CHAPTER IX.
The clocks of London were striking one when Paul and Greta descended the steps in front of St. Pancras Station. The night was dark and bitterly cold. Dense fog hung in the air, and an unaccustomed silence brooded over the city. A solitary four-wheeled cab stood in the open square. The driver was inside, huddled up in his great-coat, and asleep. A porter awakened him, and he made way for Greta and Paul. He took his apron from the back of his horse, wrapped it about his waist, and snuffed the wicks of his lamps—they burned low and red, and crackled in the damp atmosphere.
"What hotel, sir?"
"The convent, Westminster."
"Convent, sir? Did you say the convent, sir? St. Margaret's, Westminster, sir?"
"The Catholic convent."
Greta's hand pressed Paul's arm.
The cabman got on to his box, muttering something that was inaudible. As he passed the gate lodge he drew up while the porter on duty came out with a lamp, and took the number of the cab.
The fog grew more dense at every step, and the pace at which they traveled was slow. To avoid the maze of streets that would have helped them to a shorter cut on a clearer night, the driver struck along Euston Road to Tottenham Court Road, and thence south toward Oxford Street. This straighter and plainer course had the disadvantage of being more frequented. Many a collision became imminent in the uncertain light.
The cabman bought a torch from a passer-by, and stuck it in his whip-barrel. As they reached the busier thoroughfares he got down from his box, took the torch in one hand and the reins in the other, and walked at his horse's head.
The pace was now slower than before. It was like a toilsome passage through the workings of an iron mine. Volumes of noisome vapor rolled slowly past them. The air hung close over their heads like an unseen, vaulted roof. Red lights gleamed like vanishing stars down the elastic vista. One light would turn out to be a coffee-stall, round which a group of people gathered—cabmen muffled to the throat, women draggled and dirty, boys with faces that were old. Another would be a potato-engine, with its own volumes of white vapor, and the clank of its oven door like the metallic echo of the miner's pick. The line of regular lamps was like the line of candles stuck to the rock, the cross streets were like the cross-workings, the damp air settling down into streaks of moisture on the glass of the cab window was like the ceasless drip, drip of the oozing water from overhead.
And to the two laden souls sitting within in silence and with clasped hands, the great city, nay, the world itself, was like a colossal mine, which human earthworms had burrowed underground, while the light and the free air were both above.
At one point, where a patch of dry pavement indicated a bake-house under the street, three or four squalid creatures crouched together and slept. The streets were all but noiseless. It would be two hours yet before the giant of traffic would awake. The few cabmen hailed each other as they passed unrecognized, and their voices sounded hoarse. When the many clocks struck two, the many tones came muffled through the dense air.
The journey was long and wearisome, but Paul and Greta scarcely felt it. They were soon to part; they knew not when they were to meet again. Perhaps soon, perhaps late; perhaps not until a darkness deeper than this should cover the land.
Turning into Oxford Street, the cabman struck away to the west, in order to come upon Westminster by the main artery of Regent Street. The great thoroughfare was quiet enough now. Fashion was at rest, but even here, and in its own mocking guise, misery had its haunt. A light laugh broke the silence of the street, and a girl, so young as to be little more than a child, dressed in soiled finery, and reeling with unsteady step on the pavement, came up to the cab window and peered in.
At the open door of a hotel, from whence a shaft of light came out into the fog, the cabman drew up. "Comfortable hotel, sir; think you'd like to put up, sir?"
Paul dropped the window. "We want the Catholic convent at Westminster, my man."
The cabman had put up his torch and was flapping his arms under his armpits. "Cold job, sir. Think I've had enough of it. Ha'past two, and a mile from St. Margaret's yet, sir. Got a long step home, sir, and the missis looking out for me this hour and more."
The night porter of the hotel had opened the cab door, but not for an instant did Paul's purpose waver. "I'm sorry, my good fellow, but we must reach the convent, as I tell you."
"Won't to-morrow do, sir? Comfortable quarters, sir. Can recommend 'em," with a tip of his hand over his shoulder.
"We must get to the convent to-night, my man."
The cabman returned to his horse's head with a grunt of dissatisfaction. "Porter, can you keep a bed for me here? I shall be back in an hour," said Paul. The porter signified assent, and once again the cab moved off on its slow journey.
As it passed out of Trafalgar Square by way of Charing Cross, the air suddenly lightened. It was as if waves of white mist rolled over the yellow vapor. The cabman threw away his torch, mounted his box, and set off at a trot. When he reached Parliament Square the fog was gone. The great clock of Westminster was striking three; the sky was a dun gray behind the clocktower, and the dark mass of the abbey could be dimly seen.
The cab drew up on the south-west of Abbey Gardens and before a portico railed in by an iron gate. The lamp burning on the sidewalk in front cast a hazy light on what seemed to be a large brick house plain in every feature.
