatiently. "Who should it be at this hour?"

"Is't you, doctor?"

"Yes, yes!"

"Who's wi' ye?"

"No one, you old fool! Who should there be?"

A key creaked in the lock, and the great bar was withdrawn; but slowly, as it seemed to the apothecary, and reluctantly. He entered and the door was barred behind him.

"Where's Bess?" he asked.

The bent creeping figure that had admitted him replied that she was "somewheres about, somewheres about." After which, strangely clad in a kind of bedgown and nightcap, it trailed back to the settle beside the turf and wood fire, which furnished both light and warmth. The fire, indeed, was the one generous thing the room contained. All else was sordid and pinched and mean. The once-whitened walls were stained, the rafters were smoked in a dozen places, the long dresser-for the room was large, though low-was cracked and ill-furnished, a brick supported one leg of the table. Even in the deep hearth-place, where was such comfort as the place could boast, a couple of logs served for stools and a frowsy blanket gave a squalid look to the settle.

Tyson stood on the hearth with his back to the fire, and eyed the room with a scowl of disgust. The old man, bent double over a stick which he was notching, breathed loudly and laboriously.

"What folly is this about the dog?" Tyson asked contemptuously.

The old man looked up, cunning in his eyes.

"Ask her," he said.

"Eh?"

The miser bending over his task seemed to be taken with a fit of silent laughter.

"It's the still sow sups the brose," he said. "And I'm still! I'm still."

"What are you doing?" Tyson growled.

"Nothing much! Nothing much! You've not," looking up with greed in his eyes, "an old letter-back to spare?"

Tyson seldom came to the house unfurnished with one. He had long known that Hinkson belonged to the class of misers who, if they can get a thing for nothing, are as well pleased with a scrap of paper, a length of string, or a mouldy crust, as with a crown-piece. The poor land about the house, which with difficulty supported three or four cows, on the produce of which the Hinksons lived, might have been made profitable at the cost of some labour and a little money. But labour and money were withheld. And Tyson often doubted if the miser's store were as large as rumour had it, or even if there were a store at all.

"Not that," he would add, "large or small, some one won't cut his throat for it one day!"

He produced the old letter, and after showing it, held it behind him.

"What of the dog now?" he said.

"Na, na, I'll not speak for that!"

"Then you won't have it!"

But the old fellow only cackled superior.

"What's-what's-a pound-note a week? Is't four pound a month?"

"Ay!" the doctor answered. "It is. That's money, my lad!"

"Ay!"

The old man hugged himself, and rocked to and fro in an ecstasy.

"That's money! And four pound a month," he consulted the stick he was notching, "is forty-eight pound a year?"

"And four to it," Tyson answered. "Who's paying you that?"

"Na, na!"

"And what's it to do with the dog?"

Hinkson looked knavish but frightened.

"Hist!" he said. "Here's Bess. I'd use to wallop her, but now-"

"She wallops you," the visitor muttered. "That's the ticket, I expect."

The girl entered by the mean staircase door and nodded to him coolly.

"I supposed it was you," she said slightingly.

And for the hundredth or two-hundredth time he felt with rage that he was in the presence of a stronger nature than his own. He could treat the old man, whose greed had survived his other passions, and almost his faculties, pretty much as he pleased. But though he had sauntered through the gate a score of times with the intention of treating Bess as he had treated more than one village girl who pleased him, he had never re-crossed the threshold without a sense not only of defeat, but of inferiority. He came to strut, he remained to kneel.

He fought against that feeling now, calling his temper to his aid.

"What folly is this about the dog?" he asked.

"Father thinks," she replied demurely, "that if thieves come it can be heard better at the gate."

"Heard? I should think it could be heard in Bowness!"

"Just so."

"But your father-"

"Father!" sharply, "go to bed!" And then to the visitor, "Give him a ha'penny," she muttered. "He won't go without!"

