w T*- k- K THE FIDDLER OF CARNE Copyrighted in United States of Ame7-ica. All Rights Reserved. The Fiddler of Carne A North Sea Winter's Tale By ERNEST RHYS AUTHOR OF "A LONDON ROSE: AND OTHER RHYMES " " EJ yn llajar : ef yn fud ! " EDINBURGH PATRICK GEDDES or' COLLEAGUES MDCCCXCVI DEDICA TION Dear T)'tana Who has not heard of the Fiddler of Came, that romantic figure in a homely community, nvho came by the sea and nioent by the sea, and nxihose origin and final destiny nvere alike unknoivn? In these pages it is attempted, for the first time I believe, to describe at length his adventures in the primitive seaport to^wn as it nvas in his day, near a hundred years ago ; novo so grovon out of all knovoledge, so much transformed in for- tune and estate, even in name, as to be barely recognisable. 'The Fiddler, and Marged Ffoulkes, and Andrer Fostor, and the rest of that circle of predes- tinate mortals, played their part long since in the North Sea's vjinters tale; but for the tale-teller vuhat has lived once, lives for ever. And it is as a tale-teller I vcoidd like to be judged, if at all. But as every tale voorth the telling has its second intention, the Fiddlers, if you voill, is a plain fable of the artist, devoted, self-absorbed, a little more or less than purely human it may be, in an unconscious and quite matter-of-fact and 418990 DEDICA TION half-cv-uilised community. He may teach it strange lore : the maiden in its midst to look to 7ie^w horizons, the lo^er tofolloav his fate, hot youth to follo--w his ambition, or cold age to judge more coldly amiss ; but his lot is not theirs, and the chances are that he mingles nvith them, and that he fiddles to them, at his and their common peril, though the -peril he as much a part of life, and as necessary to their gronjjth, man and nuoman, as is the cutting its teeth to a babe ! But nvhy, you njuill say, ivhy moralise the tale? Why indeed'. If you like it, that is enough for me, your companion in so many a tale-telling o'ver the nvinters hearth. And if you like it, it ^ill li've ! So believe me, — Your de-voted e. R. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. The First and Last Inn ... i II. MaRGED FFOULKES . . . . II III. A Late Guest 20 IV. "Poor Mary Ann" .... 29 V. A Saturday Night's Tale ... 43 VI. The Music Shop in Seagate-Without 54. Vn. The Tegners 62 VIII. Carne Quay 71 IX. A November Night .... 82 X. The Mystic Fiddle .... 89 XI. Three-Quarter Willim's Deliverance 98 XII. Mistress Ffoulkes Speaks . . . 108 XIII. Carne Hall 117 XIV. Lady Henrietta 124 XV. The Affliction of Mistor Fostor . 135 XVI. On St Andrew's Night . . . 147 XVII. "The Three Tykes" . ... 159 XVin. The Seven Sisters .... 166 XIX. The Morrow's Morn .... 177 XX. The Black Dog 184 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XXI. The Bar Sinister .... 197 XXII. Marged Sings 207 XXIII. A Winter Sunday . . . . 215 XXIV. The Beggars' Opera ... 226 XXV. The Lady's Tragedy . . . 24.7 XXVI. My Lord 257 XXVII. A Whip and a Ring ... 267 XXVIII. Love and Fate 279 XXIX. The Fiddler's Return . . . 285 XXX. The Chinese Pheasants . . . 298 XXXI. The Blue House .... 310 XXXII. Three-Quarter Willim's Commission 317 XXXIII. The Beginning of the End . . 324 XXXIV. Farewell, Carne ! .... 336 XXXV. The End 346 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE. CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE FIRST AND LAST INN. ' ' V Ty yn y Penryn — Traseifiad tregad He trig ! " From the market-place of Carne, the long main street of the town, the Seagate, runs without a break seaward a full mile, until it merges itself in the pier. At this day the pier in turn con- tinues it another half-mile out to sea, making a direct highway between land and water. But not a hundred years ago, ere the harbour had become as important as it is now, the pier was a primitive one of wood, partly supported on piles, shored up by decaying timbers, and not a third of its present length. Even in those days it served the town as a promenade, along which the townsfolk were much given to parade A 2 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE in fine weather. In time of storm, sea and wind had it very much to themselves. Along this thoroughfare the east wind in particular found, as it were, a straight path into the town, so that its salt breath dimmed the shop- windows and mixed with the comfortable odours of spice and fruit at the shop-doors in the Seagate. This afternoon, though it was only the first week of October, the wind was north-east and the North Sea in a wintry mood. The pier was deserted, drenched as it was every other moment by overleaping waves ; the Seagate it- self showed small sign of life, until one reached its landward end in the market-place, where a few sea-dogs and tide-waiters might have been found lurking round the market-house and at ale-house doors. Of these ale-houses — and there were at least a dozen in the circuit of the square — one with the sign of the First and Last Inn showed much more life than the rest. A continual hum and clamour of voices from within, a bustle of feet in its passage, and a waft of warm air, smelling of ale-pots and tobacco-pipes, all showed it a favourite house of call. THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 3 An old red-brick house, much darkened and weather-stained, with three rows of narrow windows beneath its red-tile roof, it stood fac- ing the opening of the Seagate, a storey higher than its neighbours in the square. Over its main entrance, which was low and broad, in conspicuous contrast to its windows, was the signboard, whose original reds and umbers were so faded that the painting might fairly serve now as an impressionistic rendering of whatever the beholder pleased. The only distinct thing about it, in fact, was the legend it bore : The First and Last Inn By David Ffoulkes. The reason for this sign might not appear at a glance, since it referred to a day when the house stood alone, and when it must be either the first or the last you came upon, as you entered or departed from the town. But time had gone by ; other houses had grown up ; a weekly market had been set going in their midst ; and now the market-place was a quad- rangle, so shut in and sheltered that on market days you might easily have imagined yourself 4 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE in the middle of some little country town far from the sea. In reality the First and Last Inn stood on the very brink of the river, which made a bold sweep here, behind the town, ere it straightened itself for a last mile or so before entering the sea. At high tide its waters washed under a crazy wooden balcony behind the Inn, and devoured more than half the flight of well-worn stone steps that served the old ferry boat from Carne Quay opposite with a landing. Thus, whether (like the ghostly Captain Couleur who used, it is said, to haunt the place) you climbed out of the sea by the piles at the pier, and entered the town by the Seagate, or whether you entered it from the river by the ferry, you still must come upon the Inn first or last in the adventure of the town. Within, a company of well-salted heroes was enjoying itself this afternoon, under the eye of David Ffoulkes, the master of the house. A short, broad, red -faced, grizzled Welshman ; his left eyebrow diminished one- half by a great scar ; with a gruff voice and a lurking smile ; there you have Captain Fox, as he was called locally, who had left the sea THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 5 six years ago to turn innkeeper here. What was 'remarkable in him, was the alert expres- sion of his black eyes and heavy features, made heavier by his six years at the FIRST AND Last. It was as if one looked into a beer-barrel, and found an elfin in it. But the Captain, burly as he was, was as nothing in comparison to one of his customers, who fairly dominated the long sanded room and the rest of its occupants by his physical importance. He was speaking now, and his voice expressed him ; every word weighted with some seventeen stone weight. " Well, Captain, es I was tellin' ye, Mistor Reynolds just leapt cannily from the staithes, and into the keel, and creeps away under the coals, an' beggor ! if they ever catched the beastie ! " This was the tag end of a story, which Mistor Fostor (as he was familiarly known in the neigh- bourhood) was fond of recounting, — the story of the only fox-hunt he had ever witnessed, which ended in the fox's taking to a boat at Came Quay, and escaping so. If there was something perfunctory in the exclamations that the story called forth, it was simply that the hearers had 6 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE already heard it so often. All but one sailor, a Dane, who sat in a dark corner, and who, not properly comprehending, began suddenly to laugh, in a hoarse falsetto, at what he supposed to be the humour of the narrator. Mistor Fostor did not approve of that laugh, and glared heavily at the Dane, a mild, sun-tanned creature, with gold rings in his ears. But the fumes of some- thing like a tenth glass of the strong brandy, known to the habitues of the Inn as " Dieppe," were too powerful to let Mistor Fostor retain any fixed idea long. His head gave the inim- itable consequential jerk of the man who in his cups remembers his self-importance, and a moment's silence ensued, when, along with the distant sea-noises from the harbour-mouth, came an incongruous sound from the upper regions of the house — the thin tinkling of a piano ! It was only the doubtfully strummed air of Haydn's " Heavens are Telling " ; but it pleased Mistor Fostor, who forthwith began to beat time with one hand to the music. When the air itself was concluded, the player began some simple varia- tions, which were too intricate to be easily followed. Hereupon he said : " That lassie of yours, Cap'n, can make her THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 7 fing'rs sing varry sweet, but I care little for them new-fangled tunes she is on wi' now. Give me an auld tune like the ' Keel Row ' ! " The Captain, who, like most of his country- men, knew something about music, and had been a good singer in his younger days, smiled in- dulgently in reply, and whistled softly a few bars of "Mentra Gwen !" Meanwhile the piano had stopped, and a shuffling step was heard at the door of the room. It was a message, so to say, from the sea ; borne by a pale, unkempt, weedy youth in soiled and tarry clothes, with a shock of red hair starting out from under an old sou'-wester. He touched its brim deprecatingly as he said : "There's a bit barque trying to mak' the harbour, Mistor Fostor, and Andrer waants to knaa if ye will be for going to her." Mistor Fostor pondered the news with a very convincing air of professional gravity, for though he had not gone such sea errands much latterly, this form of consultation was always solemnly gone through. After a moment or two, pursing his lips, and giving a powerful ahem, he got on to his feet: as he rose his head touched the rafters, his bulk was amazing. 8 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE " There 's naebody ony use but me, it seems ! naebody ony use but auld Foster!" he muttered, making his way across the sanded floor to the door, and waving his hand to the company as a sign of parting. The Captain called after him : " Where are you off to, Foster?" winking at the remaining mariners as he spoke. When the pilot was out of hearing, he added : " I '11 wager a sixpenny bit he don't go to her." The master pilot, in fact, was not to disappear for long. In going along the passage, he shouldered the wall in a way to make the house shake, and to make any one tremble for the fate of any craft entrusted to his care. He thought better of it himself; for at the street door he hesitated, and leant and steadied himself for a moment against the door-post, muttering again, "Naebody ony use but auld Fostor ! " By this time Riley the Red was disappearing down the covered alley at the right-hand corner of the inn. *' Hi ! Riley, lad," shouted the pilot after him ; " tell Andrer to look after the bit barque." So saying, he turned about and betook him- self back into the comfortable shelter of the Inn THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 9 passage. As he retraced his steps along it he caught sight of a figure on the staircase at its end rapidly ascending. It was only a flying glimpse, but in that moment the figure, that of a girl of eighteen or so, had turned back a laughing face, with an expression not to be mistaken. As he took in its significance, Mister Foster fell to muttering in a sort of good-natured fury : " Ha, ye little monkey ! ye witch ! ye mischief! " The only response was a ripple of girlish laughter from the landing above. Was it some echo of it, in a gruff male chorus, that the master pilot heard, as solemnly and portentously grumb- ling to himself, he rejoined the roysterers in the back room ? Whatever it was, a sudden silence fell upon the room for a moment as the great man re- sumed his seat. Only one brisk, clean-shaven young man, who might be a ship's mate, tossed a small silver coin dexterously across to Captain Ffoulkes, " Becrikey, the wager 's yours, Cap'n ! " he said, in a loud "aside." The Captain in reply, as he dropt the coin lo THE FIDDLER OF CARNE into the till, and then proceeded to fill another glass for Mistor Foster, merely hummed two lines of an old Cardigan song, which, being in Welsh, that worthy did not understand, but which signify — " It is the salt, and not the sea, The salmon said, that gravels me ! " CHAPTER THE SECOND. MARGED FFOULKES. " Like the pale waters in their wintry race, Under the passing stars, foam of the sky, Lives on this lonely face." W. B. Yeats. While Mistor Foster was resuming his seat, the piano began again, and might be heard tinkling upstairs. Its thin treble notes formed a plaintive tune, whose real accompaniment, a fanciful listener might have thought, was the deep bass of the sea-breakers growling without intermission at the harbour's mouth. The sound came from a large low room at the back of the house, lit by three windows, reaching from the ceiling to the ground, and opening upon the crazy hanging balcony already mentioned, which commanded a fine stretch of river at full tide. Within, the faded and stained and here and there loosened wall-paper told its tale of the river damp. Once the walls had 12 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE been a crude blue and yellow : now they were faded to a most delicate and various grey and green, not unlike the sea itself under certain cold wintry skies. The remaining domestic scenery of the room had a like effect : time, damp, and long use in such service as a hostelry might require, had left their marks on every- thing. Not least was this to be seen in the battered splendours of the grand piano which, since pianos were comparatively rare then, was, it may perhaps be explained, one of a cargo of pianos wrecked off Carne ten years before, on its way from Kiimmel's (the great London makers of that day) to the port of Leith, for the Edinburgh ladies of taste. This instrument took up a large part of one end of the apartment. Evidently there had once been two rooms where now only one existed ; and the floor at one end, where the piano stood, was some six inches higher than the remainder. This, and a narrow door in the remotest corner of the room, covered with wall-paper as an ineffectual disguise, helped to give it the slight resemblance to a stage that one might discover, if one were as fanciful as the musician who sat there strumming out a doubtful music. THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 13 As for the performer, there was a freshness, a youthfuhiess, in her whole presence, which contrasted pleasantly with her surroundings. A rusty high-waisted black frock did little to disguise the soft, half-childish lines of her figure, as she bent forward over the keys. In fact, though she was nearly nineteen, she looked much younger. Certain curves in her cheeks, and a serious childish pout of the lips over a difficult passage in the music book before her, suggested that she was still far from being a woman. But presently, when the wind, on some sudden access of force, shook the windows, and the door in the corner softly opened as if of its own volition, she started up from her seat as if some new idea had struck her ; and her face was alert, her figure a woman's. The opening door and the sound of the wind in the walls and around the house reminded her of other things than the tune of " Poor Mary Ann," the last tune she had been trying to extract from her music book. She went to the nearest window, and stood there, singing in a treble voice of singular sweetness a foolish ditty of the day, " Now rustic Robin sings of love, and giggling Jane approves the lay," as 14 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE she looked out at the river where the October day was fast fading, and altering the grey reflec- tions in the water to a deep umber. A little way below the Inn, a blunt tub of a boat was crossing the river to Carne Quay, rowed by Riley, who was carrying back Mistor Fostor's message to his son Andrer. Marged had heard enough of the little colloquy, as we know, to understand what Riley's errand meant. Soon the pilot's boat would set out from Carne Quay with him and Andrer Fostor, and run out to sea to find and take charge of the vessel beating about outside. She stretched her arms with a gesture of relief as she thought of it, for she had been indoors all day. How good to go out to sea like them ! Opening the hasp of the window, she stepped out on to the crazy wooden balcony, whose planks here and there had crumbled into small holes. From this outlook she could see Carne Quay across the river, where Andrer lived ; and Andrer was the only approach to a sweetheart she had yet had ! She could see, too, as her eye roved, the long line of ship masts, a few hundred yards below, where the estuary widened, and could hear dis- tinctly the ominous noise of the breakers down THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 15 at the pier. To the pier-head she would go, and watch the pilot boat as it crossed the bar, often an exciting passage when wind and tide were at odds, as they were now. She knew that Betsy was waiting to entrap her as soon as her music should be over, but this only served to enhance the pleasure of the escape: and she stole upstairs and downstairs, got hat and cloak, and was lightly gone by the side-door of the Inn before anyone had discovered her. The great point was to reach the pier before the boat. She would have run in her eager- ness, but the flight might arouse attention. While she was making her way along the Sea- gate, an old man in an immense pair of sea- boots, and a tarred top-hat, came out of a small antiquated shop with bulging windows and deep doorway, and called after her — " Miss Fox ! Miss Fox, honey ! " But she pretended not to hear ; hurrying on, in spite of which, when she emerged at length from the shelter of the last house, and reached the approaches to the pier, it was only to see the boat tossing already far out amid the cross seas on the bar. The cold late twilight was by this grown i6 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE dark enough to make it difficult to see the other side of the harbour clearly, and the wind seemed to be gathering energy with the ap- proach of night. More than once as she passed along the pier, one wave more boisterous than the rest, though the tide was so far out, sent a contrary shower of spray over her head and shoulders. But this was a part of the adven- ture on which she rather counted, and which gave a last touch of risk and pleasant uncer- tainty to the whole experience. She held on her way all the more because of these sea's interruptions to the extreme end of the pier, which curved and broadened into a fairly spacious platform, with a tall lantern mast rigged up to carry the nightly beacon that served as a guide to entering or passing vessels. Here, at the foot of this mast, was a primi- tive shelter, constructed of a few planks \vith a tarpaulin roof, which made a capital look- out, and here she took up her post. Far out, where the coble was tacking and beat- ing about, she could barely see the ship to which it was bound, in difficulties probably with the coarse sea, and the tremendous current which runs at such times off the Came coast. It THE FIDDLER OF CARNE \^ made no headway at all, and in the fading light threatened momentarily to disappear from her view, and to leave the pale coble the only visible human thing in the whole lonely scene. There was something chilling, austere, and half-melancholy in its effect upon her mind ; and she turned with a sigh of relief as she heard a slow heavy step approaching on the pier. It was the old harbour-master. Captain Tom, a simple functionary enough in those days. One of his few regular duties was to light the lantern and run it up the mast every evening at nightfall. He carried a huge lamp, with a red eye, in his hand now, and this gleam of warm ruddy colour served to curiously enhance the chill, the cheerlessness, and the sea-desola- tion of the surroundings. " Whae 's that ? " he said gruffly, turning his lamp for a second on the girl : " Miss Fox ? Oh, haad away hame. It's no ways here for fond young lassies! It's going to blow a bit the night!" " Anything to hurt ? " she asked, looking from his lamp out to sea, half absently. He shook his head, and took no further notice B i8 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE of her, but in a slow, serious pre-occupation with his office, detached the rope and tackle, fixed the lamp he had carried in a groove of the mast, and very deliberately hauled it aloft, where it cast its red gleam out on the water. This done, and it was a work of slow accom- plishment at his un-hurrying hands, he went his way as he had come, and left Marged to keep her watch alone. She did not stay there much longer, however. Soon she saw that the tide had turned, and simultaneously the darkness increased with a sudden profound gathering of gloom ; and the lessening coble and the more distant ship had alike disappeared from her ken. Three pale sea-birds suddenly seemed to hover out of the sea or the air itself, and swooped and dipped with a plaintive pipe, a soft melancholy whistle, that expressed the whole loneliness and the spirit of the scene at this moment of nightfall, as nothing else could have done. Its solitari- ness struck her with a new sentiment about the coble tossing outside, and she wished she could be with Andrer, who was in it. Then, in turn, she thought of the Inn, and the fireside, and its familiar reminders ; and, so THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 19 thinking, hastened her steps almost into a run as she turned homeward. Before her, the Hghts were beginning to shine in the town. Carne was closing its doors against the night and the sea-wind. But when she had reached the Inn again, and doffed her straw hat, limp with the salt air and spray, she recalled the lonely sea, the boat, and the un- known ship with a certain envy, as she went down to the kitchen. There, indeed. Mistress Ffoulkes began to scold the moment she entered ; but her thoughts were far away, and what she really heard was, not the " Howts, lassie ! " of the good housewife, but these lines, — " Pull off, pull off thy silken gown, And give it unto me, Methinks it looks too rich and gay. To rot in the salt sea." CHAPTER THE THIRD. A LATE GUEST. " The night was black and drear Of the last day of the year. Two guests to the river inn Came from the wide world's bound ; One with clangour and din, The other without a. sound." R. W. Gilder. It must have been some seven hours later, when Marged had been in bed and fast asleep for some time, that she awoke from a warm dreamless sleep to some unusual sound below. At first she resisted the natural effect of so belated a sum- mons ; but the sound continued, and presently resolved itself into an irregular and dispirited knocking, as of some one who knocked with no very positive determination to be heard. At length, thoroughly aroused and remembering that her father and the maid-of-all-work were both heavy sleepers, she decided to go and in- vestigate the cause of the summons for herself. 20 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 21 Her eyes were still so far filled with sleep, that when she had lit the candle it took on for a moment the semblance, she thought, of the red beacon at the pier's-head. Then another series of knocks ensued, and recalled her to herself. So, throwing round her a grey shawl, and hastily donning shoes and stockings, she stole lightly downstairs, at once half-afraid and half-delighted at the stillness of the house and her own lurking night fears. When she had reached the passage, and looked along it to the door at its end, her courage failed her for a second ; but the knocking, that now again recommenced, was so gentle and tentative as to re-assure her. " Who 's there ? " she asked, with tremulously bold voice, as she prepared to draw the long bolt. The answer came so soft and indistinct that she decided it must be a woman who stood without. At any rate, it so far satisfied her that she did not hesitate longer to open. She had set down the candle on the stairs, and as she opened the heavy door the inrushing wind made its flame waver so that its light at first only served to confuse the darkness, out of 22 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE which a pale face gazed in at her — a face so wistful, so apparently feminine in its lines, that it was not wonderful if she did indeed think it a woman's. " Oh, come away in ! " she said, holding out her hand with a sudden impulsive pity. Even while she spoke, she saw her mistake, and that this was no woman's figure. No ! it was a tall, somewhat stooping, slight young man, whose eyes were still full of a sea's affright, whose lips were still quivering, as he stepped into the passage, bowing to her with a courtesy that she was unaccustomed to, and found embar- rassing. She led the way to the kitchen, down the stairs at the passage end, instead of to any other room, recollecting the lingering fire there ; for every night, according to local custom, the great kitchen hearth was banked up to last alight till next morning. Perhaps it was that some- thing of sleep still lingered in her eyes ; perhaps it was shyness, that made her stand long before the deep fireplace, stirring it without venturing to turn and steal a more sweeping glance at the stranger. At length, however, the broken crust of coal broke into a flame, and she collected her THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 23 mother-wit and good sense sufficiently to face him. She might well be forgiven if an inarticu- late sigh of surprise broke from her lips as she did so. She had left the candle on the table, but now the stranger had placed it on a chair, while he opened a green baize bag, which she had not noticed before, whose open mouth was disgorging — a fiddle ! His face as he bent over it was filled with a most tremulous concern ; for, as a glance showed her, the salt water had drenched the green bag. The concern of its owner was so movingly expressed that it infected her in her turn, and she drew near to see the re- sult of his inspection. He paid no apparent heed to her in his anxiety, and this helped to disarm her of any lingering fear she might have had. Presently he handed her the candle to hold, with a lifting of his black eyebrows, when he came to the point of examining the fiddle more closely. "Is it — is it broke?" she burst out, half in- voluntarily. He paid no apparent attention to the question, but after he had carefully examined its tawny body and slack and snapped strings, put it down on the table with the tenderness of a woman. 