"This is Saint Margaret's, sir. Eight shillings, sir, if you please."
Paul dismissed the cabman and rang the bell; the hollow tongue sent out a startling reverberation into the night. The sky to the east was breaking; thin streaks of a lighter gray foretold the dawn.
The door opened and the iron gate swung back. A sister carrying an open oil lamp motioned them to enter.
"Can I see the superior?" said Paul.
"She is newly risen," said the sister, and she fixed the lamp to a bracket in the wall and went away. They were left in a bare, chill, echoing hall.
The next moment a line of nuns in their coifs passed close by them with quick and silent steps. At that gray hour they had risen for matins. Some of them were pale and emaciated, and one that was palest and most worn went by with drooping head and hands that inlaced her rosary. Paul stepped back a pace. The nun moved steadily onward with the rest. Never a sign of recognition, never an upward glance, only the quivering of a lip—but it was his mother!
He, too, dropped his head, and his own lips trembled. The mother superior was standing with them before he was aware. For an instant his voice was suspended, but he told her at length that a great calamity had befallen them, and begged her to take his wife for a time into her care.
"Charity is our office," said the mother, when she had heard his story. "Come, my sister, the Church is peace. Your poor laden soul may put off its load while you are here."
Paul begged to be allowed a moment to say farewell, and the good mother left them together.
Then from an inner chamber came the solemn tones of an organ and the full voices of a choir. The softened harmonies seemed to float into their torn hearts, and they wept. The gray dawn was creeping in. It blurred the red light of the lamp.
"Good-bye, darling, good-bye!" Paul whispered; but even while he spoke he clung the closer.
"Good-bye for the present, dear husband," said Greta, and smiled.
"Who would have thought that this calamity could wait for you at the very steps of God's altar?"
"A day will turn all this evil into good."
"At the threshold of our life together to be torn apart!"
"Think of it no more, dearest. Our lives will yet be the brighter for this calamity. Do you remember what Parson Christian used to say? The happiest life is not that which is always in the sunlight, but rather that over which a dark cloud has once lowered and passed away."
Paul shook his head. "My lips are sealed. You do not know all. It is a cruel lie that separates us. But what if it can not be disproved?"
Greta's eyes were full of a radiant hopefulness. "It can, and shall!"
Paul bent his head and touched her forehead with his lips. "The past is a silence that gives back no answer," he said. "My mother alone could disprove it, and she is dead to the world."
"Not alone, dearest. I can disprove it. Wait and see!"
Paul smiled coldly, and once more shook his head. "You don't know all," he said again, and kissed her reverently. "What if to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow brings no light to unravel this mystery?"
"Never fear it. The finger of Heaven is in this," said Greta.
"Say, rather, the hand of destiny. And how little we are in the presence of that pitiless power!"
"God sees all," said Greta. "He has led me in here, and He will guide me out again."
"What if I brought you for a day, and you remain for a year, for life?"
"Then think that God Himself has taken your wife at your hands."
Paul's face, that had worn a look of deep dejection, became distorted with pain. "Oh, it is horrible! And this cloister is to be your marriage-bed!"
"Hush! All is peace here. Good-bye, dearest Paul. Be brave, my husband."
"Brave? Before death a man may be brave; but in the face of a calamity like this, what man could be brave?"
"God will turn it away."
"God grant it. But I tremble to ask for the truth. The future is not more awful to me now than the past."
"Keep up heart, dear Paul. You know how pleasant it is to fall asleep amid storms that shake the trees, and to awake in the stillness and the sunshine, and amid the songs of the birds. To-morrow the falsehood will be outfaced, and you will return to fetch me."
"Yes," said Paul, "or else drag out my days as an outcast in the world."
"No, no, no. Good-bye, dearest." Then the voice of the comforter failed her, and she dropped her head on his breast.
The choir within chanted the matin service. Paul removed the iron bar that crossed the door, and opened it. The opposite side of the street was a blank wall, with gaunt boughs of leafless trees behind it and above it, and beyond all was the dim sanctuary. Traffic's deep buzz flowed in the distance. The dawn had reddened the eastern sky, and the towers of the abbey were black against the glory of the coming day.
"It may be that there is never a sunrise on this old city but it awakens some one to some new calamity," said Paul; "yet surely this is the heaviest stroke of all Good-bye, my darling!"
"Good-bye, my husband!"
"Yonder gray old fabric has looked on the scarred ruins of many a life, but never a funeral that has passed down its aisles was so sad as this parting. Good-bye, dearest wife, good-bye!"
"Good-bye, Paul!"
He struck his breast and drew his breath audibly, "I must go. The thing is not to be thought of and endured!"
"Good-bye, Paul!" Her face was buried in his breast, to hide it from his eyes.
"They say that the day a dear friend is lost to us is purer and calmer in remembrance than the day before. May it be so with us!"
"Hush! You will soon be back to take me away." And Greta nestled closer to his breast.
