The memory roused her old set purpose, forgotten for the moment. The cunning came into her eyes again, and the twitching of her hands began afresh.
"I'm sooin gone," she said; "tha can keep me a two or three minutes longer, if tha will."
"Ay, that I will! What have I to do?"
"Wend to th' cupboard again. Tha'll find a green bottle there; fetch it."
Griff found the bottle, and put it into her hands.
"There's a little mug on th' table," she muttered.
He turned to get the mug, and Mother Strangeways, quick as a flash, brought the bottle down on his skull. It smashed into little bits, and a spirt of blood broke through Griff's close-cropped hair. The hag laughed, and hugged herself into her blankets.
"I've sworn to do for th' lot on ye, an' tha'll be wi' thy father sooin!" she croaked.
Griff retreated to the wall. He meant to see this play played through, but it was as well to take due precautions. The cut on his head was of no great depth, luckily, and the bleeding soon stopped.
"Mother Strangeways," he said, "you didn't count on a Lomax having a thick skull. That's where you made a mistake. It takes a bigger bottle than that to kill the old breed off."
Mother Strangeways had never been one to doubt fatality, and she gave up the fight. It was clear that Griff would outlive her. She lay on her back and cursed till the man grew cold with horror. Then she half rose and leaned on her elbow.
"May tha be cursed, Griff Lummax, till hell is too cold to hold thee; an' thy childer after thee, till hell-fire hes getten th' lot o' ye. Amen."
The fire was burning low, and Griff, anxious not to let uncanny notions get the better of him, turned his attention to replenishing it from the peat-stack in the corner opposite the bed; but all the while he kept the tail of one eye on the old woman's doings. Then he dropped into the solitary chair that the room possessed, and listened to the howling of the wind in the chimney-stack. Only Mother Strangeways' stertorous breathing broke the silence within.
"Griff Lummax," she called at last.
"Well?"
"I've a tale to tell thee."
"I'm listening."
"Tha minds how thy father war lost on Cranshaw Moor, mony a year back?"
"Ay, I mind it."
"That's what th' tale is about. Listen, lad; it's bonny telling. Five an' twenty year back come a neet like this as brought thee here. It blew, an' it blew, an' th' snaw war thick on th' grund i' place o' rain. I war sitting ower th' fire, thinking on th' daughter that war gone, an' ill-wishing th' man 'at hed killed her, when there comes a knock to th' door. I oppens it wide, an' who should stand on th' door-stun but th' man I'd been ill-wishing—Joshua Lummax, lad, thy father. He taks a two or three steps inside, and his eye cotches mine fair and square, same as if he'd bin as honest as he'd like fowk to think him. He'd crossed fro' Ludworth, seemingly, an' th' snaw war that thick 'at he couldn't tell which war th' highroad an' which war th' moor; he mun ha' been dazed wi' th' white, or he'd ha' known, seeing he'd getten so far, that he'd nobbut to keep on straight as iver his nose 'ud lead him. But he didn't know, an' he'd come to Mother Strangeways to leärn." She paused, laughing quietly. "I leärned him, lad. I set him straight into th' heart o' th' moor, an' I knew 'at he war sartin sure to walk into a bog or dee o' th' cold. Well, he missed th' bog, it 'ud seem, for they fund him stiff an' stark a two mile fro' th' cottage here. When I heärd th' news, I saw th' sun for th' first time sin' th' lass dee'd, an' 'One,' says I to myseln; 'I'll bide th' Lord's gooid time for th' rest.' But I war ta'en wi' th' rheumatiz afore tha war rightly growed up, Griff, an' I could no ways get at thee, as I mud ha' done wi' health an' strength to help me. Eh, lad, lad, but I made fooil's play wi' my chances this neet! There's nowt I want on earth, nowt I pray for, but just to see thee an' thy mother ligging stiff an' stark one beside t' other."
Griff had risen, and stood dumbly watching the interlude which death allowed this sorry victim. He could not grasp it at first. His father's death seemed a topic of far-away interest; his mind had room only for the figure of this strenuous witch, with the candle-light glimmering on her eager, wasted face.
There was a long silence between them, until Mother Strangeways let a moan escape her. The pain was gripping her heart-strings now, but she had to say her say. On her face was the transfiguration that comes to any who fight with death, be they good or vile.
"Tha's nowt to say, lad? Tha stands there like a witless nat'ral, an' tha listens to th' tale I've getten to tell. Well, hod thy whisht for awhile; it 'ull be thy turn next."
She clapped one hand on her breast with a shriek; but the spasm passed, and she resumed her talk, Griff listening dizzily the while.
"I warn't allus like tha's known me. I war a God-fearing wife once, an' a mother 'at yearned to her babby. Mary war my first an' my last, an' it seemed 'at she'd ta'en all th' love I hed to gie. There war nowt but Mary i' my mind when I wakened i' th' morn, an' nowt but Mary at my heart when I coddled her up for th' neet. Then—tha knows th' rest; lad, can tha wonder 'at I sent thy father to his deäth?" she finished, half in fury, half in pleading.
Still Lomax could not grip the full meaning of the thing. He grew dreamily awake to the fact that some one was taking his father's name in vain, and he knew that he must defend him.
"Father never touched your girl," he said hoarsely. "Has it taken you all these years to learn the truth? Did you never see Captain Laverack hanging round your cottage, nor see the lust in his face? Laverack it was that led her wrong; he was a friend of father's till then, and he used to stay at the Manor. He left soon after—fled the country for awhile, because of other things he was mixed up with—and your girl put it all on father's shoulders, thinking to get help from him when the child was born."
The woman on the bed was following Griff closely.
"Laverack! Laverack!" she muttered, shutting her eyes. "Where hev I heärd th' name lately?"
"Laverack has come back to these parts and bought Frender's Folly," said Griff.
Mother Strangeways peered across the smoke reek.
"Come nearer, lad; I want to see thy een—nay, I'm ower far gone to try my pranks again," she added, seeing him hesitate.
He came close and she watched his eyes.
"Is't truth tha'rt speaking, Griff Lummax?"
"Truth? Ay, bitter truth."
