Devil Water (47 page)

His sister-in-law set her lips. She flung gravel into her iron stew-pot and began to scour it with sharp motions. “Glad I am,” she said, “that Radcliffes’ve got the proof they want, yet it gars me verra sad that Meg canna ha’ decent burial -- the daft ould beggor,” she added angrily, casting a glance at the loft where her father still slept.

“Is it worse,” said Rob, “to rest in the deep clean waters of a lough than to crumble in six feet o’ clarty ground wi’ worms to feed on ye?”

Nan did not answer. Rob had ever been thus from a boy, an irreligious man, a kind man too, though a deep proud ambitious man -- and naught to show for it after all but a skill with the pipes. “Ye’ll be sune off to Tyneside?” she suggested. “Back to the keels?”

“Nay,” said Rob. Just that and nothing more.

It was Jenny who later found out what he had in mind. When the girl finally awoke she was heavy-eyed and pale. Rob after one look at her forbade all thought of the journey to Dilston; though how he somehow got the authority neither Nan nor Alec was quite sure. Certainly the old man had none. It was as though a lifespring had broken in him. He no longer wanted the Bible near him. He was feebly querulous, and would not leave his bed.

Rob ignored Nan’s protests and asserted calmly that after porridge and milk Jenny needed a ramble on the moors. The girl brightened at once. “Oh, I’d like that, Robbie, and take your pipes, won’t you? You often used to take your pipes.”

He nodded. Nan lent Jenny her woolen shawl and looked glum while Rob slipped oatcakes and a piece of cheese in his pockets. “We’ll be back by dark,” he said.

Nan frowned. “Gan sae
long?”
She grabbed her brother-in-law’s arm, and made him face her. “Rob Wilson, d’ye knaw weel what ye’re about?” she asked in a low fierce tone. “Are ye after heartache or wor-rse!”

Rob looked at her steadily. “Ye’re a bubbleheaded fool, Nan,” he said, “if ye think harm could ever come to yon lass -- through me.” He went out the door and down the steps with Jenny into a sparkling September morning.

“To the Wishing Well, first!” Jenny cried excitedly. “Do you remember how we used to go there, Rob? I used to wish for a pair of shoes to wear like the gentry. Wasn’t it silly!”

He glanced down at her little feet, finely shod in Spanish leather. “It seems ye got your wish.”

“Wey aye,” she agreed. “And what did you wish for, Rob?”

“To better m’self,” he said after a moment. “To have folk look to me wi’ respect, to be beholden to none. And wasn’t
that
silly!”

“Not at all. It’s come true!”

“Kae-e --” said Rob making the local sound for derision. “Niver mind, off we go!”

They scrambled a mile towards the huge, romantic freestone precipice called Keyheugh, past a fantastic confusion of tumbled rocks at its base, towards a dell known as Midgy Ha. They found the Wishing Well with some difficulty, since the brink was overgrown with nettles. It was really a small spring-fed pool inside remnants of the bricks which once had lined it. A roughly carved and broken stone cross stood near; the well had been one of the hundreds dedicated to St. Cuthbert, though its rites were unchanged since the Stone Age people here propitiated the water gods.

“I’ve a pin,” said Jenny, leaning over the well, while her long loosened hair fell forward, touching the peat-dark water and framing her profile in pale gold. She shut her eyes, and intoned with childish solemnity, “Halliwell, halliwell, tak’ ma gift, an’ cast a spell.” She dropped the pin into the water. Then her eyes remained shut so long that Rob gave one of his rare chuckles, and said, “What’sa matter, ninny?”

She opened her eyes with a start. “I couldn’t make up my mind,” she said, and drew back from the well, looking troubled. Her first instinctive wish had been for Rob --Rob and her to be together like this always; yet hard on that wish had crowded another, for her father, that having found him she might never lose him. She recognized the essential conflict between these two wishes, and had ended by trying to do both, which she feared would not be efficacious.
“You
wish now, Rob!” she commanded.

He shook his head. “ ‘Twould be the same ould wish, an’ I havena pin.”

“Then here’s a penny,” she said, pulling one from her pocket. “Wish with that -- I
want
you to, Robbie.” Her limpid gray eyes were very earnest, her pink lips puckered in a mixture of pout and pleading which stirred Rob to another chuckle. “Ye’re a hard lass to resist,” he said, “but I’ll not tak’ yer penny, thank ye -- at least I’ve.still a farthing o’ me
own
.” He tossed one into the well. “Now come along, Jenny, ‘tis a rare day when ould Simonside divven’t wear his cloud cap. I want ye to see the view from up there.”