"If not—if not"—his hot breathing beat fast on her drooping head—"if not, then—as the world is dead to both without the other's love—remain here—in this house—forever. Good-bye! Good-bye!"
He disengaged her clinging arms. He pressed her cold brow with his quivering lips. Her fears conquered her brave heart at last. A mist was fast hiding her from him.
"Good-bye! good-bye!"
A moment's silence, a breaking sigh, a rising sob, a last lingering touch of the inlaced fingers, and then the door closed behind him. She was alone in the empty hall; her lips were cold; her eyes were shut. The rosy hues of morning were floating in the air, now rich and sweet and balmy and restful, with the full, pure, holy harmonies of the choir.
CHAPTER X.
It was merely a momentary vexation which Hugh Ritson felt when the course that Paul had taken falsified his prescience. "No matter," he said, "it is only a question of a day, more or less. The thing must be done."
Drayton made no attempt to conceal his relief when the door closed and the fly drove off. "I ain't sorry the fence is gone, and that's flat!"
"Only, being gone, you will have a bigger risk to run now, my friend," said Hugh Ritson, with undisguised contempt.
Drayton looked up with a glance half of fear, half of suspicion. "You ain't gone and rounded on a fellow, after all? You ain't told him as I'm here?"
"Don't be a fool! Get off to bed. Wait, you must put me up for the night. You'll take care of yourself if you're wise. The police will be here in the morning; take my word for that."
"Here? In the morning? No!"
"When they asked for his address, he gave them the name of this house. They'll not forget it. Men of that sort don't forget."
"I'll pound if they don't."
"They have memories for other things besides addresses. Consider if they have any other reason to remember the landlord of your house."
"No criss-crossing! you don't do me the same as the old woman."
"No matter. You know best. Take care of yourself, Mr. Drayton."
Drayton buttoned his coat as near to the throat as the torn lapel would allow. "That's what I mean to do. I ain't going to be lagged. It's a lifer this time, and that would take the stiff'ning out of a man."
"Where are you going?"
"No criss-crossing, I say."
"Leave this house, and they'll have you in twenty-four hours."
"Stay here, and they'll lag me in twelve. Being as that's twelve to the good, I'm off."
Drayton's hand was on the door-handle. Hugh Ritson snatched it away. "An idiot like you deserves to be taken. Such men ought to be put away."
Drayton lifted his fist. "Damme, but I'll put you away if—if—"
Hugh Ritson did not flinch. "What if I show you how to escape the consequences of to-night's work altogether?"
Drayton's uplifted hand fell. "I ain't objecting to that," he growled. "How?"
"By putting another man in your place."
Drayton's eyes opened in a stare of blank amazement.
"And what about me?" he asked.
"You," said Hugh Ritson, and a scarcely perceptible sneer curled his lip—"you shall stand in his shoes."
A repulsive smile crossed Drayton's face. He fumbled the torn lapel with restless fingers. His eyes wandered to the door. There was a moment's silence.
"Him?" he said, with an elevation of the eyebrows.
Hugh Ritson bent his head slightly. Drayton stood with mouth agape.
Old Mrs. Drayton was pottering around the bar preparatory to going to bed.
"I'll be a-bidding you good-night, sir. Paul, you'll lock up after the gentleman."
"Good-night, Mrs. Drayton."
The landlady hobbled away. But from midway up the stairs her querulous voice came again. "The poor young thing—I declare she's a-crying her eyes out."
"Why d'ye mean to do?" asked Drayton.
"To get him here."
"How'll ye track him? He's gone to London, ain't he? That's a big haystack to find a needle in, ain't it?"
"London is not a haystack, Mr. Drayton. It's a honey-comb, and every cell is labeled. On getting out of the train at St. Pancras Station they will either hire a cab or they will not. If they hire one, then the number will be taken at the lodge. By that number the cabman can be found. He will know where he drove his fare. If my brother left his wife at one place, and settled himself at another, the cabman will know that also. If they do not hire a cab, then, as the hour is late, and one of them is a lady, they must be somewhere in the vicinity of the station. Thus, in that vast honey-comb, their particular cells are already marked out for us. That's enough for the present. Who sleep in this house beside yourselves—and the girl?"
"Nobody but a lad—a pot-boy."
"Where is he now—in bed?"
"Four hours agone."
"Where does he sleep?"
"Up in the attic."
"Don't let that lad see you. On which side of the house does the attic lie?"
"In the gable, this end."
"Is there an attic in the other gable?"
"Yes, a bad one."
"No matter. Get a mattress and sleep there yourself, and lie close all day to-morrow. Take food, but no liquor, mind that. I'll come for you when all is clear. And now show me to your room."
After some preparation the two men went upstairs, carrying the only remaining light.
