The History of David Grieve

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She was, as it were, always watching him with a sort of secret
discontent. He did not suit her--was not congenial to her.
Especially was she exasperated now more than ever by his bookish
tastes. Possibly she was doubly jealous of his books; at any rate,
unless he had been constantly on his guard, she would have hidden
them, or done them a mischief whenever she could, in her teasing,
magpie way.

One morning, in the grey summer dawn, Louie had just wakened, and
was staring sleepily at the door, when, all of a sudden, it
opened--very quietly, as though pushed by some one anxious not to
make a noise--and Reuben's head looked round it. Louie, amazed,
woke up in earnest, and Reuben came stealthily in. He had his hat
and stick under his arm, and one hand held his boots, while he
stepped noiselessly in his stocking feet across the room to where
Louie lay--'Louie, are yo awake?'

The child stared up at him, seeing mostly his stubble of red hair,
which came like a grotesque halo between her and the wall. Then she
nodded.

'Doan't let yor aunt hear nothin, Louie. She thinks I'm gone out to
th' calves. But, Louie, that merchant I towd yo on came yesterday,
an he wor a hard un, he wor--as tough as nails, a sight worse nor
owd Croker to deal wi, ony day in th' week. I could mak nowt on
him--an he gan me sich a poor price. I darn't tak a penny on 't
from your aunt--noa, I darn't, Louie,--not if it wor iver so.
She'll be reet down mad when she knaws--an I'm real sorry about
that bit dress o' yourn, Louie.'

He stood looking down at her, his spectacles falling forward on his
nose, the corners of his mouth drooping--a big ungainly culprit.

For a second or two the child was quite still, nothing but the
black eyes and tossed masses of hair showing above the sheet. Then
the eyes blinked suddenly, and flinging out her hand at him with a
passionate gesture, as though to push him away, she turned on her
face and drew the bedclothes over her head.

'Louie!' he said--'Louie!'

But she made no sign, and, at last, with a grotesquely concerned
face, he went out of the room and downstairs, hanging his head.

Out of doors, he found David already at work in the cowhouse, but
as surly and uncommunicative as before when he was spoken to. That
the lad had turned 'agen his wark,' and was on his way to hate the
farm and all it contained, was plain even to Reuben. Why was he so
glum and silent--why didn't he speak up? Perhaps he would, Reuben's
conscience replied, if it were conveyed to him that he possessed a
substantial portion of six hundred pounds!

The boy knew that his uncle watched him--anxiously, as one watches
something explosive and incalculable--and felt a sort of contempt
for himself that nothing practical came of his own revolt and
discontent. But he was torn with indecision. How to leave
Louie--what to do with himself without a farthing in the
world--whom to go to for advice? He thought often of Mr. Ancrum,
but a fierce distaste for chapels and ministers had been growing on
him, and he had gradually seen less and less of the man who had
been the kind comrade and teacher of his early childhood. His only
real companions during this year of moody adolescence were his
books. From the forgotten deposit in the old meal-ark upstairs,
which had yielded 'Paradise Lost,' he drew other treasures by
degrees. He found there, in all, some tattered leaves--three or
four books altogether--of Pope's 'Iliad,' about half of Foxe's
'Martyrs'--the rest having been used apparently by the casual
nurses, who came to tend Reuben's poor mother in her last days,
to light the fire--a complete copy of Locke 'On the Human
Understanding,' and various volumes of old Calvinist sermons, which
he read, partly because his reading appetite was insatiable, partly
from a half-contemptuous desire to find out what it might be that
Uncle Reuben was always troubling his head about.

As to 'Lias Dawson, David saw nothing of him for many long weeks
after the scene which had led to the adventure of the Pool. He
heard only that 'Lias was 'bad,' and mostly in his bed, and feeling
a little guilty, he hardly knew why, the lad kept away from his old
friend.

Summer and the early autumn passed away. October brought a spell of
wintry weather; and one day, as he was bringing the sheep home, he
met old Margaret, 'Lias's wife. She stopped and accosted him.

