Across The Moors

by W. F. Harvey

　　It really was most unfortunate.

　　Peggy had a temperature of nearly a hundred, and a pain in her side,and Mrs. Workington Bancroft knew that it was appendicitis. But therewas no one whom she could send for the doctor.

　　James had gone with the jaunting-car to meet her husband who had atlast managed to get away for a week's shooting.

　　Adolph, she had sent to the Evershams, only half an hour before, witha note for Lady Eva.

　　The cook could not manage to walk, even if dinner could be servedwithout her.

　　Kate, as usual, was not to be trusted.

　　There remained Miss Craig.

　　"Of course, you must see that Peggy is really ill," said she, as thegoverness came into the room, in answer to her summons. "Thedifficulty is, that there is absolutely no one whom I can send for thedoctor." Mrs. Workington Bancroft paused; she was always willing thatthose beneath her should have the privilege of offering the serviceswhich it was her right to command.

　　"So, perhaps, Miss Craig," she went on, "you would not mind walkingover to Tebbits' Farm. I hear there is a Liverpool doctor stayingthere. Of course I know nothing about him, but we must take the risk,and I expect he'll be only too glad to be earning something during hisholiday. It's nearly four miles, I know, and I'd never dream of askingyou if it was not that I dread appendicitis so."

　　"Very well," said Miss Craig, "I suppose I must go; but I don't knowthe way."

　　"Oh you can't miss it," said Mrs. Workington Bancroft, in her anxietytemporarily forgiving the obvious unwillingness of her governess'consent.

　　"You follow the road across the moor for two miles, until you come toRedman's Cross. You turn to the left there, and follow a rough paththat leads through a larch plantation. And Tebbits' farm lies justbelow you in the valley."

　　"And take Pontiff with you," she added, as the girl left the room."There's absolutely nothing to be afraid of, but I expect you'll feelhappier with the dog."

　　"Well, miss," said the cook, when Miss Craig went into the kitchen toget her boots, which had been drying by the fire; "of course she knowsbest, but I don't think it's right after all that's happened for themistress to send you across the moors on a night like this. It's notas if the doctor could do anything for Miss Margaret if you do bringhim. Every child is like that once in a while. He'll only say put herto bed, and she's there already."

　　"I don't see what there is to be afraid of, cook," said Miss Craig asshe laced her boots, "unless you believe in ghosts."

　　"I'm not so sure about that. Anyhow I don't like sleeping in a bedwhere the sheets are too short for you to pull them over your head.But don't you be frightened, miss. It's my belief that their bark isworse than their bite."

　　But though Miss Craig amused herself for some minutes by trying toimagine the bark of a ghost (a thing altogether different from theclassical ghostly bark), she did not feel entirely at her ease.

　　She was naturally nervous, and living as she did in the hinterland ofthe servants' hall, she had heard vague details of true stories thatwere only myths in the drawing-room.

　　The very name of Redman's Cross sent a shiver through her; it musthave been the place where that horrid murder was committed. She hadforgotten the tale, though she remembered the name.

　　Her first disaster came soon enough.

　　Pontiff, who was naturally slow-witted, took more than five minutes tofind out that it was only the governess he was escorting, but once thediscovery had been made, he promptly turned tail, paying not theslightest heed to Miss Craig's feeble whistle. And then, to add to herdiscomfort, the rain came, not in heavy drops, but driving in sheetsof thin spray that blotted out what few landmarks there were upon themoor.

　　They were very kind at Tebbits' farm. The doctor had gone back toLiverpool the day before, but Mrs. Tebbit gave her hot milk and turfcakes, and offered her reluctant son to show Miss Craig a shorter pathon to the moor, that avoided the larch wood.

　　He was a monosyllabic youth, but his presence was cheering, and shefelt the night doubly black when he left her at the last gate.

　　She trudged on wearily. Her thoughts had already gone back to thealmost exhausted theme of the bark of ghosts, when she heard steps onthe road behind her that were at least material. Next minute thefigure of a man appeared: Miss Craig was relieved to see that thestranger was a clergyman. He raised his hat. "I believe we are bothgoing in the same direction," he said.

　　"Perhaps I may have the pleasure of escorting you." She thanked him."It is rather weird at night," she went on, "and what with all thetales of ghosts and bogies that one hears from the country people,I've ended by being half afraid myself."

　　"I can understand your nervousness," he said, "especially on a nightlike this. I used at one time to feel the same, for my work oftenmeant lonely walks across the moor to farms which were only reached byrough tracks difficult enough to find even in the daytime."

　　"And you never saw anything to frighten you--nothing immaterial Imean?"