"Give me the candle. You had best go up to your attic in the dark. Here, put this key in the girl's door and unlock it. She's quiet enough now. Hush—! No; it was only the wind. Good-night—and mind what I say, don't let that boy see you—and, listen, no liquor!"
CHAPTER XI.
The day had not yet dawned, and all lay still in that house when Mercy Fisher opened noiselessly the door of her room and crept stealthily down the stairs. It was very dark in the bar below, and she had no light. The sickening odor of dead tobacco was in the air. She carried a little bundle in one hand, and with the other she felt her way around the walls until she came to the outer door. A heavy chain fastened it, and with nervous fingers she drew it out of the slide. When free of its groove, it slipped from her hand, and fell against the door-jamb with a clang. The girl's heart leaped to her throat. At first she crouched in fear, then lifted the latch, opened the door, and fled away into the gloom without, leaving the door wide open.
Never to the last day of her life did she know what purpose guided her in that hour. She had no object, no aim. Only to fly away from a broken heart. Only to lie down on the earth and know no more, with all the heartache over. But she was drifting in her blind misery to that reservoir of life, London.
She hurried down the road, never once looking back. The leafless trees were surging in the night-wind; their gaunt branches were waving grimly over her head. The hedges took fantastic shapes before her, and beside her. Her limbs trembled and her teeth chattered, yet she hastened on. Her head ached. She felt suffocated. The world was so cruel to her. If only she could fly from it and forget—only forget!
The day was dawning; the deep blue of the sky to the left of her was streaked with thin bars. All before her was a blank void of dun gray. A veil of vapor beat against her cheeks. The wide marshy lands lay in mist around her. Not a sound but her own footstep on the road. Not a bird in the empty air, not a cloud in the blank sky. It was a dreary scene; neither day nor night.
And through this grim realm that is aloof from all that is human, one poor, broken-hearted girl hurried on, her little bundle in her hand, a shawl wrapped about her shoulders, her red, tearless eyes fixed in front of her.
Like the spirit of unrest, the wind moaned and soughed. Now and then a withered leaf of last year went by her with a light rustle and stealthy motion. Desolate as the heart within her was the waste ground.
Bit by bit the gray sky lightened; the east was fretted over with pink, and a freshness was breathed into the air. Then she began to run. Behind her were all her pretty dreams, and they were dead. Behind her was the love she had cherished, and that was dead, too. From a joyful vision she had awakened to find the idol cold at her breast.
Running hard along the gloomy road, under the empty sky, through the surging wind, the outcast girl cried in her tearless grief as a little child cries for the mother who is in her grave—never knowing its loss until it has grown tired, and weary, and sick, and the night is very near.
She came to a brick-kiln that stood back from the road. Its wreathing smoke coiled slowly upward in the smoke-like atmosphere. The red haze drew her to it, as it drew the shivering waifs of the air. Cold and tired, she crept up and stood some minutes in the glow; but a step fell on her ear from behind the kiln, and she stole away like a guilty thing.
Away, away, she knew not where. On, on, she knew not why.
The day had dawned now. In the brightness of morning her heart sunk lower. Draggled and soiled, her hair still damp with the dew, and the odor of night in her dress, she walked on in the golden radiance of the risen sun.
Oh, to bury herself forever, and yet not to die—no, no, not to die!
At a cross-road there was a finger-post, and it read, "To Kilburn." Beyond it there was a wood, and the sunlight played on the pine-trees and reddened the dead leaves that still clung to an oak. She was warm now, but, oh! so tired. Behind the ambush of a holly-bush, close to the road, Mercy crouched down on a drift of withered leaves at the foot of a stout beech. She dozed a little and started. All was quiet. Then weary nature conquered fear, and overcame sorrow, and she slept.
And sleep—that makes kings and queens of us all—gracious sleep, made a queen of the outcast girl, a queen of love; and she dreamed of her home among the mountains.
Mercy was still sleeping when a covered wagon, such as carriers use, came trundling along the road. The driver, a bright-eyed man, with the freshness of the fields in his face, sat on the front rail and whistled. His horse shied at something, and this made him get up. He was at that moment in front of the holly-bush, and he saw Mercy lying behind it.
Her face was worn and pale, her bonnet fallen back from her forehead, her head leaning against the trunk of the tree, one hand on her breast, the other straying aside on the drift of yellow leaves, where a little bundle covered by a red handkerchief had fallen from her graspless fingers, and the radiant morning sunlight over all.
The driver of the wagon jumped to the ground. At the same moment Mercy awoke with a frightened look. She rose to her feet, and would have hurried away.
"Young to be wagranting about, ain't ye, miss?" said the driver. His tone was kindlier than his words.
"Let me go, please," said Mercy, and she tried to pass.
"Coorse, coorse; if yer wants to."
Mercy thanked him, her eyes on the ground. She was already on the road.
"Being as you're going my way, I ain't objecting to giving you a lift."
"No, thank you. I have no—I've no money. I must run."
