Perlycross: A Tale of the Western Hills

CHAPTER XXI.

BLACKMARSH

A long way back among the Blackdown Hills, and in nobody knows what parish, the land breaks off into a barren stretch, uncouth, dark, and desolate. Being neither hill nor valley, slope nor plain, morass nor woodland, it has no lesson for the wanderer, except that the sooner he gets out of it the better. For there is nothing to gratify him if he be an artist, nothing to interest him if his tastes are antiquarian, nothing to arouse his ardour, even though he were that happy and most ardent creature, a naturalist free from rheumatism. And as for any honest fellow mainly concerned with bread and butter, his head will at once go round with fear and with looking over his shoulders. For it is a lonesome and gruesome place, where the weather makes no difference; where Nature has not put her hand, on this part or on that, to leave a mark or show a preference, but slurred the whole with one black frown of desolate monotony.

That being so, the few and simple dwellers on the moorland around, or in the lowland homesteads, might well be trusted to keep their distance from this dreary solitude. There were tales enough of hapless travellers last seen going in this direction, and never in any other; as well as of spectral forms, low groans, and nightly processions through the air.

Not more than a hundred years ago, there had been a wicked baronet, profane, rapacious, arrogant, blackhearted, foul, and impious. A blessed curate prayed him not to hunt on Holy Friday. He gave the blessed curate taste of whip-thong from his saddle; then blew seven blasts of his horn, to proclaim that he would hunt seven days in every week, put spurs to his black horse, and away. The fox, disturbed on Holy Friday, made for this "Forbidden land;" which no fox had ever done before. For his life he plunged into it, feeling for the moment that nothing could be worse than to be torn in pieces. The hounds stopped, as if they were turned to stone in the fury of their onslaught. The huntsman had been left far behind, having wife and family. But the wicked baronet cracked his whip, blew three blasts on his horn, leaned forward on his horse and gave him the rowel. The hounds in a frenzy threw up their sterns, and all plunged headlong into it. And ever since that, they may be seen (an hour after sun-down, on every Sunday of the season, and any Holy Friday) in full cry scouring through the air, with the wicked baronet after them, lashing his black horse, and blowing his horn, but with no fox in front to excuse them.

These facts have made the Forbidden land, or the Blackmarsh, as some call it, even less desirable than its own complexion shows it. And it is so far from Perlycross, that any man on foot is tired by the time he gets there, and feels that he has travelled far enough, and in common sense must go home again.

But there was one Perlycrucian now – by domicile, not nativity – of tireless feet, and reckless spirit, too young for family ties, and too impetuous for legends. By this time he was admitted to the freedom of every hedge and ditch in the parish, because he was too quick to be caught, and too young to be prosecuted. "Horatio Peckover" was his name, by usage cut short into "Hopper"; a lad in advance of his period, and the precursor of all "paper-chases."

Like many of those who are great in this line, he was not equally strong in the sedentary uses of that article. Mr. Penniloe found him so far behind, when pen and ink had to be dealt with, that he put him under the fine Roman hand of Sergeant Jakes, the schoolmaster. Jakes was not too richly endowed by a grateful country, for years of heroism; neither was his stipend very gorgeous, for swinging cane in lieu of gun. Sixpence an hour was his figure, for pen-drill of private pupils, and he gladly added Hopper to the meagre awkward-squad.

Soon an alliance of the closest kind was formed; the veteran taking warm interest in the spirited sallies of youth, and the youth with eager thirst imbibing the fine old Peninsular vintage of the brightest ruby, poured forth in the radiance of a yellow tallow candle. For the long school-room was cleared at night of coats, and hats, and green-baize bags, cracked slates, bead-slides, and spelling-books, and all the other accoutrements, and even toys of the youthful Muse; and at seven o'clock Horatio stepped across the road from the rectory, sat down at the master's high black desk, and shouldered arms for the copy-drill. The Sergeant was famed for his flourishes, chiefly of his own invention, and had promised to impart that higher finish, when the fancy capitals were mastered.

"What a whack of time it does take, Sergeant!" cried Hopper, as he dipped his pen, one Friday night. "Not half so bad as Latin though, and there is something to look at afterwards. Capitals almost captured now. Ah, you have taken the capitals of many a country, Sergeant. Halloa! 'Xerxes was conqueror at Marathon,' to-night! Sergeant, are you quite sure of that? I thought it was another fellow, with a longer name – Milly, Tilly, something."