"But I don't care-"

"I don't care either-which of you goes!" she retorted. "But one of you goes."

Sullenly he produced a copper and put it in the old man's quivering hand-not for the first time by several. Hinkson gripped it, and closing his hand upon it as if he feared it would be taken from him, he hobbled away, and disappeared behind the dingy hangings of the box-bed.

"And now what's the mystery?" Tyson asked, seating himself on one of the stools.

"There is none," she answered, standing before him where the firelight fell on her dark face and gipsy beauty. "Call it a whim if you like. Perhaps I don't want my lads to come in till I've raddled my cheeks! Or perhaps" – flippantly-"Oh, any 'perhaps' you like!"

"I know no lad you have but me," he said.

"I don't know one," she answered, seating herself on the settle, and bending forward with her elbows on her knees and her face between her hands. It was a common pose with her. "When I've a lad I want a man!" she continued-"a man!"

"Don't you call me a man?" he answered, his eyes taking their fill of her face.

"Of a sort." she rejoined disdainfully. "Of a sort. Good enough for here. But I shan't live all my life here! D'you ever think what a God-forsaken corner this is, Tyson? Why, man, we are like mice in a dark cupboard, and know as much of the world!"

"What's the world to us?" he asked. Her words and her ways were often a little beyond him.

"That's it!" she answered, in a tone of contemptuous raillery. "What's the world to us? We are here and not there. We must curtsey to parson and bob to curate, and mind our manners with the overseers! We must be proud if Madam inquires after our conduct, but we must not fancy that we are the same flesh and blood as she is! Ah, when I meet her," with sudden passion, "and she looks at me to see if I am clean, I-do you know what I think of? Do you know what I dream of? Do you know what I hope" – she snapped her strong white teeth together-"ay, hope to see?"

"What?"

"What they saw twenty years ago in France-her white neck under the knife! That was what happened to her and her like there, I am told, and I wish it could happen here! And I'd knit, as girls knitted there, and counted the heads that fell into the baskets! When that time comes Madam won't look to see if I am clean!"

He looked at her uncomfortably. He did not understand her.

"How the devil do you come to know these things?" he exclaimed. It was not the first time she had opened to him in this strain-not the first by several. And the sharp edge was gone from his astonishment. But she was not the less a riddle to him and a perplexity-a Sphinx, at once alluring and terrifying. "Who told you of them? What makes you think of them?" he repeated.

"Do you never think of them?" she retorted, leaning forward and fixing her eyes on his. "Do you never wonder why all the good things are for a few, and for the rest-a crust? Why the rector dines at the squire's table and you dine in the steward's room? Why the parson gives you a finger and thinks he stoops, and his ladies treat you as if you were dirt-only the apothecary? Why you are in one class and they in another till the end of time?"

"D-n them!" he muttered, his face a dull red. She knew how to touch him on the raw.

"Do you never think of those things?" she asked.

"Well," he said, taking her up sullenly, "if I do?"

She rocked herself back on the settle and looked across at him out of half-closed eyes.

"Then-if you do think," she answered slowly, "it is to be seen if you are a man."

"A man?"

"Ay, a man! A man! For if you think of these things, if you stand face to face with them, and do nothing, you are no man! And no lad for me!" lightly. "You are well matched as it is then. Just a match and no more for your white-faced, helpless dumpling of a wife!"

"It is all very well," he muttered, "to talk!"

"Ay, but presently we shall do as well as talk! Out in the world they are doing now! They are beginning to do. But here-what do you know in this cupboard? No more than the mice."

"Fine talk!" he retorted, stung by her contempt. "But you talk without knowing. There have been parsons and squires from the beginning, and there will be parsons and squires to the end. You may talk until you are black in the face, Bess, but you won't alter that!"

"Ay, talk!" she retorted drily. "You may talk. But if you do-as they did in France twenty years gone. Where are their squires and parsons now? The end came quick enough there, when it came."

"I don't know much about that," he growled.