"You'll wait till I ax for it, won't ye, missy? Come, get up."
"And will you let me go down whenever I like?"
"Coorse I will; why not? Up with ye! There, easy, kneel on the shaft, that's the size of it. Now, go set yourself down on them sacks. Them's apples, them is. Right? Very well. We're off, then."
The wagon was about half full of sacks, and Mercy crept down in the furthest corner.
"I ain't in the apple line reg'lar. I'm a fern-gatherer, that's wot I am. On'y nature don't keep ferning all the year round, so I'se forced to go fruiting winter times—buying apples same as them from off'n the farmers down the country, and bringing 'em up to Covent Garden. That's where I'm going now, that is. And got to be there afore the sales starts."
Mercy listened, but said nothing.
"You know Covent Garden—not fur from Leicester Square and the Haymarket?"
Mercy shook her head.
"What! Never been there—and that near?"
Mercy shook her head again and dropped her eyes.
The driver twisted about to look at her. "Let a be, she's feeling it bad," he thought, and was silent for a moment. Then he twisted about for another look.
"I say, missy, got bad eyes?"
"They're sore, and a little dim," said Mercy.
"Blest if you don't look the spitting image of a friend of mine—'boutn the eyes, I mean—red and swelled up and such. It was Tom Crow, a partner of mine, in fact. Tom caught cold sleeping out one night as we was ferning down Roger Tichborne's estates—him as was the claimant for 'em, you know, on'y he didn't get 'em. The cold flew to Tom's eyes straight, and blest if he ain't gone blind as a mole."
Mercy's lips quivered. The driver stopped his chatter, conscious that he had gone too far, and then, with somewhat illogical perversity, he proceeded to express his vexation at himself by punishing his horse.
"Get along, you stupid old perwerse old knacker's crutch!"
The horse set off at a trot. They passed through a village, and Mercy read the name "Child's Hill" printed on the corner of a house.
"Is it London you are going to?" said Mercy, timidly; "Covent Garden—is that London?"
"Eh?" The driver opened his eyes very wide in a blank stare.
Mercy trembled and held down her head. They jogged on awhile in silence, and then the driver, who had cast furtive glances at the girl, drew rein, and said: "I'm wexed as I said Tom Crow was as blind as a mole. How-and-ever, a mole ain't blind, and it's on'y them coster chaps as think so, but I've caught a many of 'em out ferning. Besides, Tom was a-worrited with his missus, Tom was, and happen that was worse nor his cold.
("Git along, you old perwerse old file!)
"You see, Tom's missus cut away and left him. As young as you, and maybe as good to look at, but a bad 'un; and she broke Tom's heart, as the saying is. So Tom left the ferning. He hadn't no heart for it. Ferning's a thing as wants heart, it do. He started costering first, and now Tom's got a 'tater-ingine, on'y being as he's blind he has a boy to wheel it. And that woman, she done it all. 'Jim Groundsell,' he says to me—that's my name—'Jim,' he says, 'don't fix your heart on nothing,' he says, 'and keep to your sight and the ferning.'
("Well, you perwerse old crutch! Get along with you!)
"But I went and done it myself. And now my missus, she's a invalide, as they say, and she ain't out o' bed this twelvemonth come Christmas, and she gets lonesome lying all by herself, and frets a bit maybe, and—
("Git along, will you, you wexing old fence!")
There was a long silence this time. They were leaving the green fields behind them, and driving through longer streets than Mercy had ever seen before. Though the sun was shining feebly, the lamps on the pavement were still burning. They passed a church, and Mercy saw by the clock that it was hard on eight. They drove briskly through Camden Town into St. Giles's, and so on to Long Acre.
The streets were thronged by this time. Troops of people were passing to and fro. Cabs and omnibuses were rattling hither and thither. At every turn the crowd became denser and the noise louder. Mercy sat in her corner, bewildered. The strange city frightened her. For the time it drove away the memory of her sorrow.
When they reached Covent Garden, Jim, the driver, drew up with a jerk, and nodded to some of the drivers of similar wagons, and hailed others with a lusty shout. All was a babel to the girl's dazed sense: laughter, curses, yelling, whooping, quarreling.
Mercy's head ached. She got down, hardly knowing what to do next. Where was she to go? In that wilderness of London, more desolate than the trackless desert, what was she?
She stood a moment on the pavement, her little bundle in her hand, and all the bewildering scene went round and round. The tears rose to her eyes, and the glare and noise and the tumult were blotted out.
The next instant she felt herself being lifted back into the wagon, and then she remembered nothing more.
CHAPTER XII.
Two days later Hugh Ritson entered the convent church of St. Margaret. It was evening service, and the nave was thronged from chancel to porch. The aisles, which were bare of seats, were filled only half-way down, the rest of the pavement being empty save for a man here and there who leaned lightly against the great columns of the heavy colonnade.