"I believe thee. Thowts come thranging back now; I niver thowt to pitch on Laverack, for all th' lass war busy wi' his name while she lay a-child-bed. But I see it now, I see it now." She sprang up in bed and clutched him by the arm. "Griff, if tha's getten ony love for thy own mother, think on me; think what it meäns, lad, to lose a daughter an' see th' man what killed her go free. Kill him, Griff; he's not aboon three mile away this very minute, an' there's no snaw to stop thee. Run hot an' fast, an' tak him by t' throat, an' say Mother Strangeways sent ye."
She was growing delirious now. Still Griff could not throw off the full weight of his stupor. Instinctive stubbornness was his only ally.
"I won't," he said bluntly.
"Tha might ha' childer o' thy own, lad—bonny wenches 'at war biding th' time of a gooid man's coming; think what it meäns, an' if tha's getten ony bowels o' compassion, help a deeing woman to her rights."
"I won't, curse you!"
Her voice grew coaxing. Death might win her, to have and to hold, in a very few moments; but meanwhile the ruling passion would let her take no rest.
"I'm reckoned poor, Griff, because I lives i' a poor way. But wend to th' cupboard once again, an' tha'll find summat worth heving—summat bright an' gold, fastened up i' a worsted stocking. Tak it all, lad, if tha'll wend to Frender's Folly, an' do what mun be done."
At last Griff awoke to reality. He saw it all now. This woman on the bed had murdered his father; why was he dallying with justice? The hatred that had kept up Mother Strangeways for close on five and thirty years, the quick lust for vengeance that had sent Joshua Lomax to his grave—they had Joshua's son in their grasp now. He made a step towards the bed, then stopped; between him and his father's murderess sounded the death-rattle in the woman's throat, driving him back, stunning him with a sense of some power beyond his ken.
The rushlight guttered in its stand. The shadows came out of their corners, and played with the ruddy glow from the peats. The wind sang for rain in the chimney-stack. As any frightened youngster might have done, Griff bent his head, and trembled before the majesty of Death, and sobbed for the littleness of his understanding.
CHAPTER XXV. THE BEGINNING OF THE RIFT.
It was three of the morning when Griff got back to Gorsthwaite. Kate heard him push the key into the lock and was down in a moment.
"Griff, where have you been?"
"What! not asleep, wifey? It is against orders for you to be up at this time of night."
He reached out his arms for her into the dark, and found her, and stroked her tumbled hair, mutely thanking God that he had time to collect himself before she could see his face.
"I couldn't sleep, dear. I have been so nervous about everything of late, and I feared—I don't know what."
She cried a little then, for her nerves were highly strung nowadays, and the relief from a molehill of dread was commensurate with a mountainous terror.
"I know, Kate, I know. I will not take such long walks till you are well and strong again, and able to come with me."
"Why are we stopping out here? You are wet through. I built up a big fire in the parlour not long ago, thinking you would be cold and wet when you reached home."
His grasp tightened on her almost harshly.
"Do you mean that you came downstairs from your bed to look after my comfort?" he demanded. "Kate, you make me ashamed of myself."
"But I wasn't asleep, dear, and this dressing-gown is as warm as warm. Come and see what a beautiful blaze there is; I put on a heap of logs, as well as peat."
A ruddy glow welcomed them as they went in, and lit up every wrinkle and furrow that the past night had brought into Griff's face—lit up, too, the clotted patch of hair around the place where Mother Strangeways had struck him with the bottle. Kate, seeing this, gave a little cry.
"Where have you been?" she repeated. "Griff, you haven't been out with the poachers again? You promised so faithfully."
"No, wife," he laughed, uneasily, "I have not been poaching. Don't worry about it; it is only just a bruise."
But Kate had made up her mind not to be put off.
"You shall tell me. Do you think I'm a baby, Griff, that I must needs have everything unpleasant kept from me?"
"You know where old Mother Strangeways' cottage is? I passed it on my way back to-night, and heard cries from within. I went in and found her dying. That is why I was so late in getting home. I had to slip across to Marshcotes for the doctor before coming on here."
"Yes, but the cut on your head?" persisted Kate.
"She hated me for some reason or other, and threw a bottle at me. That is all. Tut, child, the woman is dead; it is too late to tremble for what she might have done. Now, off you run to bed, while I go and change these wet things. I won't waste your fine blaze, Katey, but I'll read for an hour or so and have a whisky hot."
"Can't I stay with you, dear? I don't want to sleep a bit, and——"
"No, you can't! Off with you; I'm too tired to carry you upstairs by main force."
She kissed him good night. Just as she was going Griff called her back.
"Don't say anything about this to the mother, will you? It would only bother her."
"No, not a word, if you had rather I didn't.—Mother is not well, Griff; I wish she would have the doctor."
"She will have the doctor, Kate, when she is too weak to forbid him to cross the threshold," laughed Griff. "Nothing serious, is it?"
"I don't think so. Only, she seemed rather feverish to-night when she went to bed. I made her drink some black-currant tea."
"Poor old lady! She'll be well by morning, never fear, lest you should give her another dose."
But the old lady was far from well on the morrow, and Griff began to grow anxious. At the end of the day he would hear of no refusal, but set off on Lassie to fetch the doctor from Marshcotes. The doctor pronounced it a case of pleurisy, and anticipated no great danger so far as the patient's present condition went.
"She will get wet through, that mother of yours, and go about afterwards without changing. You're an obstinate lot, you Lomaxes, and why you haven't died out long ago as a race, passes my wits."
The old doctor had known Griff's father, and he exercised his privilege as a friend of the family to grumble on the slightest pretext.
"Carelessness toughens people, if they begin early enough. It is coddling that sends up the death-rate," laughed Griff.
"Nonsense! There's a mean in all things. Only the other day I called to see a patient down in the village, and there was your mother, reading away by the fire as if her clothes were not filling the room with steam. She had been out for a walk in the rain, she told me, and hadn't had time to change. Well, now she has time to be ill. I wish you good day, young man. You're an obstinate lot."
Mrs. Lomax weathered her illness so easily that she thought lightly of it, and fumed at the ridiculous fuss they were making about her convalescence. One morning she announced her intention of going out; the October sun shone temptingly over the heather, and there was a fresh breeze blowing.
"Not for another week, mother," pleaded Griff, "you know what the doctor said."
"Fiddlesticks, Griff! Because he's an old woman himself, he likes to think I am one, too. But I'm not. Out I go this morning, to get the cobwebs blown away."
