In the year eighteen hundred and twenty, and for many years before and after, Abel Reddy farmed his own land at Perry Hall End, on the western boundaries of Castle Barfield. He lived at Perry Hall, a ripe-coloured old tenement of Elizabethan design, which crowned a gentle eminence and looked out picturesquely on all sides from amongst its neighbouring trees. It had a sturdier aspect in its age than it could have worn when younger, for its strength had the sign-manual of time upon it, and even its hoary lichens looked as much like a prophecy as a record.
A mile away, but also within the boundaries of Castle Barfield parish, there stood another house upon another eminence: a house of older date than Perry Hall, though of less pleasing and picturesque an air. The long low building was of a darkish stone, and had been altered and added to so often that it had at last arrived at a complex ugliness which was not altogether displeasing. The materials for its structure had all been drawn at different periods from the same stone quarry, and the chequered look of new bits and old bits had a hint of the chess-board. Here Samson Mountain dwelt on his own land in the midst of his own people.
The Mountain Farm, as it was called, and had been called time out of mind, was separated from the Perry Hall Farm by a very shallow and narrow brook. The two houses were built as far apart from each other as they could be, whilst remaining in their own boundaries, as if the builder of the later one had determined to set as great a distance as he could between his neighbour and himself. And as a matter of fact the Reddys and the Mountains were a sort of Capulets and Montagues, and had hated each other for generations. Samson and Abel kept up the ancient grudge in all its ancient force. They were of the same age within a week or two, had studied at the same school, and had fought there; had at one time courted the same girl, had sat within sight of each other Sunday after Sunday and year after year in the parish church, had each buried father and mother in the parish churchyard, and in the mind of each the thought of the other rankled like a sore.
The manner of their surrendering their common courtship was characteristic of their common hatred. Somewhere about the beginning of this century a certain Miss Jenny Rusker, of Castle Barfield, was surrounded by quite a swarm of lovers. She was pretty, she was well-to-do, for her time and station, she was accomplished—playing the harp (execrably), working samplers in silk and wool with great diligence and exactitude, and having read a prodigious number of plays, poems, and romances. What this lady’s heart forged that her mouth did vent, but no pretty young woman ever looked or sounded foolish to the eyes or ears of her lovers. Mountain and Eeddy were among her solicitors. She liked them both, and had not quite made up her mind as to which, if either of them, she would choose, when suddenly the knowledge of the other’s occasional presence in her sitting-room made the house odious to each, and they surrendered the chase almost at the same hour. Miss Jenny satisfied herself with a cousin of her own, married without changing her name, had children, was passably happy, as the world goes, and lived to be a profoundly sentimental but inveterate widow. Mountain and Eeddy married girls they would not otherwise have chosen, and were passably happy also, except when the sore of ancient hatred was inflamed by a chance meeting on the corn exchange or an accidental passage of the eyes at church. They had no better authority for hating each other than that their fathers had hated each other before them. The fathers had the authority of the grandfathers, and they, that of the greatgrandfathers.
It was Saturday afternoon. There was a bleak frost abroad, and even the waters of the brook which divided the two farms were hard frozen. The sun hung low in the western sky, lustreless as a wafer, but ruddy. The fields were powdered with thin snow, and the earth was black by contrast with it. Now and then a shot sounded far away, but clear and sharp, from where the guests of my lord of Barfield were killing time in the warren.
A labouring man, smock-frocked, billy-cocked, gaitered, and hob-nailed, was clamping down the frozen lane, the earth ringing like iron under iron as he walked. By his side was a fair-haired lad of nine or ten years of age, a boy of frank and engaging countenance, carefully and even daintily dressed, and holding up his head as if he were a lord of the soil and knew it. The boy and the labourer were talking, and on the frosty silence of the fields the clear treble of the boy’s speech rang out clearly and carried far. A burly man, with a surly red face, who had stooped to button a gaiter, in a meadow just beyond the brook, and had laid down his gun beside him the while, heard both voice and words whilst the speaker was a hundred yards away.
‘But don’t you think it’s very wicked, Ichabod?’
The labourer’s voice only reached the listener in the meadow. He spoke with the Barfield drawl, and his features, which were stiffened by the frozen wind, were twisted into a look of habitual waggery.
‘Well,’ said he, in answer to his young companion, ‘maybe, Master Richard, it might be wicked, but it’s main like natur.’
‘I shan’t hate Joe Mountain when I’m a man,’ said the boy.
The surly man in the field, hearing these words, looked on a sudden surlier still, and throwing up his head with a listening air, and holding his ankle with both hands, crouched and craned his neck to listen.
‘May’st have to change thy mind, Master Richard,’ said the labourer.
‘Why should I change my mind, Ichabod?’ asked the boy, looking up at him.
‘Why?’ answered Ichabod, ‘thee’lt niver have it said as thee wast afraid of any o’ the Mountain lot.’