The sermon had already begun. Hugh Ritson walked up the aisle noiselessly until he came close behind the throng of people standing together. Then he stood at the side of a column and looked around on those in the nave.
He was within range of the preacher's voice, but he hardly listened. His eyes traversed the church until at last they rested on one spot in the south transept, where a company of nuns sat with downcast eyes half closed. The face of one of them was hidden beneath her drooping coif; the rosary held to her breast was gripped with nervous fingers. Near at hand there was another face that riveted Hugh Ritson's gaze. It was the face of Greta, radiant in its own beauty, and tender with the devotional earnestness of parted lips and of lashes wet with the dew of a bruised spirit.
From these two his eyes never wandered for longer than a minute! Languidly he listened to the words that floated over the people, and held them mute. The preacher was a slight young man, emaciated, pale, with lustrous eyes, and a voice that had a thin, meek pipe. But the discourse was in a strain of feverish excitement, a spirit of hard intolerance, a tone of unrelenting judgment, that would have befitted the gigantic figure and thunderous accents of the monk Jerome.
"There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is death." This was the text, twenty times repeated. Men talked of the rights of conscience, as if conscience were God's law. They babbled of toleration, as if any heresy were to be endured, if only it were believed. Conscience! It was the slave of Circumstance. Toleration! It was the watchword at the gate of hell.
Hugh Ritson listened with a vague consciousness, his eyes fixed alternately on the nun with the drooping coif and on the fair, upturned face beside her. At last a word struck him, and made his whole soul to vibrate. Men, women, the great mute throng, pillars, arches, windows of figured saints, altar aflame with candles, the surpliced choir, and the pale, thin face with the burning eyes in the pulpit above—all vanished in an instant.
What was true, said the preacher, in the realm of thought, could not be false in the world of life. Men did evil deeds, and justified them to their own enslaved minds. No way so dark but it had appeared to be the path of light; none so far wrong but it had seemed to be right. Let man beware of the lie that he told to his own heart. The end thereof is death.
Staring from a bloodless face, Hugh Ritson reeled a step backward, and then clung with a trembling hand to the pillar against which he had leaned. The harsh scrape of his foot was heard over the hushed church, and here and there a neck was craned in his direction. His emotion was gone in an instant. A light curl of the hard lip told that the angel within him had once again been conquered.
The sermon ended with a rapturous declaration of the immutability of God's law, and the eternal destinies of man. The world was full of change, but man, who seemed to change most, changed least. The stars that hung above had seen the beginning and the end of ages. Before man was, they were. The old river that flowed past the old city that night had flowed there centuries ago, and generations of men had lived and died in joy and sorrow, and still the same waters washed the same shore. But the stars that measure time itself, and the sea that recorded it, would vanish away, and man should be when time would be no more. "They shall perish, but thou shalt endure. They shall wax old as doth a garment.... But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end."
The preacher finished, and the buzz and rustle of the people shifting in their seats told of the tension that had been broken. Faces that had been distorted with the tremors of fear, or contracted with the quiverings of remorse, or glorified with the lights of ecstasy, resumed their normal expression.
The vesper hymn was sung by the whole congregation, standing. It floated up to the blue roof, where the lights that burned low over the people's heads left in the gloom the texts written on the open timbers and the imaged Christ hung in the clerestory. There was one voice that did not sing the vesper hymn; and the close-locked lips of Hugh Ritson were but the symbol of the close-locked heart.
He was asking himself, was it true that when the fire of the stars should be burned to ashes, still man would endure? Pshaw! What was man? These throngs of men, whose great voice swelled like the sea, what were they? In this old church where they sung, other men had sung before them, and where were they now? Who should say they had not perished? Living, believing, dying, they were gone: gone with their sins and sorrows; gone with their virtues and rewards; gone from all sight and all memory; and no voice came from them, pealing out of the abyss of death to join this song of hope. Hope! It was a dream. A dream that great yearning crowds like these, filling churches and chapels, dreamed age after age. But it was a dream from which there would be no awakening to know that it was not true.
The priest and choir left the church. Then the congregation broke up and separated. Hugh Ritson stood awhile, still leaning against the column of the colonnade. The nuns in the south transept rose last, and went out by a little aperture opening from the south aisle. Hugh watched them pass at the distance of the width of the nave. Greta walked a few paces behind them. When the people had gone, and she rose from her seat, her eyes fell on Hugh. Then she dropped her head, and walked down the aisle with a hurried step. Hugh saw her out; the church was now empty, and the voluntary was done. He followed her through the door, and entered into the sacristy.
Before him was another door; it led into the convent. The last of the line of nuns was passing through it. Greta stood in the sacristy, faint, with a scared face, one hand at her breast, the other on the base of a crucifix that stood by the wall. When she saw that he had followed her, her first impulse was to shrink away; her second was to sink to her knees at his feet. She did neither. Conquering her faintness, but still quivering from head to foot, she turned upon him with a defiant look. "Why do you come here? I do not wish to speak with you. Let me pass," she said.