They set off walking, “dandering” over the moors, not speaking much, though easily amused by tiny incidents -- when Rob’s shoe came off in a bog, when a brimstone butterfly settled on Jenny’s nose, and when they stumbled over a stray donkey in the bracken. It followed them a while uttering mournful heehaws as Jenny called to it, “Come Cuddy, Cuddy, Cuddy!”

Jenny was aware of how young Rob became once they left the peel behind -- almost as young as she. Again he was the teasing playmate of the old days. She was even aware of how startled anyone else would be to hear him laugh like that, or to see him make her a crown of tansy and heatherbells, but she did not think about it. She was completely happy in the moment, and Rob was careful that nothing should disturb her. He led their rambles towards the east, away from Darden lough or any reminder of the mournful scene last night. He took her to the windy top of Simonside where she could follow the winding bright pewter ribbon of the Coquet from the Cheviots on the west to the dark blue of the North Sea as it stretched away towards Denmark. They explored stone circles, made by the ancient people who had lived near these crags before the coming of the Romans. They jumped over tiny burns, and discovered caves, in one of which there was a whisky still with the clear white liquid dripping merrily into a cask. “The bonny mountain dew!” said Rob, tasting a few drops. “Ugh! I’d not be risking the revenue officers for
this
muck!” And they both laughed.

“I’m hungry,” said Jenny. “Where’ll we find a pretty place to eat? Oh, I know -- Whitton Dene. Isn’t that where the elves and fairies dance?”

“Did I tell ye that?” asked Rob grinning. “I fear I tould ye a deal o’ nonsense, hinny, but we’ll go to Whitton Dene. Today ye shall do everything ye like.”

“Today . . .” she repeated, with the first chill of realization.

Hand in hand they scrambled down the slopes and reached the little dene. If the fairies chose it for their revels they chose cannily, since there was magic in the glen. Here, watered by the Whitton burn, there grew tall ferns. Here the violet water-mint still bloomed, and the orange asphodel, beneath oak and ash and a graceful willow tree. An otter peeked at them, then dived into a pool. Rob found an ivy-covered log, where they sat side by side and consumed their food, then watched the amber water gurgling over mossy stones.

“ ‘Tis like the ballad,” said Jenny. “ ‘The Oak and the Ash.’ Do you know it, Rob? I love it. I’ve often sung it in London. ‘Twas in a songbook Lady Betty has.”

“I diwen’t remember it,” he said adjusting his pipes. “You sing it and I’ll follow ye.”

She hummed the old tune, which had an enchanting minor cadence, and as he picked it up on the pipes she began to sing softly.

“A North Country lass up to London did pass
Although with her nature it did
not
agree,
Which made her repent, and so often lament
Still wishing again in the North for to be. Oh the oak and the ash and the bonny ivy-tree
Do they nourish at home in my own Countree!”

She sang several more stanzas in the same nostalgic strain. Rob did not stop her, though he was dismayed and moved. She went on to the last verse:

“A maiden I am, and a maid I’ll remain
Until my own country again I do see,
And I’ll have a lad that is North Country bred
Him that’s allotted my love for to be.
Oh the oak and the ash and the bonny ivy-tree . . .”

She broke off short at Rob’s expression. She had sung the verse in all innocence but now she blushed. He let the bag and pipes fall on his knee. “Ye mustna feel like that, Jenny,” he said gravely.

“Like what?” She looked down at the soft green moss beside her foot.

“Like any of it. Ye mustn’t hanker for a place ye can niver live in, nor could be content lang if ye did. And when ye wed, it’ll be no rough North Country lad your father’ll find for ye, nor my Lady Elizabeth neither. ‘Twill be a lordling, na doubt --and there’ll be plenty’ll want you,” he added with bitterness he could not control.

“I don’t want
them”
she said staring at the moss. “I never will.”

“Niver’s a big word, Jenny. You’re full young now. Ye don’t know what the years’ll bring.”

She turned her head towards him, her eyes troubled as the winter sea. “All this day, Rob, you’ve been helping me to say farewell, haven’t you? Farewell to Coquetdale and --” She did not add the “you,” though it trembled between them.

He shifted on the log. He toyed mechanically with the pipe-drones. When he spoke it was to the glimpse of dark hills through the trees. “This is m’own fareweel to the North,” he said gruffly, “Farewell,” he emended. “I must conquer the dialect.”

“Why?” she cried. “Why, Robbie?”