24 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE " Ach, lieber Himtnel ! " he cried, " Sie ist gesund ! " At this ejaculation, which she took to be French, the spell of the situation was broken for her. She remembered the hour, her uncon- ventional garb, the sleeping house ! But she could not help seeing, too, that the young man's seedy long black coat was saturated with salt water. Procuring, accordingly, an old pilot coat of her father's, she proffered it to him ; where- upon he proceeded to dispossess himself of his own coat with an alacrity that was startling, whirling round on his heel rapidly as he did so. As in some girlish shyness she handed him the other garment, his cold fingers accidentally touched her warm wrist where her shawl had slipped away from her arm, caught by a button of the coat. At this merest touch her cheeks flushed softly, and the young man felt a sudden thrill in all his chilled pulses, and a sudden con- sciousness of shelter from storm, of a warm hearth, and, in a more occult degree, of the woman's restoring part, after the buffeting and the sick misery of the sea. He glanced at her, and his dark melancholy eyes were full of grati- tude. But their glance exerted another influence THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 25 upon her — one not easily to be explained, one in which a half-repulsion became a whole, and most irresistible, attraction while he looked at her. The fire by this time had filled the room with its red glow ; and she turned away fi-om him with a lurking uneasiness to let the heavy kettle, already filled with water overnight, lower on its crook. This done, she asked : " Your ship ? — where, what port, was it from ? " "It is the barque Horsa" he began, with a most courteous smile over his own imperfect English ; but he turned a shade paler, and had almost fallen, as he spoke. She saw he was faint, and took his arm and drew him to the settle. Then she thought it better to run and call her father. "What?" Ffoulkes called out through the door, when he had partly divined her errand — "a Fiddler at this time o' night! Myn diawl ! let him go to the ' Three Tuns ' ! Send him away, send him away ! " However, further explanation, carried on with some difficulty through the closed door, recon- ciled the Captain to the idea of a guest who had been shipwrecked, and who was not a 26 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE mere vagrant fiddling around the countryside for a living. Moreover, the good Captain had a weakness for foreigners, having the firm con- viction, fostered in him by his local cronies and customers, that he could speak most sea- faring lingoes with an admired intelligibility. " A French mounseer," he said to his spouse, who was also at length awaking to the situa- tion ; " I '11 talk to him ; don't you get up now indeed ! I '11 put a tipan or two of hot brandy into him, never you fear now ! " When he had gone downstairs, he sent away Marged to prepare a room, so that she should not overhear his after ineffectual attempts to talk French to his guest. The tipan or two, when he had fallen back upon more intelligible operations with the furiously boiling kettle and a black case bottle, proved to be as stiff a tumbler of brandy and water as had ever been compounded. It made the hapless Fiddler's eyes to water, and it helped to unlock his tongue ; just as the Innkeeper was getting hopelessly perplexed at his silence. " It is the barque Horsa ! " he began again, without troubling on this occasion to smile. He was saved the further necessity of trying THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 27 to converse with his host as it happened, for there came another knock at the outer door. This announced Riley, who, it appeared, had first brought the stranger here by Mistor Fostor's instructions. He had left him at the door while he returned to the boat-landing below the Inn for a bag which had been forgotten. " Barque Horsa, frae Hamborg ! " said Riley briefly. " Andrer and I brought her in. She 's all in bits. Nae room for him ower t' water. Leastwise, auld Fostor didna care for the look on him. I thowt he looked a bit uncanny mysel', and sae I just fetched him here." Instead of being ruffled by these intima- tions, the Captain, who, not being a native, was superior to local prejudices, felt only the more kindly towards his guest. He ushered the sick and weary young man to a bed-chamber, with many ridiculous little foreign phrases out of the kindness of his heart. Finally he left the room with a wonderful string of — " Gute nacht! Bonne nuit! Nos dtha!" which left the' young man re-assured, but puzzled. But Marged, in her room in the rooftree of the house, long lay awake listening to the rush- ing of the wind over the housetop, and thinking 28 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE a girl's thoughts about the young man below. When she fell asleep, it was to dream uneasy dreams, in which she returned to the pier, with only a long straggling shawl to protect her from the storm. There, standing under the lantern- mast by night, she saw a dark three-masted ship driven perilously near, until, indeed, it sailed so close that the lantern cast a lurid light on to its deck, strewn with the broken spars and frag- ments of a terrible storm. In the midst of this wreckage stood a solitary figure, with long black hair streaming on the wind. He was fiddling away as for bare life on a fiddle that glistened with the salt spray continually descending on the ship. And then the ship suddenly turned, caught by a monstrous wave that threatened to bear it right down upon her and crush her beneath it. She cried out with affright, as it seemed to hang high in air for a moment, and so crying, she awoke. But was it her waking fancy, or was it reality, that brought to her ear the softest strain imaginable of a violin, a sooth- ing melody, like nothing she had ever heard before ? CHAPTER THE FOURTH. "POOR MARY ANN." " Robin left her broken-hearted, Poor Mary Ann I " The barque Horsa, with its one fateful pas- senger, arrived in Came on a Friday night — an ominous time, as is well known, for all sea affairs. Next morning was market day; and when Marged woke, two hours later than usual, it was to hear a cheerful hubbub, which showed that the market was already in full cry. But as she started up, guiltily realising the lateness of the hour, another sound, within the house itself, gave her apprehensions another guise. It was the sound of a fiddle; and the music had that familiarity in an unfamiliar guise, which is so puzzling in matters of memory. Such a music she had never heard before, running into varia- tions so fantastic, so touched, now with melan- choly, now with a gay inconsequence. And yet the underlying theme was certainly an old 29 30 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE and familiar one. Suddenly, as a new varia- tion began, her face flushed crimson. The tune that the Fiddler had so tricked out was simply " Poor Mary Ann," and it called to mind cruelly that last night she had left her much thumbed music book open at that tell- tale page. Now this tuneful stranger knew what an incompetent stumbler she was, and was even making fun of her proudest achieve- ment. The air itself is a tender and taking one, the old Welsh air " Ar hyd y Nos." But to Marged it was simply " Poor Mary Ann," her plaint and sorrowful history! To have her treated in this way was a trying thing, only to be understood by those who have cared at any time to fathom a budding girl's fancies. Even as Marged thought of it, her heroine was whirled off on a wilder flight than before. She danced, she flew, she soared ; she was carried in a mad storm of harmonics up into the seventh heaven ! Then, bang ! a terrible clash, the poor thing had fallen to earth again, and there was an end of Poor Mary Ann ! The music stopped. Marged listened in some suspense, expecting every minute that it would THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 31 begin again ; but nothing could she hear now save the bustle of the market below, and more distantly the familiar thunder of the sea. When presently she stole rather timidly downstairs, the " long room," so called, where her piano stood, and whence the fiddling had come, was empty. The Fiddler, in fact, had been dis- turbed by Betsy, the maid of the Inn, who had marched in a brief while before, and deposited, with some superfluous bustle, a tray full of glasses on the table as a sign that the room was wanted. Every Saturday at noon a market " ordinary " was held in the " long room " for the benefit of the market folk who journeyed to Carne in their gigs and country carts on that day. As a consequence, the Fiddler, driven to seek a retreat elsewhere, had retired with his fiddle to a tiny chamber opposite, on the same landing. This chamber, which overlooked the market-place, was termed by courtesy the drawing-room of the Inn, and regarded by its country customers with some awe. Filled with faded finery which suggested vaguely that it had been dipped in the sea at some remote period, and with such semi-marine decorations as stuffed fish, ivory frigates in little glass cases, 32 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE ostrich eggs, Chinese pipes, Indian idols, and dried and carefully-varnished reptiles of various uncouth kinds, it was quite the least human and habitable room in the house, but it had a certain pretence of refinement which possibly pleased the Fiddler. Marged caught a clear glimpse of him as she passed the half-open door, sitting by the window, and bending anxiously over his fiddle as he doctored one of its strings. He made no great appearance to her mind, it must be confessed, as seen so in such sur- roundings. His pale, pear-shaped face, long black hair, and luminous black eyes, seen in plain daylight, had an odd effect that was in- creased by the old sea-coat of the Captain's voluminously overwhelming his slim shoulders. Over-big as it was, it was still too short at the wrists, and the Fiddler's long hands looked the longer for it ; while, from beneath it, a pair of spectral legs protruded incongruously. He looked up on hearing her step at the door, but one glance of those compelling eyes was enough. To escape a second glance, she fairly fled. She did not pause till she reached the kitchen, which was sunk deep in the basement at the THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 33 back of the Inn, the house being practically a storey lower on this side owing to the fall- ing away of the ground toward the riverside. A huge cavernous apartment with small sunk windows, it would have been dark save for the enormous fire heaped up in the wide old- fashioned hearth, whose light cast a generous red glow over everything. Beside it sat an old lady of fine proportions, so seated as to sug- gest that she did not easily rise from the solid oak settle in which she was stablished. Before it a baron of beef was roasting, and a little farther removed, hung upon another chair, the Fiddler's long black coat was comfortably dry- ing. At sight of Marged, her step-mother, who being rheumatic was constrained to direct her kitchen campaign from her seat, and had in this way added to her vocal energies what she lost in other respects, called out in a tone harsh and quizzical rather than ill-natured : " Whaat d' ye think on her now, waakin' doonstairs eftor ten in the mom ? " This was addressed to the kitchen at large, and to the scullery beyond, where Betsy, the maid-of-all-work, a devoted adherent of her younger mistress, was peeling potatoes. C 34 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE " Ay, what d' ye think on her ? " she said, as if to the baron of beef and the Fiddler's coat. " Elsie Marley 's nothing to her, the sleepie hizzie ! " Elsie Marley, it may be said, is the heroine of an old north-country song, much sung in the Came countryside two or three generations ago ; four lines of which may suffice to explain the allusion : " Elsie Marley 's grown sae fine, She won't get up to feed the swine : She lies in bed till half-past nine, And surely she does take her time ! " Marged was too wise to reply directly to this speech, and contented herself with one defiant glance, and with stepping upon the massive fender-rail to reach down from the high mantel-shelf a black teapot which reposed there. She was bearing it off to the table, when the old woman rose up from the settle with sudden alacrity, and gravely but forcibly took it out of her hands. " Na," she said ; " ye '11 not can have ony tea, if ye winnot get up ony earlier ! " She nodded her head significantly as she spoke. Then, calmly re-seating herself, she THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 35 set the teapot down on the broad oven-top, and very slowly and very deliberately pushed off the settle a huge black cat that had jumped into its corner when she rose. Then she added : " Where 's that fond Fiddlor thou wert fule enough to let into the hoose last neet? We cannot get wor cookin' done for his lang coatie at the fire. Aa heard him fiddlin' like mad this hour back ; but there 's nothin' will waken ye when the humour takes ye ! " At this, Marged was walking off, her chin in the air, when a long-drawn, quavering note from upstairs caught her ear. It suggested a mischievous idea to her, for she knew how her step - mother hated to have her sacred drawing-room invaded. " I hear him in the drawing - room now," she murmured slily, just clearly enough for it to catch her step-mother's apprehension. The effect upon the old lady was instan- taneous. She rose again from the settle with an air that was really rather fine, and stiffly hobbled across the kitchen flags to the foot of the staircase. There she paused a second and listened. It was enough to satisfy her 36 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE that the girl's information was not fanciful only, and she turned her strongly - marked, sagacious face back toward the fire with a movement of the head that was almost leonine, and her eyes flashed, as she called out twice : "Poll! Poll!" It was her humour to call her maids in- variably by the wrong name. The alacrity with which Betsy appeared out of the scullery, wiping her hands on her apron, and kicking the black cat out of the way, proved that the call was not one to be disregarded. The girl was a tall, powerful, shambling, sandy -haired creature, whose wide mouth with up-curled corners and whose weak eyes contributed to give an expression of stintless good -nature and some silliness to her face. When she reached her mistress's side, that good woman placed a heavy hand on her shoulder, and so supported, giving a deep " Humph," expressive of both dignity and physical disability for the task, began to ascend the stairs, step by step, with immense difficulty. Meanwhile Marged, a little disturbed at THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 37 what her casual disclosure had effected, first re-possessed herself of the teapot, and then, in a fit of anguish, followed to the foot of the stairs to listen ; for she had a certain feeling for the guest upstairs, and knew her step - mother's high temper. Luckily for the hapless Fiddler and his peace of mind, the old lady's ascent was interrupted half-way. Her husband happened to encounter her out- side his glazed den in the passage, and from her gait and half- smothered snorts of anger he guessed that something of moment had occurred. " What 's all this, woman ? " he asked, with an admirably- feigned tone of concern for her in his voice. "Climbing upstairs like any cat! Why, woman, ye 're not fit ! " "Well," she said, with excessive dignity, " ye suld not gie a wild mountebank like yon Fiddlor the run o' the hoose. Captain. I 'm not gannin' to have him in my drawin'-room, that I 'm not ! " " Come, now, let him be, let him be. Mis- tress Ffoulkes!" he said, soothingly, in reply. " The man 's no common Fiddler, but a gentle- man, and a good customer." 38 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE But the old lady was not to be appeased. " Na, he sanna sit in ma drawin' - room ! " she insisted, continuing her way upstairs. The Captain retreated, much perplexed, to his den. He had all the natural courtesy of his race, and could not bear that a guest should be badly treated. But what was he to do ? When the heavy step of Mrs Ffoulkes and her escort had all but reached the land- ing above, he could contain himself no longer, however, and he started off nimbly in pursuit. He arrived at the landing in time to see Mrs Ffoulkes release the weary shoulder of her maid, seize the handle of the door, which was now closed, and without knocking open it angrily. The Fiddler, for his part, sat softly playing a delicate passage, absorbed in his occupation, when he was thus interrupted. Glancing up, he saw the solid and wrathful face of Mrs Ffoulkes, whom he had not seen before, glaring in ; and then, ere he had time to come to any conclusion about it, saw a second figure, the Captain's, who swiftly and adroitly drew the good lady away again be- fore her already opened mouth could articulate. This done, with one inimitable wink over the THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 39 shoulder of his wife at the Fiddler, Ffoulkes quietly closed the door again. The old lady was speechless with rage and outraged dignity, which only served to contribute to the Captain's ends. Long before she recovered her aggres- sive powers, she had been steadily and irre- sistibly convoyed downstairs again by the joint offices of the Captain and his amazed aide de camp, Betsy. The failure of this masterful adventure of Mrs Ffoulkes was an important item in the day's history. If she had succeeded, the whole course of the Fiddler's career might have been different. Up to this point he had had no idea of lingering in Carne an hour longer than was necessary. But during the afternoon cer- tain events, at once trifling and momentous, succeeded, which would assuredly not have fallen out in the way that they did, unless he had continued to haunt the sacred drawing- room with his fiddle for some hours to come. On Saturday afternoon in Carne, the serious business of the market being concluded, the idler country-folk that remained in the town, assisted by a willing contingent of sailors and the like, gave themselves up to mild roystering 40 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE and taverning. Out in the market-place, penny shows and itinerant quacks and hand-sale street auctioneers took the posts vacated by the poultry- sellers and farmers' wives ; and the hubbub increased into a wilder uproar. To-day, as the afternoon grew late, a jovial party of five sailors, who were intent upon practising that very sailor-like receipt for getting sober — that is to say, exchanging one hostelry for another, were crossing the square, when their ears were saluted with a sound full of a most inviting allurement. It was clearly a fiddle, playing something very like a jig within a partly-open window on the first floor of the "First and Last." Perhaps it was some sentiment set going in him by the street music and other noise without, that had led the Fiddler to recall some old jigging dance-tune, upon which, according to his wont, he had soon improvised several variations. So gay, so irresistible were some of these, that the five sailors paused, open-mouthed, in the road- way ; their ears tickled into a ludicrous state of wonder, their ten feet already tapping un- steadily an incipient jig, which soon grew into a full-blown hornpipe. This performance drew an admiring crowd, which increased momently, THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 41 until the square before the Inn was choked by those who, drawing near to see the sailors dance, there and then fell instantly under the spell of the fiddle within the window. Soon the horn- pipe was flanked by others, even less orderly, and most noticeable of them one in which three women of florid physique and costume figured. They danced with more zeal than discretion, provoking the spectators into loud and louder cries of laughter and applause. This clamour grew so great, that it attracted at last the attention of the Fiddler himself. The fiddle suddenly stopped, and as the crowd turned to look up impatiently at the window, the tall, dark, unfamiliar figure of the Fiddler appeared there for a few seconds, looking down with diffident curiosity at the crowd. " That 's nae fiddlor for me, ma hinnies ! " said the leader in the dance of the three young women. " Thor 's summat uncanny in that one, unless I 'm a lang way out on it ! Ugh ye," she added, shaking her superb fist at the window, as the Fiddler turned away. " Ugh ye black man ! Dinnot set thoor evil eye on me ! " As for the five sailors, they were beyond the 42 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE fear of man or sprite in their glory ; and they forthwith despatched a deputy into the Inn to beg a further fiddling. While they were debat- ing on this, a little man in spectacles, who had been listening to the music with many ejacula- tions of pleasure and surprise on the outskirts of the crowd, made his way impulsively past his neighbours into the Inn. A word at the bar with Captain Ffoulkes, who addressed him as Messer Tegner, and the little man had skipped upstairs in a twinkling, and tapped at the door of the Fiddler's room. When, in something less than a quarter of an hour later, the five sailors, grown impatient, invaded the Inn passage, the brisk little man had already stealthily conveyed the Fiddler away. He had spirited him off by a side door leading into one of the tortuous riverside alleys that still skirt the market-place of Carne — a disappear- ance that did not lessen the first uncanny effect that the Fiddler had made on the townsfolk of Carne ! But the ill-temper of the five sailors suddenly ended in a fit of half-hysterical laughter as they remembered how they had danced. CHAPTER THE FIFTH. A SATURDAY NIGHT'S TALE. " This night his weekly moil is at an end." Burns. Every Saturday night The First and Last Inn lit all its lamps and opened all its rooms, save indeed the sacred drawing-room, to welcome its customers. Mistress Ffoulkes then installed herself in a chair by the bright fireside behind the glass cage of the narrow bar-parlour. There she presided with dignity over the proceedings, attired in black satin and a cap with puce ribands ; serving to restrain by her presence and capable tongue any lawlessness in the house. To-night, the night of the Fiddler's first day in the town, the Inn was more crowded than usual. The " First and Last " was what was called a Captains' house, and did not seek to cater for the " general " ; but, beside the Horsa, two or three other craft had been driven in by 43 44 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE stress of weather, and their masters and other such superior seafarers swelled the ordinary Saturday night company. Among these strange faces, the fat placid features of the master of the Horsa, a Dutchman who had struck up a casual acquaintance with Mistor Fostor, shone with a full-moon-like smile on the roomful. " But whaat set ye sae far nor'ard if ye waanted to mak' the Thames, man, — ha ? " said Mistor Fostor, as they arrived at their fifth glasses. The Dutch skipper smiled mysteriously. At this point an interruption was caused by the arrival of another personage of importance, an old wrinkled gentleman in a remarkable brass-buttoned blue coat with a velvet collar, and a no less remarkable tall beaver hat of ancient pattern. He was clearly, in the eyes of the present company, a figure to be reckoned with, by the ceremony with which all turned to acclaim him : " Well, Willim ! " " Three-Quarter Willim " — to state his com- monly accepted soubriquet in full, having by his entrance cut short the Dutch skipper's tale, — " Good e'en, Willim," said Mistor Fostor, who did not mean to be done out of his dues. " Aa THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 45 was askin' Mynheer hoo it was he had run sae far nor'ard on his way to the Thames." On the whole, this was not a wise way of put- ting it, considering Willim's peculiarities ; but Mistor Fostor was not remarkable for tact. The venerable Willim had a great fund of sea remin- iscences, very useful on occasion when the time dragged, but not to be advisedly set going when any very interesting topic was to the fore. Mistor Fostor had given the situation into his hands, and it was clear from the importance of his manner, as he took his accustomed seat by the fire, that he meant to use the opportunity. Something very like a sigh escaped from the general assemblage as they glanced from the Dutchman, who looked most provokingly mat- ter-full, to the remorseless Willim. " I mind me well," began the latter, in a tone that suggested a deliberate unfolding of an inter- minable subject-matter, " the forst time I was boond for the Thames, sailing wi' ma feyther, poor man. A lad o' fifteen I was mebbees at the time ; wor schooner, it was the auld Mary Jane of Shields, — well, thanks, Cap'n, I '11 have the old mixter, varry little lemon, mind now." Here ensued a long pause while the old 46 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE hero received and tasted the mixture. He was so slow indeed, that Mistress Ffoulkes, who had divined something of profound interest in the Dutchman's story, and who could not see the whole of the company from where she sat, rose up in her seat at this juncture. This was partly that she might get a glimpse of the Dutch skipper, partly that she might calculate what chance there was of his ever being allowed to supersede the thrice -told reminiscences of Three-Quarter Willim. But the latter showed no sign at all of coming to any speedy con- clusion, and she sat down with a sigh. Her appearance in this way over the polished ma- hogany of the bar had this effect however : it pleased the Skipper, who had an eye for a fine woman, and gave him a new desire to have his tale out. "Ay, ay," at last resumed Willim, and then stopped again to reach down a churchwarden from the pipe -rack reserved for regular cus- tomers. Having looked to see the inscription, Wf, on the bowl, he gravely filled it and began to puff with an audible smack of the lips, as if each puff were an important expression of opinion in itself. THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 47 " Ay, ay, the Mary Jane, I was saying — well . . . when we were off Flamboro' the wind, that had been stififish-Hke from E.N.E., fell away, and we brought up in a fog of the deil's own brew, ugh, ugh ! ah, ah ! " And now the old gentleman fell a victim to his own spirit of realism. Having ugh-ughed to express more convincingly the particularity of Flamborough fog, the histrionic effort so affected his throat that he was seized with a sudden and alarming fit of coughing, which left him quite unfit to articulate for some little time. As soon as he was a little recovered, Captain Ffoulkes saw his opportunity. " Now, gen'lemen, we 're all fond of Cap'n Willim's stories," — here the Innkeeper winked at the company, and the slightest shade of slyness crept into his voice ; " but we oughtn't to bear hard on him when the fog gets down his chimney ; so Mynheer better take his turn now, yes sure ! " " Ay, ay, haad away, Mynheer ! " called out Mistor Fostor, " 'tis your torn now, and nae mistake ! " Unfortunately he showed such an unwise over-alacrity in saying this, that Willim felt his reputation touched, and felt it neces- 48 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE sary to maintain his dignity by a running fire of strangling coughs all through the Dutch- man's tale, which added not a little to the difficulty of understanding his plethoric English. " You have ask of mine shib, vot it is can drove him up dis vay? It ees ver' strange thing, ven you hear oil is habben to mine ship, Horsa ! " The Dutchman smiled placidly round the room, and his phlegm gave the more effect to his disclosure. There fell a dead silence until Three-Quarter Willim coughed significantly, at which the other hastened to continue. " Zat is all zat yong man, ze shib's pas- senger we hov ! " he said, and drained his glass, with a deep nasal snort after it. " Why, Mynheer," put in Captain Ffoulkes, "what did the ship's passenger do to affect you?" " Avvect you, mein Gott ! He blay, blay oil ze time ! " " Play ! " " Yaw, blay, blay ze feedle." " And he can play, too ! " said the other in a general way to the company. " Did ye hear him, lads, this afternoon ? That was a fine turn-up ! " THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 49 " Oh yaw, he gan blay ver' veil ! No bisdake ! Ven he blay, ze men zey danze, ze vind go round, an' ze shib is oil upsolce ! " " I thought there was summat uncanny in his blackaviz feators and his lang fingers," said Mistor Fostor. Thus encouraged, the Skipper grew still more confidential. " We try to put him overboard, at ze last ! Vot is ze use ? He fiddle avay ; ze men zey dance ; zey gannot touch him ! " " Put him overboard ? " said the Innkeeper at this little confession, which had set one aged gentleman in a corner chuckling to himself. " Mynheer, that 's murder, yes sure ! murder on the high seas ! " " He 's nae man, yon Fiddlor," said Mistor Fostor sententiously. "He's a whaat-d'ye- call him, the same as the cauld lad o' Hilton, and hor that gans about Willington Quay, on Tyneside yonder." " Ay," said another gentleman of age and experience, attired in scrupulous black, who proved to be the verger of St Michael's, and who spoke with a precise parsonical voice that oddly assorted with his Carne accent, D 50 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE " true, varry true, Mistor Foster ! If a man 's not canny, an' hes a evil spirit, as in holy writ, he is not a man, properly speaking ; particular," he made haste to add, hearing a slight murmur of disapprobation from the opposite corner, " particular, if he 's not a British subjick." The last clause rather struck the rest of the company by the singular combination of logic and patriotism which it exhibited, and led Ffoulkes, who, like most innkeepers, was rather an opportunist on such occasions, to suppress his inclination to carry on the argument. " And if a man 's not a man," the verger concluded triumphantly, "why then, do whaat ye like, ye cannot morder him ! " This was too irresistible to be gainsaid by anyone. But Mistor Fostor's curiosity about the Horsa and her voyage was not yet at all satisfied. " I wad have taken the beggor's fiddle friv him," he said reflectively ; " a fiddle 's nae fire- arm." " Bot, mein Gott ! zat is it ; we gannot touch him. Ven he blay eet is like blagbeedles down mine back, Ach, I hov to dronk many schnapps, and ze shib is go oil upsolce." THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 51 " How much schnapps can you swaller at one sitting, Mynheer," here interposed his host, " and keep your ship's course ? " The Skipper smiled a smile of some subtlety, and drained his glass in a calm, effortless way that was very convincing. Captain Ffoulkes was puzzled. Was the Dutchman a consummate humbug, or simply the victim of an invincible mixture of two kinds of spirits ? The question received its answer within the very next pause in the conversation, when, after some general interchange of opinion about the Fiddler's performance of the after- noon, an uncertain noise caused Mistor Fostor to lean forward, his hand to his ear. The noise was so far puzzling, that it might easily deceive an ear expectantly attuned to one thing. It was a combination of a piano- strain upstairs, where Marged, having so far regained faith in herself, was practising away at " Poor Mary Ann " ; of a street-musician's tin whistle in the market-place; and of the sea's distant humming and trumpeting. For a second or so, it fairly deceived Mistor Fostor, pos- sessed as he was by the one leading idea suggested by the Skipper's story. 