"Oh, I don't know. Short and thickset, with a stubbly chin and a beery eye."
"Would you like to know who he is?"
"I should, rather. I don't seem to remember his face a bit, and I prided myself on knowing all the moorside."
"He is Joe Strangeways—your moor woman's husband."
"Nonsense, mother! It can't be."
"Haven't they taught you, Griff, during all those years you have been away, that there is no such word as 'can't'? He is her husband."
Griff kicked the fender, for no apparent reason, and brought down the fire-irons with a rattle.
"But, mother—he was a brute—a drunken beast—a——"
"That does not alter facts, though, does it? I know Joe Strangeways very well, Griff; I had to teach him a lesson once."
She told him of that afternoon when she had gone to meet the quarryman on his return from work and had given him "a piece of her mind." Griff laughed rarely at the fierceness of this mother whom he was wont to tease beyond all limits of endurance. But he went out presently, and his step was heavy; he felt angry with Kate Strangeways because she had descended to the level of this unshaven clown. It was the first bit of real feeling he had experienced towards the woman who had heretofore struck him in the light of a valuable model.
CHAPTER VII. 'TWIXT WYNYATES AND LING CRAG.
It was nine o'clock of the next evening when Lomax, remembering his arrangement with the preacher, went to saddle his good mare Lassie. Lassie had almost forgotten what a gallop was like during the year that her master had been away from Marshcotes. The preacher came now and then to give her a turn, and the groom took perfunctory rides on her, but none save Griff could move the mare to the least show of enthusiasm. Gabriel thought her a dull nag, and wondered what Lomax saw in her; the groom voted her "a quarrelsome, skew-natured beast"; but Lassie could do a good deal when she felt Griff's legs astride of her and knew that it was worth while.
She whinnied, and arched her black neck, and kicked splinters out of her stall, when Griff came to her to-night.
"We're off for a scramble, old girl," he explained. And the mare, who had long ago guessed as much, almost harnessed herself, so eager was she to be off.
She didn't want to pull up at Gabriel's door, but a touch of the curb gave her a broad enough hint that she was to subdue inclination for once. The preacher came to the gate; he looked worth two of his usual self, what with the light of anticipation in his face, and the spick-and-span riding togs which replaced his sober gear of the morning.
"Are you ready?" Lomax shouted.
"Ay, and waiting," answered Gabriel, in a clear, ringing voice. "The chestnut has been saddled this half-hour past."
Away they went at a swinging pace along the good hard road that leads across the Lancashire border. They rattled down the hill and up again on the other side, past the wooded rise where Wynyates hamlet looks over Scartop Water. They slackened half-way up the hill, and Griff jerked his whip towards Wynyates Hall as they went by.
"A fine old place, that. It's taken at last, so Jack o' Ling Crag tells me."
"Taken, is it? I wouldn't change places with whoever is going to live there," muttered the preacher.
"Why, Hirst, I believe you're as bad as the rest of them. Do you put your trust in that ridiculous ghost of a brandy-bottle which Jack is always talking about?"
"There were men who came to an evil end up there," said Gabriel, slowly, "and it stands to reason they won't rest quiet in their graves." He drew his horse close up to Lassie, and peered into Griff's face. "Lad, it's all very well to talk and laugh and joke when you're above ground: but what is it when you've got six feet of earth above you, and there comes a rap-rap at the coffin-lid, and you ask who's knocking—and a voice comes out of the blackness and whispers of Judgment Day—and your body is mad to move, and can't—and your spirit breaks clean through for very suffering, and walks the earth till the world's end, thinking on the vengeance of the Lord——"
Griff looked out over the moor, quiet as death, with the moonlight dappling the hollows, and the road stretching on, on before him, a streaky grey, far as the silent sky. He trembled at the preacher's imagery; ghosts and another world seemed the only realities in this night-girdled land. Then he felt the mare's belly under his legs, and the breath of life in his body.
"Gabriel," he laughed, "you've got a fine imagination. Damn your superstitions!"
"Lad, you're over proud in your strength of limb," groaned Hirst. "Give a thought to the soul that can be burned in hell fire for ever——"
"I won't!" snapped Griff, digging his heels into Lassie.
Both riders and horses were content to take things easily by the time they re-passed Wynyates. The exercise had driven out half Gabriel's morbid fancies, and his thoughts were set on Greta.
"Griff," he ventured at last; "have you seen the miller lately?"
"Yes—and the miller's daughter, too; which is more to the point, I take it. I looked in this morning on my way through Hazel Dene."
A long silence. A light that was not of spiritual worries came into the preacher's face—a hot, ugly light of jealousy.
"She's a lass in a thousand, Griff, and you're a better man to look at than I; do you mean to play me false?"
"Gabriel Hirst, if you want me to think you drunk again, go on in that strain," cried the other, harshly.
Gabriel winced.
"Sober or drunk, lad, I fear you," he said, quietly.
"Then you're a fool for your pains. Haven't I eyes in my head, old chap? Didn't I watch you two the other night, and see the hide-and-seek in her eyes, and hear her cut you to ribbons with her little red tongue?"
"What of that? I don't see that it helps me."
"No, of course you don't see, because you know as much of women as you did the day you were born. It means just this—you can go in and win her. Only you won't; you're so damnably humble in the wrong places, and cock-a-whoop when soberness would fit you better."
"Do you mean that, Griff? Do you think—nay, nay, it's too good; it can't be. She as much as tells me I'm a canting fool—and sometimes she almost makes me believe it," he added reflectively.
"Do you good. What an ass you are, old fellow, somehow."
The preacher bit his lip, and seemed minded to retort; but he thought better of it, and struck off into a fresh channel of talk.
"There are changes in the countryside," he ventured presently. "The old mill is taken, Frender's Folly is taken, and now Wynyates——"
"Frender's Folly let?" echoed Griff. "I thought it was past hope by this time. Who has taken it?"
"Some sporting chap that has his pockets lined with gold."
"Frender's pockets were lined with gold, too, when he set out to build the Folly. I wish to the deuce these foreigners would spend their money elsewhere, instead of building palaces in the middle of the moor; the moor doesn't want them."
"Foreigners, Griff?" said the preacher, with a good, hearty laugh. "It's easy to tell that you come from hereabouts."
