We had scarcely started our tea, and hunger was still keen upon Elsie, when there came a noise of calling, quite different from the howling of mad folk, or the mocking laughter or ugly whine of Jeremy. Miss Orrin poured out tea with a kind of grim aplomb. If I had been afraid that she meant to poison us – or at least Elsie, I was soon undeceived. The amount of tea that she poured down her own throat was astonishing in the extreme. There were, however, certainly several sorts of cake that she would not allow her master, Mr. Stennis, to touch, on pretext of indigestion, but which she pressed upon us. And it was all that I could do, by kicking her shins beneath the table, to keep Elsie from accepting.
I managed it all right, though. They might have been as harmless as my father's acid drops. But after all there was only one Elsie, and I was not going to run any risks.
There was a distant sound of calling across the moat, and at the noise, Mr. Stennis frowned, an ugly look coming over his face, while on the contrary the sound had a still more extraordinary effect upon Miss Orrin. Her eyes gleamed more softly, losing for a moment their iron-gray expression. Her hands went up instinctively to the thin little corkscrew curls which bobbed at either side of her face.
In ten seconds the fierce, angular old maid looked ten years younger. Love, vanity, self-consciousness – ye are wondrous things.
"If it's that interfering curate from Over Breckonton, I'll throw him into the moat! I'll have the dogs on him," growled Mr. Stennis, "always poking his nose in when he is least wanted!"
Then he turned to his housekeeper, and detecting her busy fingers, he said with a sneer —
"What, prinking again! I see. Only the beneficed clergy have any chance with you, Miss Aphra!"
"Beneficed!" she cried. "Ah! poor lad, I wish he were! If I had my will it would not all go to that lazy vicar, who never does a ha'pworth of good, but rides to hounds and preaches his father's sermons, because he cannot make one for himself."
"Ha!" cried the old man, "be off with you, young ones. Miss Orrin is going to receive spiritual direction and absolution."
The tall old woman started up, her right hand upon the bread knife, as if she could have killed her master with it on the spot.
"Well would it be for you, Hobby Stennis, if you did the like!" she said, restraining herself with difficulty. "But there's Mr. Ablethorpe, and he must not be kept waiting!"
"Of course not, Miss Orrin," said Mr. Stennis sneeringly. "It were a pity indeed that he should – and he come so far to administer spiritual consolation to conscious sinners!"
Then the old woman was roused to fury.
"Sinner am I?" she said, going up and bending her body till her face came within an inch of two of that of the old man, who was seated, pretending to go on with his tea. "Sinner am I? Well, I do not deny it. But at least, if sinner I be, it is that I may find a home and a livelihood for those three poor things, whom God hath bereft of their reason! But as for you – for what do you sin – sin till the sand of the sea could hardly tell the multitude of your crimes, poured from the hand like water, a grain for a sin? For money – yes, for dirty gold! For money which you dare not spend, and for gear which you dare not show! Answer me that! And if sinner I be – I have never heard or read that the Gospel is not for sinners! Do I not need it the more, Hobby Stennis? And the young man is a good young man, and speaks to me of high things – such as I need much, and you more!"
"Have your shown him your Mumbo-Jumbo worship in the barn? Or your sisters, kneeling before the little coffins – all that flummery? You ought to be ashamed – you, Aphra Orrin, you, a woman of sense, and able to know better!"
"And if I told Mr. Ablethorpe all, he would understand," retorted the old maid. "He would understand that those who cannot know God must be content with such a God as they can understand!"
Mr. Stennis laughed, but there was a false ring in his laughter.
"Aye," he said, "doubtless there are a great many things which the good young man, Mr. Ablethorpe, cannot understand. Did you ever, by chance, try to teach him a little gardening?"
"No, and well for you, Hobby Stennis!" cried the woman, still threateningly.
"Well or ill," said the old man, "I go to see these bairns across the bridge and safe on their way home. Then to my weaving! Where is Jeremy?"
"How should I know were Jeremy is – on some of your errands, doubtless!" she cried. "Come, I will let down the drawbridge myself. Also I shall see to it that you offer no indignity to the one honest man who deigns to enter your house."
This quarrel between the two most sane inhabitants of Deep Moat Grange let me deeper into the secrets of that evil dwelling than anything else. At least, so I thought at the time. But I found afterwards that all I thought I knew had but lain on the surface. I had conceited to find Shallow Moat Grange, and lo! the name was no misnomer. The moat was Deep, indeed.
All the same, it was like coming out of a heated room, with many people therein, into the silence and chill of the winter stars, to get one's head outside that abominable house of the Grange. How good to pass by the lily clumps, and feel one's feet on green grass again! It seemed to me that even the dull and sullen moat could be crossed, if you only took it determinedly enough. We had seen Jeremy come over and return, and so surely could we, fleeing (if need were) for our lives.
But there was no need at present. Miss Orrin had thrown a white shawl about her head and shoulders, and drawn a pair of tight silk lacy "mits" over her bony wrists. She made straight for the drawbridge, walking at least ten yards in front of us – apparently that she might get the first word with the fine young man in clerical attire who stood waiting on the further bank.
"I am sorry to have kept you, sir," she said, in a voice which I could not have believed to be hers, had I not seen her lips moving as we arrived; "I will let down the bridge in a moment. Mr. Stennis has been entertaining some relatives of his own, and did not wish to be disturbed."
"I hope that I am not intruding!" called out the young man from the farther bank. "I can easily look in again. It will not be the least trouble, I assure you!"
"Not for the world," cried the old woman hastily; "in a moment the bridge will be down."
And she rushed to the little wheelhouse, to let go the chain with a relieving motion of her foot. And immediately the ponderous affair came clanking to the ground, locking into the pawls at the other side with the pleasant sloop of well-oiled machinery.
Then it was our turn to be introduced. Mr. Ablethorpe came across the wood with the firm tread of an athlete. He held out his hand first to Miss Orrin, who bowed over it, as if she would have loved to raise it reverently to her lips.
Then he shook hands with Mr. Stennis, who took the matter cavalierly enough, immediately turning on his heel and going off in the direction of his weaving-room, which had an additional entrance from the front. The young curate was apparently well enough accustomed to such treatment, and thought nothing of it, but Miss Orrin bit her thin lips and looked daggers at the bowed head of the old weaver-farmer as he trudged away.
"Halloo, Joseph Yarrow," said Mr. Ablethorpe lightly, as he ruffled my head with his hand. (I understood well enough to take off my cap to a clergyman.) "Joe Yarrow, I know your father. And I think – yes, I think – " (he put a lot of accent on the think) "Master Joseph, you ought to be at school. Shall I tell your father, Joseph? If I did, I make no doubt that he would give you a coat of a few colours, mainly black and blue. Ha! ha!"
But he had that light way with him, which made us quite sure that he would do nothing half so mean as to tell either my father or Mr. Mustard the schoolmaster.
"And who is this young lady?" he said, looking at Elsie, who was tall, and when taken short like that had a kind of "distant" look which made people think she was haughty. But she looked very nice that way – what people call pretty and "chic" (whatever that may be). I could see that Mr. Ablethorpe was interested in her directly. I could have knocked his head off! Cheek, indeed!
"She lives with a poor working woman," said Miss Orrin, who had no doubt noticed the interest as well as I, "one named Nance Edgar,