Hugh Ritson made no effort to detain her. He stood before her with downcast eyes, his infirm foot bent under him. "I come to bid you farewell," he said, calmly; "I come to say that we meet no more."
"Would that we had parted forever before we met the last time!" said Greta, fervently.
"Would that we had never met!" said Hugh, in a low voice.
"That was a lie with which you parted me from my husband," she said.
"It was—God forgive me."
"And you knew it was a lie?" said Greta.
"I knew it was a lie."
"Then where is your shame, that you can look me in the face? Have you no shame?" she said.
"Have you no pity?" said Hugh.
"What pity had you for me? Have you not done me wrong enough already?"
"God knows it is true. And He knows I am a miserable man. Have pity and forgive me, and say farewell!"
Something of contrition in the tone touched her. She was silent.
"The preacher was wrong," he said. "There is no spirit of evil. We are betrayed by our own passions, and the chief of those passions is love. It is the Nemesis that stalks through the world, haunting all men, and goading some to great wrong."
"It was of your doing that I came here," said Greta.
"Would to God it may be of my doing that you remain here," said Hugh.
"That is a prayer He will not hear. I am leaving this house to-night. There is some one coming who can unmask your wicked falsehood."
"Parson Christian?" said Hugh.
Greta made no answer, and Hugh continued, "His journey is needless. A word from my mother would have done all. She is in this house."
"Yes, Heaven forgive you, she is here!" said Greta.
"You are wrong; you do not know all. Where is your husband?"
Greta shook her head. "I have neither seen him nor heard from him since we parted at these doors," she said.
"And when you leave them to-night, do you leave him behind you?" said Hugh.
"Heaven forbid!" said Greta, passionately.
Hugh Ritson's bloodless face was awful to look upon. "Greta," he said, in a tone of anguish, "give up the thought. Look on that false union as broken forever, and all this misery will end. It was I and you—you and I. But that is over now. I do not come between you. It is useless to think of that. I do not offer you my love; you refused it long ago. But I can not see you my brother's wife. That would be too much for me to endure. I will not endure it. Have pity upon me. If I have no claim to your love, have I no right to your pity? What have I suffered for your love? A life's misery. What have I sacrificed to it? My name—my place—my inheritance."
Greta lifted her eyes with a look of inquiry.
"What? Has he not even yet told you all?" said Hugh. "No matter. What has he done to earn your love that I have not done? What has he suffered? What has he sacrificed?"
"If this is love, it is selfish love," said Greta, in a broken voice.
"Selfish?—be it so. All love is selfish."
"Leave me—leave me!"
Hugh Ritson paused; the warmth of his manner increased. "I will leave you," he said, "and never seek you again; I will go from you forever, and crush down the sorrow that must be with me to the end, if you will promise me one thing."
"What is it?" said Greta, her eyes on the ground.
"It is much," said Hugh, "but it is not all. If the price is great, think of the misery that it buys—and buries. You would sacrifice something for me, would you not?"
His voice swelled as he spoke, and his pale face softened, and the light of hopeless love was in his great eyes.
"Say that you would—for me—me!" He held out his arms toward her as if soul and body together yearned for one word, one look of love.
Greta stood there, silent and immovable. "What is it?" she repeated.
"Let me think that you would do something for my sake—mine," he pleaded. "Let me carry away that solace. Think what I have suffered for you, and all in vain. Think that perhaps it was no fault of mine that you could not love me; that another woman might have found me worthy to be loved who had not been unworthy of love from me."
"What is it?" repeated Greta, coldly, but her drooping lashes were wet with tears.
"Think that I am of a vain, proud, stubborn spirit; that in all this world there is neither man nor woman, friend nor enemy, to whom I have sued for grace or favor; that since I was a child I have never even knelt in prayer in God's house that man might see or God might hear. Then think that I am at your feet, a miserable man."
"What is it?" said Greta, again.
Hugh Ritson paused, and then added, more calmly: "That you should take the vows and the veil, and stay here until death."
Greta lifted her eyes. Hugh's eyes were bent upon her.
"No, I can not. I should be false to my marriage vows," she said, quietly.
"To be true to them is to be false to yourself, to your husband, and to me," said Hugh.
"I love my husband," said Greta, with an eloquent glance. "To be true to them is to be true to him."
There was a pause. Hugh Ritson's manner underwent a change. It was the white heat of high passion that broke the silence when he spoke again.
"Greta," he said, and his deep voice had a strong tremor, "if there is any truth in what that priest told us to-night—if it is not a dream and a solemn mockery made to enchant or appal the simple—if there is a God and judgment—my soul is already too heavily burdened with sins against you and yours. I would have eased it of one other sin more black than these; but it was not to be."