"Well, so they are foreigners. What does a moor house want with a couple of ball-rooms, terraces and gardens and hot-houses? Thank goodness, it lies outside Marshcotes moor, at any rate; they must make the best of it on the Cranshaw side."
"Captain Laverack—the man who's taken it—has a daughter, and they say she is pretty to look at," observed Gabriel, after another long pause.
Griff laughed to himself; he could read very clearly what was in the preacher's mind—his clumsy attempt to divert his rival's attentions to other quarters.
"Oh, has he? Does she ever stray as far as Ling Crag?"
"Now and then she rides this way. There's something queer about the business—so folk say—for the lass goes about with a face as long as a fiddle, and now and then she rides her horse shamefully hard, as if the devil was in her. Month in and month out they live at Frender's Folly, the girl and her father, and never get away for a holiday, as great folk mostly do."
"Gabriel, it does one good to hear you talking gossip! Man, you're changing in spite of yourself."
"I was thinking," went on Gabriel, in his honest, stubborn way, "that perhaps she is not as happy as she might be, and—it's time you were settled in life, Griff."
The other did not reply. His eyes went out across the moor again. The preacher's homely phrase had brought a host of sudden longings to the front. Settled in life, he muttered to himself; was that what was amiss with him? Then the thought of Kate Strangeways came to him—the picture of her husband, as he had last seen him with his head on the flagstones of the Bull doorway—the quick understanding that he had met no other woman who could grip his fancy just as Kate did. Then he remembered the husband again.
"Don't talk rot," he said, and fell into silence.
Another horseman showed round the bend in the road that hid Ling Crag. He drew rein as he neared them.
"Can you direct me to Wynyates?" he asked.
Griff started and looked at the stranger's face twice before he could make up his mind on some question suggested by the voice and figure. He put out his hand at last.
"Why, Roddick!" he cried. "How the mischief do you come to be scouring the country at this time of night?"
"What, it's never you, Lomax? Here, let me get a closer look at your face. By the powers it is, though! You've pulled me up with one question, and I'll pull you up with another; how the mischief do you come to be here?"
"I live here; and that is more than you can say for yourself, at any rate," Griff chuckled.
"There you're wrong, my boy. I've taken Wynyates, and am at this moment on my way to it."
"Then, why ask your road? You didn't take the place on trust, did you, without ever seeing it?"
"Yes, but I did. The road seemed as plain as a pikestaff, while the landlord at the inn there was giving me directions; but these bothersome moors of yours put a man off—from sky-line to sky-line they never vary, and they upset one's notions confoundedly."
Lassie began to show signs of impatience; she wanted to be back in her stall again, and it did not fit with her ideas of good sense that her master should keep her waiting while he talked to a casual stranger on the highroad.
"All right, Lassie, all right," said Griff; "a mile or two out of our way, and then home in good earnest. I'll see you as far as Wynyates, Roddick." Then, remembering the preacher, "Hirst, you won't mind my leaving you here? We must have another ride before long."
"As soon as you like, old fellow; it has done me a world of good," returned the preacher, cheerily.
"Now, Roddick, what on earth brings you here?" said Griff, as they went down the hill.
"Honours easy," retorted the other nonchalantly. "I thought you were in town, at the tail of Sybil Ogilvie; what brings you here?"
"Sybil Ogilvie herself, and a longing for fresh air." There was a testiness in Griff's voice.
"Ah—she played a little too fast and loose with you, did she? Well, I commend your sense, Lomax; she was worth about as little as any woman I ever saw, and that is saying a good deal."
"You still don't tell me why——"
"A longing for fresh air—and a few other trifles with which I won't burden you just now. Enough that I'm here, and here I mean to stay until it pleases Providence to kick me out."
"Then you've given up London, and political economy, and the writing of tracts for the People?"
"Yes, the whole lot. Political economy palls after fifteen years of it, and Socialism is stale. I have taken a turn for sport, and that's the truth of it; they tell me there is good shooting to be had round about Wynyates."
Roddick's face wore a guilelessness that was far from convincing his companion.
"I don't believe a word of it. You always were a secretive beggar, Roddick; if you won't tell me your motive, though, you won't, and there's an end of it. You're looking seedy," he added, taking a long look at his face.
"Possibly; it would be funny if I didn't.—Is this Wynyates? The place looks gloomy enough, in all conscience."
"Yes, that's Wynyates. Are you afraid of ghosts, by the way? They are said to simply swarm hereabouts."
"So I've been told. Let 'em swarm." Roddick dropped his exaggerated listlessness; he leaned over to Griff, just as the preacher had done not long ago. "Lomax," he said, gruffly, "have you ever touched a ghost—not a filmy white affair, decently clothed, but a sort of hag from hell-pit, with lips that are wet and cling, and a body that—ugh! Don't babble to me about your country ghosts; they fight with a brandy-bottle, don't they, that pretty pair of brothers in there? Well, they can fight till Doomsday, for all I care. You don't mind good clean ghosts when once you have seen what I see every other day or so."
"Roddick," said Griff, slowly, "it is no affair of mine, I suppose, but you're in a bad way. The man who just left us is great on hell-pit and these sinuous terrors of yours; I'm trying to bring him round to sanity."
Roddick gave a great guffaw, and set his voice to a rasping shout.
"You baby, you unutterable fool, to come and preach sanity to me, after your Samson-and-Delilah farce with Sybil Ogilvie! I believe in my ghost, I tell you, because it won't let me forget; go home to your bed, and pray for experience."
Griff sat quietly in his saddle; he was undismayed by the outbreak, though Lassie was growing restive again.
"Damned hospitable you are," he murmured.
The other came to himself.
"Come in, and have something to drink. I told the old ruffian at the inn to send me some whisky, and if he's failed me, we'll amuse ourselves by going back and breaking his senile neck."
"You can, if you like," grinned Lomax, as he slipped out of the saddle; "for my part I would rather tackle Jack o' Ling Crag another day. Wait till you have seen him with two keepers in front, and three more coming up hot-foot behind him."
"Have you?" Roddick demanded, turning sharp on his heel.
"Well, once or twice; and we licked them all to pieces."
"I didn't think you had it in you. That Ogilvie woman must have rotted you more than we dreamed of. You really are a bit of a man, are you, Lomax?"
"Just a bit, when the fit is on me. Moonlight seems to be good for your temper, by the way; I wish you would not be so absurdly polite, Roddick."