52 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE " Beggor ! " he cried, " if it isn't the bloomin' Fiddlor, gannin' to bring his ugly phiz an' his deil's catgut amang us ! " The Innkeeper, who had a quicker ear, and knew better, was about to explain the illusion ; but a o;lance at the Dutchman's face made him hold his tongue. Mynheer had indeed changed his complexion, if that seems possible, in the most convincing fashion. His small grey eyes were puffed up ; his lips emitted short stertorous snorts ; his fat hand travelled to his flat skipper's cap, and pulled it down, with two awkward twitches upon his forehead. As he did so, he started up from his seat. " Why, the man 's going ! " murmured Ffoulkes. "Haad on a bit, mate!" cried Mistor Fostor. " There 's nae Fiddlor there ! " said Mrs Ffoulkes ; and then added as an aside to her husband, " Ask the Skipper to stop an' tak a bit o' supper wi' us ! " The good lady was dying to hear more than he had told of the Horsa and the fateful Fiddler. But the fat Skipper had disappeared. " A parfect mystery ! " said the verger from his corner. THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 53 Three-Ouarter Willim coughed significantly, as much as to say, " That 's what comes of letting me be interrupted ! " But he looked round uneasily as a gust of wind blew into the passage ; and then in his turn he rose from his seat. " I '11 tell ye whaat it is ! " he said as he stood up, an infirmly-based biped, his curved back to the fire. " I '11 tell ye what it is ! Ma opinion is, the Fiddlor is a Frenchy ! Boney- parte has sent him spyin', ye may be sure. There 's summat varry queeor aboot it ! " " Summat varry queeor ! " echoed the chorus. As for Mistor Fostor, he resolved to pay a domiciliary visit to the Horsa at her berth next morning, while other people were abed or in church. But when Riley had pulled him down the river, half-a-mile below the Inn, her berth was bare ; the Horsa was gone. CHAPTER THE SIXTH. THE MUSIC SHOP IN SEAGATE-WITHOUT. The autumn wore on that year, more coldly and stormily than its wont on the North Sea coast. . . . Days gloomy and grey, and sullenly wet, were the rule when the easterly gales were not blowing. Carne shut itself up for the winter even before its usual time. It was the sort of weather to try the spirits of a pleasure-loving girl, with a lively appetite for all the natural delight of life — all that colour and stir and fine sensation, of which she had heard and read ; and Marged often stood looking out on the river from the streaked windows of the long room, moping and indulging girlish dreams of wider horizons and more entertain- ing scenes than those of Carne. On such a day, a Thursday afternoon, and Thursday always seemed to her the greyest and least interesting day of the week, she rose up rebellious after many long, dull hours in- doors, and decided to go out, — anywhere to 54 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 55 escape the tedium of the house and the rain on the window-panes. Outside the air was fresh at least ; the rain had turned into a Scotch mist with a distinct salt fragrance. Unless she crossed the river by the ferry-boat, the only route open to her that had much interest was the Seagate, and down it she took her way accordingly. But the gloom of her mood still refused to be shaken off because of any contemplation of ribands and other such fal-lals in one window, or new silks in another, and at length she found herself passing through the old half-broken down covered gate- way from which the thoroughfare originally took its name, dividing it into two halves, Seagate- Within and Seagate-Without. Seagate-Within contained the old houses of the town as it was primitively constituted — old red-tiled two- storied houses of the Jacobean period mostly, with bulging shop-windows and dark interiors. But Seagate-Without at the opening of the century was an uncertain, half-finished, inde- terminate thoroughfare, with here and there a detached row of new houses which had not yet received the humanising that time and weather can alone give. At the remoter end 56 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE of this region stood a few new houses, built in the plainest, poorest terrace style, of a muddy, badly-baked red brick. They stared out incongruously upon the melancholy sand- flats that lay beyond, and at their most ex- posed seaward corner a comparatively large shop, the only one in the terrace, attracted Marged's attention as nothing else had done in her walk so far. Within its large forlorn windows, of all incon- ceivable things, were ranged the delicate and exotic shapes of musical instruments, pianos chiefly, with a few fiddles and flutes interspersed. Over its door, set in the corner of the build- ing crosswise, and over its windows ran the elaborately scrolled and painted legend : Josef Tegner. and again, more elaborately : Josef Tegner & Co. Pianoforte Emporium & Musical Depot. According to a plan less commonly adopted at that period than now, the shop was built out as if by afterthought from the house behind it, THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 57 and beside its large windows, its flat leaden roof contained several skylights intended to give a light and airy effect to the interior. Instead of this, they made the place, especially on such a day, look peculiarly unprotected and shelterless, and so exposed, in fact, to all appearance that the poor pianos seemed almost to stand in the open air. The great window panes, moreover, were covered with drops and streaks of rain, and the melancholy plight of these delicate and ladylike instruments could not but appeal to so sympathetic an observer as Marged as she passed the place. For a few seconds she paused, looking into the forlorn and yet enticing interior, coveting greatly one smaller upright piano with a red satin bosom. From it her eye roved farther, and then she started : at the glass shop-door beyond, she saw somebody standing gazing out upon vacancy — the Fiddler ! He had been half-hidden from her unsuspecting gaze at first by some hang- ing sheets of music ; but now as she sped off she took in the whole vivid impression of his pale face, luminous eyes, long black hair, and dispirited droop of the lips. His attitude, as he stood there behind the wet panes of the glass 58 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE door, where he had evidently been standing for some time, was one of utter ennui. When his glance caught hers as she hurried on, he recog- nised her, she saw, becoming conscious of a profound bow. Thereafter she had reached the pier, and had been standing for some little time at its end, idly watching the great lazy waves, when a sound, or a mere conjecture, led her to look round. Ah, there was a solitary figure approaching, attired in a long cloak, a hat of Neapolitan pattern on the head. She felt fluttered and embar- rassed as the Fiddler drew nearer, and would have escaped. But there was no escape for her save by the sea, or by passing him. What was she to do? Like other maids in a like perplexity, she ended, of course, by doing nothing. The Fiddler was at her side ere she had formed any clear idea as to whether the interest of such a meeting would compensate for the maidenly embarrassment it would cause her. The young man's foreignness, his foreign speech, some- thing foreign in his eyes, something remote and unaccustomed to her mind in his whole bear- ing, all helped to increase her natural shyness. THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 59 However, now that he was at her side, bowing and speaking in a foreign voice no doubt, but with a certain gentleness and kindliness in its tones, she began to take courage. " Is it, you like the sea — so ? Mamzelle — Ffoulk'?" Ah, then, he remembered her name! She could not forbear a smile as he said it, so strange as it sounded on his lips. " Yes," she said, rather at a loss to define the particular feeling that she cherished for so familiar a thing, " I 'd dearly like to be a sailor!" " Oh," he cries, with an incredulous, slightly guttural little laugh that he had, " a sailohr, a see-mann ! Is that good for pretty faces — Mamzelle?" He looked at her with a half- abstracted, half-admiring glance, — how unlike the blunt boyish looks of Andrew Fostor under similar circumstances ! " Shall you come ? " he said then, oddly and abruptly, and led the way to the edge of the wooden platform of the pier. They stood there, looking out into the pale mist that draped the North Sea to-day. This veil hid all but the nearer circuit of the grey waters, but it added immensely at the same time to the sense of their vague infinitude. 6o THE FIDDLER OF CARNE " Is it — is many ships sail from here to the Mediterranee — to Italia ? " he asked suddenly. Surprised at the question, she said — "To Italy? Not often! . . . Do you want to go to Italy?" He bowed a profound affirmative. " Over there," he said, with a wave of his long hand towards the outstretching grey water — "in Italy — the sun shines; people are happy; it is musique, musique all the time ! Ah, 'tis in Italy I can live. Here — this cold sea — this cold place — here I cannot live ! " He shivered even as he spoke, and coughed ; a deep, distressingly vital cough. The cough made her uneasy for his sake, and made her smother her desire to say how much Carne and this cold sea meant to her. " You are not well, I think ! " she said, simply, turning toward the town, " Let us go back ! " They marched back together, he struggling with his cough uncomfortably, and finding no breath for talking. When at length they reached the music shop — " I am sorry," he said ; " you musz pardon ! " He had hardly uttered '.he words before the glass shop-door opened, and a tall, sallow THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 6i woman, of foreign aspect, her gray hair rather frivolously frizzled and powdered, emerged with a volley of French — " Mechant, inecha7it, — oh wicked, wicked ! " that was her refrain, as with a side glance of much interest at the girl, she hauled the Fiddler into the shop. " The doctor have said he will die if he go out in this sea fog ! " she said in explanation. So coughing, laughing a little, and bow- ing out of Madame's clutch his farewell, the Fiddler disappeared, and she resumed her way hastily home. In two or three moments Mme. Tegner re- appeared at the shop door, apparently with the idea of speaking to Marged. But by this she was halfway up the Seagate, with a mind divided betwixt the Fiddler and the Italy he loved, while a half-formed wish that he would not go away from Carne lurked in the uncer- tain background of her sentiment. CHAPTER THE SEVENTH. THE TEGNERS. " In sweet Musick is such art." It may be remembered that on the afternoon when the Fiddler had attracted his audience in the market-place, a knock on the door of his room at the " First and Last " had served to introduce a brisk, spectacled visitor who bounced in excitedly upon him, apologising for the intrusion with many manuflections and politenesses. This was M. Tegner, music master and proprietor of the music shop, who was de- lighted at this unlooked-for discovery of one whom he judged, by what he had heard of his playing, to be no common musician. So he protested in voluble French ; and, after a brief conversation, he did not hesitate to place his house, hospitality, and all available good offices, at the disposal of this strange young man whom the fortunes of the day had conjured up in a flying moment. 62 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 63 The existence of M. Tegner himself in such a community as Carne, was, it may be thought, surprising enough in the first quarter of this century. He had been formerly a dancing master at Humbro', coming to Carne, which was making some first attempts to turn itself into a seaside resort, to give lessons once a week. Then Madame fell ill of a quinsy, and the doctor ordered her sea air ; and this coin- ciding with the shipwreck of the cargo of grand pianos aforementioned, tempted M. Tegner to venture, unwisely enough, on the enterprise of his misplaced music-shop, which was fifty years before its time. He borrowed the hun- dred or two of guineas required for this specu- lation, a debt which pursued him day by day ; and had for reward the satisfaction of being so far the sole representative of the higher arts in the place. On the present occasion, when M. Tegner reached his door, he ushered the Fiddler in with excitable cordiality, and indicated with natural pride of possession the noble company of Kummel grand pianos ranged around — a pride not at all diminished by the fact that they were not paid for. And then — then he fell into 64 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE the devil's own stew as he thought on Madame sitting upstairs, probably in any mood but the right one. Here was a dilemma, since he could not bear to seem wanting in courtesy even for a second. The Fiddler probably divined some- thing of what was passing, for he could not forbear a faint smile. In answer to that smile M. Tegner grimaced most piteously. Then, " Mais — c'est Madame ! comprends? II faut — . , ." and the little man was gone, wondering and trembling as to the result of his quest. He was gone so long that the Fiddler had ample time to look about him, and presently was tempted by an invitingly open piano to touch the keys softly. From that, as time still hung on his hands, it was easy to let them wander off into a few prelusive chords, and then again into a little fugue of Bach ; but still his host did not return. The fugue suggested an old fantasia of his own composition, and, the spirit of the thing seizing him, he fairly let himself go, forgetting everything but the music. Still no M. Tegner ! Finally, he had embarked on an extravagant enough improvisation of certain themes that had lately occurred to him. THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 65 suggested partly by the North Sea, partly by his own fiddling in the earlier afternoon. In the middle of this flight, he was arrested by a sound behind and yet apparently above him. He glanced round, and saw that at the very end of the shop, on a little staircase lead- ing up into the house, stood a fairly tall grey- haired woman, whose lips were just relaxing from a severe pout of disapprobation into an exclamation of involuntary admiration. " Cest un maitre, ma foi ! " With this word, Madame, who had come intending to play the part of a tyrant, acknow- ledged her defeat, and ran down the three remaining stairs, changing her half- prepared little speech of politely but unmistakably con- veyed dismissal into one of warm welcome. Hereupon Mme. Tegner led the way into her own apartments ; with an air of delight- ful independence as far as her husband was concerned. It was part of her treatment of that ridiculous little man ; first to snub him severely whenever he propounded any scheme, and then to adopt the scheme as if it were entirely her own. The third stage of the process was, supposing the scheme after all to come to E 66 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE nothing, which very often proved to be the case, to repudiate all responsibility for it. By polishing and beeswaxing the floors, and by various little touches of Gallic art, Madame had converted her parlour behind the music shop into a rather taking apartment. Here she installed her guest with a grace that twenty years or more of sordid struggling with fate and impecunious music and dancing pupils had not been able to destroy. She lit a small bronze lamp, for the dusk was closing in, made up the fire, and then turned to exchange the courtesies of the occasion with the Fiddler. They talked in French ; the Fiddler proving conversant with that tongue, though he was not much given to express himself at any time, save in music. " Your ship was driven into this dreary place, M'sieur ? Is it then to a port farther south that M'sieur was bound ? " " To London ! " replied the Fiddler, with a bow whose courtesy made up for the curtness of his communications. " M'sieur has friends in London ? " " Ne7as, not one ! " " M'sieu goes to find his fortune there ; is it THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 67 not so ? Or is it that he has some fortune already ? " At this point, M. Tegner, who had diplo- matically loitered behind in the shop, arrived, carrying the green bag containing the precious violin, which the Fiddler had brought along with him to the music shop, and left reposing on a chair there. The young man smiled a significant smile as he caught sight of it, indicating it by a wave of one long hand, as if he would say — " Madame, there is my estate ! " At this simple gesture, M. and Mme. Tegner looked at each other with a sudden intelligence. They had known in their own history what it meant to arrive in that monster among cities without friends and with little money. " London — London is the devil ! " here put in M. Tegner unadvisedly. A turn of Madame's head suppressed him promptly. " Pardon my husband," she said. " Josef is very ignorant. It would be more polite, Josef, if you were to ask M'sieur to accept our meagre hospitality while he stays in this benighted fishing village ; for it is no better than living in a herring barrel ! " 68 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE In this way did the Fiddler come to be domiciled under the roof of the worthy pair, in the unlikeliest part of all the North Sea coast. He was unable to make his escape, as it turned out, moreover ; at least for some little time to come. He had barely tasted Madame's ex- cellent coffee, as they sat and listened to her own early reminiscences of a hard-hearted London, when the watchful lady's eyes saw that he had suddenly turned pale. And then he began to cough, and an ominous red spot appeared on the handkerchief he had put to his mouth. " Ah mon Dieu ! " cried the good woman, as she divined his predicament — " We must put him to bed ! Suzanne, come ! Josef ! run for that dreadful doctor with the large teeth ! he ! he ! mon Dieu, mon Dieu ! " With these exclamations upon the fate that she had found follow her with so many reminders of this order, Mme. Tegner accepted the situation, and proved herself more than equal to its needs. But the doctor with the large teeth, who was really not a bad fellow, forbade the Fiddler to leave his bed for some days to come, and told Madame, moreover, that the young man would THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 69 attempt the sea again at this time of year at his extreme peril. Ere the Fiddler had been three days in their house, the Tegners had impulsively adopted him, in default of any child or son of their own. And for his part he seemed to have the helpless- ness and the fatalistic acquiescence in his lot, that one often finds in artists of his order. He took his place in the household as if he had always intended to make that his home, and played his fiddle to the Tegners with the same inspiration that he might have used to conquer London. M. Tegner and he took to playing duets together in the shop, in the absence of cus- tomers ; until the very panes of the forlorn windows learnt to tremble musically. On yet another walk that Marged took seaward, one still drearier afternoon of that drearily wet November, she heard as she neared the corner where it stood, a richly sumptuous strain of music. It seemed to suggest, as it caught her ear in occasional chords and half cadences, that the Orient had shed its fragrance and scattered its most exquisite colours in one extravagant utterance to this grey, thrice-desolate street. yo THE FIDDLER OF CARNE Its spell was irresistible. She crossed the road to hear more, and its effect grew upon her so that the music shop took on the aspect of some palace of delight. Its mean lines, straight, poor, crudely coloured, each became, as it were, curved and intertwined with the phantasy of an emotion which she was never afterwards to dissociate from it. It was a dual strain of violin and piano that she heard, and the combination was new and miraculous to her ear. It held her spell-bound with its rich romanticism. When she had reached the lee of the house, she stood on the wet pavement, and halted, drinking in Paradise through her ears. A moment only, it seemed, but many passed ere that sumptuous music had marched on to its close. And when at last she retook her way seaward, the grey North Sea looked different to her ; the colour and meaning of her day was changed. There was a world beyond that pale water, a world of a rare affluence and enchantment, to which she might yet find her way ; and the magician who held the key to it all was the Fiddler. CHAPTER THE EIGHTH. CARNE QUAY. " Maids nays are nothing ! Because of Mistor Foster, and for other rea- sons, Carne Quay loomed large in the daily- life of the inmates of the " First and Last." The back windows of the Inn looked across the river at its irregular roofs and half-decayed quay and waterside wharves and boat - land- ings ; and among these, the red -tiled roof of Mistor Foster's house and the black -and -tan boat -sheds adjoining (where Andrer Fostor had lately set up as a boat-builder in a small way) made a group by themselves. The Carne coble-builders were a famous set of craftsmen in their day ; and Andrer Fostor, who had served his time with the idea of becoming, like Mistor Fostor, a privileged pilot, had lately taken instead to boat - building, inspired by Peter Lightheart. But Mistor Fostor had quarrelled with Peter, still more recently, with 71 72 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE the result that Andrer had left his yard. Now that young man was driven to continue his craftsmanship under difficulties on his own account. In the intervals of piloting, he built or mended an occasional coble in these ram- shackle boat-sheds of his father's establishment. Mistor Fostor's plans for Andrer did not end there. His eye had fallen with favour on Marged Ffoulkes, who had been a school- fellow of the lad's six or seven years ago, and who was generally understood to be the presumptive heiress to the accumulations of the " First and Last," which made no mean dower. Moreover, she was, as we know, a maid that any man might be proud to marry. More than once in his cups, Mistor Fostor had been known to confess : "If it werena for the auld woman, I wadna mind taking Margret Fox mysel' ! But the missus is slow makin' up her mind to onything: sae Andrer maun have the lass ! " In fact, Mistress Fostor had lingered on for many years in the uncomfortable role of a half- crippled helpmeet to her undiminished lord and master, to whose occasional ill humours she THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 73 largely owed her present condition. No doubt it was trying to so fine a creature to have an in- firm and dragging mate ; but the marriage laws, still uncomfortably secure, were stiffly kept up in the days of this story. Andrer in his sim- plicity devoutly abetted his mother in her desire to live as long as possible ; and for his own part never thought of marrying, save as a re- motest contingency. He knew the Marged Ffoulkes project, but that young lady had not much affected his fancy latterly. This was the position of things, when, one morning, Marged was commissioned to carry a jar of " rum-honey" to Mistress Fostor, who had lately added to her other ailments what her husband termed the " brownkipers " — that is, bronchitis. It was one of those half-bright late autumnal mornings, when there is a sort of premonition of frost in the air, and when on the river a pale mist is apt to lie in uncertain stretches, and give a pleasantly unfamiliar effect to its most familiar reaches. Marged, who liked the un- accustomed aspects of things best, was delighted as she got into the old tub that belonged to the Inn, and began to pull leisurely across stream. The tide was nearing the full, still running up 74 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE and she was easily able to get carried out of her course, which she rather courted, since it gave her a further excuse for exploring the intermit- tent patches of mist which hung upon the water. She had set the jar of honey on a seat in the stern in a critical position, which the least bump of the boat might upset, for this added just that spice of risk to her voyage necessary to lift it into the category of interesting experiences. Otherwise it was devised with no want of craft on her part. She had made some feint of pull- ing against the tide at first, so as to allow for the being carried out of her course by the cur- rent ; but in mid-stream she was diverted from her main plan of action by a floating painted broom of foreign make, probably dropped over- board from some Dutch vessel in port. To secure this, not so much for the sake of the broom itself as for the mere joy of pursuit, necessitated her pulling round and changing her course. And when at last she had overtaken the broom, instead of lifting it into the boat, which was the obvious thing to do, she found it more amusing to attach it to a line and take it in tow. This proceeding required much precarious THE FIDDLER OF CAR NE 75 balancing over the stern of the tub, with one foot ingeniously crooked under a seat to act as a balance or lever ; an attitude not in itself graceful, perhaps, but one which, practised by a figure full of lithe curves, might well be found attractive by a simple observer. As it happened, Andrer Fostor, looking from the upper storey of his boat-shed, whose door opened directly on to the river, had a full view of this wayward manoeuvre. But at its most in- teresting point the boat drifted out of sight into a thin veil of mist, and he saw it no more, till, a few minutes later, on descending the outer stair- case of the shed, he saw the tub had stranded on a foreshore, and that the girl was trying vainly to shove it off. Her predicament, to be sure, was not a serious one ; but he felt that circum- stances rather demanded his going to the rescue. His general state of mind about her, however, might be known by the deliberate way in which he went on this gallant mission. He stopped to look at a pan of pitch which was in process of cooking over a fire-lamp with three crooked legs, and even delayed to stir it up meditatively with a stick, rather expecting to see the tub set afloat at any minute. ye THE FIDDLER OF CARNE He was recalled to a sense of his masculine obligations by his father's stentorian voice : " Why, Andrer ! doesn't thou see the lass yonder, stranded an' like to be droonded under our varry nose ? Haway, lad, an' set the piece off. Haway, leave the pitch ! " Mistor Fostor stood at the door of his abode, in a morning undress of shirt sleeves and duck breeches, a sou'-wester on his head. Compared with him, Andrer had hardly a single point or feature in common. Not so heavily built for his years, he was still well and strongly made, with his long arms and fine shoulders pictur- esquely enough set forth by a blue shirt and a tartan neckerchief. But his face might be the face of a Norman gentleman, with a well- bred straight nose and good long-lipped mouth, though with grey eyes, brown hair that slightly curled, and a short brown moustache. " Riley," he called to his lieutenant, and Riley's red head popped out of the lower part of the boat-shed in response to the summons : " come and help me get Sally out, sharp ! " Sally was a light boat which required to be extricated from a cluster of others, big and little, lying under the boat landing hard by. Stepping THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 77 into her, thereupon he pulled off with the easy sculls of a waterman, and fifty strokes brought him within hail of Marged. Seeing his ap- proach, she made frantic efforts to free herself without his aid. But in vain. The still in- coming tide only floated the boat farther up on to the gravel at every effort she made. Fairly beaten, she sat down helplessly, flushed with her exertions and with her sense of being caught in such a plight. She had all a girl's dislike to be thought incapable in anything usually given over to the other sex. She looked at him with an expression half- defiant, half-mischievous, as he pulled up, " Well, Margret ? " he said in the most good- natured tone in the world. " Well, Andrer ? " her tone slightly mocked his, and left the burden of further conversation on his own head. To relieve the tension of the occasion he managed, first, to fish the Dutch broom into his own boat. " What kind of a fish is this ye 've been catch- ing ? " he asked, as he detached the line from it. "Is that the bait in yon jar ? " " No," she said in her airiest tone, " that 's some rum-honey (only it 's made with treacle) 78 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE for what your father calls your mother's ' brown- kipers.' " By this he had made fast the line to his own boat, at as close a range as possible, and pro- ceeded to pull away calmly. " Mind the traacle pot ! " he cried. The warning came too late. The slight jerk with which the boat was dislodged from its sticking place was enough to upset the jar, which fell with an ominous " plomp " into the bottom of the tub. She was much diverted by this accident, and laughing, with the blade of an oar deftly lifted the cracked and bleeding jar over the gunwale of the tub. " There," she said cheerfully. " Now I can go home again, if you '11 let me go ? " " Better come and see my mother. I wish ye would, Margret ! " he responded, looking at her. In fact, she looked infinitely taking as she sat there, her oars ready, her red lips pursed mis- chievously, her eyes dancing, her cheeks slightly flushed. He began to feel a disinclination to part with her. This was not the mere girl he had gone to school with. His own cheeks THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 79 flushed slightly, as he found her eyes scanning him critically. " No ! " she said, after a pause : " Goodbye ! I 'm going back." He let the cord go regretfully. The tide was just at the turn ; she had already pulled the tub's head round for the opposite shore. " I 'm sorry about the treacle," she called out as she began to row away ; " tell Mrs Fostor I 'm sorry." " All right ! " he sang out, secretly pleased at her relenting so far. Then feeling a further accession of admiration for her, with one strong stroke he was alongside her, and put his hand on the gunwale of her boat, detaining it. His feeling was plainly reflected on his face. To relieve the situation, she was impelled to say, as she pretended to look into the water for the lost jar, " All the same, it was your fault." He laughed boyishly. " Well, to make up, will ye go with me to St Andrew's dance at the Ha'?" St Andrew's night, as we shall see, was a great occasion for the young people of Carne. " Na, na, no ! " she said, " unless you '11 let me go now ? " She dipped her oars, ready to go. 8o THE FIDDLER OF CARNE There was a slight spice of girlish coquetry in this, which he did not fail to detect. When he released her and, drooping her pretty head over her oars she rowed off, was that a sly laugh which she bent lower still to hide? Whether or no, there was certainly something in her manner that he had not seen in her before. She had suddenly become for him something of a problem ; and when a young woman becomes a problem for a young man, it means that he is on the high road to falling in love. His heart already danced in anticipa- tion, as he counted the days to St Andrew's night. But Marged, as she neared the landing below the Inn, caught a glimpse of the white topsails of a small schooner at the bend of the river below, which was probably sailing with this tide. It led her to think of the sea and all that lay outside Carne — a world full of fine stirring life, of ships, men and women, and foreign lands. The thought of them made her sigh as she stepped out of her boat, and she said : "If I were a man I would not stay in Carne, — ah, if I were only a man." But even as she said it, a flitting vision of THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 8i Andrer, as he sculled his boat toward her with so much unconscious ease and strength, was in her thought. After all, was he not more of a man than the pale and melan- cholic Fiddler? CHAPTER THE NINTH. A NOVEMBER NIGHT. " Now winter nights enlarge The number of their hours, And clouds their storms discharge Upon the airy towers." Campion. It was Sunday night, a dark night, of abrupt gusts from the sea, that forced open doors and rushed round street corners, and then suddenly died away again, with an inconsequence more disturbing than the behaviour of a decent and steady gale. M. Tegner was anxious about the weather. He had invited the Fiddler to go across to Carne Quay with him that evening, to the Catholic chapel there, where he officiated as choir-master. Mme. Tegner had said it was not a fit night for a sick man to be abroad. Her husband went down to the side door to see if it was as bad as the uncomfortable noise of the wind round the exposed corner of the house, and its melancholy rumble in the chim- neys, seemed to testify. 82 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 83 " Pah ! it smells salt," was all he said, on reaching the upstairs again, where Madame and the Fiddler sat. " It always does that," she remarked. " It 's this wicked wind I don't like. 