Griff argued, entreated, and finally went out to the farm-buildings in the rear, thinking that his mother had given up the idea. Whereupon Mrs. Lomax, smiling like a truant child, crept upstairs, past the room where Kate was reading away the two hours' rest enjoined on her each morning, put on her bonnet and cloak, and stepped out into the moor with a rather feeble imitation of her old swinging gait. She returned at the end of an hour, feeling more tired than she would admit, and she laughed at Griff's face of concern when she confessed to her escapade.
That night she was worse, and by the morning all the old symptoms had set in with renewed vigour. But she was persistent in her assertion that going out had nothing whatever to do with the relapse; she even went so far as to hint that her yesterday's walk in the fresh air had given her a better chance to grapple with the enemy.
A couple of days later Griff rode to Saxilton for one or two sick-room necessaries which could not be got in Marshcotes. When he returned Kate met him in the hall. Her eyes were red, and her voice uncertain.
"Mother has been asking for you ever since the doctor left. Will you go up at once?"
"Is she worse?" asked Griff, a sudden fear seizing him.
For answer she burst into tears, and Griff went sadly up the stairs. The old lady stretched out her hand to him eagerly. He sat down on the edge of the bed and took both hands in his; he was shocked to notice the rapid change for the worse in her since he left.
"I have wanted you, Griff. They told me you had gone to Saxilton to buy me some things. You always have taken a great deal of trouble on my account. But I wish you hadn't gone to Saxilton. I shall not need what you brought."
"It was no trouble, dear. Why do you—mother, why do you speak in that tone about—not needing——?"
"Because I am going to die," said the old lady, quietly.
"Mother, mother, not that!"
"Yes, Griff. The doctor did not say it in so many words, but my eyes are sharp. I never did pay much attention to people's words—especially a doctor's. But I watched his face when he thought I was not looking, and it said, as plain as could be, 'You will die.' So there's an end of it, Griff."
"What do we care about his opinion? Tell yourself you will live, little mother; there's fight in you yet."
"Very little, now. I have done; the doctor only clinched what I felt in myself—otherwise, of course, I should not have believed him."
"Mother, you won't die!" cried Griff, at a loss to meet this quiet acceptance of the inevitable. It seemed so foreign to all the sick woman's characteristics.
She looked at him with a whimsical, half-pathetic smile. "Don't try to fool me, Griff; you should know how I hate it. Do you think I am afraid?"
He made no answer, only pressed her hands a little closer in his own. After a long silence she spoke again, in a soft, measured voice.
"I think people make far too much of dying, and the dread of facing the Unknown. I am sorry to leave you, and I would stay if any effort could keep me here; but I fear nothing. Perhaps I hope more than my life has given me any right to do. I never understood religion, Griff, and I went my own way through everything, and I believe I have been a very selfish, bad old woman."
"Mother——"
"Boy, I never would have you flatter me, and I don't mean to now. How did you find Kate?"
"Well enough—quite well, dear. Don't worry about her."
"She will fret about me a good deal. Be very careful of her, Griff; there are not many women in the world I should admit to be worthy of you. You see what a foolish mother I am."
Griff did not understand how it came about, but his tears were pouring fast on to the thin old hands. The mother ruffled away the hair from his forehead, and comforted him with a hundred soothing gestures, laid aside long ago with the end of his childhood. The dying strove to calm the living.
"Come, dear, come. I am an old woman, and I had to go some time. Don't fret so about it. I have had a good life, and you have been a good son to me, Griff. We might almost have been lovers, you and I, from the way we behaved at times."
She fell into a reverie, a little smile flitting now and then across her lips as she recalled this or that pleasant memory. And Griff went softly from the bedside; he could not bear up against the pathos of it all. But she heard his footfall, faint as it was, and called him back.
"Only a word, dear, and then you can leave me to sleep. The end won't be just yet, I think; you can come back for the good-bye. It is about the child. Don't be too fearful about it; don't hedge it round with carefulness, and shut out the fresh air from it. Kate will know what I mean when it comes. A baby, Griff—one's own baby—seems so wonderful, and frail, and precious, till one gets used to it. You must fight that down, and try to believe it will grow without being shut up in a glass case." She laughed, and her sharp old eyes fastened themselves on Griff with a touch of roguishness in them. "If any one asks how I died, boy, tell them that I died as I lived—trying to teach you good common sense. And—yes, tell them this, too—I died glad of my life, and proud of the grand old stock. You have the Lomax pride in you, marrow-deep: cling to it, Griff, and pass it on to your children."
A week later Griff stood in the wind-swept graveyard at Marshcotes. A bitter, roving gale chased the fallen leaves in and out among the tombstones. The parson droned his "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," but the sexton's scattered handful of earth was forestalled by the rattle of hail upon the coffin-lid. The moor would have none of man's tawdry symbols; it loved the dead too well.
And Griff took heart from the blustering weather. As of old, the heath was one with him in sympathy, and mourned, in its own wild way, for the fearless woman who was gone.
The old doctor passed an arm through his as he turned towards Gorsthwaite.
"I will go with you, Griff, if you'll let me. I have not seen your wife to-day."
Neither spoke till they were well out on the moor. Griff, striving hard to look ahead, not backward, began to talk of Kate.
"She is not strong, doctor, and this has been a sad blow to her. What are her chances?"
The doctor glanced at him nervously, and fumbled with the buttons of his great-coat.
"Oh, good enough, good enough! She'll pull through all right. It's not for a good while yet, you know, and there is time to get over all this before then."
"You sound shifty," said Lomax, curtly; "do you mean there is danger?"
"Well—we shall all of us have to be careful. She is not strong—never has been since the first year of her marriage. I have attended her off and on since she was a child. The healthiest woman I ever saw till she married. Her weakness is all owing to that brute Strangeways; he led her a dog's life for years."
They went on for another half-mile, till the doctor, anxious to turn his companion's attention from his troubles, struck off into another topic.
"By the way, talking of Strangeways, do you remember the night, not long ago, when you knocked me up to go to Sorrowstones Spring? Phew, it was a night, too! I blessed you pretty heartily on the way. The old hag was dead as a door-nail, and she might have waited for me till the morning without a touch of impatience. Joe, I fancy, is of the same breed; he has taken up his quarters in the maternal cottage."
"What is he doing?" asked Griff, more from a feeling that he had to say something than from any interest in the answer.