Griff had thought little of the preacher's gossip touching Frender's Folly; but as he rode home from Wynyates, in the small hours of the morning, the name of its new owner came to his mind, and stuck there with irritating persistency; there was some elusive, half-remembered association with the name, but he could not focus it. The matter was still troubling him—as trifles sometimes will—when he came down to breakfast.
"Mother, where have I heard the name Laverack before?" he demanded.
Mrs. Lomax was pouring him his second cup of tea at the moment, and a sudden nervous movement of her hand flooded saucer and tray alike.
"There, Griff, you always were so abrupt! You know how I hate spilling things," cried the old lady, with an uneasy laugh.
Griff, seeing her trouble, came very near to gripping his fugitive memory fair and square.
"Never mind the tea; who is Captain Laverack?"
"I had rather you left that question alone, dear," she said slowly; "but if you must have an answer, you must. Long before you were born, there was a certain lying rumour set abroad; it was said that Joe Strangeways' mother had—had suffered at your father's hands; every one believed it at the time."
"I know now. And it was this same Captain Laverack who had really done the harm?"
"Yes, he got into difficulties soon after, you may remember, and went away to America. Your father wrote to him just before he sailed, asking him to put matters straight so far as he could; and Captain Laverack wrote back that he had enough discovered sins to face, without gratuitously adding to the list. This was the last we heard of him."
"Well, he has returned, it seems, with a mint of money. Gabriel told me yesterday that he had come to live at Frender's Folly."
Mrs. Lomax frowned; her memory seemed to be busy with things of long ago.
"I remember your father taking him to see Frender's Folly one day," she said at last. "He was curiously attracted by the place, and bored me for a whole hour that evening by describing how he meant to buy it as soon as he could, and the alterations he intended to make. I am sorry he has come, Griff; it will open up the old sores."
CHAPTER VIII. KATE STRANGEWAYS ASSERTS HERSELF.
Griff, during the next few months, was greatly exercised in mind touching his friend the preacher. Gabriel Hirst's moods were swinging to wider extremes nowadays; the constant sight of Greta kept the inner fires going, and whether they flamed or smouldered was a question largely of the way she treated him. Not altogether, though: there were times when he wrenched himself free of his fetters, and set his thoughts on the Word instead of on Greta, and made his congregations quake with his whirlwind eloquence. But he was what old Jose Binns termed "wobbly-like"; his temper was uncertain, his attitude towards his fellows harsh beyond all his old-time limits of justice. If for an hour or so he could persuade himself into the belief that Greta cared for him, then he spent the rest of the day in self-denunciation, because his heart was fixed on carnal welfare: if the girl ran across his path and chanced to mock him, as she frequently did, he forgot that she was not the highest goal man could have, and railed at the destiny which showed him a heaven with shut gates. On and off, he sickened with hate of Lomax, thinking him an unacknowledged rival; and after the stormy scenes, which generally followed hot-foot on the heels of such humours, came abasement of himself before Lomax—an abasement that hurt Griff far more than the passion which preceded it.
Gabriel Hirst suffered, during these months, as he had not known how to suffer before that meeting with Greta Rotherson on the sunny Sabbath morning. He grew more sensitive than ever to changes in the face of the moor and sky. When the day was bright and the wind blew soft, there seemed excuse for his gaining passion—even a hope sometimes; but when the storm-skies opened, and the wind came ravening out of the north, and the moor streams swelled themselves to rivers, Gabriel Hirst would awake to the sins of the world and his own wrongdoing—would hark back to his scanty fare, and his wrestlings with the Adversary. But the Adversary, with that practical, vivid imaginativeness of his, showed nowadays in the guise of a woman.
Greta, for her part, was growing out of all patience with the preacher. He could not speak to her but the words tripped each other up as they came from his mouth; he was awkward with his hands and feet directly he found himself near her; he looked a hundred proposals out of his eyes, but never approached the utterance of one. She cared for him—if he would only let her—and she was angry with him, ashamed of, sorry for, him; so that amongst it all the girl, like Gabriel himself, was like to spoil her temper for good. What angered her most was that Gabriel was always like this in her company; she had seen him riding with Griff, and had noticed how manly, and neat, and broad-shouldered he looked. Why would he never come to her in decent clothes, or square his shoulders when he stood before her? And why, in the name of goodness, did she care how he came to her?
It was a matter of surprise to the villagers that their preacher should be so given to "fits and starts." One Sunday he would rain brimstone from the pulpit, while the next would find him tender almost to the verge of tears.
"Nay, nay, I doubt it's too mich for Gabriel; he should tak hisseln off ivery other week an' rest a bit," commented a member of his following.
"That's so, lad, that's so," assented Jose Binns; "he's nobbut poorly like, is th' pracher, or he'd niver gie us such pap sermons as that'n we hed yester morn. Oh, ay, he'd better tak a rest, an' that's plain to ony man 'at can see to th' end on his nose."
But Greta's comments on the preacher were of a different sort. "He's such a woman, father," she said to Miller Rotherson one day. It was her usual remark when Gabriel had particularly angered her.
"Don't be too sure, lass. I've no call to fight his battles, seeing how often he's bothered and bothered me about my soul—but this I'll say for Gabriel Hirst: he's no woman at the heart of him. Greta, I'd think shame if I was you to set so much store by the outside."
"I don't like an apple with an ugly rind, however good it be inside," said Greta, crossly.
"And there you make your mistake, as women-folk mostly do. Give me the ugliest-looking apple you can find, and I'll know it's worth eating."
"But Gabriel isn't ugly," flashed the girl, perversely.
The miller laid down his pipe, and looked quizzically at his daughter.
"Has he snared thy heart, lass, this preacher fellow?"
Greta tossed her head, got half-way through a denial, and ended with a storm of sobs.
"There, there, Greta, don't cry," murmured Miller Rotherson, as she came to his knee and buried her head out of sight. "Supposing he is too blind, this Gabriel Hirst, to know a good thing when he sees it—there are other men in the world."
She lifted up her head at that and pushed back the hair from her eyes.
"But not one that can come near him, father."
"Well, well; I never did understand the twists and the turns of you women, and I never shall, as I told your poor mother most every day of her life. He's such a woman, sings the lass one minute, and the next——"
"So he is," quoth Greta, and ran from the room to tidy herself.