'Twill give you your death of cold," she added, turning to the Fiddler. The Fiddler was a fatalist. " Not unless my time is come ! " he said, rising up and stretching out his long arms. This decided the matter, and the two set off a few minutes later for the ferry. The Chapel, dedicated to St Hilda, lies among the narrow waterside back streets of Came Quay, where you may see it to this day. The influence of the ancient Catholic family living at Carne Hall, the titular seat for cen- turies of the Earls of Carne, had served to retain it where it stood — one of those rare ori- ginal Catholic foundations to be found in the north country. All this did M. Tegner instil into his guest's ears on their way thither. But, as he might have seen, that young man was more interested during the service in the three young ladies from Carne Hall, who sat at an angle convenient for observation, than he was 84 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE in the building, or the music, or in Father Martin's easy oratory. As the three girls, befurred, well-dressed, distinguished, so different to the rest of the small congregation, passed out after the ser- vice, they glanced never so slightly at the dark foreign face of the Fiddler. He saw then that the eldest of the three, who walked last, limp- ing slightly, had a high bred but singular face, set, like an early eighteenth-century portrait, with curly flaxen hair, and softly illuminated by very pale blue eyes, A little touch of hectic red in the cheeks, which the Fiddler, in his foreigner's simplicity, took for rouge, completed the portrait, save for certain black satin ribands that flowed from a large hat and met gracefully under her chin. The Fiddler was impressed. " Who are they — those three ? " he whispered to M. Tegner in the mixed tongue in which they commonly conversed, as they left the chapel. " Ah ! the young ladies from Came Hall. The eldest, the blonde, the lame, is my pupil. Lady Henrietta — she is very syinpathetique. Dances? Sings? No, pianoforte. She has a touch, and she has the je ne sais quoi of the art, my dear Karl." THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 85 Karl, Karl Pastal, was the name by which the Fiddler was known to the Tegners and his more intimate ring of acquaintances. Carne never learnt to know him save by his name and role of The Fiddler. As the two passed down by the narrow, unsavoury, waterside back streets and alleys to the ferry, on their way back to Carne, M. Tegner drew a fanciful picture enough of the ancient decayed Carne family, and of my Lord himself, who had succeeded to the title by a mere contingency, on the death of the direct heir. My Lord's father had married the daughter of a Newmarket training stable, and given his children a Newmarket education ; but as for my Lady, she came of good stock, and was a prize when my Lord carried her off twenty-four years ago. Now she was a poor, hysterical, half-witted creature, who had suf- fered for her husband's sins, and wandered about the deserted wing of Carne Hall, crying: "Where's Rupert?" Rupert was her first child and only boy, drowned at ten years of age from a sailing boat off Carne Hall, under more dreadful cir- cumstances than M. Tegner made clear ; for 86 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE he was so pleased with his picture of the poor lady wandering through the empty rooms with her constant refrain, which he repeated in Eng- lish and pronounced, — " Verr 's Ruper-rt ? " that he iterated this part of the tale at the expense of the rest. When they were embarked in the ferry boat, he would have continued, but that the Fiddler began to cough, probably affected by the river chill, and frightened him out of the rest of his narrative. It was during the pause that followed, while they were hanging in mid stream, and the gloom and the clinging damp airs oppressed them with sombre thoughts, and while the ferrymen fought the tide, there came to them another voice, unexpectedly, and, therefore, thrice memorably, out of the darkness, and drove all else out of their thoughts. It was a fragment merely, the end of some unfamiliar melody, in the minor key, which the voice, a clear girlish treble, sustained with a singular sweetness. In the first uncertainty as to its source, it reached the Fiddler's ears like a sleeper's summons from some unascer- tained corner of the night. The strain was wild, melancholy in the extreme, full of an THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 87 aspiration beyond words ; and this lonely voice expressed it with a sorrowful note that went to his heart. He was still in the stage of nervous suscepti- bility that some days of sickness and an indoor life are apt to leave behind. The solemn ritual at the Chapel had affected him ; the music of the Mass ; the presence of the girls from Carne Hall, and M. Tegner's story of their mother. And now the darkness, and the chill of the night, weighed upon him ; the river affected him, the cheerlessness, the desolation, of it. This voice and its solitary song went with his mood. As he thought upon it, it began again, and he at once related it to the lighted windows of the "First and Last," which served travellers who crossed the river by night as a beacon. The plaint, if he had known, had a touching refrain of " Caersalem," and a land of promise beyond these dark nights of earth. But it was a sealed tongue to the Fiddler. The words, however, did not so much matter ; to him, music was the mother-tongue. It was the old cry of earth to heaven, that the singers, as well as the saints, spend their lives in trying to utter. And he understood. 88 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE " Did you hear ? " said M. Tegner, as they stepped out of the boat. " That is the Httle girl at the Inn." " So she can sing ! " said the Fiddler ; and he began to whistle two or three bars of the melody absently. Ere many days were passed, he had fitted its tune with such effect to his fiddle, that Madame Tegner, after hearing it one night, fell a-weep- ing, her head on her knees, homesick for " La Belle France ! " France, need it be added, was Madame Tegner's heaven. CHAPTER THE TENTH. THE M' .TIC FIDDLE. " To his sweet lute Apollo sung the motions of the spheres, The wondrous order of the stars, whose course divides the years. One result of this Sunday night adventure was that M. Tegner, happening to call in at the " First and Last " one cold afternoon on his way to a music lesson, suggested to Captain Ffoulkes, over a glass of the famous Dieppe smuggled brandy, served only to the elect, that his daughter ought to take singing lessons, and that Mme. Tegner was willing to give them for a very trifling consideration. Now singing is a weakness with every Welsh- man ; Ffoulkes had once had a very sweet tenor himself, and M. Tegner had a very flattering way with him. An hour was actually appointed be- fore he left the Inn, when the pupil one evening shortly was to go to Madame for a first lesson. Mistress Ffoulkes, it may be said, heartily disapproved ; but this only whetted Marged's 89 90 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE desire for it. A girl of spirit, her five wits were quickest when threatened. On that evening, as she stepped into the market-place, she felt the frost in the air, and her pulses danced. The line of familiar dark roofs, the lighted windows, had a friendliness for her ; and above the stars shone like frost-crystals. Her high spirits, her adventurous eyes, turned everything into matter-of-fancy. Youth, after all, is your only idealist, and can turn a dark street into a highway of romance. In this taking she came to the music shop, and felt for the moment a little defeated to see no light in its windows. The place was closed for the night. She went round to the side door, and knocked. At first, no response ! A window showed a glimpse of red, lamp-lit curtains ; and she heard a muffled, but brisk, exchange of voices. She knocked again ; and after a few seconds the door was opened. There stood M. Tegner, who had forgotten to tell Madame of the new pupil's advent. He threw up his hands in an histrionic amaze as he discerned who it was, and then ushered her in to wait until he arranged matters. A faint fragrance of coffee, and a THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 91 casual note struck on a piano, as if some one had been sitting at the instrument and chatting so, instead of actually playing, reached her senses together. That moment of suspense, in that ridiculous little lobby, counted in her own his- tory. That single note was the keynote of a new music and a new emotion. The moment over, and M. Tegner re-appeared in a marvellous good humour with himself. Clearly Madame had been propitious. He ushered the pupil in, with a politeness that to her, used to the rough manners of the Inn, was almost extravagant. The Fiddler it was who had been seated at the piano, and now rose, bowing so that his long black hair fell down in a portentous cataract. Madame, for her part, took an original view of the situation. She made the girl sit in an arm-chair, and after scanning her closely, poured out for her a tiny cup of black coffee. " There ! " she said, " that will gif you cour- age ; for you s'all sing to us." Marged looked round in dismay at the room, and the three people who sat there ; people, as it seemed to her, not only of another race, but of another sphere. Madame's grey eyes were so 92 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE fixed, her thin -lipped mouth had so quizzical a wrinkle at the corners, that her victim feared they were simply bent on amusing themselves. She looked down ; her cheeks flushed, which they were always ready to do. Madame smiled more sympathetically, " What then ? " she added now, " you think we sing to you. Ver' well. That is the singer." She indicated the Fiddler. " His violin is sing like any Malibran. N'est-ce-pas, Josef?" Josef acquiesced, and laughed. The Fiddler laughed softly, with the air of an artist who is sure of his art, and need use no mock modesty. Madame laughed again. They all seemed in great spirits. " Mais, vols tu ! " Madame began, pointing to the fiddle in a corner. The Fiddler, without more ado, lifted it on to a chair, and opened it, Madame took her place at the piano, and struck a few richly prelusive chords. Then Marged tasted her coffee : it was nectar. The walls of the room fell away. Her ears were her eyes ; she lost sense of present time and space. The Fiddle sang ; and a hundred shut doors seemed to open. Into one she found her way; THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 93 one opening in a wide staircase, up which she went. Suddenly a gust of wind swept her feet from under her ; her head reeled ; she shut her eyes fast, but it was no use. The garden of a summer night, full of roses ; this is what her closed eyes saw. At her side walked one, a lover, whose words made her afraid. His words grew passionate ; he drew her closer. It was — Andrer ? His lips brushed her cheek. Phew ; they were cold as death ! An abrupt chord ; a harsh note of evil sounded. The gardens had vanished. The music had changed to a march. Through dark streets she marched with a multitude of melancholy folk dressed in black. But as the soldiers returning from burying one of their file play their liveliest tunes, so to this sad music a merry succeeded. A jig, a gavotte, a reel, in rapid succession : all the world seemed to be dancing. But particularly one little man, dressed in motley, and spectacled, who took up a larger and larger part of the scene. And when the dance ended, he was still before her, his small head, covered with bristly grey hair, drooping ; his motley changed into plain black ; his spectacles gazing benignly upon her. A last 94 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE movement ; pensive, retrospective, and the music was over. She drew a long sigh, and returned to the present surroundings of the little French parlour. The Fiddler was calmly putting down his fiddle, as if nothing had happened. As he moved across the line of the candle light, betwixt the candles that lit the piano, and M. Tegner, she recognised that she had been staring, uncon- sciously all the time, at the latter gentleman. The movement of the Fiddler's bow and bowing arm had cast a flickering shadow on his face and form : in short, M. Tegner himself was the little dancing man. But as for her romance — her first romance ; it had lasted a brief five minutes, and it was all over. But the strange thing was, that the Fiddler's art had done for Andrer what he had not yet succeeded in doing for himself. It had made him into a warmly human, a wooing, a conscious lover. As for the Fiddler himself, her feeling for him was dif- ferent. He fascinated her by his fiddling and his unfathomable eyes ; and yet, he left her heart cold ! But the music was done, the spell broken. THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 95 She was standing, ere she knew it, at Mme. Tegner's side, by the piano ; and trying to sing the notes that her mistress struck, and feeling that she failed dismally. Fortunately, the master magician, the Fiddler, and his dancing puppet, M. Tegner, had left the room. She was still thinking of what she had heard, instead of the music before her ; so that a certain asperity crept soon into Madame's comments : " You have a voice — yes ! But you use it — like a pig ! That is how pigs sing, all in the throat ! " For half-an-hour she struggled on, feeling that she was a fool ; disappointed with her- self, dismayed, mortified. She had got behind the scenes, and saw the machinery of her paradise. As it happened, whether by design or no, the Fiddler descended the stairs in hat and cloak as she was being ushered out by Madame. He offered to escort her home, in spite of Mme. Tegner's almost hysterical protests. " You will catch your death — on such a night — a ! All men are silly ; mais you are, the silly most ! " and so forth. 96 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE When the pair were passing up Seagate- Without : " Is Madame seem so difficult in the sing- ing ? " he asked. " It is take so long, long time to sing — as we say — parfaitejnent" She pouted a girl's " Yes ! I suppose ! " " But at the last," he continued, " if so Mamzelle is sing as the gr'reat ones — as Grisi, or Malibran, the world is at the feet then : London, Paris, Milan! in the stead of this dirty town — pah ! " At this point, her concern at hearing him depreciate the Seagate, which she secretly found so interesting, with its small shops and their wares, was replaced by a cold thrill as she caught sight of a venerable figure toddling up the street before them. It was Three-Quarter Willim. " Oh," she says, at this, " the night is very raw, M'sieur ! Will you not go back ? " He shook his head. " I care not : Madame is foolish about me ! " " But," she said again, " see — that old man ; he is a very sly old man ; I 'm afraid of him ! " The Fiddler laughed : " But then — what can he do?" THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 97 He persisted in passing Three - Quarter Willim, and only left her at the very door of the Inn, with a glance that was almost tender, and with an extra flourish of his Florentine hat, by way of defiance to all meddling old men. CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH. THREE-QUARTER WILLIM'S DELIVERANCE. Three-Quarter Willim duly reached his destined corner by the fire in the back-room at the First and Last, and sighed with satisfac- tion as he laid aside his stick, following the sigh by a grunt of unmistakable significance. " What is it, Willim ? " asked the Innkeeper. " Is it — is it Jemmy's wife ? " said the Verger. Mrs Jemmy had lately disappeared from her home, and from Jemmy (who was given to his cups), with a gentleman from Tyneside. " Wey, Willim — get your glass filled, and your chorchworden gannin' ! " said Mistor Fostor, with robustious cheerfulness. " I wad as soon heor Three-Quarter Willim as read the Keelman's gossup in the Humbrd Mer- cury ! " he further remarked to the company. " Willim 's fine at a morder ! I never heord a better than the morder of auld Mistress 98 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 99 Chorlton, as he telled it in that varry chair one night ! " " Yes," said the Verger reflectively : " that was a varry pretty piece of newspaper. I can see it as plain as if it was in print in the Mercury ! " He drew imaginary letters with his long pipe-stem in the air before him, and spelt them out deliberately, in the clerical sing- song he affected — "TARRIBLE MORDER AT BLACKHEUGH! " FLIGHT OF THE MORDEREK ! ! "DISCOVERY OF THE COAL-PICK WITH WHICH THE BLUIDY DEED WAS DONE ! 1 ! " He took so long to spell this out, with a conscientious particularity, and a literalness defying all interruption, that Captain Ffoulkes, whose wits moved quicker than his company's, said, half in an " aside," ere the Verger had quite ended : "That's an old tale now. If Willim's a walking newspaper, he has some news. Now, WiUim ! " loo THE FIDDLER OF CARNE Three-Quarter WilHm put his head slightly on one side, as he looked round at the speaker, and gravely pointed his pipe at him : " Cap'n, it consarns you ! " He said this in a way to suggest untold depths of revelation, preserved in the interior of his chronicler's historical treasury. " Concerns me ? " " Consarns you, Cap'n Fox ! " Captain Ffoulkes laughed, with the easy con- science of a man who felt his sins of omission and commission to be fairly and securely hidden. " Out with it, man ! I haven't murdered any- body this long while ; and the last was a canni- bal on St Joseph's island, — yes indeed ! and his eye said as plain as need be, ' I '11 have a cut off you. Captain, for me and my missus ! ' " Three-Quarter Willim did not like this frivolity. " I once had a doughter mysel'," he began, with an apparent inconsequence. The Innkeeper, still with much unconcern, received an empty tumbler from the nearest customer, and proceeded to replenish it. Meanwhile, a foolish young man, Willim's own nephew, Tom, who had been imbibing so fast THE FIDDLER OF CARNE loi that he lost his proper respect for his elders, began to sing suddenly : " Onjj, Hjohat'syor ne-ivs the day, Mr Mayor, Mr Mayor? And Huhat 's yor nezvs the day. Mi star Mayor ? The folks of Came, they say. Want to tak" --wor ^ay aiuay, And ye canna say them nay. Mist or Mayor ! " " I once had a doughter mysel', and I ken well what lassies are." Three- Quarter Willim went on now, deliberately, being fairly started in his way. " Now, I waant to ask you, Cap'n Ffoulkes, as twix' man and man, if ye think yon Frenchy a fit charrakter for your doughter to be seen wi' after dark in the Seagate ? " Here he paused, and took a judicial gulp from his tumbler. " Frenchy — what Frenchy ? " " Why, whae but yon Fiddlor ? " " Oh, him ! Why he 's no Frenchman, Willim ! " "If he is not a Frenchy, he is summat else wot he oughtn't to be ! " " Good — varry good reas'ning ! " here said Mistor Fostor, in support of this contention. " And Qeordie Reed himseV, Will send Mounseer to hell. And ye canna stop him -well, Mistor Mayor ! " sang again the irrepressible Tom, producing 102 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE another verse of the sanguinary ballad of the Men of Carne, and their valiant demeanour on the high seas. " Frenchy or nigger, Jew or 'Gyptian ! " pur- sued Willim, undeterred, " is yon Fiddlor fit company for the likes of any of hus, — much less for the bit lassie, whae we 've aal heard play the panner upstairs ? " The whole company shook its head, " Why, Willim, what 's the matter wi' the man ? " " Mattor, Cap'n, mattor ! I '11 syune tell ye the mattor." " Fiddling 's no sin, if ye fiddle well ! — if that 's what you 're after ? " " Let that pass, Cap'n. But I '11 put a quest'n to the comp'ny : Did ivor anyone of ye ivor so much as heor the black-a-vist rascal sae much as say a single wor-rd to anyone of ye ? Now, that 's a funny thing ! " " Ay, ay ! " said Mistor Fostor. " If the beggar 's a dummy, let him say sae like a man ! " The Innkeeper exploded : " If the man 's dumb let him speak ! Oh, Fostor, Fostor ! What a bishop ! And you full of my best Dieppe ' too ! " THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 103 This produced a temporary lull in the general feeling against the subject of the discussion. Perceiving that he had lost ground somewhat, Three-Quarter Willim roused himself for a still more convincing line of argument. He spat out an imaginary straw from his lips, as a pre- liminary — "P'ff— p'ff!" He always did this when a great occasion arose, and his faculties needed to be at their best. " I saw him on Sundie night, and I saw him again the night — in the Seagate — ay," he added very solemnly, " walking with the Cap'n's daughter, " " She is just come in ! " said the Captain callously ; " I hear the missus at her i' the kitchen ! " Three-Quarter Willim ignored the interrup- tion. "And I said to myself, said I, 'That face has seen you before, Willim Robson ; or one varry like it.' So, I casts about in my memorry. " Here the old gentleman became much excited, laid down his pipe at the hearthside, and arose from his seat. So standing, he turned his back 104 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE to the fire ; and he spat out three imaginary straws this time, as he faced the company, — " P'ff— p'ff— p'ff. " The pause had its effect. Everybody was in suspense to know what the recesses of so venerable and well -stocked a memory were about to unfold. "It was my thord and last voyage to the East Indies," said he, at length, measuring every word : " my thord and last. We sailed from the port o' Leith. At the last few minutes, one of oor crew slipped oot of sight, and we shipped a lang lean dark man in 's place, to sarve aft. He said he was a Hielandman frae Kelso, — Thurso, I mean : but he was nae Scot, Hieland or Lowland ! " " What was he, WilHm — a Welshman ?" Cap- tain Ffoulkes meant to be ironical ; but the point failed of its effect. " He was — he was " here Willim lowered his voice mysteriously, and stooped a little, to give his continuation more oratorical force — " a dummy ! " " Howts, Willim," said the Verger, forgetting his dignity, " aa thowt ye were commin' oot wi' a sperrit at the varry least o 't ! " THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 105 " A dummy ! " iterated the narrator, severely. " I never heard tell of a dumb seaman, all my years at sea," said Captain Ffoulkes at this. " He warn't much good, Willim ? " " He was the divil up aloft 1 " said the other. " 'Tis like a tom-cat he could straddle the cross- trees in the coorsest sea that runs ! Our bos'n was a Cockney born ; he says, one tarrible day when we had sent the dummy aloft, and the sea swallering itself, and the lightnin' curlin' like snakes in the topmast, — hopin' the beast would singe, — he says, as he keps his eye on him, ' Ee must have an inwisible tail,' he says ! " "Rather a curiosity — a sailor wi' a tail!" commented Willim's foolish nephew, with a giggle. " Pigtails they did have, and not so long ago ! " said the Captain. " But what come of the poor devil ? " " Well," continued the tale-teller, " the weather grew coorse and coorser on us, after that ; and the crew set it doon aal to the dummy ; said he was Judas, the Flying Dutchman, or summat uncanny ! Ye see, ma lads — they thowt he wouldn't could speak, tho' he kenned how ! So I detormined to have him open his beggorin' io6 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE lips, at the end o 't. One daay, I called him up, and spoke him plain — ' Ef ye dinnot and winnot speak, I '11 rope-end ye, ye fause dummy 'at ye are ! ' But no ! not a word ! So I gave him rope's-end and wator for a week, and put the irons on him. But one mornin' when they went to look, beggor ! he was gone ! Ay, clear vam- oosed ! And fine weather we had aal the rest on that v'yage," " I hope the poor devil won't have it out with you in Kingdom-Come ! " said the Innkeeper. " Seems to me, he has a case ! But where does the Fiddler come in ? " " That 's it," said Willim, with culminating emphasis — " That 's it : the rascal was the varry moral on the Fiddlor ! — the varry moral. And both dummies ! " he added, with a final stroke, as he resumed his seat, " both dummies ! " " What does Holy Writ itself tell us ? " queried the Verger, when this had duly saturated the imagination of the whole assemblage. " It 's possessed wi' divils and an' evil sperrits, a'most aal the dummies in it are ! " " I say nowt about the Beuk," said Willim, determined to have the completing touch, and to add the moral to his own tale : " but take THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 107 vvarnin' frae an auld friend, Cap'n ; and dinnot let young Miss near that black man ! " The Captain laughed indulgently : " Well, he can't come in to-night," he said ; " for there 's the clock striking eleven ! 'Tis time we got to bed, especially old gentlemen of degree like Three-Quarter Willim. " The company thereupon dispersed, but each member of it carried home his own version of Three-Ouarter Willim's little tale. CHAPTER THE TWELFTH. MISTRESS FFOULKES SPEAKS. It was old Martinmas Day, and Mistress Ffoulkes was engaged in her cavernous kitchen, preparing for the Martinmas supper of the retired sea-captains and river pilots of Carne. In spite of her infirmities, to which, indeed, she gave a certain robustious effect, her minis- trations in the huge burnished apartment con- veyed as convincing a picture of life, and of the activities that go to maintain it, as one could well desire. Outside, the November gloom might seem to savour of mortality ; but therein lay only an added glory for the Inn-kitchen, since it gave the enormous fire that burned and red- lit the place every opportunity of making its glow tell. In its full blaze, but at a sufficient distance for comfort. Mistress Ffoulkes sat in a chair that io8 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 109 had been placed by the clean-scoured kitchen table, itself about an acre in extent. Therefrom she directed operations, inspected the appearances and proportions of flour, seasoning, spices, and so forth ; the trussing of a goose; the dismembering of a hare for a pie; and other such phenomena incidental to the preparing of a feast. Surrounded by such signs. Mistress Ffoulkes was well in her element, and in thorough good humour ; and a handsome old lady she looked. But now, O Kitchen-muse, sing the charms of Marged Ffoulkes, who stood at the remoter end of the table, the sleeves of her lilac print frock turned up above the elbows, her pretty arms kissed by insensible flour, her fingers caressing unfeeling flakes of pastry. Ah me ; it is given to one to see such arms so appetisingly engaged only once in a life-time. For this is the age of drawing-rooms ; and the Kitchen-muse is out of date. The sweet fragrance of baking bread ; the noble odours of roasted meats before the fire ; the promise of an open oven-door : these things Marged might, and did, find good ; but she will probably be the poorer, in the stand- ard of heroines, for my having said so. no THE FIDDLER OF CARNE In the very midst of these unheroinic occu- pations, resounded a knock at the back-door that admitted the more intimate friends of the house, through a sort of mysterious catacombs, from the riverside. It was young Andrer who entered, passing out of the shadow of the doorway into the red hght of the fire. There he paused, in a half- bashful attitude that was picturesque enough, as his eye rested on Marged. Mrs Ffoulkes hailed him with great heartiness. " Ay," said the older woman, giving a nod of the head backwards towards the younger, " look at her ! Makin' a hare-pasty, she is, for the pilots' supper. She is not sic a bad hussy, if she wad be content wi' fillin' other people's mouths, in place o' elways opening her own ower that panner ! " " She can do baith, it seems, " said young Andrer adroitly. " Auld sangs and hare-pasties, I like them baith varry well ! " " Nae doobt ! " said Mistress Ffoulkes : " auld sangs like ' Bonnie Bobby Shaftoe ' is fine ; but this new-fangled way of screaming, now we go up, now we come down — the same as she is learning from them Tegners — that's what I THE FIDDLER OF CAR NE in canna abide. It 's aal that Fiddlor : he 's sent the Cap'n crazy, like the rest o' them ! " " They say he can play, sae as to make your mouth run to hear ! " said he at this. " An' him a dummy! He's a bit o' a myst'ry. Mistress Fox." " Too myster'ous for me," she said drily. " Dummy or no, he seems to have plenty to say eftor dark i' the Seagate — hey, Marged —hey?" The shaft took more effect than the old lady intended. The second " hey," in fact, was brutal. It was uttered with a sarcastic unction, and a harsh pitch of the voice, that made it insulting. The girl did not trust herself to speak. She flushed a combative red ; her eyes darted de- fiance, and two tears half-started in them. Ashamed of this, she vigorously swept the flour from her hands ; turned, with one pretty abashed glance at young Andrer, and was gone. Mistress Ffoulkes, her back being turned, heard the rustle, looked round and saw what had occurred. " Eftor her, Andrer ! eftor her ! " said the wily old woman. " Ye '11 can saay ye dinnot 112 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE believe what they saay about her and the Fiddlor ! " " Neither I do," said Andrer chivalrously, hurrying off in his turn. He caught her in the long room upstairs, crouched on the old couch there, her head in her hands. Fortunately for her pursuer, he was still for her mainly her old playmate and schoolfellow. He knelt beside her there. " Never mind what they say ; I '11 swear it 's a lie either way," he consoled, with a sudden expansion of his usual moral code, for he was one of the most truthful of creatures. " They are all against me, and that unlucky Fiddler," she cried, " and him not able to say a word for himself. Cruel ! they are cruel, cruel, cruel ! " " Never mind," he said again, and put his arm round her neck in the sheerest schoolboy fashion. " You was always friends with me, wasn't ye, Marg'd?" She turned, threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him impulsively. " Ye will be good to me, won't ye, Andrer ; — and ye will stand up for them that 's wronged, always ? " THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 113 " Always," he said fervently. He kissed her in his turn, on her red lips, and that she did not object to. But when he caught one of her arms, still shaded with the white dust of the flour, here and there in flakes and patches, and went on to kiss that too, she started up and threw him ofl" with an alacrity that astonished him. For she had asked her question as of a bon camarade, an old play-fellow, a loyal friend ; he had answered as a lover. She sped out of this room too, still more disturbed than before, crying : "O Andrer, I thought— I thought!" He heard no more, as she vanished through the doorway, on the way to her own sanctum upstairs. Whatever his errand was, he did not go back to the kitchen and Mistress Ffoulkes. He let himself out quietly by the side-door in the alley, and so went his way, with the foolish expression that an inexperienced lover is apt to wear at such first