The Black Tor: A Tale of the Reign of James the First by George Manville Fenn (best romance books of all time .txt) 📖

Master Rayburn received the raven’s addled egg, and gave Ram Jennings a groat for his trouble, and for telling him all about how it was obtained, and what followed, keeping the man, and questioning him a good deal, as he smiled and frowned over the task he began at once, that of chipping a good-sized hole in one side of the egg, and extracting its contents in a little wooden bowl of clean water.

At last, after a great deal of sniffing and shuffling about, the man said, “Done with me, Master Rayburn?”

“Yes,” said the old man sharply. “Unless you can tell me any more. But why?”

“Well, master, I’m pretty hard about the smell, and it falls to me to clean out the pigsties; and when they’ve been left a month or two in the summer, and got pretty ripe, they aren’t so nice as bean-fields in bloom, or the young missus’s roses in her bit o’ garden; but pigsties aren’t nothing to that there egg. It’s enough to pyson a black dog.”

“Be off with you, then,” said the old man, with a dry chuckle; and as soon as he was alone, he threw the foul water away. “Yes,” he muttered, “it does smell; but that’s a splendid egg, and not stained a bit.”

“Hah!” he ejaculated a few minutes later. “I’d have given something to be there. Brave lads. True English, to the backbone; but with their young minds warped and spoiled by the traditions of this miserable feud. Why, it must have been grand,” mused the old man, shaking his grey locks. “How I should have liked to see and hear it all! What a fight to master the inborn hatred! On both sides the evil contending with the good; and, according to that man’s telling, that boy Mark did not show up well. I don’t know, though! He could not help it. He had to fight the black blood in his veins that has been handed down for generations. So young Ralph saved his life, made him prisoner, and set him at liberty like a true honest gentleman; and the other had to battle with his dislike and bitterness at receiving a favour from his enemy’s hands.

“Good Heavens!” he cried aloud. “Enemy’s! What contemptible worms we are, to dare to nurse up such a feeling from father to son, generation after generation! Why, with them it is an hereditary disease. But who knows? Those two lads may grow up to be friends, and kill the old feud. They cannot help respecting each other after such an encounter as that. I’ll try and get hold of young Darley, and then of Mark; and perhaps I may be able to— Bah! you weak-minded, meddlesome old driveller!” he cried impetuously. “You would muddle, and spoil all, when perhaps a Higher Hand is at work, as it always is, to make everything tend toward the best.

“But I should like to be present, by accident, the next time those two lads meet.”

The meeting took place before many days had passed.

In the interim Ralph Darley had told his father all that had happened, and Sir Morton had frowned, and looked pleased, and frowned again.

“You think I did wrong father,” said the lad.

“No, my boy; I think you behaved splendidly; but you see what a miserable race those Edens are. You do good to one of them, a boy of your own age, and he is ready to turn and rend you.”

“But I did not go on purpose to do good to him, father. I meant to catch him, tie him hand and foot, and bring him here to do what you liked with him.”

“Never mind: you acted bravely; and he like a roused wolf’s cub, as Nick Garth called him.”

“Felt humbled,” said Ralph thoughtfully.

“Yes, my boy. Well, it’s all over; but don’t go risking your life again for your enemies. We don’t want to quarrel with them unless they force it on, and I’m afraid they are going to, for I believe Eden has enlisted that gang of ruffians in his service. I can’t hear that they were seen to go away.”

Mark Eden told his father too, about the incident, and Sir Edward looked very grave.

“As the lad was a Darley, matters are different,” he said at last, “and I don’t like your conduct over the matter, Mark. To begin with—well, to go all through the business, you did wrong.”

“Yes, father,” said the lad bitterly.

“It was not right for you, a young scholar, and a gentleman, to go upon their land and invite a quarrel.”

“But I wanted the young ravens, father.”

“Yes. And they want my lead-mine; and if young Darley comes to try and take it, I hope you’ll break his neck.”

“Yes, father.”

“But you did not come out well, my boy,” said Sir Edward irritably. “The young cub has some good in him, and he behaved splendidly.”

“Yes, father; that made me feel so mad against him, and all the time I was feeling as if I would have given anything to shake hands, for he was very brave.”

“Well, it would have been, if he had not been a Darley.”

“And, of course, I could not shake hands and say thank you to a boy like him.”

“Shake hands—an Eden with a Darley! Impossible, my boy, impossible. There, it’s all over, and you must never give them the opportunity of insulting you again. That family has done us endless injury.”

“And we’ve done them a deal, too, father.”

“Yes, my boy, as much as ever we could. I mean in the old days; for I’m beginning to think that it’s best to let them go their way, if they let us go ours.”

“Yes, father.”

“I wish they lived on the other side of the county, instead of so near. But there, promise me that you will not run foul of any of the savages again.”

“Yes, father, I promise you,” said the lad quietly.

“By the way, Mark, you say young Darley had half-a-dozen ruffianly fellows with him, and they wanted to stone you, and then throw you off the cliff?”

“Yes, father.”

“Do you think any of them were part of the rough crew who came here with that red-faced captain?”

“I think not, father.”

“I’m afraid they went to Sir Morton Darley; so we must be watchful. Let that other trouble drop now, and be careful for the future. Don’t worry me now; Rugg wants to see me about the mining accounts. Keep out of mischief, and don’t let me hear any more about young Darley.”

Mark promised, and went out with the intention of going down the river to see old Master Rayburn, and ask him whether he had received the egg. But before he had gone far, the memories of the whole business seemed so distasteful, and he felt so much annoyed with himself, that he turned back.

“He’d make me tell him all about it, and I feel as if I couldn’t,” muttered the lad. “It tastes more and more bitter every time I think about it, and if Master Rayburn began to ask me questions, he’d get it all out of me, for he has such a way of doing it. I don’t believe any one could tell him a lie without being found out. Of course I shouldn’t tell him one. No, I won’t go. He’d say that I behaved badly, and I don’t want to be told, for though I wouldn’t own it, I know it better than any one could tell me. Hang the Darleys! I wish there wasn’t one on the face of the earth.”

So, instead of going to old Master Rayburn’s cottage, Mark walked back to the Black Tor, and after making up his mind to go down into the lead-mine, and chip off bits of spar, he went and talked to his sister, and told her, naturally enough, all that had passed.

Mary Eden, who was about a year older, and very like him in feature, shuddered a good deal over parts of his narration, and looked tearful and pained at the end.

“What’s the matter?” he said, rather roughly; “why, you’re going to cry!”

“I can’t help it, Mark,” she said sadly.

“Why: what makes you look like that?” said the lad irritably.

“Because—because—” she faltered.

“Well, because—because—” he cried mockingly.

“Because what?”

“Don’t be angry with me, dear. My brother Mark seems as if he behaved like a Darley, and that young Darley like my brother Mark.”

“Oh!” cried the lad, jumping up in a rage; and he rushed off, in spite of an appealing cry from Mary, and went down into the mine after all, where he met Dummy Rugg, old Dan’s son, and went for a ramble in the very lowest and grimmest parts, feeling as if to get away from the light of day would do him good, for his sister’s words had struck very deeply into his heart.

It was a gloomy place, that mine, and opened out into strange cavernous places, eaten away by water, or by strange crackings and subsidences of the earth, in the far distant ages when the boiling springs of the volcanic regions were depositing the beds of tufa, here of immense thickness, springs which are still in evidence, but no longer to pour out waters that scald, but of a gentle lukewarm or tepid temperature, which go on depositing their suspended stone to this day, though in a feeble, sluggish manner.

Dan Rugg