'Why doan't yo coom and see 'Lias sometimes, Davy, my lad? Yo might
leeten him up a bit, an' he wants it, t' Lord knows. He's been
fearfu' bad in his sperrits this summer.'

The lad stammered out some sheepish excuses, and soon made his way
over to Frimley Moor. But the visits were not so much pleasure as
usual. 'Lias was very feeble, and David had a constant temptation to
struggle with. He understood that to excite 'Lias, to throw him
again into the frenzy which had begotten the vision of the Pool,
would be a cruel act. But all the same he found it more and more
difficult to restrain himself, to keep back the questions which
burnt on his tongue.

As for 'Lias, his half-shut eye would brighten whenever David
showed himself at the door, and he would point to a wooden stool on
the other side of the fire.

'Sit tha down, lad. Margret, gie him soom tay,' or 'Margret, yo'll
just find him a bit oatcake.'

And then the two would fall upon their books together, and the
conversation would glide imperceptibly into one of those scenes of
half-dramatic impersonation, for which David's relish was still
unimpaired.

But the old man was growing much weaker; his inventions had less
felicity, less range than of old; and the watchful Margaret, at her
loom in the corner, kept an eye on any signs of an undue
excitement, and turned out David or any other visitor, neck and
crop, without scruple, as soon as it seemed to her that her
crippled seer was doing himself a mischief. Poor soul! she had
lived in this tumult of 'Lias's fancies year after year, till the
solid world often turned about her. And she, all the while, so
simple, so sane--the ordinary good woman, with the ordinary woman's
hunger for the common blessings of life--a little love, a little
chat, a little prosaic well-being! She had had two sons--they were
gone. She had been the proud wife 'o' t' cliverest mon atwixt
Sheffield an Manchester,' as Frimley and the adjacent villages had
once expressed it, when every mother that respected herself sent
her children to 'Lias Dawson's school. And the mysterious chances
of a summer night had sent home upon her hands a poor incapable,
ruined in mind and body, who was to live henceforward upon her
charity, wandering amid the chaotic wreck and debris of his former
self.

Well, she took up her burden!

The straggling village on Frimley Moor was mainly inhabited by a
colony of silk hand-loom weavers--the descendants of French
prisoners in the great war, and employed for the most part by a
firm at Leck. Very dainty work was done at Frimley, and very
beautiful stuffs made. The craft went from father to son. All
Margaret's belongings had been weavers; but 'Lias, in the pride of
his schoolmaster's position, would never allow his wife to use the
trade of her youth. When he became dependent on her, Margaret
bought a disused loom from a cousin, had it mended and repaired,
and set to work. Her fingers had not forgotten their old cunning;
and when she was paid for her first 'cut,' she hurried home to
'Lias with a reviving joy in her crushed heart. Thenceforward, she
lived at her loom; she became a skilled and favoured worker, and
the work grew dear to her--first, because 'Lias lived on it, and,
next, because the bright roses and ribbon-patterns she wove into
her costly stuffs were a perpetual cheer to her. The moors might
frown outside, the snow might drift against the cottage walls:
Margaret had always something gay under her fingers, and threw her
shuttle with the more zest the darker and colder grew the
Derbyshire world without.

Naturally the result of this long concentration of effort had been
to make the poor soul, for whom each day was lived and fought, the
apple of Margaret's eye. So long as that bent, white form sat
beside her fire, Margaret was happy. Her heart sank with every
fresh sign of age and weakness, revived with every brighter hour.
He still lorded it over her often, as he had done in the days of
their prosperity, and whenever this old mood came back upon him,
Margaret could have cried for pleasure.

The natural correlative of such devotion was a drying up of
interest in all the world beside. Margaret had the selfishness of
the angelic woman--everything was judged as it affected her idol.
So at first she took no individual interest in David--he cheered up
'Lias--she had no other thought about him.