"No, Master Hopper; if it had been, we must have passed him long ago, among the big M's."

"To be sure. What a muff I was, not to think of that! I beg your pardon, Sergeant. There's scarcely anything you don't know."

"I had that on the highest authority – right elbow more in to your side, sir, if you please – that Xerxes copy was always set by commanding officer at Turry Vardoes – could not tell what to do with the men at night – so many ordered to play at nine-pins, and so many told off to learn roundhand. If it had not been for that, sir, I should never have been equal to my present situation."

"Then it must have been Xerxes, Sergeant. And after all, how can it matter, when it happened so long ago? A blot again? D – n it."

"Master Hopper, I am very sorry, but it is my duty to reprimand you, for the use of profane language. Never permitted, sir, in school-hours. Would you do it, before Mr. Penniloe?"

"I should rather hope not. Wouldn't old Pen stare? And then he'd be down upon me, like the very – capital D. Sergeant, pray excuse me; I only thought of him, without any name. I suppose we may call him 'Old Nick' though, without having to go to him, for doing it. I never could see what the difference was. But, my eye, Sergeant, I expected to see the old chap yesterday, cloven hoof, tail, eyes of fire, and everything!"

"What do you mean, sir? Where was he? Not in Perlycross, I hope." Sergeant Jakes glanced down the long dark room, and then at the pegs where his French sword was hanging.

"No, not here. He daren't come so near the church. But in the place where he lives all day, according to the best authorities. You have heard of Blackmarsh, haven't you? No marsh at all – that's the joke of it – but the queerest place I ever saw in all my life. Criky jimminy, but it is a rum un!"

"You don't mean to say you were there, sir!" The Sergeant took his hand from Hopper's shoulder, and went round to see whether he was joking.

"To be sure I was, as large as life, and twice as natural! Had a holiday, as you know, and got leave off from dinner. Mother Muggridge gave me grub enough to go to Halifax. I had been meaning to go there ever so long, because everybody seems to funk it so. Why there's nothing there to be afraid of: though it makes you look about a bit. And you aren't sorry to come out of it."

"Did you tell Mr. Penniloe, you had been there, Master Hopper?"

"Sergeant, do you see any green in my eye?" Horatio dropped his pen, and enlarged the aperture of one eye, in a style very fashionable just then, but never very elegant.

"No sir, I can't answer fairly that I do. And I don't believe there ever was much, even when you was a babby."

"Mum's the word, you see then – even to old Muggridge, or she might be fool enough to let out. But I say, Sergeant, I've got a little job for you to do. Easy enough. I know you won't refuse me."

"No sir, that I won't. Anything whatever that lays in my power, Master Hopper."

"Well, it's only this – just to come with me to-morrow – half-holiday, you know, and I can get off, plum-duffs – always plum-duffs on a Saturday, and you should just see Pike pitching into them – and we'll give the afternoon to it, and examine Blackmarsh pretty thoroughly."

"Blackmarsh, Master Hopper! The Forbidden land – where Sir Robert upon his black horse, and forty hounds in full cry before him, may be seen and heard, sweeping through the air, like fiends!"

"Oh, that's all my eye, and Betty Martin! Nobody believes that, I should hope. Why Sergeant, a man who knows all about Xerxes, and has taken half the capitals in Europe – oh, I say, Sergeant, come, you are not afraid now, and a fellow of sixteen, like me, to go there all by myself, and stop – well, nearly half-an-hour!"

"Afraid! Not I. No certainly not, after mountains, and forests, and caverns, and deserts. But the distance, Master Hopper, for a man of my age, and troubled with rheumatism in the knee-joint."

"Oh, that's all right! I have planned out all that. Of course I don't expect you to go ten miles an hour. But Baker Channing's light cart goes, every other Saturday, to Crooked-post quarry, at the further end of Hagdon, to fetch back furze enough to keep his oven going, from a stack he bought there last summer. To-morrow is his day; and you have no school, you know, after half-past ten or eleven. You ride with old Tucker to the Crooked-post, and come back with him, when he is loaded up. It shan't cost you a farthing. I have got a shilling left, and he shall have it. It is only two miles, or so, from Crooked-post to this end of Blackmarsh; and there you will find me waiting. Come, you can't get out of that."

"But what do you want me there for, sir? Of course, I'd go anywhere you would venture, if I could see any good in it."

"Sergeant, I'll tell you what. You thought a great deal of Sir Thomas Waldron, didn't you?"