“Because ‘tis laughed at elsewhere, because ‘tis not the speech of an educated man, which I still mean to be.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Try again to be -m’own master. I failed before. I thought I’d money and lands, but I’d neither. I’d nothing but a bubble. Wuns! How they sniggered on Tyneside! Sniggered and nickered at me for a credulous fool, and at the house I started to build -- brick it was to be -- foursquare and staunch, white cornices an’ twenty windows glazed wi’ crown glass, standing i’ the fair center o’ my acres --fields and pastures I had -- well watered, I’d planned the stables for my horses, the barns for my cattle, there were groves of oak, pine woods, and along my own bit o’ burn there was a dell not unlike this one --” He shook his head and added in a different voice. “Well, it’s gone. And my debts’re gone too now. Two and a half years I’ve warked them off in the keels. I’m a free man again!”

“What will you do with freedom?” she asked timidly.

“Ah, I’ve thought much on that. I’ll no’ be the simpleton I was before in Lunnon at the beck an’ call o’ depraved culls like His Grace o’ Wharton! I thought o’ shipping to America.” At her horrified gasp he shook his head. “ ‘Twouldna do, since I’d have to be bonded. Give up my liberty for five years. Nay, this time I’ll learn a fine trade I can rise in. I’ll not believe I’m good for naught but heaving coals and running races.”

“You’re going to London?” she cried, the joy clear in her voice.

“No, Jenny,” he said slowly. “I’m going to Oxfordshire, to Ditchley Park, aye, I see how that amazes ye! I’ve been writing to my Lord Lichfield. He’s torn down the ould castle, as maybe ye know, and is rebuilding from the ground up. He’s offered me a chance to learn the building trade there under Mr. Gibbs, the architect. ‘Tis rare luck and I’m grateful to his lordship.”

“Yes,” said Jenny. “It seems we must both be grateful to Lees. And I’m glad for you, Rob -- glad you see a way of doing what you want, but --” She paused, then went on with a desperate rush, “Am I never to see you more? Surely, you can’t mean that?”

He had meant exactly that, for now he knew that it was dangerous for him to be near Jenny too long, and he began to know, improbable as it was, that the girl’s childish feelings for him had not altered.

Yet as she sat there looking at him so sweetly beseeching, her full mouth trembling, the foolish heather and tansy crown he had made her a trifle askew on her small beautiful head, he said the words he had never meant to admit, “An’ if there’s love between us, Jenny -- if there is a kind o’ love --”

“Yes . . . ?” she whispered.

He banged his hand on his knee. “Then we mun cut it from us!” he said violently. “Cut it from us, and fling it awa’!”

They sat silent several minutes, until Jenny stiffened. She gave him a level somber look. “ ‘Tis not so easy, I think, to cut out love, and fling it away. Yet since you want it so -- I’ll try.”

She arose from the log and began to walk out of the dene, her chin up, her shoulders proudly held under Nan’s shawl. He strangled the impulse to call her back, and then to rush after her and cover with fierce kisses the soft white hands, the primrose face. Instead he got up quietly and followed her, several paces behind.

Soon they reached the road near Tosson. He came abreast and walked beside her for a long time, while he struggled against a weakness which he thought he had subdued. Yet he had not, for as they passed by Bickerton he burst out, “We might write each other -- maybe -- no real harm in that.”

“
I
see none,” she answered, without turning her head.

Now he was ashamed of his weakness, though he could not gainsay it and by way of counterbalance, he spoke sternly. “Tomorrow ye’ll be wi’ Mr. Radcliffe, as ye should be. Mind that ye be a good, obedient daughter to him -- in all things.”

“Ah,” she said. “I don’t need
you
to tell me that, Rob. I want to please him, though I cannot believe as he believes. I can’t bear to see him suffer for the Stuarts and for Papacy.”

“Ye may come to understand,” said Rob.

“Do
you
believe in them?” she asked quickly.

“I’ve no Stuart blood, as ye have, nor a Catholic father. I believe in m’self, in hard toil an’ in decency.”

“More than that I think,” she said, “or you’d not make music as you do, nor ramble o’er the moors with me as you did today.”

“ ‘Tis the soft daft part o’ me,” he cried with anger. “ ‘Tis flabbiness!”

“To be cut away -- along with love?”

“Aye!” he barked out the monosyllable, stuck his hands in his pockets, and, quickening his pace, pressed rudely ahead of her and walked along the road as though he were alone. She watched him as he spat suddenly at a stone.

Her sore heart seized with relief upon this vulgarity. Only a coarse lad, after all, she thought, a pit lad -- what shame that I have yearned for him.