The Buccaneer Farmer. Harold Bindloss
were independent and suspicious about new plans, but it was obvious that the best defense against a monopoly was a combine. In fact, they began to see it was the only defense they had. Then one turned to Peter.
"If you're for stopping Bell robbing us and starving poor folk at
Allerby, I'm with you."
One after another promised his support, a plan was agreed upon, and Peter was satisfied when his neighbors went away. They were patient, cautious, and hard to move; but he knew their obstinacy when they were roused. Now they had started, they would go on, stubbornly taking a road that was new to them. Bell, of course, would make a cunning fight, but Peter doubted if he would win.
"I reckon your plan will work," he said to Kit, with a nod of satisfaction.
Kit nodded and picking up his hat and some letters went out. As he walked down the dale the moon rose above a shadowy fell, touching the opposite hillside with silver light that reached the fields at the bottom farther on. Tall pikes of wet hay threw dark shadows across a meadow, and he heard the roar of a swollen beck. There was too much water in the dale, but Kit knew something might be done to make farming pay in spite of the weather. Land that had gone sour might be recovered by draining, and a bank could be built where the river now and then washed away the crops. Osborn, however, was poor and extravagant, and his agent's talents were rather applied to raising rents than improving the soil.
Kit stopped when he got near Allerby, where the dale widens and a cluster of low white houses stands among old trees. The village glimmered in the moonlight and beyond it rolling country, dotted by dark woods, ran back to the sea. A beck plunged down the hillside with a muffled roar, and a building, half in light and half in shadow, occupied the hollow of the ghyll. Kit, leaning on the bridge, watched the glistening thread of water that trickled over the new iron wheel, and noted the raw slate slabs that had been recently built into the mossy wall. A big traction engine, neatly covered by a tarpaulin, and a trailer lurry stood in front of the sliding door.
Osborn had spent some money here, for Allerby mill, with its seed and chemical manure stores, paid him a higher rent than the best of his small farms. It was obviously well managed by the tenant, and Kit approved. Modern machines and methods, although expensive, were good and were needed in the dale. The trouble was, they sometimes gave the man who could use them power to rob his poorer neighbors. Kit saw that concentrated power was often dangerous, and since unorganized, individual effort was no longer profitable, he knew no cure but cooperation.
Although young, he was seldom rash. Enthusiasm is not common in the bleak northern dales, whose inhabitants are, for the most part, conservative and slow. Wind and rain had hardened him and he had inherited a reserved strength and quietness from ancestors who had braved the storms that raged about Ashness. Yet the north is not always stern, for now and then the gray sky breaks, and fell and dale shine in dazzling light and melt with mystic beauty into passing shade. Kit, like his country, varied in his moods; sometimes he forgot to be practical and his caution vanished, leaving him romantic and imaginative.
He went on, and as he reached the first of the white houses a girl came out of a gate and stopped where the moonlight fell across the road. She had some beauty and her pose was graceful.
"Oh," she exclaimed, with rather exaggerated surprise, "it's Kit! I suppose you'll take this letter? I was going to the post."
Kit did not know much about young women, but hesitated, because he doubted if she wanted him to post the letter.
"If you like," he said. "I expect the causeway at the water-splash will be wet."
She gave him a curious smile. "Oh, well; here's the letter. Jim Nixon had to help me across the water when I went last night, and I don't suppose you're afraid of wetting your feet. You are used to it at Ashness."
"Yes," said Kit. "My boots are stronger than yours."
"Canny lad!" she answered, with a mocking laugh. Kit felt embarrassed, for he thought he saw what she meant. Janet Bell was something of a coquette.
"I heard people coming down the road not long since," she resumed. "Have you had a supper party? Tell your father I think he's shabby because he left me out."
"It wasn't a supper party and there were no women. Three or four neighbors came in."
"To grumble about the weather or argue about the sheep?"
"They did grumble about the weather," Kit replied.
Janet looked amused. "You're very cautious, my lad; but you needn't take it for granted I'm always on father's side. Do you think I don't know why your neighbors came?"
"You don't know altogether."
The moonlight was clear enough to show that Janet colored. "And you think
I stopped you to find out?"
"I don't," said Kit, rather awkwardly. "Still, perhaps it's better that you shouldn't know."
"Oh," said she, with some emotion, "I can't tell if you mean to be nice or not. It's the lazy, feckless people who dislike father, because they're jealous; and they try to make things hard for me. Why should I suffer because he's cleverer than them?"
"You oughn't to suffer. I really don't think people blame you."
"They do blame me," Janet insisted. "You doubted if you could trust me just now."
This was true enough to embarrass Kit, but he said, "I didn't see why I should talk to you about our business; that was all. In fact, I don't mean to talk about it to anybody."
"Now you're nicer. I didn't like to feel you were taking particular care not to let me know. Well, of course, father's no friend of yours and perhaps he'll like you worse by and by. But, after all, does that matter?"
"Not in a way," said Kit, pretending to be dull. "You have nothing to do with the dispute and we don't want to quarrel with your father, although we mean to carry out our plans."
Janet looked rather hard at him and there was some color in her face, but she forced a smile.
"Oh, well! Good-night! I've stopped you, and expect you want to get home."
She went back through the gate and Kit resumed his walk, struggling with an annoyance he felt was illogical. He knew something about Bell's household and imagined that Janet's life was not smooth. He was sorry for her, and it was, of course, unjust to blame her for her father's deeds. All the same, the favor she had sometimes shown him was embarrassing. He was not a philanderer, but he was young and she had made him feel that he had played an ungallant part. Jane was a flirt, but, after all, it would not have cost him much, so to speak, to play up to her. Perhaps he had acted like a prig. This made him angry, although he knew he had taken the proper line.
By and by he came to the water-splash, where a beck crossed the road. Its channel was paved, so that one could drive across, and at the side a stone causeway had been made for foot passengers. Sometimes, when the beck was unusually swollen, shallow water covered the stones, and Kit saw the significance of a statement of Janet's as he noted the width of the submerged spot. It looked as if Jim Nixon had carried her across. Then his annoyance vanished and he laughed. Gallant or not, he was satisfied to carry Janet's letter.
As he went on in the moonlight he began to see that there were some grounds for his reluctance to indulge the girl. He had thought about Miss Osborn often since he helped her across the stepping stones. He had not hesitated then, and although the things were different, to dwell upon the incident was perhaps rasher than indulging Janet. Miss Osborn had, no doubt, forgotten, but he had not. The trouble was, he could not forget; his imagination pictured her vividly, sitting beneath the alders talking to him.
With something of an effort Kit pulled himself up. He was a small farmer's son and the Osborns were important people. He knew Osborn's family pride, which he thought his daughter had inherited. In Osborn, it was marked by arrogance; in the girl by a gracious, half-stately calm. For all that, the pride was there, and Kit, resolving that he would not be a fool, went to the post office and put Janet's letter in the box.