"More than of any man that ever lived, or ever will see the light of this wicked world."

"And you didn't like what was done to him, did you?"

"Master Hopper, I tell you what. I'd give ten years off my poor life, if I could find out who did it."

"Then I fancy I have found out something about it. Not much, mind; but still something, and may come to more if we follow it up. And if you come to-morrow, I'll show you what it is. You know that my eyes are pretty sharp, and that I wasn't born yesterday. You know who it was that found 'Little Billy.' And you know who wants to get Fox out of this scrape, because he is a Somerset man, and all that, and doesn't deserve this trouble. And still more, because – "

"Well, Master Hopper, still more, because of what?"

"I don't mind telling you something, Sergeant – you have seen a lot of the world, you know. Because Jemmy Fox has got a deuced pretty sister."

"Oh come, Master Hopper, at your time of life! And not even got into the flourishes!"

"It doesn't matter, Jakes. I may seem rather young to people who don't understand the question. But that is my own business, I should hope. Well, I shall look out for you to-morrow. Two o'clock at the latest."

"But why shouldn't we tell Dr. Fox himself, and get him to come with us? That seems the simplest thing."

"No. There are very good reasons against that. I have found this out; and I mean to stick to it. No one would have dreamed of it, except for me. And I won't have it spoiled, by every nincompoop poking his nose into it. Only if we find anything more, and you agree with me about it, we will tell old Pen, and go by his opinion."

"Very well, sir. It all belongs to you; as it did to me, when I was first after Soult's arrival to discover the advance of the French outposts. You shall have the credit, though I didn't. Anything more, sir? The candle is almost out."

"Sergeant, no more. Unless you could manage – I mean, unless you should think it wise to bring your fine old sword with you. You say there is no such piece of steel – "

"Master Hopper, there is no such piece, unless it was Lord Wellington's. They say he had one that he could lean on – not a dress-sword, not flummery, but a real workman – and although he was never a heavy man, a stone and a half less than I was then, it would make any figure of the multiplication-table that he chose to call for, under him. But I mustn't carry arms in these days, Master Hopper. I shall bring a bit of Spanish oak, and trust in the Lord."

On the following day, the sun was shining pretty well for the decrepitude of the year. There had been no frost to speak of, since that first sharp touch about three weeks back. The air was mild, and a westerly breeze played with the half ripe pods of gorse, and the brown welting of the heather. Hopper had brought a long wand of withy, from the bank of the last brook he had leaped, and he peeled it with his pocket-knife, and sat (which he seldom did when he could help it) on a tuft of rush, waiting for the Sergeant. He stretched his long wiry legs, and counted the brass buttons on his yellow leathern gaiters, which came nearly to his fork, and were made fast by narrow straps to his brace-buttons.

This young man – as he delighted to be called – had not many grievances, because he ran them off so fast; but the two he chiefly dwelt upon, in his few still moments, were the insufficiency of cash and calf. For the former he was chiefly indebted to himself, having never cultivated powers of retention; for the deficiency of calves, however, nature was to blame, although she might plead not unfairly that they were allowed no time to grow. He regarded them now with unmerited contempt, and slapped them in some indignation, with the supple willow wand. It might well be confessed that they were not very large, as is often the case with long-distance runners; but for all that they were as hard as nails, and endowed with knobs of muscle, tough and tense as coiled mainspring. In fact there was not a bit of flabby stuff about him; and his high clear colour, bright eyes, and ready aspect made him very pleasant to behold, though his nose was rather snubby, and his cheekbones high, and his mouth of too liberal aperture.

"Come along, Sergeant, what a precious time you have taken!" Hopper shouted, as the angular outline of the veteran appeared at last in a gap between two ridges. "Why, we shall scarcely have two hours of good daylight left. And how do you know that Tucker won't go home without you?"

"He knows a bit better than that," replied Jakes, smiling with dark significance. "Master Hopper, I've got three of Tucker's boys in Horseshoe. Tucker is bound to be uncommon civil."

Now the "Horseshoe" was a form in the school at Perlycross especially adapted for corporal applications, snug as a cockpit, and affording no possibility of escape. And what was still better, the boys of that class were in the very prime of age for attracting, as well as appreciating, healthy and vigorous chastisement; all of them big enough to stand it, none of them big enough to kick, and for the most part newly trouser'd into tempting chubbiness. Truly it might be said, that the parents of playful boys in the "Horseshoe" had given hostages to education.