rebuffs. But the presence of Marged, as she stood in the red firelight, and then again, as she turned round in the arm-chair and kissed him ; of Marged, her tearful eyes, so full of FI 114 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE vivid sable gleams, her lips so red, so poutingly indignant, and her soft, rounded, flour-dusted arms, seemed to rise up amid the familiar ap- pearances of everything he looked at, and to be reflected in the water as he rowed back to Carne Quay. And he said more than once : " Damn that Fiddler : he shan't have her." And once again he set his hopes fondly on the coming festival of St Andrew's night. He did not know that by this Marged was standing at her window, which commanded the ferry from on high, watching his boat. Till now she had worn her hair down in long dark tresses, that hung prettily about her shoulders. But now, as she stood there, she was gathering them up experimentally, and twisting and coiling them vigorously around her head. The movements of her hands were abrupt, even angry ; but it was a kind of anger that in a maid is often half coy. It showed the sudden consciousness of the woman in her, against which she rebelled, and which was called out by the state of war she had got into, as well as by love. What her gestures said, practically, was : THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 115 " Ah, if I were a man, — if I were a man ! " She had been struck by the weight of Andrer's arm, as she threw him off and fled from him. How good to be so strong, or, next best ! — how good to have one so strong as a protector ! She felt at once indignant with him, and yet strangely exhilarated, as she thought of his kiss. She was at once angry with him, and yet, — yet grateful to him for caring for her so fervently. She yearned for affection, and so little of it came to her share. She wished to have a lover, but such a lover as only a maiden imagines, all compact of fire and angelic, untainted chivalry. Something of a maiden's inexperience, and a good deal of a maiden's fierceness, was in all this. Soon again her thoughts returned to Mistress Ffoulkes' quip about the Fiddler, And again, she wished she were — everything she was not ! She wished she could go away, — to the southern lands the Fiddler spoke of And then, as she saw a blunt and battered collier toiling slowly, with brown sails spread, down the river, she realised how inextricably her heart-strings were tied up in the familiar surroundings of the Inn and the waterside, the Seagate, Came Quay, ii6 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE and the rest. Her heart was there : her fancy craved to travel. Her mind, in fact, was torn by cross emotions ; and in trying to assort them, and wishing to be a man, she grew of a sudden, without quite knowing it, into a woman. CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH. CARNE HALL. She did not return to the hare-pasty; but asserted her newly attained independence by crossing the ferry, and making her way through the purHeus of Carne Quay, to the seashore north of the harbour, a lonely stretch of sands backed by lonelier rolling sand-dunes. The gloom of the day suited her mood. She wandered on, humming moodily to herself snatches of old songs, and some of those newer melodies she had succeeded in remem- bering from hearing them on the fiddle. A few sea-birds swooped and dipped near her now and again ; once, a black dog barked and ran out on to the sands from the sand-dunes, came towards her, then faltered, turned, and ran back again. The dog's disappearance left the sombre sea- scape lonelier than before. At times the gloom gathered ahead of her in a dark cloud, that 117 ii8 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE rested on the sand, and seemed to have an al- most human form, giant-like, threatening. But as she came nearer, these vague genii — for they really assumed an amorphous life of their own, expressing the spirit of the day as nothing else could — gradually disappeared, or retreated to the sand-dunes, or to the sea. These glooms, these giants of the sea-waste, gathered number as she went ; but she felt a pride at leaving home behind, and she pressed on. She must have walked some three miles along the beach, where, latterly, the only life was in some short abrupt wave which the still sea threw up at her feet, when, at length, she felt herself tired and hungry, and paused, look- ing around for some place to rest. The sea-gloom had encircled her by this in a narrow ring of only some dozen yards in diameter. This ring, at the point where she paused, included some portions of an old sea- wall, almost covered up and obliterated by the drifting of the sand. Under this had been constructed a primitive bathing-box of canvas, in the soft sand ; entering its low door, and sinking on a sandy plank that served as a seat, she immediately fell asleep. THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 119 Broken dreams came to her as she slept. She found herself walking in the midst of gaily- dressed people upon a green lawn, with gardens around, and a palatial mansion beyond. She looked in vain for some familiar face among them, and so entered the house, and wandered through one stately room after another. In one, a table was spread with silver dishes, white napery, and flowers. Ah, how hungry she was! Just as she was uncovering a dish some one called out with a terrific shout, and she started up, confused at her surroundings. Thereupon she saw that a black dog, the same she had encountered earlier in her wanderings, had put his head in under the canvas flap that served as a door. As she sat up, he withdrew, gave one brief bark, and fled. Evidently it was another such bark that had disturbed her sleep. Startled, chilled, and thrice uncomfortable, she found on emerging a slight breeze stirring, and saw that the gloom was dispersing. Her circle of sight was so far enlarged that she per- ceived, beyond the drifted and ruined masonry of the wall, dim shapes of trees and shrubs, evidently adorning some large terraced garden, the lowest terrace of which was half-covered up 120 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE with sand. A minute or two more, and some larger, more definite object showed distantly through the clearing fog. It was a mansion, built in pillared and porticoed magnificence, which gradually disclosed itself, standing back in solitary state and melancholy unexpected- ness about a quarter of a mile from the sea- shore. A palace out of place ! A more stately and august design you shall hardly find among all the great houses of Inigo Jones, that master of his art, who designed it. A lofty pile served as its centre, with an array of columns — exquis- itely set, divinely proportioned, and approached by three simultaneous flights of steps, fit to give a generous entrance to troops and battalions of guests. The immense portico easily received these steps, and opened palatial doors to them. Opened ? — it should rather be said, closed ; for a closer view showed they had clearly not been opened for a long period, and that some other entrance must now be used by its inmates. Evidently the central pile was hardly in- habited. On either hand, two less lofty wings were connected with it by long crescents of THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 121 severe masonry, again supported on pillars, and forming two classic cloisters. Each of these wings was spacious enough to hold, with space to spare, a large household. The austere state of the whole building filled our one solitary spectator with wonder and sigh- ing curiosity. She stood there in a breach of the sea wall, gazing at it in profound amaze ; trying to construct for herself the life of the people who lived there ; recalling fitfully some of the traditions and scandals that had leaked out of its ruinous magnificences. Came Hall was well known to every one in the Came region ; but to most people, as to her, it was only known in its landward aspect, as seen from the highway road running north from Came Quay to Hartwick Sands, and skirting its demesne. It was new to her on this side. She stood long; taking note of the long avenues of stunted, sea-warped elms stretching out of sight to north and south, and of the neglected gardens, originally intended to carry out and enhance the architectural design of the house itself. So looking, a sunk road, leading down to the seashore, not a hundred yards from where she stood, reminded her that her quickest 122 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE way home again was by the Hartwick highway beyond the park, and not by the sea. She be- gan to feel an exquisite desire for familiar faces, houses, and men, something more human than the seascape and this cold, great house. Making her way to the sunk road, she found, on adventuring up it, that the cutting was more than half-filled with sand. At one point, when she had passed under a graceful bridge, and come nearly in a line with the out- posts of the right wing of the house, the side of the road had fallen in ; and this, together with the blockaded sand, brought her head above the level of the surrounding gardens. As she surmounted this debris, and paused to inspect the surroundings in all their superfluity of desolate spendour, her ear caught a sound of approaching wheels on the gravel before the Hall. She would have been something less than the girl she was if she had not delayed to see what arrival this might be at the deserted house. Aggravatingly enough, just as the head of a grey pony appeared, the soft sand began to sink beneath her feet. She had only time to catch one sure glimpse of the low chaise behind, ere the whole scene was lost to her, as she sank out THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 123 of range. But that one glimpse showed her in the chaise a solitary young man, with long dark hair beneath his hat, brushing the cloak about his shoulders ; and with a vivid patch of green, the green baize of a bag, showing brightly against its black folds. CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH. LADY HENRIETTA. " I care not for these Ladies, That must be wooed and prayed : Give me kind Amaryllis, The wanton country maid ! " Campion. While Marged, feeling unaccountably disturbed at what she had seen, was wearily resuming her way up the sunk lane to the high road from Hartwick to Carne Quay, the Fiddler was lifting his long legs out of the pony chaise, under the scrutiny of three pairs of eyes. One pair, and the most important, were the pale blue eyes of Lady Henrietta, Lord Carne's eldest daughter, who gave a hasty glance to see that the visitor she expected had arrived, and then fled as fast as her slight lameness permitted. The second pair, of a deeper blue, belonged to Lady Philippa, a complacent young person of nineteen, without any of her sister's superfluous sentiment. She stood at a window of a deserted chamber in the central pile, and her glance grew scornful as she gazed. 124 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 125 The youngest of the three girls, Hilda, had more boldly gone to the very side-door by which the chaise was standing and calmly scrutinised the Fiddler through the side-windows of red glass, which gave him a decidedly Mephisto- phelean effect and agreeably impressed the young lady. " I thought it was the Devil come to take Mamma away ! " she observed to Philippa afterwards, alluding to a favourite threat of my Lord's, which his children, too, had learnt to use to their mother. Poor Mamma herself was also at a window in one of the empty upper chambers of the central pile, as the Fiddler might have perceived had he been more ready to take cognisance of things other than his own emotions. But she did not see him for her part, either. She was busily engaged in her one absorbing pastime of catch- ing flies with a large silk handkerchief on the windows of this part of the Hall, which, for some unascertained reason, were infested with these creatures. But, unlike other kinds of game, November saw the supply begin to give out ; and the poor lady was sore put to it to find sufficient sport. In proportion to its difficulty, 126 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE she became more absorbed in its pursuit, in spite of the hindrances which her family sought to interpose. Even now, while the Fiddler was being escorted through the long corridors of the left wing to a faded drawing-room, hung with blue satin, and much decorated in pale azure and gold, she was interrupted by Philippa, who entered the lofty apartment, from one of whose window-seats the fly-hunting was being conducted. " Dear Mamma ! " said the young lady, in a clear and slightly sarcastic tone, looking not at her mother, but at the handle of the door, which had given her some trouble to get it open, " dear Mamma — don't you know that a distinguished visitor has arrived, on Henrietta's invitation ; and he has, very kindly, brought a fiddle with him ? You ought to be in the drawing-room to receive him. It isn't at all proper for Henrietta to be there all alone. Come, dear Mamma ! I can't wait ! " Lady Came looked round. She had an oddly devised head-dress surmounting her plentiful yellow hair, and this had been pushed out of place in the eagerness of her pursuit, which much enhanced the oddity of her expression. THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 127 Moreover, one of her eyes had, at some distant time, been injured, and had no light or sight in its discoloured orb. This came of one of Lord Carne's little pleasantries, indulged in very early in their married life : one of the series which his wit had prompted, and which his wife's wits had suffered by. And yet, as one looked at her, one saw what a comely and attractive girl she once had been, and noted the impress of an inherited grace still lingering in her lustreless features. But, as she turned towards her daughter, from her post on the window-seat, with the yellow silk handkerchief, constituting her sporting gear, in one hand, and looked helplessly at the floor as if inanimate things were apt to become animate, her whole hopeless, fantastical incom- petency might have struck any one with pity. " Where 's Rupert ? " she said, in a disconsolate voice. There was small pity in Philippa's tones, as she looked up calmly at the absurd figure poised there, iterating for all reply to the question : " Come — come ! really, I can't wait." The tone was too peremptory to be withstood. The young lady evidently had a will of her own. 128 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE Her mother, after two separate attempts at different corners of the window-seat, succeeded in ahghting safely on the floor of the room. She went towards the door, with one last regretful look back at the window-panes on which a large fly was buzzing. Five minutes later, and as the Fiddler and Lady Henrietta were overcoming the prelimin- aries of a musical acquaintanceship, difficult enough under the circumstances, the drawing- room door was unceremoniously pushed open. The Fiddler, who was extricating his fiddle from the green bag, looked up uneasily. Henrietta made a gesture of nervous irritation. " There ! " said a clear mischievous voice without, as Lady Came, assisted by a directive push on her shoulder, stumbled vacantly into the room, and then stood, looking round her. When, however, she had apprehended the new- comer, she advanced toward him, with a certain dignity, and inclined her head with a graceful courtesy. " You must pray excuse me ! " she said, and her voice had a melancholy echo in it of great occasions ; " I am suffering from a recent severe loss ! " THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 129 " Why, Mamma," said Henrietta, " what is this ? what do you mean ? " " I have lost my son Rupert ! " she said as she turned again towards the door, and so made her exit, while a ripple of schoolgirlish laughter sounded in the corridor. Henrietta shut the door with emphasis after the departing lady, and slipped the catch as a security against further interruptions, " Chere pauvre Maman!" she said. " II faut, M'sieur, que vous pardonnez une si drole scene. Mon Dieu, qu'il fait sombre ce soir : tiens ! je vais 6gayer un peu les choses ! " She laughed with an eager, excited little laugh, as she went to the fire, lit a wax taper, and proceeded to the grand piano (one, it may be added, of M. Tegner's shipwrecked cargo). Producing a sonata for violin and piano, and seating herself, she had not struck a dozen chords ere the Fiddler perceived she was an accomplished musician. " You see," she said to him presently, out of a running accompaniment, while there came a pause for the violin, " I wanted someone to practise with." For an hour the blue hangings trembled at I 130 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE his music, the gilt naiads on the panels grew pale to hear, and the grand piano felt itself thrilled by a new emotion. As for the pianist, who was still more emotional, the hectic flush on her cheeks grew into a spot like blood, as they ended their last duet, and a knock came on the door. The maid who had ushered the Fiddler in on his arrival, appeared there, in accordance with some order not given by Henrietta, it would seem — " The shay is ready, my leddy ! " Something that sounded almost profane escaped the young lady's lips. The Fiddler, who had a curious despatch in such things, was already putting up his fiddle and preparing to go- She was about to ask him to stay a while longer; then she reflected, and said, in French — " When will you come again ? " The Fiddler was perplexed. He began a polite, but rather unintelligible series of ex- planations, ending with " Vendredi ? " " Friday ? " she said. " Well, yes ! Friday then ! " She rang for the maid. When the Fiddler THE FIDDLER OF C A RNE 131 had got into the chaise for his return home, he thought he saw, as he drove off, a pale face indistinctly showing at a window immediately above him. It was Henrietta, who was gazing sentimentally after him. " Poor fellow ! " she said, " what a romantic face ! " The face haunted her, indeed, for some time to come. But his day's adventures were not yet over. About a mile and a-half outside Carne Quay, a small blacksmith's forge used to stand, posted at the parting of two roads, seaward and landward, so that its light shone far along the former way in the deepening dusk. As the chaise jogged up, the Fiddler thought he recognised a familiar figure against this red light, seen in black relief It was Marged, dragging weary feet homeward. She looked round as the chaise overtook her, and recog- nised the Fiddler, who, touching the driver's shoulder, caused the vehicle to stop. He jumped out, bowing, and pointed with an ex- pressive gloved hand to the chaise. She was about to decline the offer, when the blacksmith, probably thinking that the stopping 132 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE chaise meant something amiss, came to his forge door. Since, then, she was already seen in conference with the Fiddler, what did it matter ? Moreover, there was always her independent spirit, telling her to take her own way. So after a moment's doubt, she jumped into the chaise. " But where is Mamzelle go this afternoon?" asked the Fiddler, as they rode down toward the dark town, and he drew a rug closer over her knees. " Walking by the sea ! " she said, not too graciously ; but she was tired and dispirited, poor child, and rather resented his having been to the Hall. He could hardly have guessed this feeling ; but he said next, more abstractedly (he was always ready to become abstracted) : " I have been giving a music-lesson at Came Hall— to M'lle Henriette ! " " Lady Henrietta ! " she corrected, perversely enough ; " she is proud ; she would be angry if you called her that ! " " She is ver' nice, I think," he said, half to himself — " tres gracieuse ! " Marged said no more. Without any suffi- THE FIDDLER OF C A RNE 133 cient reason, she felt jealous of his having made the acquaintance of this lady, proud or gracious, who would, no doubt, monopolise him hence- forth. When they dismounted at the landing-stage, and were passing down to the ferry-boat under the gleam of the flickering oil-lamp, a young man who was crossing from a neighbouring slip, a pair of oars on his shoulder, started, and let an oar drop. It was Andrer. He went on with downcast head and averted eyes, she noticed ; feeling uneasy and yet a little pleased that he should see her with the Fiddler. But there was trouble already in his face, long ere he had seen her. The end of a dark day, indeed, for the house of Foster ; and the lot and portion of that house were to count differently to young Andrer from this time forth. As the Fiddler bade Marged good-night in the alley by the " First and Last," he said — " I hope Mamzelle is sing, — sing all the time. Madame, she think you have good, — ver' good voice ! " A wave of girlish ambition surged through her, and it was not allayed by his saying, mischievously, as he shifted his 134 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE green bag, the better to shake her hand, the first time he had done so : " Also M'lle — I mean — Lady Henriette, is a good pianiste ! " " I don't like that Lady Henrietta ! " said Marged to herself, as she took off her hat and cloak upstairs, and prepared her tired nerves to meet Mistress Ffoulkes. CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH. THE AFFLICTION OF MISTOR FOSTOR. " Poor thing she is sae sairly She canna live till morn 1 " Kirsty's Complaint. The night before, Mistor Foster had been awakened by his wife, after something like an hour's sleep. He had a regular formula for such occasions. " You always was a heartless woman ; — wakin' a man aftor he has wrought hard aal daay." He grumbled it over, first to himself, then more loudly, so as to make it reach her ear, and with emphasis ; but for once it took no effect. The groans increased momently, so that even his sound slumbers were hopelessly discounted. He sat up at last, lit a candle on the chair at his bedside, looked hazily round the room ; and then, with a profound yawn, turned to his wife, as a still thicker rope of groans untwisted it- self in her frail throat. 135 136 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE " Goodsakes ! " he said, as he watched her, " her insides must be varry teugh to stand such a rivin' ! " Thereafter, getting more used to the noise, and to the near impact of another person's agony, he procured his pipe, which lay ready to his hand, and filled and lit it. He smoked it to a running accompaniment of such mortal sighs and groans, casting a calm and reflective glance now at the sufferer, now at the near circuit of the bed-chamber. The room was a low, confined, raftered one, in which the huge four-poster took up a main part of the small space, leaving only a narrow lane on one side, and all but touching the ceiling with its blue and white chintz curtains. Out of these Mistor Fostor loomed like Jupiter from a cloud, supreme deity of the place. A chimney-piece adorned with china dogs, and a heavy chest of mahogany drawers crowded with similar bric-a-brac, mostly canine, were the two other chief features in the room. To the chest of drawers, in particular, his eyes turned more often than to other objects. When his pipe was finished, the groans still continuing, he dismounted heavily on to the floor. One more THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 137 glance, to make sure that his wife was still sunk in her own sufferings, and he had reached the chest of drawers and gently opened the topmost one. The drawer was filled with the poor woman's best caps and other fal-lals ; but after some careful groping in one corner, Mistor Fostor drew forth a small black velvet bag, from which he extracted with a surprising deftness a key. Kneeling down before the chest, he opened the deep bottom drawer of the chest with this key, and took therefrom a sealed blue-paper packet. His expression, as his finger's closed upon it, was a miracle of subtlety for so stolid a being ; but when he rose again to his feet, and looked round, another expression, still more surprising, suddenly demoralised his heavy features. From the dim enclosure of the bed-curtains, a face, like a death's-head, the skin strained tight over the bony structure, the face of his wife, was looking out at him. She had raised herself slightly to see ; and when she had seen, she fell back ; but she said no word, perhaps because she was too exhausted. However, the mere effect of her face rising thus in witness against him, was enough. He put back the packet, locked 138 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE the drawer, replaced the key, and returned to the bedside. But his demeanour now was quite different to what it had been, and when he spoke to his wife his voice was soft, and sounded even kind : " Div ye want anything, Mary ? " The woman shook her head. " Shall I dout the light ? " he asked again, with lips pursed in readiness above the candle. She nodded. It seemed his doings had revived her. But in the morning she failed to get up, and spoke of the doctor. Many hours elapsed before the doctor, who, like Mistor Fostor, was given to his cups, and to pause at the " First and Last " on his way, was sober enough to arrive. By this it was evening. " r faith, Foster," he said, " I '11 send her a draught to ease the pain ; but she 's going this time. She may last the week out ! But, you know, you 're no nurse for her ! " Young Andrer escorted him afterwards back to the ferry : he had overheard his speech to Mistor Fostor. "Is there nae chance for her, doctor ? " " Not a bit ! she '11 hardly see another Sunday ! Get some woman in. Hold on THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 139 there ! " For the ferry-boat was going. It was as Andrer was turning back that he saw Marged alight from the chaise. The lad, for he was no more, found a neigh- bour to come in ; but he haunted her bedside, and stole in and out, in stockinged feet, bringing useless cups of tea and milk and brandy. His mother showed no sign of recognising these offices until the late afternoon, as the November dusk was already settling down. Then Mrs Waite, the attendant neighbour, had disappeared to drink tea with a friendly caller, and discuss sick-room reminiscences. The sick woman, in her absence, cried out : " Tom ! Tom ! " She was very fond of her masterful husband, in spite of everything, and adored his bulk, and masculine deep bass of authority. " Ow, 'tis only thou, Andrer ! " She put out her hand, and the lad took it. " It is easior with me now," she said ; " but I ken I canna be for varry long — an hoor or two, mebbe ! " The lad could not find words to speak. " Look ye, ma little Dan ; — 'at 's what we used to call ye ! But I 've forgot ! ye 're none I40 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE sae little now ! But ye '11 never be sae big as Foster. He 's what they call a fine man ! " Andrer bowed his head. He, too, admired his father beyond words. " Never ! " pursued the sick woman. " But as I 'm going, 'tis time ye were thinking of gettin' merried soon, Andrer ! That missie of Fox's is a nice lass ; and she '11 have a bit too, they say ! Ask her the first chance. Dinnot let her be. Lassies like to be well set upon ! They dinnot like the hanging-back lads ! " This exhausted her. She had turned on her side ; now she sank in the bed, and lay panting on her back. The terrible groans recommenced. She withdrew her hand, and clenched it in her pain. The agony went on for what seemed to her son an eternity. " O God, O God ! " he kept saying to him- self, shutting the tears resolutely into his eyes, and gripping his knees together. Presently the dying woman came to a little. She cast a piteous glance at him, to see if he was still there. " Hinnies how ! " she said ; " I thowt I was THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 141 gone that time ! Dinnot greet, Andrer. I '11 soon be through with it ! " Thereafter she found voice to add : "If ye marry yon lassie o' Fox's, ye '11 keep an eye on her ! There 's a sly twist o' mis- chief sittin' in the corner of her mouth, I 'm thinkin'. She might be carryin' on if ye was away frae the hoose for lang, look ye ! " Here a sharper pang quickened her thoughts, and suggested perhaps other reflections. " But oh, Andrer," she said, with a last effort, " if she has bairns ye '11 be kind to the poor lass — specialies when they 're on the road ! Yor father wasna varry kind to me, — a heavy hand and a lang airm ! Ah, he was a fine man, Andrer ! Ye '11 never be sic — an ane ! Never ! But what on a fancy is this in my poor heid ? " She gasped out these last words with diffi- culty. Another sentence she began, but so faintly, that he had to rise and lean close over her : it took long ere she could collect her forces sufficiently to speak again ; then she began : " Fostor is not i' the hoose, is he ? I have that to tell ye, Andrer, it's best he sannot 142 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE hear ! " With this, she began a broken narra- tion of her experiences at Carne Hall, when she was a maid to my Lady there. " Ay," she said, " his Lordship took a fancy to me ; he was varry kind to me, varry kind ! — That's why ye have his name — Andrer's his name, and ye were called aftor him ; for 'tis him, not Fostor, is your father ! The three bairns I had tae Fostor all died ! He give Fostor a hun'red poun' to marry me aftor ; and another hun'red to me to keep for ye against when ye should come to need it. An' if ye will luik where I '11 tell ye, ye '11 find the packet in they drawers yonder ! " Thereupon, she gave him instructions how to find the packet, and insisted he should take it now, at once : " Fostor 's a shifty man, times ; and ye couldna saay what he might be aftor ! " The effort to say so much had quite spent her strength. She fell back, as he was grop- ing, dumfoundered, in the drawer for the packet. He held it up at length for her to see, but she was past noticing anything. He went back, and knelt by her, as she was trying to mutter, apparently, some last message. THE FIDDLER OF C A RNE 143 " If — she — has — bairns ! " that was all. As he bent closer, he knew the mortal seal upon her face, by instinct ; and the rattle of the breath as it left the body which rejected the familiar guest. Mistor Fostor had retired earlier in the day, finding the house uncomfortable, to a den that he had had constructed in a corner of the boat- shed. It had been made by simply boarding up a corner of the shed, so as to form a triangular retreat, with a small window to light it, and a large door to give access from without. An old fire - stove, taken out of a dismantled schooner, served to heat it. A desk, and a strong oak seat, with some stained charts, compasses, and an old weather-glass, on the walls, completed the garniture of the place. He called the place his office ; but from the fact that the ink in the bottle was dry, and the solitary quill split, and that the atmosphere, when the stove was active, was apoplectic, it may be inferred that his