And all this, as has been said, bothered Griff Lomax no little. He felt like a father to these two young people, and had set his heart on their making a match of it. He was in and out of the mill a good deal; old Rotherson took kindly to him, and Greta grew to regard him in the light of a hail-fellow-well-met sort of comrade, who showed no disposition to make love, and who was yet willing to serve as a friendly basis of jealousy when the occasion demanded it.
And all the while Griff never once guessed that he was himself walking—nay, running—into deep waters. The mother and he went very often across the three miles of moor that lay between Marshcotes and Peewit House. Almost as often Kate Strangeways walked to the Manor; sometimes she sat by the parlour fireside, with her hands in her lap, enjoying the sensation of being thoroughly idle; sometimes she played the model in the snug little studio upstairs, and watched Griff as he plied his brushes. True, he had asked permission simply to paint her portrait; but he wanted more than that—and, wanting it, contrived in his usual headstrong way to obtain it. There was no trace of self-deception in his enthusiasm for Kate's strong, lithe type of beauty. It was with an artist's zeal that he seized this and that new pose, or altered expression; and if he was gentler with her after the fatigue of posing, more solicitous that she should not tire herself unduly, than was altogether necessary—well, how could he help it, when he had, in very fact, been searching after this treasure-trove of his ever since he took to painting?
Mrs. Lomax buzzed in and out of the studio while they were at work, and was disposed to blame Griff for what she called his callousness in the matter of his model's welfare; at times she even went so far as to be indignant that the boy could be so blinded by his art as to lose sight of the good red gold that lay beneath the surface of Kate's quiet manners. But she never stopped to picture what must happen should Griff once dig down to the gold and set his heart on wealth that belonged to his neighbour.
Only Roddick guessed which way the wind was blowing, and he kept his opinions to himself. Griff would ride over to Wynyates two or three times a week, and he rarely left without a word or two about the woman who lived across the moor.
"Across the moor she lives, do you say?" Roddick had asked, with a start, the first time Griff had mentioned her.
"Yes; what of that? You look as if there were some one hereabouts in whom you are interested. Is that the reason——"
"Pish, romantic boy! I'm interested in grouse, trout, and rabbits; don't saddle me with your women." But he recurred to the topic for all that, as Griff was mounting Lassie at the gate. "Does she live on the Marshcotes moor?" he asked suddenly.
"No, the Cranshaw side," said Lomax, with deliberate intent to take Roddick unawares.
"By God!" muttered Roddick, under his breath.
Griff saw the contraction of his brows and laughed.
"So that is the trend of your secret, is it? Put your mind at rest, old fellow; she lives on the Marshcotes moor right enough, and she is the wife of a master-quarryman."
"You're a fool," said Roddick, gruffly, and shut the door with a bang.—"Why the devil won't Lomax let my secret alone?" he muttered, stirring up the fire in his parlour. "Jove, though, I fancied for the moment that Frender's Folly was his destination; Janet might care for a man of Lomax's build—the Lord knows why she picked me out from the crowd—and that's just the rub of it all. Oh, my God, if only I were free!"
After that evening Roddick learnt a good deal about Kate Strangeways—or, at any rate, about Griff's conception of her. He was an astute man where other people's follies were concerned, and he could have told Lomax that the adventure was bound to end in one of two ways.
"He wouldn't believe me, so where is the use of telling him?" Roddick argued. "For a clever man, old Lomax is pretty blind—yes, a confounded ass whenever a woman is toward. This is biting deeper than he'll like, though, when he comes to open his eyes; it's not the trashy stuff he called love while the Ogilvie woman had him in tow. Well, I'll wait; there'll be a cheerful blow-up one of these days."
But neither Griff nor the old lady of the Manor thought of coming evil. They walked far and wide by day, and at night they chatted of old times, of new endeavours, by the parlour fire. The itch for work, too, was taking a surer hold of Griff, and he was well satisfied with the progress of his picture. Autumn had long ago failed to winter, and the moors were looking their best; the heather had lost its gaudy raiment of purple, and stretched away in patches of rusty brown, of sober red, that fitted better with its savage dignity. Overhead, on the fine days, were wonderful shifting tints of sapphire and clear-cut green, with sunsets that stretched, purple and crimson, along half the horizon edge; then, again, the wind would shift to rain, and the sullen banks of yellow would come crowding across the sky from over Ling Crag, and the tremor and stress of storm would sweep into the man's heart. And all the while the woman across the moor grew dearer to him; she was part and parcel of the heath he loved, the sunsets that fired him to endeavour, the wind that made him drunker than wine could ever do. If he failed to look at the situation squarely, it was because Kate was always there, to be seen whenever the wish moved him; had a rival stepped in, or had she left Marshcotes for a space, Griff would better have understood it all.
Kate Strangeways, too, began to find heart again, began to feel the old use of her limbs and the old relish for a gale; she wondered, now and then, what had wrought this change in her, but it was long ere she was brought to confess that she counted the days between visit and visit of a man who had troubled himself to bring fresh interest into her dull round of care. Her manner towards her husband changed; she found courage to fight him, and she conquered; she furbished up a little bedroom facing south, and maintained her rights of property therein, and did not stop to inquire what instinct prompted her to privacy.
As for Joe, he got drunk oftener nowadays; his will held altogether too much parley with the shadowy places, and, as a consequence, he blustered more and was less capable than ever of backing up his bluster. Just once he tried to trespass on Kate's private domain; it was a night of late November, and he had sat up chatting with Hannah, the maid-of-all-work, after his wife had gone to bed. Hannah was even a little sourer than her wont, and she gave Strangeways a lengthy account of young Lomax's comings and goings.
"I'd be shamed, if I war a man, to put up wi' my wife's hoity-toity ways, same as tha does," she snarled, with a freedom born of the sense that she was talking to one of her own class. "She mun sleep i' her own bedroom, mun she? Happen there's more i' that nor there seems, if tha'd getten a couple of een i' thy heäd."
"What dost 'a meän? Come, out wi' it; I cannot abide thy ins an' thy outs, an' thy shammocky ways o' talk. There's no mouse-holes about me, an' I look to find other fowk talking fair an' square. What dost 'a meän, woman?"
"Nay, if tha cannot guess, it's noan for a honest woman to tell thee. Didn't I say 'at young Lummax comes an' goes for all th' world as if he war th' maister? If that isn't enow, I'd like to know what is?"