On a certain November day David was sitting opposite to 'Lias. The
fire burnt between them, and on the fire was a griddle, whereon
Margaret had just deposited some oatcakes for tea. The old man was
sitting drooped in his chair, his chin on his breast, his black
eyes staring beyond David at the wall. David was seized with
curiosity--what was he thinking about?--what did he see? There was
a mystery, a weirdness about the figure, about that hungry gaze,
which tormented him. His temptation returned upon him irresistibly.

'Lias,' he said, bending forward, his dark cheek flushing with
excitement, 'Louie and I went up, Easter Eve, to t' Pool, but we
went to sleep an saw nowt. What was't yo saw, 'Lias? Did yo see her
for sure?'

The old man raised his head frowning, and looked at the boy. But
the frown was merely nervous, he had heard nothing. On the other
hand, Margaret, whom David had supposed to be in the back kitchen,
but who was in reality a few steps behind him, mending something
which had gone wrong in her loom, ran forward suddenly to the fire,
and bending over her griddle somehow promptly threw down the tongs,
making a clatter and commotion, in the midst of which the cakes
caught, and old 'Lias moved from the fender, saying fretfully,

'Yo're that orkard wi things, Margret, yo're like a dog dancin.'

But in the bustle Margaret had managed to say to David, 'Howd your
tongue, noddle-yed, will yo?'

And so unexpected was the lightning from her usually mild blue eyes
that David sat dumbfounded, and presently sulkily got up to go.
Margaret followed him out and down the bit of garden.

And at the gate, when they were well out of hearing of 'Lias, she
fell on the boy with a torrent of words, gripping him the while
with her long thin hand, so that only violence could have released
him. Her eyes flamed at him under the brown woollen shawl she wore
pinned under her chin; the little emaciated creature became a fury.
What did he come there for, 'moiderin 'Lias wi his divilments'? If
he ever said a word of such things again, she'd lock the door on
him, and he might go to Jenny Crum for his tea. Not a bite or a sup
should he ever have in her house again.

'I meant no harm,' said the boy doggedly. 'It wor he towd me about
t' witch--it wor he as put it into our yeds--Louie an me.'

Margaret exclaimed. So it was he that got 'Lias talking about the
Pool in the spring! Some one had been 'cankin wi him about things
they didn't owt'--that she knew--'and she might ha thowt it wor'
Davy. For that one day's 'worritin ov him' she had had him on her
hands for weeks--off his sleep, and off his feed, and like a
blighted thing. 'Aye, it's aw play to yo,' she said, trembling all
through in her passion, as she held the boy--'it's aw play to yo
and your minx of a sister. An if it means deein to the old man
hissel, _yo_ don't care! "Margaret," says the doctor to me
last week, "if you can keep his mind quiet he may hang on a bit.
But you munna let him excite hissel about owt--he mun tak things
varra easy. He's like a wilted leaf--nobbut t'least thing will
bring it down. He's worn varra thin like, heart an lungs, and aw t'
rest of him." An d' yo think I'st sit still an see yo _murder_
him--the poor lamb--afore my eyes--me as ha got nowt else but him
i' t' wide warld? No--yo yoong varlet--goo an ast soom one else
about Jenny Crum if yo 're just set on meddlin wi divil's wark--but
yo'll no trouble my 'Lias.'

She took her hands off him, and the boy was going away in a
half-sullen silence, when she caught him again.

'Who towd yo about 'Lias an t' Pool, nobbut 'Lias hissel?'

'Uncle Reuben towd me summat.'

'Aye, Reuben Grieve--he put him in t' carrier's cart, an behaved
moor like a Christian nor his wife--I allus mind that o' Reuben
Grieve, when foak coe him a foo. Wal, I'st tell yo, Davy, an if
iver yo want to say a word about Jenny Crum in our house
afterwards, yo mun ha a gritstone whar your heart owt to be--that's
aw.'

And she leant over the wall of the little garden, twisting her
apron in her old, tremulous hands, and choking down the tears which
had begun to rise. Then, looking straight before her, and in a low,
plaintive voice, which seemed to float on hidden depths of grief,
she told her story.