"What has he been doing for years past? Drink, drink, only more now than of old. He has failed in his quarry business, and they say he hasn't a penny in the world. Well, well, let him pass; he's a fine object-lesson for those who believe in the inherent worth of the animal man. Cross between a gentleman-rake and a woman of the soil—a bad cross always—children inherit worst of both sides. Heigho! Here we are at Gorsthwaite. Now, mind that you pull yourself well together, Griff. Your wife wants no molygrubs from you, let me tell you; she will manufacture enough and to spare for herself. Oh, and another thing. I don't know whether you think of moving into the Manor soon. You had better not, till your wife is strong again. The moving would only worry her."
But old Jose Binns, milking his cows in the mistal that same evening, nodded his head sagely, and a dour look was on his face.
"I said 'at there'd no gooid come on it, an' there's war i' th' making. No gooid could ha' come on it, choose how a mon looks at it."
CHAPTER XXVI. HOW THEY FOUGHT ROUND THE PEAT-RICK.
For generations past Gorsthwaite Moor had been a meeting place for gamblers from the little manufacturing towns that encroached on the furthest limits of the heath. Town-bred they were, for the most part, stunted and sickly-bodied; they spoke the uncouth, hybrid Yorkshire of the streets, not the rich Doric of the moor-folk. But here and there you would find moor-reared men among them, a poacher may be, or one of the fast-dying race of moor-squireens. The police knew well enough that never a fine Sunday went by without adding its quota to the countless games of pitch-and-toss that had already been played on the moor; they had known it for years past, but had never been able to make a successful raid. The moor ran down sharply to the valley on every side, and outposts stationed at the edges could command every way of access, recognized or otherwise, to their open-air gambling haunt. Periodically the detectives pitted their ingenuity against that of the gamblers, and periodically they found, on reaching the middle of Gorsthwaite Moor, an innocent company of workingmen, engaged in no more illegal occupation than the smoking of very black clay pipes. The pickets knew their business far too well to admit of surprises; their rule was, to pass the one word "stranger" to their comrades, whenever an unknown figure appeared below; no matter if the figure were that of a woman or child—the word was passed along just the same, and operations were suspended until the intruder had got out of sight.
Treachery among their number was the only thing they had to fear, and it was a standing wonder to Griff—who made himself free of every out-of-the-way society afforded by the moors—that none of them had ever sold their secret.
Joe Strangeways, whenever he was not employing his Sabbath in getting most royally drunk at the Bull, was sure to be found at the meetings on Gorsthwaite moor; and on the Sunday following Lomax's fight with the preacher at the edge of Whins Quarry, it fell to Joe's lot to guard the approach to the moor on the side overlooking Gorsthwaite Hall. Involuntarily his eyes took stock of his enemy's house; the day was clear and bright, and he could see the smoke curling up from the Hall chimneys, as if the mile that lay between were but a few score yards. The quarryman's heart was still sore within him; he would not let himself forget how Griff Lomax had filched his wife from him; he remembered that he had sworn vengeance on him, and that his only steps in this direction, up to the present, had given Lomax exactly the thing he most wanted.
"If only I warn't so dull-witted like," muttered Joe, "I might think o' summat. But the beer doan't seem to help a chap, an' my fine gen'leman ower yonder, what plays at running a farm an' reckons to be fine an' condescending to us plain-natured devils, smiles i' my face fro' nooin to neet. I've thowt, whiles, o' waiting on th' moor for him after dark, an' spoiling his pretty mug wi' th' heft of a good stout crowbar; but a mon hes to keep sober for that sort o' game—an' he's ower big, ony way ye tak him."
He paused in the midst of his reflections to watch a black dot on the landscape. The dot grew bigger, and moved in a bee-line between Gorsthwaite Hall and himself. Soon he could see that it was a man's figure, and presently he recognized Lomax. A sudden inspiration ran athwart Joe Strangeways' muddled brain. He rammed his pipe hard into the left corner of his mouth, thrust both hands deep into his pockets, and gave a prolonged growl of satisfaction. Then he slouched across the heather to where his companions were gaming.
"Well, Joe?" said a little man, with a red nose and ferret eyes, who had the air of being in some sort a leader among them. "What art 'a coming away for now? Tha's not watched thy time."
"I've come, Dave Jefferson, to tell ye there's one on th' way ye'll noan be ower glad to see," said the quarrymaster, slowly.
The pence and the halfpence disappeared like magic. An air that refuted suspicion crept over the faces of all present.
"Then why didn't tha pass t' word, yer lumbering fool?" said the little man, whose temper was altogether disproportionate to his size. "Mebbe tha'd like to go round by Thornborough town t' next time, an' come to tell us an hour or two after t' magistrates have given us the straight tip for gaol?"
Joe squirted his tobacco-quid, with careless accuracy, at a bumble-bee that was sipping the heather in front of him.
"If tha thowt twice afore tha spoke, Dave, tha'd be a likelier lad; an' happen tha'd be likelier still if tha never spoke at all. It's noan a stranger 'at's coming; it's a chap ye think a powerful deal on, some on ye."
"An' who may that be, Mr. Strangeways?" queried Jefferson, ironically. "Tha'rt grown mighty sharp all on a sudden; for it takes a more nor ordinary sharp feller to fool Dave Jefferson."
"That's as may be. It's Griff Lummax that's creeping, sly as a fox, up th' hillside."
Three of the poaching set that foregathered at the Dog and Grouse were on the moor that afternoon, and Jack o' Ling Crag spoke up for his absent friend.
"If that's all tha hes to tell us, Joe, tha mud as weel gang back th' way tha came. He's a proper set up chap, is Mr. Lummax, an' it's noan his breed that peaches on a mate."
"Oh, ay, he's a grand un!" echoed Joe, with beery derision. "He prigged my wife, he did; an' a man that 'ull do that, 'ull do owt."
"He did thy wife a sarvice, anyhow, I'm thinking," snapped Will Reddiough.
They all laughed at that, and their laughter braced up Joe's wits to further effort.
"Well, seeing's believing," he muttered.
"Eh? Speak out, mon, if tha's getten owt to say."
The little group was pressing close about him now; the sulkiness of his tones seemed to give added weight to his innuendo.
"I war passing th' Bull one neet a while back——" began Joe.
"Nay, lad, nay," put in Jack o' Ling Crag, with a mellow chuckle. "Passing, did'st say? It's not oftens tha passes by a public, Joe."