Joe brought the bowl of his pipe down hard on the grate and smashed it.
"She shall shift her quarters to-neet, or I'll shift mine," he muttered.
"Fine talking," sneered Hannah.
"Hod thy whisht, wench! I tell thee I'll teach the wife to come it ower me; ay, that I will," said Joe, doggedly. He kicked off his boots and went shambling up the stairs; tried the handle of Kate's door, and found it locked; swore at her and commanded her to open. She did open at last, and stood on the threshold. She had taken off the bodice of her dress, and her bust and beautiful bare arms showed faintly by light of the candle behind her. Joe, despite his sodden state, felt something of the old desire as his eyes took in the contour of her figure.
"What do you want?" she demanded.
"It's lonely wark, Kate, living wi' a wife that's no wife, an' I willun't stand it."
"When you had me, Joe," said she bitterly, "you were never so free with kindness. A woman gets tired of being kicked out of bed, and I'm not going to risk it again."
"When fowks is wed, they're wed. Me an' thee's teed fast as parson could tee us, an' I've a right to thee—ay, that I hev—a right o' law, an' a right o' parson."
A swift smile came to Kate's lips, as she straightened herself and sought his eye in the semi-darkness.
"Then, Joe Strangeways, you can go for the parson and bring him to help you; for you'll never touch me again, if I have to fight the lot of you."
"I'm a honest man," Joe declared, after a disconcerted pause.
"It's a queer country that would call you honest, Joe." The wife was feeling almost flippant for the moment, as the stronger sort of women do in moments of strain.
A long silence followed, broken only by the shuffling of Joe's feet, and the ticking of the clock in the kitchen down below, and the rattle of mice behind the wainscoting.
"I'm a honest man," reiterated Joe at last; "an' dang me if I'll see my wife go wrang wi' th' first fine gent what taks a fancy to her."
"Go wrong!" she cried, with a sudden blaze of fury. "You dare to come to me and——"
Joe felt vaguely that he was getting the advantage now that he had made her angry.
"Ay, go wrang; that's what it's leading to," he responded doggedly.
All the fight went out of Kate. He had brought home to her at last what she had hidden from herself all these months: she was face to face with the truth, and she saw in a flash the dreary stretch of years that spread before her—after she had proved true to her conscience—after she had said good-bye to Griff, and they had each gone their ways. Without a word she turned; before Joe had divined her purpose, she had locked the door in his face and left him on the cold landing to marvel at the queer ways of women. She threw herself on the bed and cried her heart out, while her husband growled his way to his own room. She wanted never, never to see Griff again.
But Griff himself chanced to ride over the very next morning, and he altered her outlook on things. The clear, friendly look in his eyes—the easy talk on this or that topic of interest which they shared in common—his kindly insistence that she was far from well, and that he meant to tell his mother when he got home how little care she took of herself—all helped her to view the last night's misery in a quieter light. With a quick feminine subterfuge she told herself that his regard for her did not go very deep; if her own went deeper, need she make herself foolish in his eyes by bidding him never come near her again?
After he had gone—with a faint wonder in his mind at her changed manner—Kate went over all that she had suffered at her husband's hands; and across her honesty of purpose struck a swift desire to take life while she had it and enjoy it to the full. She put the desire away from her; but it returned day by day, and she grew less eager to cast it out. Gradually she let the old life go its way; Griff came and went, and she was glad to see him; she would not look behind.
But Roddick, in amongst his own perplexities, found time now and then for a sardonic grin, and a wonder as to how soon the climax would be reached.
And the climax came sooner than he expected.
CHAPTER IX. CONFESSION.
Kate Strangeways, after her sudden collapse before Joe's accusation, nerved herself to the fight once more. Joe attempted to take up the same line on the next night, and was beaten; at heart he was afraid of her, because he knew her to be stronger, finer in breed, than himself. Then, gradually, he grew mortally sick of her, now that she showed so uncompromising a determination to stand on her own level. He conceived an idea, and soaked the idea in much strong ale until it mellowed.
"When a gentleman born," said he to his mug, "when a gentleman born taks th' trouble to come aboon three miles i' search on a wench, he allus hes one notion. Well, I'll let 'em bide, that I will, an' I won't break th' bones i' his body, 'cos he's ower big for that kind o' marlaking. They shall just go their own foul gate, an' we'll see what'll come o' my fine lady's airs an' graces when this Lummax hes dragged her in th' mire. She puts up her high-bred nose, does she, when I get a bit on th' booze now and again? Well, it'll be six o' one an' half a dozen o' t' other sooin."
So Kate, thanks to a resolve of which she guessed nothing, had a whole month's respite from her husband. He went out every night directly after tea, and rarely spoke to her during the few moments when they were together. She took the respite gladly, and flattered herself that the trouble with Griff was assuming no more alarming proportions as the days went on. Yet she wondered, and ached, and cried at rare intervals, just because he could maintain his friendly attitude so easily; freely would she have forgiven him if he had faltered once or twice in well-doing.
"Shall we go to Peewit to-morrow? I promised to take Kate some books," said Mrs. Lomax to Griff, one evening, as they sat in their favourite nook by the parlour fire.
"You oughtn't to, with that cold of yours. Why will you never look after yourself, mother?"
"Don't coddle me, Griff. My cold must be driven out by some good frosty air; the walk will do me good."
But she was worse on the next morning, and Griff put his foot down in a way that even his mother understood. He sat with her until three o'clock, and then she insisted on his going for a run on the moors.
"I'll walk across to Peewit, if you like, and take the books with me," he said, turning at the door. "It will give me an object in going out."
"Very well, dear. You will find them in my room, on the table near the window."
He stowed away the books in sundry capacious pockets, and set off towards the moor at a swinging pace. It was near the end of March, but the frost, repenting the easy winter it had given the Marshcotes folk, had suddenly bestirred itself and gripped the moorside shrewdly. Just as Griff left the churchyard, he met Greta Rotherson on her way to the village.
"You're enjoying the frost, too?" he said, coming to rest against a gate.
"No, I'm not," retorted Greta, crossly; "it's far too cold, and the end of one's nose gets red."
"Not your nose, at any rate; your cheeks have used up the supply.—I saw Gabriel this morning for five minutes."
"Did you?" Disdainfully.
"Yes; he called at the mill last night, and came round to tell me how disappointed he was to find you out."