It appeared that 'Lias had been 'queer' a good while before the
adventure of the Pool. But, according to his wife, 'he wor that
cliver on his good days, foak could mak shift wi him on his bad
days;' the school still prospered, and money was still plentiful.
Then, all of a sudden, the moorland villages round were overtaken
by an epidemic of spirit-rapping and table-turning. 'It wor sperrits
here, sperrits there, sperrits everywhere--t' warld wor gradely
swarmin wi 'em,' said Margaret bitterly. It was all started,
apparently, by a worthless 'felly' from Castleton, who had a great
reputation as a medium, and would come over on summer evenings to
conduct seances at Frimley and the places near. 'Lias, already in an
excitable, overworked state, was bitten by the new mania, and could
think of nothing else.

One night he and the Castleton medium fell talking about Jenny
Crum, the witch of Kinder Scout, and her Easter Eve performances.
The medium bet 'Lias a handsome sum that he would not dare face
her. 'Lias, piqued and wrathful, and 'wi moor yell on board nor he
could reetly stan,' took the bet. Margaret heard nothing of it. He
announced on Easter Eve that he was going to a brother in Edale for
the Sunday, and gave her the slip. She saw no more of him till the
carrier brought home to her, on the Sunday morning, a starved and
pallid object--'gone clean silly, an hutched thegither like an owd
man o' seventy--he bein fifty-six by his reet years.' With woe and
terror she helped him to his bed, and in that bed he stayed for
more than a year, while everything went from them--school and
savings, and all the joys of life.

'An yo'll be wantin to know, like t' rest o' 'em, what he saw!'
cried Margaret angrily, facing round upon the boy, whose face was,
indeed, one question.' "Margaret, did he tell tha what t' witch
said to un?"--every blatherin idiot i' th' parish asked me that, wi
his mouth open, till I cud ha stopped my ears an run wheniver I
seed a livin creetur. What do I keer?--what doos it matter to me
what he saw? I doan't bleeve he saw owt, if yo ast _me_. He
wor skeert wi his own thinkins, an th' cowd gripped him i' th'
in'ards, an twisted him as yo may twist a withe of hay--Aye! it wor
a _cruel_ neet. When I opened t' door i' t' early mornin, t'
garden wor aw black--th' ice on t' reservoir wor inches thick. Mony
a year afterwards t' foak round here ud talk o' that for an April
frost. An my poor 'Lias--lost on that fearfu Scout--sleepin out
wi'out a rag to cover him, an skeert soomhow--t'Lord or t'Devil
knows how! And then foak ud have me mak a good tale out o'
it--soomthin to gie 'em a ticklin down their backbane--soomthin to
pass an evenin--_Lord!'_

The wife's voice paused abruptly on this word of imprecation, or
appeal, as though her own passion choked her. David stood beside
her awkwardly, his eyes fixed on the gravel, wherewith one foot was
playing. There was no more sullenness in his expression.

Margaret's hand still played restlessly with the handkerchief. Her
eyes were far away, her mind absorbed by the story of her own fate.
Round the moorside, on which the cottage was built, there bent a
circling edge of wood, now aflame with all the colour of late
autumn. Against its deep reds and browns, Margaret's small profile
was thrown out--the profile already of the old woman, with the
meeting nose and chin, the hollow cheek, the maze of wrinkles round
the eyes. Into that face, worn by the labour and the grief of the
poor--into that bending figure, with the peasant shawl folded round
the head and shoulders--there had passed all the tragic dignity
which belongs to the simple and heartfelt things of human life, to
the pain of helpless affection, to the yearning of irremediable
loss.

The boy beside her was too young to feel this. But he felt more,
perhaps, than any other lad of the moorside could have felt. There
was, at all times, a natural responsiveness in him of a strange
kind, vibrating rather to pain than joy. He stood by her,
embarrassed, yet drawn to her--waiting, too, as it seemed to him,
for something more that must be coming.

'An then,' said Margaret at last, turning to him, and speaking more
quietly, but still in a kind of tense way, 'then, when 'Lias wor
took bad, yo know, Davy, I had my boys. Did yo ever hear tell o'
what came to 'em, Davy?'

