Barbara Lynn Part 20

"Are you frightened, Lucy?" asked Mistress Lynn.

"Maybe it's the last day," replied the girl.

The old woman's face was ghastly as the face of a corpse in the strange light which filtered through the windows. The kitchen seemed to be swallowed up by a weird sepulchral vapour.

She laughed.

"Get down on thy knees, Lucy Lynn," she said ironically, "get to thy knees and pray for a sinful old woman and an innocent la.s.s. Don't forget Peter Fleming forbye. I misgive me he'll come in for a wetting if he doesn't tie wings to his heels. He went up the fells a few hours ago."

"Peter! when? I didn't see him."

"Why shouldsta? He came to see me, and you were in the dairy."

Lucy seized the poker to stir the peats; it was heavy bar of iron and clanged like a bell when she knocked it in her nervousness and irritation against the stone jambs of the fireplace. Then she jumped up and looked in at the cow-house, where the hind was just stalling the cattle. There she saw Jan Straw, sitting with his hands on his knees, staring into vacancy. He did not seem to see her, but he laughed like a mindless creature at every rumble of distant thunder.

"It's going to be a fearful storm, Tom," she said to the hind.

"A regular smasher!" he replied.

"You didn't see anyone coming down the fellside, did you, when you were gathering the kye?"

"Nay, never a soul. Every man o' sense has got his flocks into shelter by now."

Lucy returned to the kitchen.

"Jan Straw's by with himself," she said.

Her great-grandmother continued to knit composedly.

"Look up the dale, and see if you can spy Peter," she said with a wicked gleam in her eyes.

"He's old enough to look after himself," replied the girl tartly.

"Then look up the dale and see if the storm has broken on Thundergay.

I'm wondering about Barbara."

Lucy did as she was bid. The sky was shrouded by a heavy pall, through which the sun still shone as through smoked gla.s.s. But the mountain had disappeared. Now and then it flashed into sight as the lightning played round it, then darkness swallowed it up.

Meanwhile Barbara was standing at the mouth of the cave. She looked a very solitary being in the midst of that tremendous gathering of the tempest. The forces which nature had wakened were so overpowering and mysterious, they could have swept her away, if she had exposed herself to them, like a withered leaf. Everything around her was magnified by the lightning--the cliffs were towers, the bushes distorted creatures, the rocks--fragments from the heights above, which former storms had thrown about like pebbles--loomed in the darkness as big as elephants or those prehistoric beasts, the mammoths that Timothy Hadwin had told her about. Behind her the mouth of the cave yawned like a black mouth waiting to swallow her up. The dogs crept close to her side, the sheep, too, seemed to be rea.s.sured by her presence. Could they have spoken they might have uttered the words said by the Red-skins to Montcalm:

"_It is when we look into your eyes that we see the greatness of the pinetree and the fire of the eagle._"

The lightning played off its fire-works against the inky clouds; the thunder crashed like the wheels of a great car hurtling down Thundergay.

The dales and ravines rolled and reverberated. Every pinnacle spat fire, every cliff gave back the sound in twofold, threefold, even sevenfold echoes.

Still Barbara stood at the mouth of the cave and watched. She had not seen a storm like this before--though thunderstorms were common occurrences among the fells. She thought it was like the convulsion which must have attended the making of the earth. She could imagine that a G.o.d was moving within the cloud, striking upon his anvil with a great hammer, and forging bands for a new world.

The lightning and thunder ceased. The quietness was more oppressive than the noise had been. A waterfall rang startlingly clear like a call.

The darkness increased with the silence. All the nearer objects sank into a thick atmosphere.

Then came the rain. It did not fall in drops, but in a flood. It drummed upon the gra.s.s and rocks; it sounded like an army coming down the mountain side and pa.s.sing along the dale. Every well-head, that had been dry for weeks, broke into clamouring; Thundergay gushed with fountains; the fountains gathered; they rushed along like mad horses.

CHAPTER XII

SIX WHITE HORSES AND A COACH

The cow-house was dim, like night, when a cloudy moon is s.h.i.+ning, although the clock had just struck four. Through a small window the grey light stole and vaguely lit up the horned heads of the cattle. It showed Jan Straw sitting in a corner.

Rain beat on the roof like the trampling of heavy feet; it fell in a sheet from the eaves, and spouted like a waterfall from the drip-stone; the noise of the beck increased until it became a roar.

With a heave and a snort Cushy, Barbara's favourite cow, got up. She feared! she did not know what she feared; but perhaps in those days when the earth was new-made and cataclysms were frequent occurrences, her forbears had learnt to dread the sounds of a rising flood. She stirred the other beasts into restlessness, although they had borne the thunder and lightning with timid resignation.

Jan Straw sat motionless. He had stopped muttering, and his eyes were half-closed. His hands were cold as ice. The flame of life was burning very low. To him had come a presentiment that death was on his way to put it out. Once he had seen a play acted upon the village green in which Death came by with all his bones a-jangling, and the memory of it had not faded. His intellect was too beclouded to fear. The dogged stolidity, that had made him an unrepining drudge through manhood to old age, now made him a placid watcher for the fleshless form that would extinguish his little candle.

Lucy heard the trampling and snorting of the beasts, and she came to the cow-house door. Peter Fleming was with her, for he had reached Greystones just in time to take shelter there. The sudden change from the brightly lit kitchen, where the candles were burning, to the dimness of this place at first bewildered him; he could not distinguish anything clearly--the cattle looked like ungainly shadows, and their horns like the bare and twisted branches of trees. Then one by one the forms took shape, and his eyes fell upon the old man.

"Hulloa," he cried, laying his hand on Jan's bent shoulder, "What ho, Jan! how goes thyself? Why! I believe you've been asleep in the midst of all this racket. It's loud enough to waken the dead."

The old man roused himself from his lethargy, gathered his scattered wits, and looked at the countenance bending over him for some moments without replying.

At last he asked in a voice that trembled away into silence:

"Will it waken her?"

Peter knew of whom he was thinking.

"Nay," he said kindly, "her bed is a bed of peace."

The grey face fell, and the young man saw that he had not antic.i.p.ated Jan's desire.

"I shouldn't wonder," he replied, "if she doesn't hear it in her sleep, and dream of you."

"I thought as how she might waken and be watching," answered Jan.

"M'appen she is," Lucy spoke with tenderness, for she was fond of the old man. "She'll certainly be looking out for thee, Jan. She'll never sleep so heavily but she'll hear thy step when thee goes."

"I's going soon."

His head sunk upon his breast; he was old, forlorn and weary.

"Nay, Jan, nay," said Lucy, "you mustn't leave us yet. Barbara and me.

We'd be so lonesome sitting by the winter fire, wanting thy face that's smiled on us ever since we were born."

"We's o' comers and gangers," he replied. "There's new faces coming to take the place of the old ones. I's ganging. He'll soon pa.s.s by."