"To find father out? He would be: we were with friends in the village."
"Look here, Miss Rotherson—why do you treat poor old Hirst as you do?" queried Griff, bluntly.
"I don't know what you mean, Mr. Lomax. Why should I treat him differently?"
"Because—well, being a woman, you know more than I can tell you. It seems a pity, that's all; he worries about things."
Greta dropped her air of aloofness.
"Gabriel Hirst," she snapped, "will never get rid of his preaching. If he was making love to a woman, he'd quote Scripture in the middle of it—and a woman doesn't want that."
"Well, no, she doesn't. But women were made to put up with things. Can't you get at the man in Gabriel, and let the preacher go hang?"
"I can do the last thing certainly. Good day, Mr. Lomax: you seem very anxious to get your friend settled in life."
The sun was dying bloodily behind Peewit House as Griff climbed the last stretch of rising ground. The clouds showed stormy. A dun mist hugged the skirts of the moor.
"This is cheery after the cold look of things outside," he cried, as he stretched his legs before the fire.
"It was kind of you to bother about the books: you will have a stormy walk back, I'm afraid." The trouble of contact with him weighed heavily on Kate for the first moment; she could scarcely find words in which to answer him.
"Ah, but that doesn't matter when you can see in the dark, as we moor folk can." He was curiously insistent on that moor bond between them. "Will you let me smoke just one pipe, and then I must be off; mother is down with a cold, and I promised not to be away for long."
He lit his pipe, and Kate Strangeways went out in a little while, to return with tea and buttered toast; they fell into some out-of-the-way topics over the tea, and continued them until another pipe, and yet another, had been smoked. Griff had forgotten all about the time, and his companion, while she remembered it, remembered also that Sunday was a day which her husband invariably spent at the Marshcotes inn, and that he would not be back much before midnight at the earliest; she had felt lonely before Griff came, and she wanted him to stay as long as forgetfulness of the hour would let him.
But he rose at last and looked at his watch.
"I really must be off; do you know what time it is, Mrs. Strangeways? The mother will think I have strayed into a bog, or something, if I keep her waiting much longer. Good night. No, don't come to the door; it is too cold for you."
"Too cold for you." There was a tenderness in the thought that soothed the woman; there was an off-hand friendliness in the tone that hurt her in some unexplained way.
He opened the heavy oak door, with its armour of nails and bolts and its out-of-date lock. A solid wall of fog came up close to the steps in front; snow showed white on the threshold, and drifting fog and snow combined took traveller's leave of the ingress afforded by the open door.
"You can't cross the moor until the fog lifts," said Kate, at his elbow.
"But I must. Mother will be sick with fear when she sees how bad the night is."
Instinctively she laid a hand on his arm.
"Better that than death," she said quietly.
"I can find my way in a fog; it is only a little extra darkness, and I know every inch of the way."
"Nonsense!" she said sharply. "No one can be sure of the road in a fog, and there is snow as well. I tell you, it is madness to venture out."
Griff Lomax could not but admit as much, as he obeyed the pressure of the hand on his arm.
"It will clear presently," he said, shutting the door, and following the woman into the parlour.
"There's more nor one kind o' storm brewing, I fancy," muttered Hannah, peering through a nick in the kitchen door.
The evening wore on. From time to time Lomax went to see if there were any change in the weather, but the fog showed no sign of lifting, and the snow crept earthward in bigger flakes than ever.
"You must spend the night here," said Kate. Her voice was peremptory, but a hot blush came to her cheeks.
"I ought to make an attempt to reach Marshcotes," muttered the other, doubtfully. Reason told him how foolhardy such an undertaking would be.
"With the snow covering every track? How can you, even if the fog clears?"
He gave in at last, as he was bound to do; but, once the point was settled, there was ample room for other disturbing thoughts. Hannah put her head in at the door presently.
"Shall you be wanting owt more to-neet?" she demanded.
"No; you can go to bed. Good night, Hannah."
"Good neet, mum."
Hannah's tread on the upstairs journey was heavy; her downward steps, some few minutes later, were correspondingly light.
There was a silence between the two who were seated on either side of the great peat fire in the parlour. Lomax pulled at his pipe and stared into the glowing peat-ash; the woman watched his face. He grew conscious of her gaze, and turned his eyes suddenly to hers.
The months had been slow to teach him, but he learned their lesson now. As the seasons had run their course, the man's great love had been growing—growing so silently, so little at a time, that he had not once pulled himself up to say, "This is love that has you by the throat; thrust it off while you can." And now—now, all in the space of that quick uplifting of his eyes to hers, he had come to understand. Nothing he had felt, read of, dreamed about, was like this masterful reality; it hurried him along blindfold, as the welter and swing of a gale from the north had now and then driven him clean off the moor-track—into the bogland, it might be.
He leaped from his chair, and crossed over to her, and put his arms about her. She spoke no word, and he was silent; but her lips went out to his.
The reaction followed. He set her free, and strode restlessly up and down the room, with its black oak panels, its ridiculous china dogs on the mantelshelf, its fiery eye of smouldering ash. She followed his steps with her eyes, and cared not one whit save that he loved her.
"See, Kate," he said, coming close to her again, "you are the wife I should have had, but you are not free to hear me tell you so. We must go apart, you and I, lest—my darling, my darling, how I want you!"
Conscience, stilled for awhile, raised its voice. The woman warded off that second caress with which the man was minded to point his logic.
"Let me alone, Griff! Let me go. You know it is not right."
He stood irresolute. The worst and the best in him fell to blows, and fought the quarrel out to the bitter end. Then he put his lips to her hand, and raised her very gently.
"Show me to my room, Kate. It is time you were asleep; you look tired," he said, as nearly in the tones of the friend of yesterday as he could contrive.
She lit two candles, gave him one, and preceded him up the creaking wooden stairs. She let her hand rest in his for a space at the door of his room, then left him.
At eleven of the same morning, the godly folk of Marshcotes, clothed in their Sunday best, were singing lustily within the bleak walls of the Primitive Methodist Chapel; other godly villagers were singing with slightly less vigour in the Parish Church across the way. Joe Strangeways' mind, however, was set on other things, as he shambled across the ill-paved square that fronts the churchyard. He glanced at the church clock, and leered at large upon the village.
"Eleven of a Sunday morn, an' me noan drunk yet," he observed. "Dang me, but that beäts all."