"Ay, but I do."

"But how the devil do you?" he answered, in some irritation, but more wonder. "How do you?" And he looked round the bare, sordid kitchen. The fire, shooting warm tongues up the black cavernous chimney, made the one spot of comfort that was visible.

"Never you mind!" she answered, with a mysterious and tantalising smile. "I do. And by-and-by, if we've the spirit of a mouse, things will happen here! Down yonder-I see it all-there are thousands and tens of thousands starving. And stacks burning. And mobs marching, and men drilling, and more things happening than you dream of! And all that means that by-and-by I shall be knitting while Madam and Miss and that proud-faced, slim-necked chit at the inn, who faced us all down to-day-"

"Why," he struck in, in fresh surprise, "what has she done to you now?"

"That's my business, never you mind! Only, by-and-by, they will all smile on the wrong side of their face!"

He stared morosely into the fire. And she watched him, her long lashes veiling a sly and impish amusement. If he dreamed that she loved him, if he fancied her a victim of his bow and spear, he strangely, most strangely, misread her. And a sudden turn, a single quick glance should have informed him. For as the flames by turns lit her face and left it to darkness, they wrought it to many expressions; but never to kindness.

"There's many I'd like to see brought down a piece," he muttered at last. "Many, many. And I'm as fond of my share of good things as most. But it's all talk, there's nought to be done! Nor ever will be! There have been parsons and squires from the beginning."

"Would you do it," she asked softly, "if there were anything to be done?"

"Try me."

"I doubt it. And that's why you are no lad for me."

He rose to his feet in a temper at that. He turned his back on the fire.

"What's the use of getting on this every time!" he cried. And he took up his hat. "I'm weary of it. I'm off. I don't know that I shall come back again. What's the use?" with a side-long glance at her dark, handsome face and curving figure which the firelight threw into prominence.

"If there were anything to do," she asked, as if he had never spoken, never answered the question, "would you do it?" And she smiled at him, her head thrown back, her red lips parted, her eyes tempting.

"You know I would if-" He paused.

"There were some one to be won by it?"

He nodded, his eyes kindling.

"Well-"

No more. For as she spoke the word, and he bent forward, something heavy fell on the floor overhead; and she sat up straight. Her eyes, grown suddenly hard and small-perhaps with fright-held Tyson's eyes.

"What's that?" he cried, frowning suspiciously. "There's nobody upstairs?"

"Father's in bed," she said. She held up a finger for silence.

"And there's nobody else in the house?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Who should there be?" she said. "It's the cat, I suppose."

"You'd better let me see," he rejoined. And he took a step towards the staircase door.

"No need," she answered listlessly, after listening anew. "I'm not afraid. The cat is not here; it must have been the cat. I'll go up when you are gone, and see."

"It's not safe," he grumbled, still inclined to go. "You two alone here, and the old man said to be as rich as a lord!"

"Ay, said to be," she answered, smiling "As you said you were going ten minutes ago, and you are not gone yet. But-" she rose with a yawn, partly real and partly forced, "you must go now, my lad."

"But why?" he answered. "When we were just beginning to understand one another."

"Why?" she answered pertly. "Because father wants to sleep. Because your wife will scratch my eyes out if you don't. Because I am not going to say another word to-night-whatever I may say to-morrow. And because-it's my will, my lad. That's all."

He muttered his discontent, swinging his hat in his hand, and making eyes at her. But she kept him at arm's length, and after a moment's argument she drove him to the door.

"All the same," he said, when he stood outside, "you had better let me look upstairs."

But she laughed.

"I dare say you'd like it!" she said; and she shut the door in his face and he heard the great bar that secured it shot into its socket in the thickness of the wall. In a temper not much better than that in which he had left the inn, he groped his way round the house, and up the three steps at the corner of the building. He swore at the dog that it might know who came, and so he passed into the road. Once he looked back at the house, but all was dark. The windows looked the other way.