clerical, like his nautical avocations, were in an agreeably chronic state of abeyance. Here it was Andrer went to tell him the 144 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE fatal news. Mistor Fostor roused himself from an apoplectic dose, and emerged rubbing his eyes. " Well, well ! " he said, " so the auld woman is gone! Did she send me a good-bye?" Andrer scanned him narrowly, and answer- ing, his voice broke with what might be half a sob, half a bitter laugh. " Na ; but she said ye were a fine man to look at!" " Humph ! she wasna sic a fule after all ! Come, lad, and we'll have a dram o' Scots to keep wor hearts up in this sad 'flickshun is come upon us ! " And he led the way to the house. But Andrer did not follow ; but went up into the boat-loft, and sat there on a heap of sails in the dark. Presently Mistor Fostor came to the foot of the steps, with a lantern, and called him. He went down, reluctantly ; and they turned into the lower floor of the boat-house. " Did your mother say onything about your bit portion ? " asked Mistor Fostor. " I have it here, in my pouch ! if that 's what you mean I " said Andrer. THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 145 " Humph ; she might have kinsult' me about ye ! Onything else ? " " Said she would have me marry soon ! " " Ye 'd better look after the lass, then. Three- Quarter Willim seen her walkin' aftor dark in the Seagate wi' yon Fiddlor ! " so saying, he turned away. "A liar, a da !" Andrer was beginning, when he thought of the dead face within, and all that it had kept to tell him at the last. This was only another stroke, small by com- parison. All the world would soon know what he was, and what a stained name he carried. What could Marged care for him when she once knew. Still, still — ah, that Fiddler! It was untrue. That he should walk with her ; and it be talked about by any ale-worm over his cups. It was a lie. Alack, within half-an-hour he saw her cross the dark ferry landing with the very man ! As for Marged, let us add that when she heard of Mistress Foster's death, she was filled with the awe that such news brings to youth- ful fancy. Every time she looked over the K 146 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE river at the red-tiled roof of the Foster house at Carne Quay, she was filled with an over- whelming sorrow for Andrer, and an almost morbid fear of death. Next day, Mistress Ffoulkes told her the rumour, which was already finding its way busily about, of Andrer's being misbegotten. " Ye '11 have to find another mate ! " she concluded. But now that he was in misfortune, Marged felt her love declare hotly for him ; and she vowed to take the first chance of telling him she would marry him. CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH. ON ST ANDREW'S NIGHT. "'Tis time, gudewife, ye did ihe candles light : Till we foot the floor a' St Andrew's night ! " St Andrew was the patron saint of Carne Hall. To his memory the half-ruined chapel in its grounds, long disused, was dedicated ; and every year, according to time-honoured custom, a tenants' supper, followed by country dances, was held at the Hall on the last day of November, which is, in the Church calendar, devoted to St Andrew. It was to this festival that Andrer Foster had invited Marged ; but his mother's death broke that project. When Carne heard that the Fiddler had been to Carne Hall, under the circumstances which we have seen, it said — " Then Willie Westoe may stay at hame on St Andrew's night!" Willie Westoe of Hartwick was the accredited 147 148 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE musician on that occasion. He could fiddle dance tunes like the " Keel Row " against any- one ; and he had this singular merit, that he fiddled the better the drunker he got. Like all true artists, moreover, he was privileged ; and had grown tyrannous through long and unquestioned priority. He laughed at the mere idea of a rival. " I '11 fiddle the beggor for a guinea any daay ; for a guinea, I will ! " The night of St Andrew's came, draughty, dark, cold, and mischievous, with occasional wild splutterings of rain, so that the oil-lamps at the gates of the Hall, and the lanterns along the gravelled drive, and the lights under the gusty colonnade, were blown about uncomfort- ably, and threatened momently to go out. As for the great doors of the Hall, they showed an awkward tendency to throw themselves wide to the night at one moment ; at the next, they would violently fling themselves to, just when some party of guests was entering, so as to cut off the tail — usually consisting of young men with stout faces, red hands, and hesitating dispositions. These additions to his usual duties severely THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 149 strained the temper — already taut — of the gray- haired factotum, Abel, who was acting as porter and doorkeeper to-night. " Come in, come awaay in, ye greet styeg (gander) ! " he said rudely to one halting young yeoman of a Herculean frame and a mouse- like hesitancy. " Come in, or stay oot. We can get on varry well without )'e ! " No one, luckily, thought of taking offence at the old man, whose humour was well known. " Good save 's ! what a night ! " he said, when some of our old acquaintances arrived. " I nevor thought to see ye here, Cap'n Fox, and Miss Fox with ye. It would hae become ye, I wad hae thought, to keep sic slim young missies at hame on sic a night. — That last beer ye sent us is not fit, it isn't ! " Mistor Fostor had ridden up in the same trap with the Innkeeper and his daughter, not being able to resist the occasion, in spite of his recent bereavement. He tried to slink in unobserved amid the throng ; but his bulk betrayed him. In this instance Abel surpassed himself. " Hey, I see ye there, Fostor. Oh, what a canny man. Haad away in. Ye '11 find plenty I50 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE to pick from, if that 's what ye 're after. There 's nothing Hke an eorly start ! " This was a sarcastic suggestion that Mistor Fostor was already in quest of a successor to the late Mistress Fostor, and that materials for a choice were not wanting. He only raised a deprecatory left hand in reply, and hurried out of range as fast as possible. Inside the festive chamber matters were equally disconcerting. The lofty doors opened without any intervening lobby into the hall, which extended its really magnificent propor- tions, between pillared walls, with two galleries overlooking at different heights, the full depth and height of the central pile. Since the date of the fire that had come near to destroying the place half-a-century ago, the wind and rain had had time to study out the weak points in the roof and elsewhere, and to take advantage of them. The pigeons, too, had made the same use of their opportunities, and found their way in. To-night, disturbed by the wind above, and the lights and unusual hubbub below, they flew at intervals across the upper darkness like uneasy spirits. And other sounds, still more disconcerting in their effect, were heard now and again from the THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 151 region of the roof, that kept up a continual uneasy clamour ; sounds like the raising and shutting again of heavy trap-doors, accompanied by a creaking of beams and rafters, and by a moaning without of trees that threatened to grow human under stress of the elements. Now, Carne Hall, and particularly this central deserted part of it, had an uncanny enough reput- ation. There was the tradition, to begin with, that the direct heir to the place always died ere he succeeded ; and, a hundred years ago, the young heir of that day fell, or threw himself, from the lofty gallery above this festal hall, and was picked up dead. My Lady's afflicted wits, too, did not add to the reputation of the house. As the company assembled, and the rows of candles flickered and wavered on the long lines of the supper tables, and the murky and lofty vault of the roof-tree above was filled with dark noises, the greetings that passed had a distinct flavour of the gruesome. " Is 't true whaat they say, that her Leddy- ship has a greet pair o' hobbles on her feet, to keep her frae rinnin' awaay frae the house ? " " I s'ouldn't wonder ! Ugh, hinnies, I 'm glad 152 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE it's Willie Westoe, and not that Fiddlor frae Carne, that 's playin' the night ! " Willie Westoe was standing up on the little dais reserved for the musicians, and looking at the preparations made for his comfort ; two tall candles, to wit, and one huge tankard of ale, laced with rum, called " Pit - punch." The same beverage, supplied in a hogshead for the occasion, from the cellars of the *' First and Last," coursed in a generous flood along the tables, and mountains of cold meat, pasties, and other valiant comestibles, barri- caded the company against the discomforts of the night, and the draughts that played coldly about the place. At a side table, beneath a row of the marble columns carried up at either side of the hall. Captain Ffoulkes presided over a maritime con- tingent of guests from Carne ; and Marged sat by him, feeling desolate in Andrer's absence, and silently collected half-childish, half-superstitious impressions of this august, unhomely interior of the mansion, whose seaward aspect had so affected her fancy. To be taken to St Andrew's supper at Carne Hall for the first time was an event in the life of a girl. It meant that hence- THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 153 forth she was to have the privileges of a marriage- able maid. Andrer would have been an ideal companion to induct her into the mysteries of the danc- ing floor, after supper, had not his mother's death intervened. Mistor Fostor, as we have seen, was unable to resist the occasion ; dressed in decent widower's black broadcloth, looking grave when humour was to the fore, and taking a quiet seat where he could eat and drink silently, he contrived to enjoy himself without being much noticed. Once in a while he cast a placid glance at Marged Ffoulkes, a pretty figure among the seamen and robust hoydens, in her black and lilac frock ; whose subdued colours were meant as a delicate token of the relations betwixt the Fostor and Ffoulkes houses, and of the bereave- ment that had befallen the former. Supper over, and the toasts of Lord Came and his family being proposed, the three girls, as representing the family in my Lord's absence, came to the front of the lower gallery overhang- ing the hall, and bowed their acknowledgments. The clearing of the tables thereafter raised the ancient dust of the place, so that the candles blinked in a gusty cloud. But at the first 154 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE squeak of Willie VVestoe's fiddle, the disorder ended, or rather re-shaped itself into the more orderly disorder of the opening dance, which was always danced to the tune of the " Keel Row." The apparition of the three young ladies in the lower gallery interested Marged so much, that her eyes were still vainly climbing up there when a partner claimed her hand. As the night wore on, and Willie Westoe's fiddle grew warm, and the dancers' feet red-hot, the storm without increased to a pitch that was finely proportionate. Gust after gust shook the walls till the windows rattled again ; and the moans and wailings of the wind in the roof- tree had become first like the howls and shrieks of an endless multitude of demons of the air, and then like the trampling of waves, and the tearing of giant hands. Those whose lot it was to sit coldly by and watch the dancing, grew alarmed early at these noises, and listened with increasing fear and trembling. Willie Westoe himself found it hard to make his music heard, and repaired so frequently to the tankard of Pit-punch that his fiddle overran its time, and more than once THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 155 squeaked a discord. Then the dancers lost their footing, and exclaimed upon him : "Time, Willie, time!" It became the refrain on all sides. This, to a man of Willie's temper, was not to be tolerated. He stopped to protest ; he stood up so un- steadily that he fell against the table supplying his lights and refreshment, tipped it over, and himself sank by it, as if pulled down by some invisible hand ; while from his fiddle came a scream — the anguish of catgut, the snap of strings. The dancers went on for a turn ; then paused in mid-floor. During this pause the storm fortified itself, and swept upon the Hall with all its terrors thrice increased. Immediately after the fiddle had cried out, there sounded, as it were, an ironic echo from above, the crash apparently of breaking glass ; and this was the beginning of a series of tremendous buffets that the wind dealt roof and walls. To Marged, standing there, on her partner's arm, it seemed that Willie's overthrow was a consequence, in some sort, of this assault. At any rate, it was clear he would fiddle no more to-night, and dismay seized the dancers one and all. 156 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE The storm went on, visibly gathering fury. It seemed to come in bounds and leaps, and to throw itself upon the seaward front of the house, hallooing like some giantesque huntsman calling on his hounds. At the height of this madness, there came a blast like the end of all things, threw the doors wide asunder, and swept into the hall with a fury that made the girls scream and bend their heads, while half the candles were blown out, and the rest shivered with only a last blue half-inch of flame upon their wicks. When the frightened dancers, and the by- standers, had a little recovered, as the blast abated for a breathing space, and the unex- tinguished lights revived uncertainly, they saw that a tall dark figure, Willie Westoe's pre- destined rival, cloaked and hatted, his green bag under his arm, stood facing them in the dark space betwixt the open doors. Lest this sudden entrance should seem too strange, let it be told how simply it came about. The Fiddler had been asked by Lady Henrietta to stay on for the evening's entertainment, after one of their usual weekly lessons of that after- noon. He made thus one of the house party in THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 157 the gallery upstairs, where he sat uncomfortably enough and dreadfully bored, behind Lady Henrietta. On the collapse of Willie Westoe, Philippa, who sat in the front of the gallery, looking down at the scene below, said : " Why doesn't M'sieur go and fiddle to the poor things down there ? " she added, in an aside to Hilda, — " where his proper place is ! " The Fiddler was only too delighted to take advantage of the diversion, and Henrietta acquiescing, he rose to go. But she followed him to the top of the staircase : " Your fiddle is in the drawing-room ! Per- haps you had better go round by the quad, and enter by the front doors ! " she indicated them with a waved hand ; " else the people might think it strange, you see ! Take hat and cloak, because of the storm outside ! " Only the first clause of these directions were audible even to Philippa's sharp ears. The rest was spoken softly, almost tenderly ; though it showed a concern, it may seem, rather for the proprieties, than for his comfort. This as it may be, the Fiddler duly made his entry, and, after a moment's consternation, during which Abel chuckled audibly with 158 THE FIDDLER OF CAR NE delight, Captain Ffoulkes stepped forward, and the dancing couples, seeing a possibility of a new supply of music, took heart of grace to abet his petition. Marged, on the arm of Jack Heugh, a shy but stalwart young yeoman of Hartwick, who had pursued her in vain all the evening until this dance, eagerly urged him forward. " He can make his fiddle all but talk ! " she whispered. " Nae doubt," said Jack, with a sagacious smirk ; " but can he play a jig ? Can he play the ' Keel Row,' and ' The Three Tykes ' ? " CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH. "THE THREE TYKES." '■ I canna stand they tunes frae France, The ladies likes ; I d have them play up fit to dance, ' The Three fond Tykes ' ! " After some preliminary skirmishes, some tunings up, and some strident harmonics, the Fiddler, sitting in the seat of Willie Westoe, struck at length into a lively tune that might be a Polish jig. But, though they admitted its "go," the dancers failed altogether to master its movement and its erratic rhythm. " ' The Three Tykes ' ! " then called out some bolder spirits. " Tell him to gie us ' The Three Tykes ' ! " The Fiddler was willing to play anything. He had none of Willie's professional jealousy. But, alack ! he knew not " The Three Tykes." " W'histle it to him. Jemmy ! " someone suggested. Jemmy, nothing loth, stepped forward to the 159 i6o THE FIDDLER OF CARNE foot of the musical dais, on which, behind the two tall fluttering candles, sat the Fiddler. Jem was a lively youth, of some forty-five summers — a bachelor, fond of dancing and the maidens it enabled him to seize by the waist. He had a clean shaven face, and rosy gills ; and looked about twenty. When he whistled, his whole face, even his eyebrows, moved in concert with his lips ; and one eyebrow had a trick of raising itself at intervals for the space of a few bars, that was very interesting to the simple-minded observer. Now, " The Three Tykes," as everyone knows, is one of the liveliest of airs ; and Jemmy's ardour was according. He became so absorbed in it, that even his elbows and shoulders shrugged themselves in sympathy ; and when, after only a few bars, the unmistakable divine wail of the catgut joined itself to his brisk whistle, showing that the Fiddler had caught the tune, Jemmy held his breath to listen, but his arms still moved in an involuntary accom- paniment. Soon the spirit of it — for the Fiddler played with a most convincing rhythm, seized Jemmy still more irresistibly. He had bent forward at first, in his eagerness to test THE FIDDLER OF CARNE i6i the correctness of the Fiddler's bowing ; and so standing, his head slightly on one side, his lips pursed, his arms going, he made an excellent index to the music, which even a deaf man could have understood. But now, his left foot began to tap in unwitting time to the music, and ere many more bars had passed, his other foot had followed suit ; from this the transition to the full step of the jig was a matter of course. It did not take a second for the dancers at large, who all had their eyes on him, to take his cue. Before the Fiddler had been fiddling five minutes, every foot was going — the whole floor danced. As he went on, the Fiddler slightly quickened the time of his playing, so that the dance went fast and faster ; and the pace soon told upon the weaker maids, who dropped out with their partners — usually in the near neighbourhood of the table, whereon tankards of Pit-punch stood in tempting array. This masterful beverage enabled the spell of the fiddle, after a very few moments' pause, to re-assert itself. And when " The Three Tykes " had played their part, the Fiddler very adroitly shifted to the tune of L i62 THE FIDDLER OF CAR NE an old Border jig, a very pretty exchange which, by its novelty, added a new impulse to flagging feet, and a new backward fling of the heel to the ordinary triple step of the jig. By this, the night was growing late ; but the Pit-punch was so persuasive in the case of the gentlemen, and they were so urgent upon the ladies, and the fiddle was so irresistible, that the company showed no sign of breaking up. After a brief pause, the Fiddler, instructed afresh by the melodious Jemmy, struck up the famous tune of " Rowan Berries," which is more rapid than "The Three Tykes." The Fiddler had an artful way, moreover, of intro- ducing sly little runs and variations into the main plain theme that was very taking. " A few rounds more ! " each gentleman whispered, as his partner cried off, "just to see how this pairt gans ! " Once the Fiddler's eye caught Marged's, as she was whirled round on Jack Heugh's arm ; and the next moment she found herself puzzled by some change in the music. The musician had, in truth, suddenly recollected and turned to effect her old acquaintance, " Poor Mary Ann." As we know, a skilful adapter can THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 163 turn the "Old Hundredth" into a waltz, and " He}', Tutti, Tutti " into a comic song, or a march to victory : so the Fiddler, who having begun by accommodating himself to their tunes, ended by making them dance to his. "The fiddle's bewitched!" said Ffoulkes, with a laugh, after two vain attempts to get Marged to relinquish the dancing floor ; " the devil 's in it — hey Fostor ? " In fact, some of the less lusty dancers having given up the floor to an elect remnant, the dance grew fast and furious. The fiddle seemed to hold the dancers in thrall. It did not offer to pause ; the Fiddler, apparently, was tireless, and — " possessed " ! Man and maid, their feet must obey his bidding and could not cease if they would. Else, it was plain to see, they were tired. Their movements were no longer easy, but feverish and reckless, as if they danced not for their own pleasure, but under the bidding of some hard task-master, like a set of conscious puppets. Occasionally the men cried out : " Hoo ! Hoop ! " with sharp staccato shouts almost like cries of pain. Meanwhile, the storm had not lessened r64 THE FIDDLER OF CAR NE though the ear might have grown accustomed to its hubbub. As midnight drew on, it gathered head and fury; and at the point of its most angry clamour, once again, after a series of urgent ringings and knockings, the great doors, which had been temporarily se- cured by bar and chain within, were opened by old Abel. There entered a drenched, oil -skinned and sou-wester'd sea-dog, his face and beard, his sleeves and legs, gleaming with rain and salt water. He ran the back of his hand across his wet moustache and beard, and then called out, as some of the seafaring men present turned towards him. " There 's a ship lost, lads, on the Seven Sisters ! we want some o' ye ; — hey, what a night, what a night ! " His voice was clamorous, its note urgent ; but whether the Fiddler did not understand its import, or whether he chose simply to exercise his powers to the last, he did not cease fiddling. And while he still fiddled, the dancers must dance. "Mat! Davie! Geordie! Johnny!" The bystanders called on these young heroes, THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 165 who made it a point of honour not to give up before their rivals, and who danced on, reckless of all interruption, " Mat ! " cried Ffoulkes. " Davie ! " cried Mistor Foster. " Geordie ! " cried a third. "Johnny; don't go, honey!" cried that youth's fond mother. Persuasion and dissuasion were alike of no avail. "They must have thor dance oot," said Mistor Fostor phlegmatically ; " an' if the ship 's lost, she's lost." At last the unmerciful fiddle showed signs of relenting. It softened its strains, and the dancers began to relax, and as it ended, reeled to the benches, where they sank breathless and exhausted. CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH. THE SEVEN SISTERS. " Oh, what know they of harbours, That toss not on the sea?" Ernest Radford. The delay in the response of the four dancers — four of the Came crew that manned the white coble used at such times and on such errands, was enough to make all the difference in the fate of the unfortunate brig that was breaking her back on the knived ridges of the Seven Sisters. The Seven Sisters were seven rocks, the out- jutting points of a long limestone reef which ran out from the sands about two miles to the north of Carne Hall; where the sand-dunes converted themselves abruptly into sandstone cliffs, with here and there an irruption of the limestone of which the Seven Sisters were composed. A ship driven upon their fatal edges, with the tide at half-ebb, with the wind 1 66 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 167 sweeping in from the south-east, as it was in tempestuous fury to-night, had as much hope of salvation as an egg-shell under a cart-wheel. At most, it could hope to hold together till some almost instant rescue was effected. Such a rescue, if it came at all, must come in good time from the pilots of Carne. No boat from any northward point could hope to reach the reef in the teeth of such a storm and with the tide against it. Now, of the available Carne pilots, young and old, masters and 'prentices, six out of ten (counting Mistor Fostor), were at Carne Hall ; and four of these we have seen dancing away their energies under the spell of the Fiddler bewitched. " Haway I\Iat, lad, haway Mat ! " Mistor Fostor kept urging that foolish young giant. " Wor Andrer '11 be aff before ye get hame ; and ye '11 lose any salvage there is, you and your mates ! If it hadn't been I 'd losted my missus, I 'd " What he would have done must be con- jectured. As it was, at this point Abel came to announce that the old travelling carriage was already being harnessed, by Lady Henrietta's orders, to convey any men whose services i68 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE could avail, to the Seven Sisters, in the hope of thus expediting a rescue. Two cart- horses, instead of the four coach-hacks anciently allotted to its use, drew it up to the door, while they were discussing it. A few moments more, and, with a couple of gigs and three or four young farmers on horseback for escort, it was despatched with a cheer, at a hand -gallop. Its destination was the fishing hamlet of Redheugh — which maintained a small har- bourage, immediately north of the Seven Sisters. For the old hands agreed it was useless to attempt a rescue from Carne now. On the higher ground above the hamlet, they stopped the chariot, which swayed about on its straps and swings, under the jolts of the sandy uneven road, like a ship in dis- tress. Here Mat jumped out, to look round, and met a blast of air, sand, rain, and salt water that almost blew the " hair out of ma hat ! " as he expressed it. "We'd bettor drive doon to the DUN Coo ! " he said, giving the signal to go on, and getting in. " I can mak' oot nothing i' this blast ! " The " Dun Cow " was the Redheucfh inn. THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 169 The coach swayed off again behind its un- gainly horses, down the primitive road which descended abruptly to the sands ere it reached the inn. Here it had nearly run over a man advancing across it to the sea. Lights on the rocks, and in one or two windows of the place, made the surroundings dimly apparent. The coach was pulled up on the sands : the man it had encountered was a fisherman with a coil of rope, and a lantern that had been blown out. " There 's nae use in your gannin' farther, lads ! " he cried. The Carne men leapt out, and surrounded him. " Might as well set sail now in yon greet Noah's ark o' yours," he said, " as in ony coble we hae here ; na, ye 're too late. An hoor, half-an-hoor ago, and there was our one chance. The wind went away for a bittie ; and there was just water enough ! But we had no men : and now ye 're too late. Eh, but did ye heor that }-ell ? " An awful cry came from the dim reaches of the reef Almost simultaneously a bright light shone out at its shoreward end. " That 's the tar bar'l they 've got alight at last ! " I70 THE FIDDLER OF CAR NE It was a flare they had set going, after many attempts, in a nook of the rocks. The flames began to make visible the cHfTs, the reef, and the dark uncertain mass of some two-masted vessel, far out, at a distance of a hundred yards or more from shore, the sea breaking over its torn hull in tigerish leaps. As the flames gained in power, and shot up like a loose bunch of torches, redly illumining the very air, they saw what a desperate pass the wreck had reached. Each sea that swept it made it heel over farther. Its foremast went by the board, carrying with it two more of the few dusky shapes that had still hung on the deadly pitch of its deck, cowering, doomed, beneath the merciless leap and descent of the waves. Out of the greater darkness, the fire-gleam called into being one brief segment of night and storm. On the very limit of this the doomed ship lay, like a deer beneath an over- taking pack of hounds. But at the fatal moment of the Carne men's coming up with the little band at the flare, one man there broke this silence. " Gordome ! there 's a coble off" frae Carne ! THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 171 She '11 be on, she '11 be on ! O Gordome, what dae they vvaant ? Whaat ? " He broke off his exclamations to run to the next point of the reef, which the sea had just left tangible. The Carne men followed. Yes ! there was the coble, manned by ten men, just hovering outside the seventh Sister and the ship, beyond the breakers. " Yon 's nae ways for her ! " said the same spokesman. " They can dae nowt ! " " Young Andrer, tnat 's it ! " said Mat. " Lads, we 're shaamed wi' our dancin'. An' all because he losted his auld mother, and stayed hame ! But yon Fiddlor witched ma heels ! " Even as he spoke, the storm had a new access of fury. The wind increased, the ebbing sea made one of those brief recoveries of lost ground that occur at such times. Wave after wave, mountainous, terrible, deadly, leapt and swept over the Seven Sisters. Even under their lee, the attack and recoil were deadly ; dreadful to see, terrible to hear ! After one or two vain attempts, the coble had sheered off a little from the wreck, and made as if it would clear the reef But it was caught 172 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE in this monstrous succession of breakers, turned sideways on, and so poised a moment on the edge of destruction. The ninth wave, and the last, ended the fight. It smashed the wreck under its downpour into twenty pieces, driving some fairly over the reef into the boiling water beyond. It caught the coble, hurled it aloft, with its crew of ten, like a cockleshell, and then drove it under water, capsizing it, rolling it over, cracking its shell, and scattering its crew like a handful of chaff. A common cry of death came from the wreck, the lost coble, and the men at the fire. These last ran down to the sands below the reef Some half-a-dozen dim forms were seen strug- gling, striking out, rolled over and over, cast up for a moment, and then swept under, in the dark play of the water in the lee of the Seven Sisters. If any of this mortal wreckage by any chance came ashore while any life still stirred in it, it should be on this strip of sand. What might be the one hope of salvation so, would lie in some strong saviour's arms, prompt to seize, ere the receding wave carried back the live creature it cast up. " Davie, will ye go ? " they asked. He nodded, THE FIDDLER OF CAR NE 173 buttoning his coat a button higher. The others helped to secure the rope under his arms, and to boot him in a great pair of borrowed sea-boots. At the other end of the rope hung four men as hauh'ers, and payed out and pulled in, as need were. Davie spat into the air for luck as he touched the sea's edge. He had not stood there long enough to count five waves ere he had plunged in, and, buffeted a while, had seized on some slim tattered creature, an undersized lad, his poor shirt torn and twisted about his head. Davie got hold of him and carried him in easily, and laid him gently on an oilskin they had spread on the froth and seaweed, in the care of the others who waited there. A shout recalled them to the water. A Redheugh man had spied another such dark bundle rolling, floating in ! And they ran back, not knowing that the boy, when their mates uncovered his small face, gave no sign, and was dead. A big seaman was the next ; but saved too late. They stretched him out unceremoniously on the sand at their feet and hastened back. Then came one of the coble crew, clasping an 174 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE oar with one arm, and struggling desperately with the other. There was a shout as Davie succeeded in catching him at the one moment and carried him in. They all knew the tartan neckerchief and blue shirt, and that deathly, beseeching face : it was young Andrer. He opened his eyes to close them instantly, as he was set down on a rough bed of coats and rugs : a nasty wound at the back of his head was bleeding, they saw. One of the Carne men took off his own neckerchief, and tore it into two strips for a bandage, and bound up the wound. Then they thought him dying ; he had fainted. They looked round, and saw that the Carne chariot, which some while ago had gone back to the Hall, was returned again. It had drawn up on the sands ; two women were dismounting, muffled in furs and in sealskin caps. They stood there hesitating, bending uncertainly to the shock of the wind, and watching from afar : then one of the two advanced, and stooped over the half-drowned man as he lay. It was Lady Henrietta. She uttered a naif hysteric " Ah-yf-f ! " as she saw the pale and noble face and the blood-stained kerchief When she heard that there was no place near THE FIDDLER OF CARXE 175 by for the wounded man, she went back again to the coach and questioned Lady PhiHppa. " He looks quite interesting : shall we take him home ? " " If you like." Philippa tossed her head disdainfully, and walked a little way off along the sand. Hen- rietta returned to the rescue-party. " Bring him to the coach ! " she said ; " we will carry him to the Hall, and send for a doctor." Three men carried him, unconscious, to the coach, which, fortunately, was roomy enough to hold him, outstretched on some rugs across the two seats. Lady Henrietta had meant to say some one must come with them to tend him ; but, on another shout from the water-side, they disappeared through the wet and gusty shadows ere she could call on them to stay. She hesi- tated, after re-arranging the rugs under the stricken man's head. Philippa came up and stared in. " Ugh ! " she said, " he is like a fish. ... I 'm not going to ride home with that ! " She set off briskly homewards as she spoke. Henrietta thereupon got in alone. 