"An' I thowt as I'd turn in for a glass o' bitter," went on the quarrymaster, doggedly, not heeding the interruption. "There war no one i' th' back room, an' I stood waiting i' th' passage till somebody should come to sarve me. I heärd voices i' th' front bar, an' I fell to listening to 'em. One war Griff Lummax's, an' he war agate wi' telling all about these here sprees up o' Gorsthet Moor. I crept a-tip-toe an' peeped in at th' door; an' I see'd 'at t' other chap war a police inspector. Well, Lummax, he said as how he hed fooiled th' lot on ye, an' that it 'ud be an easy job to land ye all i' quad. Is that enow for ye, or mun I wend back th' way I came, an' say niver a word to this Lummax chap?"
The poaching trio was silent, and the rest looked ominously black.
"Is this gospel truth?" said Jefferson, at last.
"Gospel truth, so help me God!" Joe answered.
Griff Lomax, meanwhile, had topped the rise, and was sauntering easily towards them. They watched him cross the two hundred yards of heather that divided them; they listened to his cheery "Good-day," but answered never a word. He felt that there was trouble in the air.
"What the deuce is the matter with you all? Do you think I'm a spy, or what?" he laughed.
That emphasizing of what lay uppermost in the mind of each was an unlucky move for Griff.
"Mebbe that's about the size of it," growled Jefferson.
Lomax paused awhile. Then—
"What's all this nonsense about?" he demanded sharply.
Jefferson, in his turn, halted before speaking.
"Joe Strangeways slipped into t' Bull, Mr. Lomax, a neet or two back, without your hearing him. Ye'd best hearken to what he has to say."
"I will. Speak up, Strangeways."
Joe shifted under his enemy's steady gaze. Then, with his eyes on the ground, he repeated his story. Every one watched Griff's face.
"Well," said Jefferson, "what have ye to say to yon?"
"Say? That it is a damned lie!" retorted Lomax, coolly.
"Are ye for denying that t' inspector chap war wi' ye in t' Bull that night?"
"He was."
The three poachers crept a little apart; they were loth to hear young Lomax condemn himself so openly.
"Then what have ye to say for yourseln?"
Griff, once he was roused, was stubborn as a mule. He kicked against little Jefferson's domineering tone, and he resented the facile way in which these comrades of his had given their verdict against him at a word from a man like Strangeways.
"Nothing; I've nothing to say," he repeated. "There's plenty that I could say, but nothing that I will; so put that in your pipe, Dave Jefferson, and smoke it till you're sick."
A low murmur rose from the company—only the poachers were silent.
"That means fighting, I fancy," said Lomax, after another long pause. "There are twenty-two of you, so far as I can count, and that's rather long odds. But it happens that you have three sound men amongst you." He stopped to look the three poachers square between the eyes. "You, Will Reddiough—and you, Jack o' Ling Crag—and you, Ned Kershaw—you'll all take an honest man's word against a cur's like Strangeways here. Have I dealt fair by you in the past?"
Those three purloiners of their neighbours' game warmed to the man's pluck.
"Ay, that ye hev, Mr. Lummax."
"I tell you this is all a lie, and I'll prove it when we've had a taste of good hard blows. Come over here, you three, and we'll fight the lot of them. They're a weakly crew at best, and they ought never to show themselves on a moor."
They hung irresolute for a second or two. Then their love of Griff, right or wrong, their instinctive response to his appeal against town-bred folk, above all, their zest for adventure, settled the question. They crossed to Griff's side, and the nineteen gamesters felt slightly less eager for the fray than they had been a moment ago. Lomax took advantage of their hesitation to throw a rapid glance about him: he saw, not ten yards on his left, the peat-rick which he had built up a few days ago, and which his farm-man was to cart away at the end of the week; and he framed his plan of action on the spot.
"Come with me," he cried. "You have sticks, all of you; so have I. Take a side a-piece of that peat-rick, and I'll look after the front. And hit hard: we have our work cut out."
The hesitation in the enemy's camp was over. No sooner had Griff and his three allies set their backs to the peats, than they were in the thick of it. Most of the nineteen had sticks, and the rest came on with their fists, trusting to run in under guard.
Thwack, thwack, thwack sounded Griff's heart-of-oak on three separate skulls, and he was left free for a breathing space.
"How goes it behind?" he called, with a laugh that had the true fighting ring in it.
"Fine, sir, fine," answered Will Reddiough, in between two resounding blows; and "Beautiful!" cried Jack o' Ling Crag, with his big mouth all a-grin and his crisp grey hair on end with excitement.
Sixteen of the attacking party fell back in disorder; the other three were left on the ground as a barricade for Lomax. A second wild rush, in the middle of which Griff could make out the master-quarryman's square-set figure, and a naked knife-blade in his hairy red hands. Strangeways jumped with a yell on the three prostrate bodies, and his blade caught a dancing sun-shaft as he drew it back to strike. Quick almost as the sun-shaft itself, Griff's stick went out, and took the knife, and whirled it high up in the air. The stick made another circuit, and the barricade was increased to the number of four. But it was his last stroke. Jefferson, close behind Joe Strangeways, took Griff neatly between the eyes, and down he went like a log on top of the other four. A wild yell came from those in Jefferson's rear, but Will Reddiough and the rest had their hands too full to be able to glance behind them. Strangeways grunted a curse, and picked up himself and his knife from the heather.
"By Hell, I'll settle accounts between us!" he muttered.
Gabriel Hirst felt his sins weigh heavily on him that afternoon. He had gone up the stream-side to the miller's, but had turned before coming in sight of the house. The deep hollow of the sky seemed, as of old, to be full of God's vengeance: as of old, the vengeance was all for him—for him, the chiefest of sinners. He had striven to murder his friend; save for that accident of the tree, he was at this moment a murderer; how dare he draw near to Greta—beautiful Greta, warm, human, all-sufficing—with the brand of Cain on his brow? He cursed himself for ever telling his love. He turned every single act, every thought and desire of his life, into blackest sins, with all his old-time ingenuity. He saw—physically saw—a Devil with flaming eyes, who stood in his path and mocked him on to the wrestling for which his arms were no longer strong. He leaped up the hillside, with the pauseless spring of the hunted, and went out on the moors to pay his full tribute of remorse. For Gabriel Hirst was a man who could be well trusted to ensure his own punishment.