The boy shook his head.

'Ah!' she said, catching her breath painfully, 'they're moast
forgotten, is my boys. 'Lias had been seven weeks i' his bed, an I
wor noan so mich cast down--i' those days I had a sperrit more 'n
most. I thowt th' boys ud keer for us--we'd gien em a good bringin
up, an they wor boath on 'em larnin trades i' Manchester. Yan
evenin--it wor that hot we had aw t' doors an windows open--theer
came a man runnin up fro t' railway. An my boys were kilt,
Davy--boath on 'em--i' Duley Moor Tunnel. They wor coomin to spend
Sunday wi us, an it wor an excursion train--I niver knew t' reets
on 't!'

She paused and gently wiped away her tears. Her passion had all
ebbed.

'An I thowt if I cud ha got 'em home an buried 'em, Davy, I could
ha borne it better. But they wor aw crushed, an cut about, an
riddlet to bits--they wudna let me ha em. And so we kep it fro
'Lias. Soomtimes I think he knows t' boys are dead--an then
soomtimes he frets 'at they doan't coom an see him. Fourteen year
ago! An I goo on tellin him they'll coom soon. An last week, when I
towd him it, I thowt to mysel it wor just th' naked truth!'

David leant over the gate, pulling at some withered hollyhocks
beside it. But when, after a minute of choking silence, Margaret
caught his look, she saw, though he tried to hide it, that his
black eyes were swimming. Her full heart melted altogether.

'Oh, Davy, I meant naw offence!' she said, catching him by the arm
again. 'Yo're a good lad, an yo're allus a welcome seet to that poor
creetur. But yo'll not say owt to trouble him again, laddie--will
yo? If he'd yeerd yo just now--but, by t' Lord's blessin, he did
na--he'd ha worked himsel up fearfu'! I'd ha had naw sleep wi him
for neets--like it wor i' th' spring. Yo munna--yo munna! He's all
I ha--his livin 's my livin, Davy--an when he's took away--why,
I'll mak shift soomhow to dee too!'

She let him go, and, with a long sigh, she lifted her trembling
hands to her head, put her frilled cap straight and her shawl. She
was just moving away, when something of a different sort struck her
sensitive soul, and she turned again. She lived for 'Lias, but she
lived for her religion too, and it seemed to her she had been
sinning in her piteous talk.

'Dinna think, Davy,' she said hurriedly, 'as I'm complainin o' th'
Lord's judgments. They're aw mercies, if we did but know. An He
tempers th' wind--He sends us help when we're droppin for sorrow.
It worn't for nothin He made us all o' a piece. Theer's good foak
i' th' warld--aye, theer is! An what's moor, theer's soom o' th'
best mak o' foak gooin about dressed i' th' worst mak o' clothes.
Yo'll find it out when yo want 'em.'

And with a clearing face, as of one who takes up a burden again and
adjusts it anew more easily, she walked back to the house.

David went down the lane homewards, whistling hard. But once, as he
climbed a stile and sat dangling his legs a moment on the top, he
felt his eyes wet again. He dashed his hand impatiently across
them. At this stage of youth he was constantly falling out with and
resenting his own faculty of pity, of emotion. The attitude of mind
had in it a sort of secret half-conscious terror of what feeling
might do with him did he but give it head. He did not want to
feel--feeling only hurt and stabbed--he wanted to enjoy, to take
in, to discover--to fling the wild energies of mind and body into
some action worthy of them. And because he had no knowledge to show
him how, and a wavering will, he suffered and deteriorated.

The Dawsons, indeed, became his close friends. In Margaret there
had sprung up a motherly affection for the handsome lonely lad; and
he was grateful. He took her 'cuts' down to the Clough End office
for her; when the snow was deep on the Scout, and Reuben and David
and the dogs were out after their sheep night and day, the boy
still found time to shovel the snow from Margaret's roof and cut a
passage for her to the road. The hours he spent this winter by her
kitchen fire, chatting with 'Lias, or eating havercakes, or helping
Margaret with some household work, supplied him for the first time
with something of what his youth was, in truth, thirsting for--the
common kindliness of natural affection.