　　"I can't really say that I did, but I had an experience eleven yearsago which served as the turning point in my life, and since you seemto be now in much the same state of mind as I was then in, I will tellit you.

　　"The time of year was late September. I had been over to Westondale tosee an old woman who was dying, and then, just as I was about to starton my way home, word came to me of another of my parishioners who hadbeen suddenly taken ill only that morning. It was after seven when atlast I started. A farmer saw me on my way, turning back when I reachedthe moor road.

　　"The sunset the previous evening had been one of the most lovely Iever remember seeing. The whole vault of heaven had been scatteredwith flakes of white cloud, tipped with rosy pink like the strewnpetals of a full-blown rose.

　　"But that night all was changed. The sky was an absolutely dull slatecolour, except in one corner of the west where a thin rift showed thelast saffron tint of the sullen sunset. As I walked, stiff andfootsore, my spirits sank. It must have been the marked contrastbetween the two evenings, the one so lovely, so full of promise (thecorn was still out in the fields spoiling for fine weather), the otherso gloomy, so sad with all the dead weight of autumn and winter daysto come. And then added to this sense of heavy depression came anotherdifferent feeling which I surprised myself by recognising as fear.

　　"I did not know why I was afraid.

　　"The moors lay on either side of me, unbroken except for a stragglingline of turf shooting butts, that stood within a stone's-throw of theroad.

　　"The only sound I had heard for the last half hour was the cry of thestartled grouse--Go back, go back, go back. But yet the feeling offear was there, affecting a low centre of my brain through some littleused physical channel.

　　"I buttoned my coat closer, and tried to divert my thoughts bythinking of next Sunday's sermon.

　　"I had chosen to preach on Job. There is much in the old-fashionednotion of the book, apart from all the subtleties of the highercriticism, that appeals to country people; the loss of herds andcrops, the break up of the family. I would not have dared to speak,had not I too been a farmer; my own glebe land had been flooded threeweeks before, and I suppose I stood to lose as much as any man in theparish. As I walked along the road repeating to myself the firstchapter of the book, I stopped at the twelfth verse.

　　"'And the Lord said unto Satan: Behold all that he hath is in thypower'. . .

　　"The thought of the bad harvest (and that is an awful thought in thesevalleys) vanished. I seemed to gaze into an ocean of infinitedarkness.

　　"I had often used, with the Sunday glibness of the tired priest, whoseduty it is to preach three sermons in one day, the old simile of thechess board. God and the Devil were the players: and we were helpingone side or the other. But until that night I had not thought of thepossibility of my being only a pawn in the game, that God might throwaway that the game might be won.

　　"I had reached the place where we are now, I remember it by that roughstone water-trough, when a man suddenly jumped up from the roadside.He had been seated on a heap of broken road metal."

　　'Which way are you going, guv'ner?' he said.

　　"I knew from the way he spoke that the man was a stranger. There aremany at this time of the year who come up from the south, trampingnorthwards with the ripening corn. I told him my destination.

　　"'We'll go along together,' he replied.

　　"It was too dark to see much of the man's face, but what little I madeout was coarse and brutal.

　　"Then he began the half-menacing whine I knew so well--he had trampedmiles that day, he had had no food since breakfast, and that was onlya crust."

　　'Give us a copper', he said, 'it's only for a night's lodging.'

　　"He was whittling away with a big clasp knife at an ash stake he hadtaken from some hedge."

　　The clergyman broke off.

　　"Are those the lights of your house?" he said. "We are nearer than Iexpected, but I shall have time to finish my story. I think I will,for you can run home in a couple of minutes, and I don't want you tobe frightened when you are out on the moors again.

　　"As the man talked he seemed to have stepped out of the verybackground of my thoughts, his sordid tale, with the sad lies that hida far sadder truth.

　　"He asked me the time.

　　"It was five minutes to nine. As I replaced my watch I glanced at hisface. His teeth were clenched, and there was something in the gleam ofhis eyes that told me at once his purpose.

　　"Have you ever known how long a second is? For a third of a second Istood there facing him, filled with an overwhelming pity for myselfand him; and then without a word of warning he was upon me. I feltnothing. A flash of lightning ran down my spine, I heard the dullcrash of the ash stake, and then a very gentle patter like the soundof a far-distant stream. For a minute I lay in perfect happinesswatching the lights of the house as they increased in number until thewhole heaven shone with twinkling lamps.

　　"I could not have had a more painless death."

　　Miss Craig looked up. The man was gone; she was alone on the moor.

　　She ran to the house, her teeth chattering, ran to the solid shadowthat crossed and recrossed the kitchen blind.

　　As she entered the hall, the clock on the stairs struck the hour. Itwas nine o'clock.