176 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE " Home, Thomas ! " she cried. She closed the cumbrous door herself, and the coach lumbered off. In this semi-state, but less conscious even than a fish, sea- stricken and half - drowned, young Andrer Fostor was taken for the first time to his father's house, across the ancient demesne of the Earls of Carne. CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH. THE morrow's morn. " We kept it up till the break of day, But the morrow's morn was the deil to pay While the family chariot was chivalrously making its way with its first load to Redheugh and the wreck, the prudent gig, carrying Cap- tain Ffoulkes, Marged, and Mistor Fostor, was returning to Carne Quay. Though the hour was so untimely, lights and faces appeared as they drove up to Mistor Fostor's door, where they must all alight for the ferry. " Andrer 's awaay, Fostor ! he 's awaay in the white coble wi' ony crew he could get — to yon wrack ! " " The devil he has ! " said Ffoulkes, with genuine concern ; " why, it 's a night out of hell ! " " He mought ha' consulted wi' me forst," said Mistor Fostor, shaking the wet off his hat M 177 178 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE under his doorway ; " he '11 be losing the lang coble wi' his mad scarshins ! " Marged turned pale as she heard. There was no sleep for her beneath the roof-tree of the Inn that night ; she was too excited, tired as she was, to be able to sleep. She saw the coble, captained by Andrer, tossed on frightful seas, crushed under falling masts, broken upon the sharp edges of the Seven Sisters. Next morning there was consternation in all Carne. Four more of the coble crew, beside Andrer, had been rescued ; seven were drowned. Tom Hawkins, David Golightly, Harry Reed, John Charlton, Bob Robson, Tom Dunn, and not least, Riley. The names were on every- one's lips ; the blinds were drawn in their windows ; the pilots' jack was at half-mast. In the Seagate, small groups, twos or threes, collected and dissolved, discussing in grave voices, multiplying the sea-terrors of last night. Andrer Fostor himself, it was rumoured, lay dying at Carne Hall. The " First and Last " was the centre of this tragic circle. Marged went downstairs at nine o'clock, with a racking headache and feverish hands, to find the back-room full already of the THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 179 company who usually inhabited there twelve hours later in the day : Three-Ouarter Willim, Mistor Fostor, Captain Tom, and a dozen be- side. The strong fumes of " Dieppe," and of the tobacco whose smoke curled in a thin stream out of the top of the half-opened door owing to the contrary gusts of wind, were thrice offensive to her as she passed, her nerves alert from her headache. She hurried on to the lower regions. The kitchen fire looked black, and a dull stythe was driven out by the contrary wind across the apartment. Mistress Ffoulkes, sitting by it had put a black shawl about her shoulders, to protect her from the draught. She was talking apparently to the empty kitchen, when Marged entered ; she was really addressing the usual recipient of her gossip — Betsy, who was silently doing something professional in the back-kitchen. When she saw Marged, Mrs Ffoulkes made no other sign but to increase slightly the em- phasis of her remarks. " I thought better on Mistor Fostor than that to go off to St Andrer's feast, an' Mary, poor auld woman, hardlies cold in her grave. 'Tis a i8o THE FIDDLER OF CARNE judgment on him, to lose young Andrer, poor laddie — the varry same time as he was watch- ing the ankles o' the young lassies at the Ha', flittin' about — auld styeg that he is ! Word 's just come that young Andrer's deein' the morn, and wunnot last out the day. What 's that ? " The last exclamation was caused by Marged's half-cry of anguish, where she stood, turning round with pale lips and affrighted eyes, from the china-cupboard in the corner. It only encouraged Mistress Ffoulkes to say more. "Ay," she said, gazing sternly now at the girl, " ay, while ye was dancin' last night, and yon Fiddlor o' your fancy was fiddlin' his Popish tunes frae Frence, young Andrer, 'at ye despises sae, was droonin' upon the Seven Sistors ! " Poor Marged ! Her face grew paler, but she made no further sign. She went calmly about brewing herself some tea — with an air of grave determination. Evidently she was think- ing of other things ; for she did not hear the further course of Mrs Ffoulkes' remarks ; and when she had drunk two cups, without eating anything, she rose to go. " What 's this, Margret ? " said Mrs Ffoulkes. THE FIDDLER OF CARNE i8i " Oh, nothing ! " She disappeared as she spoke. " Go away after her, and see what she 's up to ! " said then Mrs Ffoulkes to her maid. Betsy presently returned, with the informa- tion : " She is going ower the wator : what for, she vvinnot saay ! " Marged had the privilege of crossing the ferry without paying the usual penny. This morning she had put on her best hat and gloves, and a veil, and looked like some stranger to the old ferryman, Peter Reed, whose son Harry had gone out with the ill-fated coble last night. Peter was a blear-eyed old man, whose mouth was always full of tobacco. This morning his head hung low on his oars, and he took small note of his boat-load, consisting of two butchers' boys, who trailed their red hands in the water, and two farmers' wives, who were talking in sensational tones of the wreck and its victims. Marged felt a nervous terror of them and their unctuous discussion of things so near and pitiful, and drew away as far as she could. But she could not help overhearing thus much : i82 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE " And 'tis only the othor daay he losted his wife, an' now young i\ndrer — often I seed him as I went by to the market yonder — a fine lad, quite like his grand-dad and the gentries in his Sunday clothes ! " " They do saay " the other began, in a more closely confidential tone, hushing her voice so that only an occasional word — " Lord Carne," or " when poor Mary was a maid to my Lady ! " was at all audible to the rest of the boat. When Marged alighted, the ferryman held out his hand mechanically ; and she, as me- chanically, was looking for a penny, when he looked up, and recognised her. " Aw — 'tis Miss Fox ! " he said, and there was a world of significance in his tone ; " they saay young Andrer 's lying yonder sick to deid at Carne Ha' ! 'Tis a black daay for 's a', Miss Fox ! " Till he said this, Marged had not realised that Andrer was not under the Fostor roof, where she had thought of going to ask after him, and to see him for herself. A swift resolution came to her, making her tremble with many apprehensions as she con- THE FIDDLER OF CAR NE 183 firmed it, walking up the worn causeway from the ferry landing. She would go on to Came Hall. It was the least she could do for her old schoolmate, and her would-be lover, whom she had treated so coldly, she said to herself — so coldly and carelessly, since his mother's death. Though she feared the young ladies at the Hall, with their cold faces, and though she had some natural feeling too about his mistaking per- haps her coming to him — yes — she would go on, and go now, to Came Hall ! As she went she mused much on what the two gossips had said in the ferry-boat, but failed to fathom it. CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH. THE BLACK DOG. " This is not the Black Dog of Newgate neither." The Witch of Edmonton. This time Marged followed the Hartwick high- way road, by which they had driven home last night. It was noon when she reached the Hall gates, passing along the sunk wall that divided the park from the high road. Her steps faltered as the Hall itself rose into sight ; and while she was in this hesitancy, the same black dog that she had seen previously, on coming this way, ran out from the opposite hedge toward her. She was in a mood for sympathy, and called to it ; but when it had come within a few yards, it faltered, turned, and fled, with a beaten and hunted air. She thought no more of it then ; for the sense of Carne Hall, and Andrer lying within its gloomy pile, wounded, dying perhaps, gave 184 THE FIDDLER OF CAR NE 185 her heart a squeeze, as if a cold hand had gripped it. The Hall gates were open ; as she was enter- ing them, she encountered a dog-cart driving out. It was the family doctor from Stirrelport, and it occurred to her to question him about the patient that he had, no doubt, just been visiting. Fortunately the doctor happened to observe her, and pulled up. " Oh," she cries, " will you tell me ? " She stopped awkwardly, flushing slightly. Her upturned face, with this faint tinge in the cheeks, and her eager black eyes struck the old doctor's fancy. " Your sweetheart — eh ? " he said, with the privilege of his age and art, and with a slightly quizzical air. " He will soon be all right, my dear ! doing as well as can be expected ; a little off his head — wouldn't know you this morning. Better come back to-morrow after- noon, about four ; then we will see ; nurse him ? oh dear no, oh dear no ! " And the doctor whipped up his pony, starting off. She was left standing undecided in the gateway. Before the dog-cart had gone twenty yards in the direction of Carne, it was pulled i86 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE up sharply. The doctor, turning in his seat, called back to her — "Come from Came Quay, eh? It's a good walk. I 'm going on there now : better come back with me ! " It was one of those privileges that a pretty face may fairly purchase. She went on with a blushing hesitancy to the dog-cart, conscious of a small hole in a finger of one glove. The doctor's boy had leapt down, and gave her his seat, clambering up to a perch behind. The doctor dropped her at the top of the steep street at Carne Quay leading to the ferry. " To-morrow afternoon ! " he cried, as she tripped off. " I shall be angry if you don't come, my dear ! " She returned to the Inn, thrice re-assured, her headache gone ; but famished for want of food. As she entered, her father caught sight of her. She told her story with some excitement. " Da iawn I " he cried. " Good, very good ! " What was more, the coast being clear, he sup- plied her from the market round of beef that stood in his glass cage, installing her in Mistress Ffoulkes' sanctum, and adding a glass of wine. She ate and drank with a schoolgirl's appetite ; THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 187 and saw the world rosy through the red wine in the glass. Thereafter, she retired upstairs with those emotional confidences that a piano may so safely receive. She had spent long hours lat- terly over its yellow keys ; and sung — sung with the beginnings of a power, and with the promise of a voice so clear, so sweet and strong, that Mme. Tegner was beginning to talk openly of more and more extravagant possibilities. That evening she must go for her weekly lesson to the music-shop ; and she had a scale to master ere she went. She sang it over and over, till Betsy came up \\ ith Mistress Ffoulkes' peremptory suggestion that "there should be less shoutin', she says ! " Later, that afternoon, Marged, looking out on the ferry from an upper-landing window, as she descended the stairs, was surprised to see the Fiddler, carrying his green baize fiddle-bag, with a black dog sitting at his side in the bottom of the boat, being ferried over by old Peter. Had the Fiddler too, then, again been to Carne Hall? Some few minutes afterwards, a fine yelping came from the market-place, and led her to a i88 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE lower window of the Inn. One of the water- side loafers, who lurked in the alleys betwixt the market-place and the ferry, had thrown a stone, well aimed, at the black dog which was following the Fiddler, and which was limping with the blow. The Fiddler had turned on the water-rat, and in three long strides reached him, and caught him by the throat, and shook him so nervously — twice, thrice. A shout of derisive laughter came from the alley, where no doubt other of the same kidney lurked. " Give it him, Billy, give it him ! " Hearing this, she was about to run out in affright to the rescue ; but the lad was cowed and slunk off as the Fiddler relinquished his hold. Marged saw him disappear, thereupon, down the Seagate, with his long dragging stride, his bag under his arm, followed by the limping dog ; and her heart ran after them. The same evening, she too went off down the Seagate, carrying her music books, picking her way nervously past its darker alleys by the scattered light of the infrequent, smouldering oil-lamps, that hung on the corners of a few favoured houses. THE FIDDLER OF CAR NE 189 Ere she started out, the news had come that Andrer was out of danger, but that poor Riley the Red was lost too. Could it be that his wrinkled eyes and red bush of hair would start up never again in the doorway of the " First and Last " ? Could one be blotted out so ? Her heart grew sick as she thought of it. She found Mme. Tegner, when she reached the safe harbourage of her parlour, troubled about other things. The Fiddler had been to Came Hall, accord- ing to his weekly custom, that afternoon ; and he had been rudely dismissed by Lady Henrietta, after he had been waiting in the drawing-room, "without a vire — without a vire ! " for nearly an hour. And no pony-chaise to meet him, or bring him back ! " Mon pauvre Pastal" she kept saying, " mon pauvre Pastal! he is come back quite exhaust, and ver' melancholy ! " Mme. Tegner was indeed very indignant, and much excited. " Oh-a ! " she cried, " they are all the same ; these peoples, they find somebody ; then throw them away, like old glove ! what do they care ? " I90 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE " Wait ! " she cried, after this outburst ; " I go call him ! He shall play to us. I am so angry, I could tell — tell her — somezing ! oh, I could-a!" With this threat, she disappeared, to return with the Fiddler. He looked tired and dejected, and held Marged's hand long, as if asking for sympathy, when he shook hands with her. Madame begged him to stay. " Mais Old ! " he said, " \{ our friend will also sing ! " He played some Volkslieder, so softly, so tenderly, that they brought the tears to Marged's eyes. Madame vanished, in the midst of these, to make some coffee, she said. The Fiddler noticed how much Marged was moved. After playing one of them, Den lieben langen Tag^ he asked : "Will you sing it?" She objected that she did not know the words. He persuaded her to sing over the air only, and kept beginning it on the fiddle, paus- ing for her rejoinder — which never came. He put down his fiddle, and going to the piano, played it over softly. This gave her courage, and she struck in, singing with the THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 191 ' window in it had such writings on its panes as hold the secrets of the heart and its attachment to a hundred common things. Every patch in its weathered red brick held in it some reminder of feelings too subtle for words, too strong to be ever got rid of to the end of time. CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FOURTH. FAREWELL, CARNE ! " Farewell, farewell, to my sweet mate ! a long farewell to Carne ! I Ml walk nae mair the Seagate, wi' my bairn upon my arm ! '" Old Song. When Marged returned to the Inn, peeping in first through the side door as a precaution, she received a sharp pang to see her box in the passage, corded and ready to be transhipped. There was a horrible finaHty about it, she felt, flinching as it caught her eye. On entering, she found her father behind his usual glass cage in the bar. He was humming carelessly to himself, as if nothing was the matter. She tapped on the glass, and he came to her, and told her the dragon was safe downstairs. " I want to go upstairs to look for something," she said ; and fled up the familiar, yielding, creaking steps. She really wanted to pay another visit to the long room, the piano, the balcony, and the other things of her common 336 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 337 day, which she had turned into human creatures by her childish fancy in former time, and which still kept for her a living place in her heart. The fear of being interrupted in these last rites and observances only served to add a last, livelier touch to her emotion. She snatched up from the piano a tattered music book which lay there. It was the book that contained " Poor Mary Ann," and other superseded tunes whose recollected airs would be like familiar speech to her in a strange place. She went to the windows • the swirl of the brown water without, as she had seen it a thousand times, in all moods, grey, brown, or radiant, gave her positive pain. And for the piano, she would have given much to have spent a last hour in playing every tune she knew, or half knew, upon its keys ; but she dared not. She turned away, then went back to it in spite of herself, and failing to resist the impulse of old habit, opened it and sat down. A dozen bars of Elsie Marley — " Elsie Marley 's grown sae fine, She lies in bed till half-past nine ! " as a sort of last defiance to the dragon below, and Y 338 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE she was seized with a panic, fancying she heard steps approaching. She fled incontinently, cast- ing one long fond look back at the little stage on which she had built up so many hopes, so many maiden fancies, and so many invisible castles of comfort. She went next to pay a good-bye visit to the Tegners, her father telling her the Jolly Jane was to sail at five, and he would put her on board at four. As she went down the Seagate, — passing Pit Alley, behold Fred, her victim of last night ! who took his revenge by singing out : "O Meg Fox, O Meggie Fox! Who ran away wi' the Fiddlor, oh ? " Another time, and she would have been quite equal to giving chase, and inflicting summary chastisement, but now she had not the heart for it, and she hurried on with her cheeks aflame. It was time surely, though, that she was gone, if such insult could be ! Yet a space farther and she saw Three-Ouarter Willim at the other side of the street ; and on the old dog's catching sight of her, he raised his cane and shook it, in a way that might either be meant to be playful or threatening. She took it to be the last. THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 339 When she reached the music shop, she was surprised to see an unsightly piece of board nailed across one of the great windows. The window had evidently been broken, and within she found M. Tegner in a state of gesticulatory anger and distress. " Mais, mon aniie ! " he cried ; " see ! The little diable have broke the vindow ; and Madame ! — she is sick in her bed, ver' sick ! " He wiped his eyes, in his emotion, with the dirty duster that he used to dust the pianos. Marged told him she was going away, that very evening. Then, he exclaimed, they would go too ! And she must find her way to London, where she would make her fortune, and find both them and, perhaps, the Fiddler ! He dared not take her to see Madame, be- cause the good lady was suffering from hysteria, and if she knew Marged was going away to-day, the effect might be disastrous. " But be sure you come see your poor vriends in London ! " he said in parting, coming out upon the strip of pavement to say farewell — " Kyo Street-a ! look for the name of the sister of Madame — Mme. Lubin, Modes de 340 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE Paris ! Au revoir, — au revoir, mofi ainie, Margarita ! " He turned away into the music shop, the duster to his eyes. It was four o'clock ; the Seagate was hghting its lamps, and the market square was filled with the winter dusk, beneath which the trodden snow on the ground looked unreal ; when a boat left the "First and Last," carrying the Innkeeper, Marged, and her trunk. It was bitterly cold, a northerly wind was blowing across the river, and there was a thin shuffling edge of ice on the waterside. " Ye might ha' had a better night ! " said Captain Ffoulkes, as the boat pushed off, and they met the full shrewdness and force of the wind. " It '11 be a bit coarsish outside, and the wind is shifting a bit ; but the Jolly Jane is a snug little craft ; an' this time to-morrer, all well, ye '11 be safe wi' your Aunt Sarah. Meg, what are ye piping your eye at now ? Is it me, or Andrer, or the Fiddler — confound his fiddle that 's set us all at this loose ends ! " So aboard the Jolly Jane, a well set-up coast- ing schooner, with a suspicion of ice on her THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 341 decks, where she had been newly swabbed, to have things pleasant for a lady passenger. Below, a truly sailor-like tea was spread in the captain's cabin ; queer confections, side by side with hot dishes, cold dishes ; pippins, cheese ; tall bottles and small bottles ; while a steaming kettle sang on a blazing stove, that made the place as hot as an oven. She was sitting alone by this stifling stove, her father gone, the ship well afloat in mid current, ere she quite realised it. She sat there, interspersing profound reflections with trivial present discomforts, as one does at such times ; when some shouting on deck led her to go up to see what the cause could be ; glad of an excuse for fresh air ! It was a mismanaged boat which the schooner had all but run down — a mere tub, rowed with so random a stroke by so poor an oarsman, that the mate of the Jolly Jane, on a glimpse over the ship's side, was convulsed with laugh- ter at the spectacle. The captain maintained his post, like a serious seaman, paying no attention to the boat, now that any danger there had been of running it down was past. It was drifting into the darkness on their 342 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE larboard, when Marged sighted it, in such difficulties in the yeasty swell that was on the water, that though so used to boats, and given to feel contempt for those who were not, she was filled with pity for the man. Even as she stood looking on, he lost, in some clumsiness or other, one of his sculls ; at the same second a gleam from a distant light ashore let her distinguish his form. " No, no ! " she cries at this, to the astonish- ment of a seaman who was coiling a rope near her. He was still more astonished to see her put her hands to her face, as if she was afraid to see more, and then turn to him as if she would take him by the arm. " He is lost ! " she said ; " oh, save him ! " It was the Fiddler, in fact ; in the boat he had appropriated at the "Blue House." " He 's all right. Miss," said the man grinning. With that she ran to the captain. " It is the Fiddler ! " she cried. " Oh, save him ! " Luckily, the captain had just heard his story, and something of Marged's part in it, from Captain Ffoulkes himself. So, in spite of his ship - master's traditional grumble at THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 343 losing a ship's length or two on leaving port on such a night, he laid the ship to. With much scuffling, and some swearing over the Fiddler's fecklessness, they contrived to sling him aboard, and his fiddle with him. But when they had him there, he was so numbed with cold, besides being well drenched by his own crab-catching, that he could barely stagger to the companion. He did not see Marged as they led him below and gave him dry clothes and some hot tea ; and so into a bunk with him, where he lay like one ex- hausted. It was so Marged saw him on returning to the captain's cabin, and glancing in at him as she passed by. A bare quarter of an hour more and they were on the bar. The ship staggered uncomfortably, so that Marged had to keep reminding her pulses she ought not to give way too quickly to the sea-qualms which threatened her. But the cabin began to oppress her again, it was so close, so insidiously mal- odorous ; and she told herself she would be better on deck. She tried to make her way up, and a sudden lurch had almost over-balanced her, when someone appeared at the top of the 344 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE stair and cried, shutting up the hatch as a swish of spray reached her face : "Better below, Miss. 