"'Behold, I was shapen in wickedness: and in sin hath my mother conceived me,'" he wailed at last.
He had travelled far across the moor, and his strength was spent, and the tears were running apace down his hollowed cheeks.
The sound of shouting came from near at hand. He lifted his face, that showed pitiful as a child's, and looked across the gorse. He saw four men with their backs to a peat-rick, and a crowd of others rushing to the attack. He heard the rattle of sticks, and a clear, wild laugh that could come from none but Griff. The childishness smoothed itself out of his face, and his mouth grew firm. He forgot that he was a miserable sinner, forgot that he had been like to drop with weariness, forgot everything in earth or sky, except the rain of body-blows. The old moor-blood, swift and hot, was awakened; not for nothing had his forebears, like Griff's own, been reared through long centuries on the peaty uplands. He ran towards the peat-rick, and as he ran he found time to think that now he could wipe out that blood-stain once for all: Griff Lomax, his friend, was fighting against odds up there, and he would save him. Another flash, and he saw that God had given him one more clear chance, that the Almighty had stooped to work directly on his behalf. So, with a jumble of sheer fighting instinct, a sense of God's personal intervention, and an itch for the squaring of accounts, he rushed into the thick of it; but the moor instinct was uppermost.
Strangeways had his knife a shade too close to his enemy's heart, and Griff could not move a muscle to defend himself. But Strangeways got no further: he felt a pair of big, vice-like hands at his throat, and he thought his time was come. The preacher flung him back, half strangled, and picked up a stick lying at his feet, and laid about him merrily. They fell like acorns in a gale, till Gabriel Hirst shouted to Reddiough and the rest to leave their peat-rick. They rushed forward elbow to elbow, and those who were left of the nineteen broke and fled, crying for quarter. Then Gabriel Hirst cried, "Stop!" And the three poachers and the one man of God looked into each other's faces, and gripped each other's hands, and went to see what was amiss with their fallen comrade.
Lomax was sitting up on his elbow by this time.
"What is it, old fellow?" asked the preacher, fondling his hand in a silly, motherly way.
"A bit dazed—nothing at all—have we licked the beggars?"
"Licked 'em all to fits, sir; an' a grand fight it war," spoke up Will Reddiough.
Griff laughed at that, and got on to his feet. His victims had, one by one, done the same; for Griff's blows were hard, but their skulls were harder still. Then, after awhile, the defeated band came slinking back in twos and threes, and Lomax leaned against the peat-rick while he said his say.
"I have something to tell you now. First of all, my best thanks for as merry a picnic as I am likely to have for many a long day to come. You're not a bad lot, take you all in all, but you can't make up your minds quick enough, and you get hit while you're thinking. Next, Joe Strangeways—he's not here, by the way—Joe Strangeways was quite right about my being in the Bull with the stranger, and I've no doubt he listened at the keyhole. The stranger had got a notion into his head that I knew a good deal about these pleasant Sunday afternoons on the moor, and he came to Marshcotes expressly to pump me. Well, I told him a lot—but it was all wrong, every word of it. I put him as far off the track as I could, and I set him homewards with a glass of good Scotch whisky inside him. Now, do you believe me, or don't you?"
CHAPTER XXVII. THE RIFT GAPES WIDE.
January was here, and the frost had long ago set a sharp finger and thumb on the world. The grouse were visibly tamer than they had been a week ago; the peewits came nearer to farmsteads at the lowest point of their wheeling flight; the smaller feathered fry looked more than ever like desolate waifs and strays, as they fluttered from patch to frozen patch, above the whitened heather. So keen was the air that at Gorsthwaite could be heard the busy clatter of the quarry which hugged the Ling Crag end of Marshcotes Moor.
At eleven of a Wednesday morning, Griff was being soundly rated by his wife's nurse, a slim little energetic body who had seen to the bringing of too many infants into the world to feel much reverence for useless males.
"Mr. Lomax, I wish you'd go somewhere out-of-doors and stay there, that I do. Here you be, upstairs and down; now listening at the door, and popping out at me like a firebrand whenever I leave her room, to ask if there's any change for the worse; now tramping about the floor downstairs, till a body would think you'd fair set your mind on making the most noise you could."
"I—I didn't know you could hear me," said Griff, meekly. "I took my boots off, but the boards are all old and crazy. I must sit down, I suppose."
"Sit down? Nay, that you never will! As well ask you to sit on a hornet's nest as a chair, in your present feckless state. The only chance for us is to bundle you out-of-doors. I'd do it myself if I was a bit bigger. Dear, dear! it's a puzzle to me to know how the first man could grow a rib decent enough to make a woman out of. Such poor, shiftless mortals as you are—cannot sit still a minute—unless there happens to be real work for you to do——"
"I'll put on my hat, I think," murmured Griff, swept towards the door by the speed of the little woman's utterances.
When he got out-of-doors, and had time to collect his thoughts, he remembered that Gabriel Hirst was to be married that morning. He had been anxious to put in an appearance and give his friend a good handshake at the chapel door, but Kate's illness had driven the matter clean out of his mind. He set off now by the short cut to Ling Crag, past Smithbank and the foot of Hazel Dene.
The village was all astir, and he found the little chapel full to the doors when he reached it. They made way for him instinctively, partly from sympathy with his recent trouble, partly through a feeling that the preacher's best friend ought not to have to stand outside the door while his marriage-service was being read. The ceremony was half through when Griff finally squeezed himself into a corner at the back of the chapel. A flood of confused thoughts came to him, dizzying his brain—remembrance of the time when he had stood at the altar with Kate—his mother's death—the ever-present anxiety about his wife.
It was over at last. Griff hurried forward, and took a hand of each as they came out on to the prim little pavement of the chapel graveyard.
"Good luck to you both," he murmured.
"We owe it to you a good deal, I fancy," said Greta, with pretty friendliness.
"That we do!" cried the preacher. "If it hadn't been for the quarrel, Griff, I should never have found heart to ask Greta to marry me. And if it hadn't been for the fight round the peat-stack, I should never have known what it was to feel the use of my arms. Man, it was worth living for, that fight!"
"That is not nice of you, Gabriel," laughed the girl, softly; "you have something more important to live for now."
But it was clear that she was far from disapproving of this new phase in her husband's character.