By way of repairing this slight omission, Strangeways entered the Bull. The fog was thick in his brain, and thick on the landscape, when he emerged. A friend in need guided him to the verge of the moor, but it was clear that there was to be no getting home that night; so the friend guided him back to the Bull, and it was seven of the next morning when he set off for Peewit, to change into his working clothes before going to the quarries.
Hannah clattered to meet him as he entered.
"I telled thee how it 'ud be," she said, with a toss of the head. "Griff Lummax war up yester afternooin an' stayed his tea."
"Stayed his tea, did he? Can't he get decent pickings at home?" muttered Joe, whose head and temper were alike impaired by his carouse.
"An' after that he stayed th' neet. They reckoned it war too wild for him to cross th' moor. Too wild! I'd hev crossed myseln, it war that bright."
"Nay, lass, tha'rt wrang there. It war thick, main thick, or I'd hev been home long sin'."
"Drink maks a man see thick," observed Hannah, dispassionately. And Joe took to himself a shamefaced look.
"Did tha see owt?" he asked presently.
"See? Ay, a bonny sight too mich. I saw 'em kissing by th' parlour fire. An' at after that—well, th' missus knaws best what happened at after. See yonder, he's coming dahn th' stair now, fair as if he owned th' place."
Joe's face grew black with rage. He never doubted Hannah's story, to its uttermost detail. This, then, was what he had worked and hoped for—the wife who had scorned him was on his own level at last. Yet he was not pleased, when it came home to him how well his plan had succeeded; his jealousy was roused; he felt the need of Kate more than he had yet done in his six years of courtship and marriage. He stood with his hands behind him and watched Griff come down step by step.
"Tha'rt i' th' wrang house, seemingly," he growled.
"Through no fault of mine. Why didn't you return last night?" retorted Lomax, quickly. He had not given thought enough to Kate's danger; but he realized now that he must carry the thing through with a high hand, if the ugly brute at the stair-foot were to be silenced.
"'Cos I war drunk," retorted Joe, succinctly.
"Well, if you had been sober enough to take a square look at the weather, you'd have seen the snow and fog. I preferred a roof over my head last night, and your wife offered me one. I'm obliged to you both, Strangeways."
"Oh, th' wife offered it, did she? Then th' wife shall pay for it," muttered Joe.
Griff went up to Strangeways, and took him roughly by the coat-collar.
"And you shall pay double if you lay a finger on her. You surly brute! To threaten your wife because she kept a man from starving on the moor. Strangeways, I've a mind to give you one thrashing on account—another to follow if you don't behave yourself."
He took a square look at Joe's eyes, saw that the man feared him beyond all promptings of rage, and swung out of the house. But he was sorely troubled about Kate as he went across the glittering frost-flakes to Marshcotes Manor.
CHAPTER X. THE WOMAN OF SORROWSTONES SPRING.
Between Marshcotes and Cranshaw the highroad runs for a mile and a half. From Cranshaw to Ludworth in Lancashire is a very good six. The hill rises sharp after you pass Cranshaw Church and the wild, wind-swept burial ground; and well towards the top, soon as you gain the open moor, a grim line of "stoups" guards the right hand of the way. It is an eerie road to travel, especially if night has fallen and brought you no company. The stoups, huge blocks of millstone-grit, white-washed at the base, blackened at the top, seem to stand out from the darkness, to move towards you almost. Year after year they have stood there, pointing the way to travellers: if snow be thick on the highway, their black crowns show clear against the white; if the moor lie black, their white bodies point the way of safety. Year after year, with frost and rain and snow, the rough moor weather has made sport of the stoups; they are workers of charity, and buffets are their fit reward. It is vain to call them senseless stone, and pass them by, and think no more of it; they stop you, willy-nilly, with their rough-hewn, tragic faces; they have lived in the silent places, and the mystery of a long loneliness is theirs. A true man done to death by the cold was the cause of their being, and many a true man killed by harsher foes has gone to swell the tale since then. More than once, or twice, or thrice, has murder walked beside those silent, ghostly stoups, and the bogs to right of them could tell some fearsome stories if they chose.
It was then some five and twenty years since Joshua Lomax, Griff's father, tried to cross from Ludworth one bitter winter's night; they found him a mile from the highroad, dead from exposure, and his widow, as soon as she could bring herself to read other people's welfare through the crystal of her own trouble, made haste to build the sentinel line of stoups, lest more good lives should be sacrificed. Griff could not bear to walk that road for many a long day after the tragedy, and even now he shuddered as he gained the outposts.
Tinker's Pool glooms down in the hollow, just beyond the last of the stoups, and the gamekeeper's house stands at the top of the road; between the two lies Sorrowstones Spring—a two-roomed, crumbling cottage that gets its name from the well-spring at the door. Rachel Strangeways, the quarrymaster's grandmother, had lived here time out of mind, and she would have found it hard to chance on a dwelling more to her liking. Rachel was reputed a witch throughout the countryside; maidens came to her, in fear and trembling, to have their fortunes told, and burly farmers sought her aid whenever the Evil Eye was working havoc among their cattle. She dealt in drugs, too, and great virtue was attached to an infusion she prepared of a certain bitter herb which only grew on the marsh that hugged her door. Her eighty-five years had bowed her body to the proportions of a hunchback's, and there was an evil light in her blue-green eyes that did not fit ill with her reputation. Whenever Joe found himself in straits he repaired to the maternal roof-tree, for Mistress Strangeways could show good common sense on occasion.
Joe walked over to the cottage on the night following Griff's stay at Peewit House. He entered the living-room without knocking, and found Mistress Strangeways huddled over the embers of a poverty-stricken fire.
"Well, mother," said he, "I'm i' a queer way."
Rachel gibbered over her ashes awhile, then looked up. Her blue-green eyes grew almost soft as they rested on this scrubby-bearded clown, who was yet bone of her bone. For there had been a time when the old witch's hand was not against the world, nor the world's hand against her; that was in the days when she and her man had a spruce little cottage at the edge of the moor, and a strip of garden where the peonies and the sweet marjoram and the ladslove grew, and one little lass to fend for. The little lass had grown up into a slim, well-favoured maid, and the mother had loved her after the profligate fashion of these rough-speeched, tender-hearted women of the uplands. And Mother Strangeways' heart was broken, once for all, when the girl died in bringing Joe to a shameful birth; she did not rail against her daughter, but against the world that had wronged her, as the way of her class is; and she hardened herself against all men living, and buried her husband in due course, and came to this battered, wind-swept cottage to live out her days. And Joe Strangeways, who had inherited neither his mother's fearlessness nor his father's breeding, was all she had left in the world to cherish and frame plans for.