But certainly, to most observers, he seemed to deteriorate. Mr.
Ancrum could make nothing of him. David held the minister at
arm's-length, and meanwhile rumours reached him that 'Reuben
Grieve's nevvy' was beginning to be much seen in the public-houses;
he had ceased entirely to go to chapel or Sunday school; and the
local gossips, starting perhaps from a natural prejudice against
the sons of unknown and probably disreputable mothers, prophesied
freely that the tall, queer-looking lad would go to the bad.

All this troubled Mr. Ancrum sincerely. Even in the midst of some
rising troubles of his own he found the energy to buttonhole Reuben
again, and torment him afresh on the subject of a trade for the
lad.

Reuben, flushed and tremulous, went straight from the minister to
his wife--with the impetus of Mr. Ancrum's shove, as it were, fresh
upon him. Sitting opposite to her in the back kitchen, while she
peeled her potatoes with a fierce competence and energy which made
his heart sick within him, Reuben told her, with incoherent
repetitions of every phrase, that in his opinion the time had come
when Mr. Gurney should be written to, and some of Sandy's savings
applied to the starting of Sandy's son in the world.

There was an ominous silence. Hannah's knife flashed, and the
potato-peelings fell with a rapidity which fairly paralysed Reuben.
In his nervousness, he let fall the name of Mr. Ancrum. Then Hannah
broke out. '_Some_ foo',' she knew, had been meddling, and she
might have guessed that fool was Mr. Ancrum. Instead of defending
her own position, she fell upon Reuben and his supporter with a
rhetoric whereof the moral flavour was positively astounding.
Standing with the potato-bowl on one hip and a hand holding the
knife on the other, she delivered her views as to David's laziness,
temper, and general good-for-nothingness. If Reuben chose to incur
the risks of throwing such a young lout into town-wickedness, with
no one to look after him, let him; she'd be glad enough to be shut
on him. But, as to writing to Mr. Gurney and that sort of talk, she
wasn't going to bandy words--not she; but nobody had ever meddled
with Hannah Grieve's affairs yet and found they had done well for
themselves.

'An I wouldna advise yo, Reuben Grieve, to begin now--no, I
wouldna. I gie yo fair noatice. Soa theer's not enough for t' lad
to do, Mr. Ancrum, he thinks? Perhaps he'll tak th' place an try?
I'd not gie him as mich wage as ud fill his stomach i' th'
week--noa, I'd not, not if yo wor to ask _me_--a bletherin
windy chap as iver I saw. I'd as soon hear a bird-clapper preach as
him--theer'd be more sense an less noise! An they're findin it out
down theer--we'st see th' back on him soon.'

And to Reuben, looking across the little scullery at his wife, at
the harsh face shaken with the rage which these new and intolerable
attempts of her husband to dislodge the yoke of years excited in
her, it was as though like Christian and Hopeful he were trying to
get back into the Way, and found that the floods had risen over it.

When he was out of her sight, he fell into a boundless perplexity.
Perhaps she was right, after all. Mr. Ancrum was a meddler and he
an ass. When next he saw David, he spoke to the boy harshly, and
demanded to know where he went loafing every afternoon. Then, as
the days went on, he discovered that Hannah meant to visit his
insubordination upon him in various unpleasant ways. There were
certain little creature comforts, making but small show on the
surface of a life of general abstinence and frugality, but which,
in the course of years, had grown very important to Reuben, and
which Hannah had never denied him. They were now withdrawn. In her
present state of temper with her better half, Hannah could not be
'fashed' with providing them. And no one could force her to brew him
his toddy at night, or put his slippers to warm, or keep his meals
hot and tasty for him, if some emergency among the animals made him
late for his usual hours--certainly not the weak and stammering
Reuben. He was at her mercy, and he chafed indescribably under her
unaccustomed neglect.