"We shall make a Pagan of you yet, old fellow. Good-bye, good-bye." And Griff, with many final handshakes, was off across the moor to Gorsthwaite, running hard in his anxiety to hear the latest news of Kate.
The doctor was coming down the stairs as Griff opened the front door.
"Well?" he cried, forgetting altogether, in his eagerness, to regulate his voice properly.
The old doctor had been present at such scenes often enough, but he had never felt an equal desire to turn tail and give necessity the slip. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose; then he fidgeted with the buttons of his rough tweed coat—thinking all the while that it would have been a trifle easier in the telling if he had had the pluck to give Griff a plainer hint months ago. Finally, he looked up with a kind of desperation in his eyes.
"Your wife is dead," he answered, in a harsh, grating voice.
Griff put his hand to his forehead and stood there for a moment; the blood rushed to his face, and ebbed away again, as quickly as if some one had struck him.
"Wait a moment, doctor," he said, after a while; "do you know just what that means? You ought to be very sure——"
"She is dead, Griff; I'm not going to lie to you."
Not a word said Griff, but set his feet on the stairs, and began to mount them slowly. The doctor followed, put a hand on his shoulder, and led him down again to the hall.
"Not just yet, lad. When people die in great pain, it is not good to—can you understand me?—I want you to say good-bye to a calm face, Griff."
"Yes, yes. She was very beautiful, doctor, wasn't she? Too beautiful, I fancy; I should have reckoned on that."
His dull, passionless voice jarred on the old man terribly.
"See, lad, you must pull yourself together. The child is alive; keep up heart for the bairn's sake."
"The child? What do I want with the child? It is Kate I want."
"A boy, too—you always wanted a boy, you know," went on the other, not heeding Griff's fretful interruption.
The door stood open, and Griff, looking out across the moor, saw the crimson sun sinking into a grey bank of haze.
"We shall have snow to-night," he said, and glanced at the doctor as if prepared to meet dissent with argument.
"Yes, I fancy we shall—a heavy fall, too."
Griff straightened his shoulders presently, and held out his hand.
"You've done your best, doctor, and I thank you for it. I can't get used to the idea just at once; perhaps—if you left me to think it out a bit—I might get the hang of things better."
"God forgive me!" muttered the doctor, as he went out; "it is only staving off utter hopelessness for the lad. The child is as good as dead; it may live a day or two—a week, perhaps—it would have been better if it had never lived at all. Lord, Lord, what a mess life makes of itself!"
Without, Gorsthwaite showed itself in touch with the black weather. A sullen frost had hold of the land, and the stained old walls answered the sky with frown for frown. The plover wheeled ceaselessly about the chimney-stacks, and the voice of the damned rang dryly through their sable throats.
Within, the rooms were darkened, and the oaken panels creaked at the burden of their own sad thoughts. The mistress had been taken to her rest, and the master was battling for his reason, with a face that aped the stones which shut him in. All that he had in him of dogged resistance was pushing its way to the front: one blow had followed another, and the end, perhaps, was not yet—but he would fight till his own end came.
He got up from the bed where she had died, and moved stiffly up and down the room. He thought of the child, and forced himself to recall, one by one, the goodly plans he had framed for him. Yes, he should grow up strong—a Lomax to the backbone—he should take his fill of life, and help his father to live again in watching him. Steady! The boy would have need of his father, as his father had of him: there must be no knuckling under to circumstance now.
On a sudden the child began to cry most piteously, disturbing his father's gaining resolution. Griff's thoughts wandered out again to that ice-bound moorland graveyard, where Kate was lying in the cold. It was surely a monstrous unfairness that she had died to give the boy his taste of life—that she must evermore lie naked and friendless, while he would some day eat and drink in the lusty fulness of his manhood.
But where did such thoughts carry him? Into the tangled places of shade, where neither hope nor light could show themselves. He fought them back, time after time, and slowly won his way to calm. By sheer strength of will he set his baby on the heights where its mother had had her dwelling, and fell down and worshipped the rising dawn now that the older day had set.
And all the while, the child within sent up its piteous cries. And all the while, the plovers, wheeling round the chimney-stacks, ceased not to wail, and screech, and whimper. And night settled dumbly over the silent heather places.
CHAPTER XXVIII. JANET.
They talk yet of that winter in Marshcotes parish. Some recall it for its twelve weeks of frost, others for the depth of snow that covered all but the tallest tombstones in the cemetery for a week and a day; but one and all remember the bitter night that heralded the storm, because of a deed which the snow did its best to hide.
At four of the afternoon the sun went down behind the surly spur of moor that guarded the western side of Frender's Folly. A black frost had made iron of the marshy ground, and glass of the sullen lake. All was bitter and dark, and the Folly walls seemed one with the gloom about them. The sky was a dead, expressionless grey. Then, on a sudden, yellowish banks of cloud crept up from the moor-edge, as though puffed by a noiseless wind. The grouse ceased their complaining, the curlews dropped earthward. One by one the snowflakes floated out of the cheerless sky, like tears from a frozen heart; one by one they clung to the heather sprays, blackening their murky green by contrast, or nestled in he clefts of their stalks. And every flake might have been a ghost, so subtle and lonely and sad was its wandering fall. White of snow, black of night—there was nothing over all the moor but these.
The guests at the Folly, while they were dressing for dinner, peeped out from under their blinds and saw the snowflakes silting against the window-panes. They shrugged their shoulders at the lunacy that had brought them here in winter weather, and went downstairs resolved to make the best of a bad business. Laverack, feeling that he would have much to answer for if the snow should fasten them up in the house, exerted himself to keep the ball rolling. Laughter and jest increased apace, till Janet, facing her father from the opposite end of the table, thought she must surely go mad. Her mind was made up, and she feared lest the storm should render it impossible to cross the moor that night—feared lest some cause from within should detain her—feared, finally, lest the dinner should never end.
When they had gained the drawing-room, and the men below had grown noisily insistent on their freedom, Janet slipped to the side of the lady-companion who helped her to do the honours of the house.
"Look after these people, will you?" she said. "I have an atrocious headache, and I can't bear their foolishness."
"Really, my dear, you sound quite vindictive. I am sorry you are so unwell; shall I send your maid up with some tea?"
"Please don't. I would rather be left alone till to-morrow; talk and fuss jar on me so when I am like this. You will explain to every one? I mean to slip away quietly."