‘I’m not afraid of him,’ piped the engaging young cockerel ‘We had a fight in the coppice last holidays, and I beat him. The squire caught us, and we were going to stop, but he made us go on, and he saw fair. Then he made us shake hands after. Joe Mountain wouldn’t say he’d had enough, but the squire threw up the sponge for him. And he gave us two half-crowns apiece, and said we were both good plucked uns.’
‘Ah! ‘said Ichabod, with warmth, ‘he’s the right sort is the squire. And there’s no sort or kind o’ sport as comes amiss to him. A gentleman after my own heart.’
‘He made us shake hands and promise we’d be friends,’ said Master Richard, ‘and we’re going to be.’
‘Make him turn the brook back first, Master Richard,’ said Ichabod. The two were almost at the bridge by this time, and the listener could hear distinctly.
‘Turn the brook back?’ the boy asked. ‘What do you mean, Ichabod?’
‘Ax thy feyther, when thee gettest home,’ answered Ichabod. ‘He’ll tell thee all the rights on it. So fur as I can make out—and it was the talk o’ the country i’ my grandfeyther’s daysen—it amounts to this. Look here! ‘He and the boy arrested their steps on the bridge, and Ichabod pointed along the frozen track of the brook. ‘Seest that hollow ten rods off? It was in the time o’ Cromwell Hast heard tell o’ Cromwell, I mek no doubt?’
‘Oliver Cromwell,’ said Master Richard. ‘He was Lord Protector of England. He fought King Charles.’
‘Like enough,’ said Ichabod. ‘In his daysen, many ‘ears ago, there was the Reddys here and the Mountains there’—indicating either house in turn by pointing with his thumb—‘just as they be now. The Reddy o’ that day—he was thy grandfeyther’s grand-feyther as like as not—maybe he was his grandfeyther for aught as I can tell, for it’s a deadly-dreadful heap o’ time long past—the Reddy o’ that day went to the wars, and fowt for Cromwell. The Mountain o’ that time stopped at hum. Up to then they’d niver been misfriended as fur as I know. That’s how it’s put about, anyway. But whilst the Reddy was away what’s the Mountain do?’
The boy was looking at Ichabod, and Ichabod, stooping a little to be the more impressive, was looking at him. The surly-faced man with the gun had hitherto been concealed by the hedge beside which he had knelt to fasten his gaiter, and neither of the two had suspected his presence. It was natural, therefore, that both of them should start a little when his voice reached them.
‘Well?’ The voice was sour and surly, like the face, and the word was rapped out sharp and clear. Master Richard and Ichabod turned with one accord. ‘Well?’ says the surly man, ‘what does the Mountain do?’
Ichabod, less discomfited by the suddenness of the interruption than might have been expected of him, rubbed the frozen base of his nose with a cold forefinger and grinned. Master Richard looked from one to the other with a frank and fearless interest and inquiry which became him very prettily. The surly man bestowed a passing scowl upon him, and turned his angry regard again upon Ichabod.
‘Come, now,’ he said, ‘you backbiting, scandal-mongering old liar! What does the Mountain do? Out with it!’
‘Why, nayther thee nor me was there at the time, gaffer,’ responded Ichabod, his frosty features still creased with a grin. ‘So nayther thee nor me can talk for certain. Can us?’
‘I suppose,’ said the surly, burly man, ‘you’re going to stuff that young monkey with the old lie about the stream being turned?’
Ichabod made no verbal response, but continued to rub his nose with his forefinger, and to grin with an aspect of uncertain humour. The surly man stooped for his gun, threw it over his arm, and stared at Ichabod and his young companion with eyes of hatred and disdain. Then, having somewhat relieved his feelings by a curse or two, he turned his back and went off with a long, heavy, dogged-looking stride, his feet crunching noisily through the frosty grasses.
‘It eeat for me to talk about my betters, and them as the Lord has put in authority over us,’ said Ichabod, with an expression which belied these words of humility; ‘but I put it to thee, Master Richard. Dost think that old Mountain theer looks like a likeable un? No, no. Might as well expect cat an’ dog t’ agree as Reddy and Mountain.’
This speech was made in a carefully modulated tone, when he and the boy were at some distance from the surly man, who was still visible, three or four fields away.
‘What was it about the brook, Ichabod?’ asked Master Richard.
‘Why,’ said Ichabod, ‘when that old longaway grandfeyther o’ thine was away a-fighting for Cromwell, ‘tis said his neighbour turned the brook so as to bring in four-score acres o’ land as ud niver have been his by right. The Reddy o’ that day died in the wars, and his widder could mek no head again the Mountain lot; but her taught her son to hate ‘em and look down upon ‘em, and hated an’ looked down upon is the name on ‘em from that day to this.’
‘But Joe Mountain didn’t do it,’ said Master Richard.
‘No, no,’ assented Ichabod. ‘But it’s i’ this way. It’s i’ the blood. What’s bred i’ the bone will come out i’ the flesh. Afore thee makest friends with young Joe Mountain, Master Richard, thee ax thy feyther.’