"So tha'rt come to me?" she muttered, still with her eyes on Joe's face. "So tha'rt come to me? Ay, it brings men to their women-folk, does trouble; year in an' year out, I niver see thy black face, Joe, without there's trouble agate. Sit thee dahn, lad; sit thee dahn, and let's know what's toward."
"Just this—my wife's gone wrang wi' a gentleman. I could ha' borne it better if he'd hed rough talk an' a rough pair o' hands."
Rachel stiffened her dwarfed old body.
"An' who may it be, Joe?"
"Griff Lummax, out to Marshcotes Manor. I knew how it 'ud be when th' mother—th' girt, ugly man of a figure—got coming it ower Kate."
The blue-green eyes shot fire.
"Then why didn't tha get him by t' throat, and squeeze th' life out on his body?"
"'Cos he's ower strong," growled Joe.
"Ower strong, ower strong!" flashed the crone. "I didn't talk i' that way when I hed th' use of my body an' wits. Tha'rt noan o' my flesh, Joe—no, nor bone o' my bone, nawther—shame on thee, lad, for a shammocky nowt of a man." She pushed her skinny face close up to his. "Dost mind what Joshua Lummax, Griff's father, did to thy mother five an' thirty year agone?" Her voice crackled and hissed like the fall of water on live coal. "Dost mind how he came wi' his fine airs, just same as th' son hes done to thy wife, an' witched th' heart out on her? Dost'a know i' what fashion I sarved him?"
"Tha did nowt," muttered Joe, surlily; "tha gabbled an' gabbled for a fearful deal o' years, an' th' cold took him off i' th' end. Dunnot thee talk to me till tha's getten summat to show for t' to-do tha'rt making."
Still closer the lean face pressed to his. She whispered something in his ear, and he glared at her with an admiration touched by fear.
"Art 'a leeing, mother?" he demanded.
"Leeing? No, by God! I hed my rights i' th' end, an' th' lass sleeps quiet i' her grave. Thee see to thy own porridge, Joe. I'm ower owd to cook for other fowk."
"Tha'rt a sight fuller i' th' wit nor me, owd or young. What mun I do, mother?"
"Do? Kill him, I tell thee, an' off wi' them Lummax peacocks for gooid an' all. That's th' porridge tha hes to cook."
"She came it high an' mighty ower me, did Mrs. Lummax; reckoned she'd gie me a bit o' stick, she did. More nor once her son hes hed th' laugh on me, i' sight o' all th' Marshcotes fowk. I owe him a two or three hard knocks—ay, that I do."
"Then gie 'em, tha lout! Childless am I this day—not counting a six ha'porth o' copper like thee—an' childless tha'll mak th' Lummax woman. Ower strong, is he? Lig i' a hedge-bottom, then, an' crack his skull wi' a pickaxe."
Joe kicked at the smouldering peat, but his face showed no responsive enthusiasm.
"Tha itches to see me dangling at th' end on a hangman's rope, that's easy to be seen. Dost 'a think a plain man can kill gentlefowk same as he'd lake at a bit o' pigeon-shooiting, an' niver hear no more on't?"
"Hes Mother Strangeways swung for Joshua Lummax? Nay, tha shames me, Joe, tha shames me. I mun ha' kept thee ower long at th' bottle; tha'rt a mammy's lad, a right mammy's lad." She rose from her bench, and her hands moved swiftly, the claw fingers keeping time to her thoughts. "Christ! if I war only young again!" she shrieked. "If I could han'le a knife—or an iron bar, mebbe—I'd hev my rights o' yon Lummaxes." She fell once again to a sitting posture, making hideous mouths at the fire. Then a fresh train of ideas was started, and she looked up at Joe with a cunning leer. "Blood's blood," she crackled, "but swinging's swinging; an' happen tha can hurt him war nor even killing 'ud do. They're fearful proud, them Lummaxes; break 'em, lad, break 'em wi' law; set their names on th' housetops, an' mak 'em a bye-word i' th' land. Ay, hev th' law on 'em, an' bide thy own time for th' rest."
"Th' law?" snarled Joe. "Th' law is a matter o' brass, an' nowt but brass. Him 'at's getten th' fattest purse can allus best a poor man. Nay, doan't thee talk to me about law."
"Wilt 'a hearken to sense, or willun't 'a? Thee go to-morn, i' th' dinner-hour, to Lawyer French i' Marshcotes. He's a sharp un, yon, an' he kep' me my bit o' freehold when Squire war minded to set me, bag an' baggage, on th' roadside. Ay, Lawyer French bested th' Squire an' proper."
"An' charged thee a pretty penny, I'll be bound."
"Not more nor a poorish woman could pay; an' he'll noan charge thee more nor tha can pay."
"Well, I mak nowt o' sich things. What sort of a figure should I cut i' th' witness-box, afore judge, jury an' all, swearing away my pride i' my own wedded wife?"
"Oh, ay, tha's showed thyseln mighty proud on her, hesn't 'a, Joe?" snapped the mother. "It'll break thy heart, willun't it, to lose thy lass? What tale didst 'a come to me wi' a four months back? That she wouldn't do this, an' she wouldn't do that, an' tha wert main weary o' th' sight on her."
"But I'm noan for making her free to marry this Lummax lad."
"Marry, sayst 'a? He'll noan marry her, if I know th' gentry. Tha'll hev one less mouth to feed, an' Kate 'ull hev to set to an' fend for herseln."
"Begow," muttered her son, after a lengthy silence, "tha allus did gie a chap a bit o' gooid, straightforrard sense. I'll off to this lawyer chap to-morn, dang me if I don't!"
Rachel crouched over her fire after he had left her.
"To hev a babby like yon for a grandson," she grumbled. "Cannot move hand nor foot by hisseln. Eh, eh, to hev the free swing o' my own arms again, an' young Lummax at t' other end on a mattock! But I'm owd, owd; nawther spells, nor muscles, wark as they once did. Almighty God, if tha'd only mak me strong for a day—just for a day!"