A moment later she was speeding along the corridor that led to her bedroom. She panted with excitement, with dread of frustration at this eleventh hour; but her mouth was firm, and her eyes resolute.
"What it is to have to lie! I hate it," she muttered. "Only, I had to. What will Leo say, even if I do reach him safely?" she added, with a disturbed wrinkling of her forehead.
She put on a cloak, and drew the pretty frilled hood over her head; then waited till she heard the men come up, and the drawing-room door close on the last of them. She went softly out by the side door, cutting short the growl of a chained-up mastiff by telling him who she was. Then across the whitened lawn, and up the rise till the open moor was gained—a slender, girlish figure, flitting shadow-like amongst the silent flakes. Her heart failed her as she reached the top; she seemed to be the sport of the storm-elves, and there was no living thing to help her to battle with the loneliness. She tried to sing, that so she might trick herself into the thought that she had company; but her voice was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and it sank affrighted by its own power to people the stillness with re-echoing cries. Her knees shook under her, and the bridle track showed dimly—more dimly, it seemed, with each succeeding step. Not till now had she understood what was meant by her foolhardy resolve to cross the five miles of desolation that lay between herself and Wynyates.
At the end of a mile, just after she had turned into the cart-road that ran past Lawfoot Water, she clashed against some one walking in the opposite direction.
"Beg pardon," said a gruff voice. "I didn't fancy there'd be more nor one fooil abroad to-neet."
At any other time the girl would have been frightened out of her senses; but the voice rang honest, and any human company was better than that awful silence which had gone before.
"Stay!" she cried, as the stranger was about to pass on. "Where are you going?"
The man slewed round on his heels and began to make a queer cackling noise in his throat, suggestive of sour merriment.
"To which I'd answer, Who the devil may ye be, an' what is't to ye where I'm wending? Ye've a lass's voice, an' a snod sort of a figure, what I can see on't—but it beäts me to know what ye're after, scampering across th' moor at this time of a wild neet."
"I want to get to Wynyates, and you are going to show me the way."
Janet, fearless now, had come close up to her companion, and rested a hand on his sleeve.
"Begow, tha'rt a cool un!" he muttered, half admiringly. "But I can't do't; there's a wife an' three waiting at home, an' I mun put th' best foot forrard to reach 'em come ten o'clock."
"I must cross to Wynyates, I tell you, and I'm afraid of losing my way if I go alone. Can you find it with snow on the ground?"
"Well, I reckon I can. I've known it, man an' boy, these forty year."
"If money will persuade you, you can take my purse and welcome. I don't know how much there is in it, but if it isn't enough——"
"I don't want your money," growled the man. "I niver said a word to leäd ye to think I wanted that."
"Then you won't come?" she said impatiently.
He shuffled from one foot to another, continued his growls in an undertone, and finally started off in the direction of Wynyates.
"Ay, I'll come. Ye may be up to no godliness, but ye've got some sperrit in ye—an' that's saying a deal for a woman. Come on."
As Captain Laverack was playing whist in the drawing-room, and inwardly reviling his partner's experimental style of play, the butler came behind his chair and asked for a word with him.
"All right, Denman; it will wait till we've finished our rubber, I suppose?"
"It will wait, sir, but——"
Laverack saw from the man's air that the matter was a grave one, and rose from the table as soon as the hand was played, leaving his place to a youngster who had been much more pleasantly employed at the piano.
"Well?" he demanded, standing just outside the door, which he had closed behind him.
"It's about Miss Laverack, sir. She is not in her room, nor anywhere else in the house, that we can find. Mrs. Rigby, sir, was looking out of doors an hour or so ago, and she saw a figure in a cloak go past Sultan's kennel."
Laverack wiped his forehead.
"Yes, yes; go on," he said irritably. "Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I've only just heard it, sir; and Mrs. Rigby didn't like to come and tell you, seeing that the figure was come and gone so quick that she had scarcely time to make sure of it. It was snowing, too, at the time."
"Did she recognize Miss Laverack?"
"It was about her height and figure. Besides, she stopped and patted Sultan, and he left off growling at once. It must have been Miss Laverack, sir."
Laverack began to pace up and down the long corridor, talking to himself in his quick, nervous way. "I can't raise the alarm, because that would give the confounded girl away to every guest in the house. Oh, damn it, why didn't I do as I intended to do at first, and leave here a week ago? It would have meant putting off the house-party, but anything would have been better. Where does this fellow Roddick live? Wynyates, isn't it? Five miles away, they tell me. She is sure to have gone there. Well, I must get on to a horse, I suppose, and follow as fast as I can: it will be all up with Janet if I don't bring her back to-night."
He came opposite Denman again, and the butler coughed apologetically—
"Have you any orders for me, sir?"
"Orders? Yes; have the bay saddled, and waiting at the end of the drive in ten minutes. Not a word of this, Denman, to any one."
It was not very long since Rigby, whose fears on the point may be remembered, had been constrained to tell his wife of the disinterested part he was playing as messenger between Miss Laverack and Mr. Roddick of Wynyates. And Mrs. Rigby, though pledged to absolute secrecy by all she held sacred in the world, had nevertheless been unable to refrain from repeating the story, in confidence, to her friend the cook. From the cook it had travelled round, still strictly in confidence, to the ears of Denman, the butler; and Denman, having lately endangered his comfortable post here by a rather glaring misdemeanour, promptly repeated what he had heard to his master, hoping by this means to re-establish his shaken credit. Laverack, being a man who was not over-nice in his own methods, credited his keeper with like principles; and his certainty that Rigby would spread the tale far and near, if dismissed, was his sole reason for keeping man and wife in his employ. Poor Rigby, whose only faults were an inordinate love of mystery and a tendency to give others the benefit of his experiences, had been almost heart-broken when he learned that it was all over with the meetings between Roddick and Janet. Laverack had stormed and raved, and had with difficulty been persuaded to stay at the Folly till the invited guests should have come and gone. Even as it was, Janet was never sure from day to day that he would not get rid of everyone on some excuse of sickness or bereavement; and she resolved to bring matters to a crisis before she was again dragged away from Roddick.
"By Gad, what a night!" muttered Laverack, as he went quietly out of the house and crossed to the bend of the drive where his horse was waiting for him. "Why Heaven gives a man daughters, Heaven only knows. I shall be wet to the skin before I get back. Cranshaw first, if that knave Rigby told me right, and after that I must ask the way."