'Tis a nasty night comin' on." Evidently it was bad weather outside. She had much to do to get back to her seat, and when she had reached it there came a lurch that threw her against the fixed ledge of the table, and sent a plate with a crash to the floor. She set herself to gather its pieces up, and then, looking round, was startled to hear a step at the door, and to see the Fiddler steadying himself by either side of the doorway. He put his hand to his breast at seeing her ; and his pale, haggard face recalled to her painfully all that he had gone through since she parted with him outside the lively hostelry in the High Street at Humbro', after his triumph there on that famous night. Apparently the sea itself did not affect him ; but his late misadventures had set their seal on him, and if he had really stood at the foot of the gallows, he could not have looked more deathly. " I am cold," he said. She motioned to the fixed seat at the stove THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 345 side, and held out her hand, without daring to rise, to guide him safely across the cabin. But when he had seized her hand, he threw himself on his knees and, burying his head in her lap, fairly burst into womanish sobs. She could have cried herself for pity to see him. CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIFTH. THE END. " Oh, come wi' me, my marrow, Sae sweet shall be your sleep, No in a cauld bed narrow, But in the swaying deep I " William Sharp. The North Sea, without a doubt, was wild to- night, and prepared for mischief, as the captain of \hQ Jolly Jane saw as soon as he had taken his first tack to the south outside the bar. The schooner did not at all like the steep seas that waited her outside, and would willingly have turned about if it had been an admitted thing to shirk weather when she met it. But Sammie Evans was a stern old fatalist, who never went back, and who let Fate bear the responsibility for any rasher seamanship. All might have gone well as it was if the wind had not shifted a few points ere they had got half-a-mile out, coming away in black gusts of a vicious whipping fury, that made the seas roar like a herd of mad bullocks, and tumble and 346 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 347 chase each other in a way to shock even the stoutest and nimblest timber that ever floated. The effect of this upon the two passengers below was to break up rudely their chances of sleep, after the first part of the night had passed. Marged awoke at midnight from a troubled dream which mixed itself confusingly with her surroundings and noise of the sea fury which was gathering head all around. She thought she heard the Fiddler playing one of his most extravagant fantasias, and playing so fast that her head turned giddy in trying to follow the music. Suddenly he stopped, and gave three sharp knocks with his heel on the floor, whereupon the floor began to swerve and to split asunder beneath their feet, and he disappeared from view. At the same moment three more such knocks came — was she dreaming after all ? She rubbed her eyes and sat up in her bunk. More knocks ! followed by a terrible rending and tearing, as if some beast of timber were being rent to pieces by some tiger of giant jaws ! The knocks became thuds, the thuds became thunder-strokes ; and then came a rush and 348 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE scatter, like a thousand rats tumbling down the stairway. It was sea-water ; now she heard it washing on the cabin floor, and hissing in the stove of the adjoining cabin, and then rush to and fro, as the ship rolled, like some wild animal trying to make its way out. She called out and reached for her cloak : — she had half undressed on lying down. No one answered. Where was the Fiddler? Could he possibly be asleep, through this monstrous tempest ; or had she only dreamt he had come aboard the vessel ? She called again : still no answer ! Ah, now there was a light. Some one was coming down the companion way with a lantern ! It was — it was the Fiddler ! He had not deserted her ! But he passed by, as she sa^^^ by the little crack of light under her door. What did it mean ? She managed to find her shoes, wet as they were, and to pull them on, and throw on her crimson cloak, stumbling in the darkness, just as the light returned, going by. She opened the door, and called to him as he reached the companion way. He turned, and then she divined his errand ; for his eternal green bag was in his hand. " Come ! " he said, quite calmly ; " they know THE FIDDLER OF C A RNE 349 not what will be next ! The boats perhaps ! It is Fate pursues me. Come ! " Even as she was trying to think of all that this meant (and his speech was made more confusing than ever by the unceasing uproar), there came a crash that transcended chaos. " Come ! " he cried, holding the lantern high ; not a moment too soon, for a pour of water followed that washed up to his knees. He began to ascend the steps without waiting longer, drawing his fiddle up close under his arm with tender concern. He cared more for his fiddle than for her, that was clear. This indifference of his, coupled with the calm face that he preser\^ed through it all, armed her too with a sort of cold recklessness of the worst that could come. She managed, ere his lantern had disappeared up the ladder, to reach its foot, and to drag herself up with the aid of the hand-rail. Ere she had touched the topmost step, a sudden glare on deck made the wet panels of the companion gleam red. It came, she saw, as she reached the deck and looked round, from a flare at the stern, a tar barrel newly set alight 350 THE FIDDLER OF C A RNE Its red flames made the wet deck seem as if it ran blood, and showed the giddy running seas — how near ! A moment only, for then there came yet one more of those sheer avalanches of water, that fell as though it would crash through everything. She cried out, and stooped, giving herself up for lost, and the descending wave threw her prone, and drenched her cloak and her poor garments beneath, as if they had been paper. Stunned, wet to the skin, thinking every second to be slid down the treacherous deck into the sea itself, which seemed to be now high in the air, now far below the ship, without any law even of chaos, her first impulse was still to look round for the Fiddler. He was standing, holding on to some rope, right under the fore- mast ; and at the minute of her discovery, she felt a strong hand seize her firmly. It was the ship's mate, who took her with a run down the slippery deck to the Fiddler's side. " I '11 have to lash ye both tae this ! " said the mate. The Fiddler shook his head, and steadying his feet, made as though he would move away, looking around for some escape. Marged THE FIDDLER OF CARNE 351 could not forbear in her growing terror of body and soul, from putting out one beseech- ing hand to him, while the other gathered together the flying flaps of her crimson cloak. He held up a repellant hand in his turn. " No, no ! " he cried, " the hour is against me. Keep away from me, or you die ! " She swooned at the repulse, her poor senses failing her. If, by this, she had not been fastened to the mast, she must have fallen. When she came to, it was from cold ! The water was washing over her feet, the wind was blowing loose her wet cloak, and her hair. But what, — what was that dark vessel tower- ing above the schooner. One moment it was here, the next it was gone; but she had an indistinct sense that it would return, if only she could keep her stunned and be- wildered eyes awake to see ! She had not seen that, during these moments, a white coble had been approaching from the side of the harbour, to which they were being slowly driven back, rudderless, helpless as they were. The coble rode the seas with the light- ness of a cork, pulled by a dozen stout arms. The few men left on the schooner gave a 352 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE faint cheer at sight of her. She was lying by, waiting her chance to get alongside, when a terrific gulf of water carried the two craft apart. Then came another of those iron crashes of overtoppling seas upon the deck. Marged cowered as low as her lashings would let her, crying for mercy. When she dared look up, it was to find someone undoing the fastenings. "She is going!" a voice -said, "take this!" It was a lifebelt. She looked round, with a crying desire for some friendly face ! The man was gone. How cold, how cold, she was ! Her hair was in her eyes. Ah, now she saw ! On one side there was the white coble, with only one of her crew left her, and he was making desperate efforts to reach the wreck. On the other towered high, then again sank low, the dark vessel she had seen before. A second glance at the coble, and she cried out : " Andrer ! " Was it fancy that she saw the Fiddler being hauled into the dark vessel, hanging in mid air, and pointing one of his rescuers back to her? Another second and a bearded sea- man, roped and belted, was running, almost THE FIDDLER OF CARNE OJO on all fours, like a beast, across the treacherous deck to her side. But she turned from him to the coble which had been driven in beneath the schooner, a last sea sending it on with a rush — crash against the bows ! A deadly blow ! " Andrer ! " she cried again. He stood up in the boat, held out his arms, and cried, " Margret ! " " Come ! come ! " said the bearded sailor, on her other side, touching her. She threw off his arm, threw back her hair, gathered her cloak, fled down the rent and desperate deck, that seemed to cry out and part asunder beneath her feet ; and with one wild leap was in the clasp of him who had staked his boat of boats to save her. And oh, the comfort of those unavailing arms. " You won't leave me ? " she cried, " O Andrer, Andrer ! " " Margret ! " he said, in her hair, for she clung close to his breast ; " Margret, my boat can't live after that deadly crack ! Do you love me ? Christ save us ! " " You have saved me ! " she said. She felt the boat sinking, and looking round z 354 THE FIDDLER OF CARNE saw no sign of other life than theirs. She clung to him in a last sobbing rapture. Her home was in that sinking boat ; and he was her whole world, and her immortality. "Tis all over, Margret!" " Andrer, we 're in Heaven ! " The North Sea held the night. The two lovers sank, through what purgatory, what sea-strangling and torture of water that was like fire! into that profound sleep whose waking, says the poet, is paradise ! T^k- iff RECENTLY PUBLISHED AND FORTHCOMING BOOKS ISSUED BY PATRICK GEDDES AND COLLEAGUES VV. H. WHITE AND CO. LTD. EDINBURGH RIVERSIDE PRESS Distrfbutin^ Agents for the Publishers THE CELTIC LIBRARY page (Fiction, &c.) - - - 357 BIOLOGY and SOCIOLOGY - 367 THE EVERGREEN - - - 37i 356 Announcements for 1896. THE CELTIC LIBRARY. LYRA CELTICA. Jtist Publhhed. An Anthology of Representative Celtic Poetry, from the ancient Irish, Alban-Gaelic, Breton, and Cymric Poets to the youngest Anglo-Celtic Poets of To-day. Edited by Elizabeth A. Sharp. With an Introduction on the Celtic Renascence, and Notes, by William Sharp. Published at 6s. Cr. 8vo (with Celtic Cover Design by Helen Hay). "That Celtic Renascence, of which so much has been heard, has yielded nothing more rich and stimulating in its contents, or more attractive in its outward form." — The Scotsman. " A new world is revealed in this glimpse of old-world poetry, merging gradually into our modern lays. Probably the book will be valued more highly for the modern element in it. There is no poem here that has not some high quality to recommend it, whether it be taken from Celt or Anglo- Celt." — The Morning Leader (London). " We are very glad to welcome this volume." — The Daily Nexus. "Mr William Sharp contributes a very valuable Introduction on The Celtic Renascence. ... As for the get-up of the book, no praise can be too high." — The Higldand Neivs. THE FIDDLER OF CARNE : A Romance. Just Published. By Ernest Rhys. THE WASHER OF THE FORD: and other Legendary Moralities. Cr. Svo (with Celtic Cover Design), 6s. By Fiona Macleod. THE SHADOW OF ARVOR : and other Breton Legendary Romances. Cr. Svo (with Celtic Cover Design), 6s. {Early Sitr/mier.) By Edith Wingate Rinder. 357 (Celtic History and Mythology.) ARTHURIAN SCOTLAND: A Slady in Celtic Romance-Lore. By J. S. Stuart Glennie. Cr. 8vo (with Celtic Cover Design), 6s. OSSIAN. The Centenary Ossian. Edited anew, with an Introductory Essay on authentic Ossianic Fragments, Macpherson's Ossian, the Ossianic Cycle, and the influence of "Ossian": with additional Ossianic Ballads and Poems. By William Sharp. Cr. 8vo (with Celtic Cover Design), 6s. Early in the Summer ytill be published, price 6s., in cloth 8>o, fiith specially designed coders. LYRIC RUNES AND FONNSHEEN. Runes: Fonnsheen: and other Poems. By Fiona MACLEOD. {For Later Publication.) MUSA ARMORICA. A representative selection of poems by ancient, modern, and contemporary Breton-Celtic poets, translated into English Verse by Mr W. J. Robertson, author of A Century of French Verse (renderings of typical poems by thirty-three modern French poets, from Andre Chenier to Jean Mor^as : vide note on Mr Robertson at p. 338, et seq. in Notes to Lyra Celtica). 358 ( To be Pttblished early in May. ) THE WASHER OF THE FORD: and other Legendary Moralities. (TALES AND EPISODES.) Legendary Moralities. I. The Washer of the Ford MuiME Chriosd The Last Supper The Fisher of Men The Three Marvels of Hy IL The Anmr-Coilya in. The Shadow-Seers Seanachas. The Song of the Sword MiRCATH The Laughter of Scath- ACH, the Queen The Flight of the Cul- DEES The Love of Hydallan The Helot The Matriarch IL Ula and Urla {Of the second story, on its appearance in the Jlutumn Evergreen, Mr George Cotterell wrote :— " No contemporary ■ivriter has produced such rare imaginative •■work, of its kind, as Miss Macleod has gi-uen us ; but in this remarkable composi- tion she excels herself. It is not simply beautifid, but seems to be of the very essence of beauty.''^ Of the same story, Mr Ashcroft Noble ^vrote : — '■'■ One oj Fiona (Macleod's lonely old-ivorld romances, ivith its eVery sentence saturated iKiith the Celtic glafnour.''''\ FIONA MACLEOD. '■'■The most remarkable figure in the Scottish Celtic Renascence^ Miss Fiona Macleod, has noyt set three books before the public, and it is time to appraise her seriously.'''' (From an article on Fiona Macleod and the Celtic Renascence in The Irish Independent.) " A Celt of the Celts, Miss Macleod lo^es this people, yiho hefne the gift of charm — lo^es them, their country, and their legends, knoTis e^ery cur^e and spiral of their nature as she knoyis the aspects of the hills, the pull of the currents, and the yoice of the storm. The elemental passions of an elemoital race are the themes of her stories.'''' (The Pall Mall Gazette.) " The yiritings of Miss Fiona Macleod are gradually disclosing to the 'British public quite another Scotland than that yiith vihich Loyiland -writers ha^e fam'diarised them.''^ (The Bookman.) "The central figure in the Scoto-Celtic Renascence.''^ (The Daily News.) " 'Primiti've instincts and passions, primitive superstitions and faiths, are depicted nv'ith a passionate sympathy that acts upon us as an irres'ist'ible charm. We are snatched, as it nuere, from ' the njoorld of all of us'' to a 'world of magic and mystery, •where man is intimately associated ivith the "past elemental forces of Nature.^'' (The National Observer.) " // is impossible to read her and not to feel that some magic in her touch has made the sun seem brighter, the grass greener, the yiorld more ysonderful.'''' (Mr George Cotterell, in an article in The Academy.) " Miss Fiona Macleod'' s second book, ' The Mountain Lowers,'' fully justifies the opinions already formed of her exquisite handi- craft. . . . Her "Vocabulary, in particular, is astonishing in its range, its richness, ajid its magic : she seems to employ e^ery beautiful ■word in the English language -with instinctive grace and sense of fitness ^ (Mr Grant Allen, in an article entitled "The Fine Flower of Celticism.") " The fascitiation of ' atmosphere ' in all Miss Macleod" s Tvork is extraordinary."" (Mr H. D. Traill, in the Graphic.) 360 " For sheer originality, other qualities apart, her tales are as remarkable, perhaps, as anything ive ha-ue had of the kind since (Mr Kipling appeared. . . . Their local colour, their idiom, their --Luhole method, combine to produce an effect uuhich may be unaccustomed, but is therefore the more irresistible. They pro'vide as original an entertainment as nve are likely to find in this lingering century, and they suggest a neiv romance among the potential things of the century to come.'" (The Academy.) "Not beauty alone, but that element of strangeness in beauty ivhich Mr Pater rightly discerned as the inmost spirit of roTnantic art — // is this -ivhich gi-ves to (Miss (Macleod's nenv volume its peculiar asthetic charm. But apart from and beyond all those qualities nvhich one calls artistic, there is a poignant human cry, as of a 'voice ivith tears in it, speaking from out a gloaming -which ne-uer lightens to day, ivhich ivill compel and hold the hearing of mayiy tvho to the claitns of art as such are iv holly or largely unresponsive. If I --were to ask myself --what ivere the external objects of contemplation -vohich ha-ue most strongly influenced (Miss CMacleod, I should say, first, uuild Nature, felt not as a mere shoiv of beauty or of ^wonder, but as a presence and a pouoer ; second, the tragic pathos airways cunningly intervjo-ven tvith the fabric of human passion and human fate ; and, third — though this, indeed, is hardly distinct from the second — the strange, barbaric element, ivhich sometimes breaks up e-uen the thick crust of an elaborated ci-uilisation, though it can naturally be obser-ued most steadily and studied most closely among the unsophisticated, simple, eleTuental human beings ivho Hue not merely with Nature, but, so to speak, in her, and feel the stirrings of a conscious kinship. . . . The Qaelic nature is in some nxiays markedly un-Hellenic, and yet I think ive ha-ue to go back to Greek tragedy for a rendering of the irresistible dominance of fate equal in imaginative impressi-veness to some of these celebrations of the Western Gael's persistently fatalistic outlook upon human life.'^ (James Ashcroft Noble, in The New Age.) " Of the products of ivhat has been called the Celtic Rena- scence, ' The Sin-Eater ' and its companion Stories seem to us the most remarkable. They are of imagination and a certain terrible beauty all compact.'''' (From an article in The Daily Chronicle on "The Gaelic Glamour.") 361 THE SIN-EATER : and Other Tales. By FIONA MACLEOD. (Patrick Geddes & Colleagues, Edinburgh.) (Stone & Kimball, Chicago, U.S.A.) REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS :— The Scotsmait. — "The latest of Miss Fiona Macleod's books will infallibly strengthen the spell which she wields over those who have come within the circle of her Celtic incantations, and help to make good her claim to a peculiar place in the literature of her day and race. In all these wild tales from the shores of lona and the Summer Isles and from the hillsides of Mull— saturated with the sweet and plaintive music, and heavy with the sadness and mystery of the land and people of the Gael — in all these tales, from the beautiful ' lona' prelude addressed to Mr George Meredith, the same refrain runs. All are steeped in the gloom and glamour of the gathering mist, the lowering cloud, the breaking wave : in all is the sense of the resistless power of destiny : and in all are manifest Miss Macleod's wonderful ear and delicate touch." The Irish Independent (from a leading article on Fiona Macleod and the Celtic Renascence). — "The most remark- able figure in the Scottish-Celtic Renascence, Miss Fiona Macleod, has now set three books before the public, and it is time to appraise her seriously. She is a poet born, and the colour and strangeness she gets into her work are as of some land east of the sun and west of the moon rather than of some earthly islands to which one may journey. All she does is namelessly fascinating. She is like her own ' Anointed Man ' ; she has seen the fairies, and she has also seen the underworld of terror and mystery. Her work is pure romance, and she strikes a strange note in modern literature. The Sin- Eater will assure Miss Macleod's position with literary people ; in this book she has 'arrived.' She is a woman of genius, and, like many people gifted so greatly, her message is often gloomy and terrible. But it is the spirit of the Celt, and her work another triumph for the Celtic genius. ' The Englishman can trample down the heather, but he cannot trample down the wind,' she says in her dedication to George Meredith, ' Prince of Celtdom,' and that wind of romance which breathes among the un- practical and poetical Celtic peoples stirs in every page of the new writer." 362 THE LONDON PRESS :- The Daily Netvs. — "The preface and stories have in their style and treatment that blending of vividness and dreaminess that gives so much distinction to this writer's work. Fiona Macleod is the central figure of that Celtic Renascence curiously going on side by side with the pro- gress of naturalism in fiction. These tales are, we think, the strongest and most characteristic she has yet given us. The charm and interest of the volume lie in the subtle apprehension and imaginative rendering of the ideals of a race whose standpoint toward life and the unseen is altogether remote from that of a practical and agnostic generation." The Fall Mall Gazelle. — " Miss Fiona Macleod has already won fame as an interpreter of the Celtic spirit. In her new book she gives us the essential emotional quality of her race in a series of studies which move, touch, and transport. She has the power of transporting which Matthew Arnold calls the test of poetry." The Morning Leader. — " Miss Macleod has the intel- lectual and emotional equipment that enables her to appeal effectively to the whole English-speaking race, while she has the intense love — idolatry is perhaps the truer word — for the 'Celtic fringe' that lends to her imagination an unearthly %-ividness that nothing else could give, and touches her almost with prophetic fire. Her weird story of the Wild Man of lona, who took upon himself the sins of a dead man whom he hated, could hardly be rivalled outside the pages of Maeterlinck. The startling effect made upon the reader's imagination cannot be set down merely to the writer's literary skill, great as that is. Much is due to the racial identification of the writer with the men and women she writes about. Her brain and heart are like unto theirs, and hence the secret of the sympathy and terror she creates." The Daily Chrotiicle (in a review article on "The Gaelic Glamour"). — " In the rendering of the Celtic vision of the wonder and mystery, the terror and beauty, both of visible Nature and of the something which lies just behind Nature, Miss Fiona Macleod is doing in prose what Mr W. B. Yeats is doing in verse. . . . The book is one every page of which takes us on to enchanted ground. Of the products of what has been called the Celtic Renascence, The Sin-Eater and its companion stories seem to us the most remarkable. They are of imagination and of a certain terrible beauty all compact." 363 THE WEEKLY PRESS:— The National Obso-ver. — " The hand of the authoress of Pharais and The Alountain Lovers has lost none of its cunning. Miss Macleod's new volume is as remarkable as her earlier ones for sombre romance, striking imagery, and poetic expression. She has caught in no small degree the spirit of the Celt, with its gloom and superstition, its fixity of purpose, its harshness and nobility. Her tales, full of curious folk-lore, are always powerful and melancholy. The stern, rude nature she describes forms not only a fitting background to her characters, but seems, as it were, a part of them, necessary to them — nay, they appear to spring from it, and be made by it." The Academy. — " Miss Macleod is the first writer who has tried natively to interpret the Gael, not of the Scottish Highlands, but of the Islands, to Southern readers ; and for sheer originality, other qualities apart, her tales in this volume are as remarkable perhaps as anything we have had of the kind since Mr Kipling appeared. They are so original ; in fact, they treat of so strange a subject-matter, and in so strange a way, that the unregenerate Saxon may find them at first a little difficult. On a further acquaintance, he will find that their local colour, their idiom, their whole method, combine to produce an efi'ect which may be un- accustomed, but is therefore the more irresistible. . . . And so throughout these tales ; the manner of their telling, their idiom, their very mannerisms, only tend to increase their total effect. To quote again from their teller's singular opening epistle from lona, addressed to him whom she calls ' Prince of Celtdom ' : they have been written ' as by one who repeats with curious insistence a haunting, familiar, yet ever wild and remote air, whose obscure meanings he would fain reiterate, interpret.' It is only by insisting, as she does, with some romantic excess, on the vivid traits and idioms of the remote Gaelic folk she describes, that she brings home to us their speech, sentiment, and spirit of life, as the true interpreter may. She expressly disavows the docu- mentary method at the start; she is subjective and interpre- tative to a degree ; she is often so much moved by her own subject-matter that Heine's famous confession of over-much sentiment in his Buck le Grand is apt to recur as one reads. Her tales, then, are not documentary ; they reveal their writer's individuality, quite as much as the idiosyncrasy of the island Gael. But just for this very reason they provide as original an entertainment as we are likely to find in this lingering century, and they suggest a new romance as among the potential things in the century to come." 364 THE PROVINCIAL PRESS:— Liverpool Mercury. — "The book is full of an art that carries the imagination captive and leads it where it will. Moreover, there is a delicate strength of expression and a power of indicating the finest shades of meaning that is almost, if not absolutely, unique among liNnng writers ; at any rate, we know of no one else who possesses it in an equal degree. On nearly every page some phrase strikes home with its freshness and truth. Those who take up The Sin-Eater as a merely entertaining book may be disappointed ; but let them read it in the gloaming of a winter evening by the 'soft radiances of oil,' when the firelight dances on the wall and the imagination has freed itself from the cares that oppress the day, and they will find more than entertainment in the images of beauty and sadness and love with which this most charming volume abounds." The Yorkshire Herald. — "This is the third of a remark- able trio of books which have given a peculiar interest and not a little celebrity to the name of Miss Fiona Macleod. A Gael of the Gaels, and a writer of prose narrative which glows with poetic insight and feeling, she has revealed to English readers much of the strange charm and mystery, the eeriness and fascination, that belong as truly as the silence of their hills and the glory of their sunsets to the Western Isles and Highlands of Scotland. Miss Macleod has rendered the invaluable service to literature of interpreting for us this unfamiliar side of a humanity that is near to us yet so far away, of a world of which we thought we knew everything, whereas those gates of vision were closed to us. The tales in this volume — she calls them tales, but they are full of the deep realities of the imagination — lift for us some of the veils that have shut from the unseeing eye and the unhearing ear readings of the truth and meaning of things that we are the better for possessing. It is a service which only a writer of genius could have rendered." 36s {Published last November.') THE SIN-EATER: and other Tales. (TALES AND EPISODES.) Prologue {From lona). I. The Sin-Eater. The Ninth Wave. The Judgment o' God. II. The Harping of Crave- THEEN. III. Tragic Landscapes — 1. The Tempest. 2. Mist. 3. Summersleep. IV. The Annointed Man. The Dan-Nan-Ron. Green Branches. V. The Daughter of the Sun. The Birdeen. Silk o' the Kine. [" For sheer originality, other qualities apart, her tales are as remarkable perhaps as anything =we hd^e had of the kind since (Mr Kipling appeared. . . . Their local colour, their idiom, their nvhole method, combine to produce an effect --which may be unaccustomed, but is therefore the more irresistible. . . . They pro'vide as original an entertainment as -Tve are likely to find in this lingering century, and they suggest a 7ienv romance among the potential things of the century to comeT — The Academy.] BIOLOGY and SOCIOLOGY 367 "CURRENT SCIENCE" AN EVOLUTION SERIES {For full announcement see advertisement at end of Pasteur volutne. ) PASTEUR AND HEALTH. By J. Arthur Thomson and Professor Patrick Geddes, authors of The Evolution of Sex, &c., &c. THE THREE FATES : A Study in Contemporary Biology (Function, Environment, Heredity). By J. Arthur Thomson, author of Study of Animal Life, &c., co-author of The Evolution of Sex. \ 368 A NORTHERN COLLEGE : An Experimental Study in Higher Education. By Professor Patrick Geddes. This little book (illustrated) opens with an account of University Hall, Edinburgh, and narrates what has been done during the last nine years. It is also, however, of more general interest as an Experimental Study in Higher Education. "The 'house beautiful' is, of course, a single step towards the chief end of architecture — the city beautiful. But to talk of the rebuilding of cities is to plunge into controversial economics, which is no part of the purpose of the Evergreen. Its policy is with reclamation rather than with declamation, with houses rather than with householders. But there is, too, a side of the movement which is directly educational. The endeavour is to organise a system of education based, not on use and wont, but on the organisation of knowledge, and in immediate relation to the realities of contemporary life, thought, and action. This involves, of course, a co-ordination of all the forces at the disposal of science and industry, of literature and art, of morals and religion, and their harmonious concentration on the training of the student. Here, again, theory and practice have proceeded hand in hand. And such experimental results as have been already achieved are likely to prove valuable in proportion as they are used as the seed-plots of further experiment. For these partic- ular experiments those interested in the Educational Revolution should be referred, however, not so much to the Evergreen as to a little book by Professor Geddes, announced to be in the press, entitled ' A Northern College— Experimental Studies in higher Education.' " — The Bookman. 369 " Amongst the ' local and national ' traditions ivJnck patriotic Scotsmen are to-day trying to re'vi've and keep aliue, the present E\ergreen specially concerns itself - of Autumn Sir Noel Paton The Hammerer Margaret Armour Love shall Stay Sir George Douglas Cobweb Hall : a Story William Macdonald Maya III. Autumn in the World — Elis6e Reclus La Cit^ du Bon- Accord S. R. Crockett The Song of Life's Fine Flower C. Van Lerberghe Comers in the Night : a Drama The Abbe Klein Le Dilettantisme Edith Wingate Rinder Amel and Penhor IV. Autumn in the North — William Sharp The Hill-Water John Macleay The Smelling of the Snow Sir Noel Paton In Shadowland Fiona Maclbod Muime Chriosd : a Legendary Romance And Thirteen Full- page Drawings by Robert Burns, James Cadenhead, John Duncan, Helen Hay, E. A. HORNEL, Pittendrigh Macgillivray, C. H. Mackie, and A. G. Sinclair. Head and Tail Pieces, after the manner of Celtic Ornament, drawn and designed in the Old Edinburgh Art School. Printing by Messrs Constable of Edinburgh. Coloured Cover, fashioned in Leather, by C. H. Mackie. The First Series of The Evergreen will consist of Four Parts : The Book of Spring (April 1895) ; The Book of Autumn (September 1895) ; The Book of Summer (May 1896) ; The Book of Winter (NoTember 1896). 373 PART III.— THE BOOK OF SUMMER. Price 55. (7^1? be Published early in May.) In the Sections — Summer in Nature. Summer in Life. Summer in the World, and Summer in the North. There will be contributions by Professor Patrick Geddes, J. Arthur Thomson, Fiona Macleod, Sir George Douglas, and Dr Douglas Hyde, among other writers. And Thirteen Full-page Drawings by Helen Hay, John Duncan, C. H. Mackie, Jas. Cadenhead, Pittendrigh Macgillivray, Robert Burns, Peploe, N. Peploe, Robert Brough, and W. G. Burn-Murdoch. Head and Tail Pieces, after the manner of Celtic Ornament, drawn and designed in the Old Edinburgh Art School. Printing by Messrs Constable of Edinburgh. Coloured Cover, fashioned in Leather, by C. H. Mackie. The First Series of The Evergreen will consist of Four Parts : The Book of Spring (April 1895) ; The Book of Autumn (September 1895) ; The Book of Summer (May 1896) ; The Book of Winter (November 1896). REPRESENTATIVE PRESS OPINIONS. "It is the first serious attempt we have seen on the part of genius and enthusiasm hand-in-hand to combat avowedly and persistently the decadent spirit which we have felt to be over- aggressive of late. . . . We have in this first number of The Evergreen some score of articles, sketches, and tales, written round Spring and its synonyms — youth, awakenings, renascence, and the like — whether in human or animal life, in nations, in history, or in hterature. And the result is a very wonderful whole, such as has probably never been seen before under similar conditions. It is an anthology rather than a symposium, and not only its intention but its execution makes its worthy to be read by all who pretend to follow the literary movements of our time." — Sunday Times. "The first of four quarto volumes, devoted to the seasons, is a very original adventure in literature and art. It is bound in roughly tmbossed leather, very delicately tinted. It is superbly printed on fine paper, gilt edged over rubric at the top, and with rough sides. ... A high standard of literary quality is main- tained throughout."— i5/rw/«^^a;« Post. " Probably no attempt at renascence has ever been better equipped than that undertaken ' in the Lawnmarket of Edin- burgh by Patrick Geddes and Colleagues.' The Book of Spring is altogether of the stuff bibliographical treasures are made of." — Black and White. " The Evergreen is unequalled as an artistic production, and while the organ of a band of social reformers in one of the poorest quarters of Edinburgh, it also touches an international note, and holds up the spirit of the best ideals in literature and art." — London. "It is bad from cover to cover ; and even the covers are bad. No mitigated condemnation will meet the circumstances of the case." — Nature. FRINTKD BT W. H. WHITE AND CO. LTD. EDINBURGH RIVKRSIDb' l-RESS ^^^^^^^m^