"What do you mean?" said Greta. Her face was panic-stricken.
Hugh Ritson came a step nearer.
"That your husband is in my hands—that one word from me would commit him to a doom more dreadful than death—that if he is to be saved as a free man, alive, you must renounce him forever."
"Speak plain. What do you mean?" said Greta.
"Choose—quick! Which shall it be? You for this convent, or your husband for lifelong imprisonment?"
Greta's mind was in a whirl. She was making for the door in front of them. He stepped before her.
"I parted you with a lie," he said, "but to me it was not always a lie. I believed it once. Do you think I should have denied my self my inheritance, and let a bastard stand in my place, if I had not believed it?"
"What further lie is this?" said Greta.
"No matter. Heaven knows. And all I did was for love of you. Is it so guilty a thing that I have loved you—to all lengths and ends of love? I meant to put a hemisphere between you—to send him to Australia, and you back home to Cumberland. What if the lie had then been outfaced? I should have parted you, and that would have been enough."
"And now, when your revenge falls idle at your feet, you come to me on your knees," said Greta.
"Revenge? That was but a feeble revenge," said Hugh. "He would have learned the truth and come back to claim you. There would have been no peace for me while he was alive and free. Do I come to you on my knees? Yes; but it is to pray of you to save your husband. Is it so much that I ask of you? Think what is earned by it. If you have no pity for me, have you none for him?"
She was struggling to pass him.
"Greta," he said, "choose, and at once. It is now or never. To-night—to-morrow will be too late. You for a holy life of self-renouncement, or your husband to drag out his miserable days in penal servitude."
"This is only another lie. Let me pass," she said.
"It is the truth, as sure as God hears us," said Hugh.
"I shall never believe it."
"I will swear it." He laid a strong hand on her wrist. "I will swear it at the very foot of God's altar."
He tried to draw her back into the church. She resisted.
"Let me go; I will cry for help."
He dropped her wrist, and fell back from her. She drew herself up in silence, and walked slowly away.
He stood a moment alone in the sacristy. Then he went out through the church. It was empty and all but dark. The sacristan, with a long rod, was putting out the lights one by one. He turned, with arm uplifted, to look after the halting figure that passed down the aisle and out at the west porch.
CHAPTER XIII.
Abbey Gardens, the street in front, was dark and all but deserted. Only a drunken woman went reeling along. But the dull buzz in the distance, and the white sheet in the sky, told that, somewhere near, the wild heart of the night beat high.
Hugh Ritson looked up at the heavy mass of the convent building as he crossed the street. The lights were already out, and all was dark within. He went on, but presently stopped by a sudden impulse, and looked again.
It was then he was aware that something moved in the deep portico. The lamp on the pavement sent a shaft of light on to the door, and there, under the gas-light, with the face turned from him, was the figure of a woman. She seemed to cast cautious and stealthy glances around, and to lift a trembling hand to the bell that hung above her. The hand fell to her side, but no ring followed. Once again the hand was lifted, and once again it fell back. Then the woman crept totteringly down the steps and turned to go.
Hugh Ritson recrossed the street. Amid all the turmoil of his soul, the incident had arrested him.
The woman was coming toward him. He put himself in her path. The light fell full upon her, and he saw her face.
It was Mercy Fisher.
With a low cry, the girl sunk back against the railings of the convent, and covered her face with her hands.
"Is it you, Mercy?" said Hugh.
She made no answer. Then she tried to steal away, but he held her with gentle force.
"Why did you leave Hendon?" he asked.
"You did not want me," said the girl, in a tone of unutterable pain. And still her face was buried in her hands.
He did not reply. He let her grief spend itself.
Just then a drunken woman reeled back along the pavement and passed them close, peering into their midst, and going by with a jarring laugh.
"What's he a-doing to ye, my dear, eh?" she said, jeeringly. "Sarve ye right!" she added, and laughed again. She was a draggled, battered outcast—a human ruin, such as night, the pander, flings away.
Mercy lifted her head. A dull, weary look was in her eyes.
"You know how I waited and waited," she said, "and you were so long in coming, so very long." She turned her eyes aside. "You did not want me; in your heart you did not want me," she said.
The wave of bitter memory drowned her voice. Not unmoved, he stood and looked at her, and saw the child-face wet with tears, and the night breeze of the city drift in her yellow hair.
"Where have you been since?" he said.
"A man going to market brought me up in his wagon. I fainted, and then he took me to his home. He lives close by, in the Horse and Groom Yard. His wife is bedridden, and such a good creature, and so kind to me. But they are poor, and I had no money, and I was afraid to be a burden to them; and besides—besides—"
"Well?"
"She saw that I was—she saw what was going to—being a woman, she knew I was soon—"
"Yes, yes," said Hugh, stopping another flood of tears with a light touch of the hand. "How red your eyes look. Are they worse?"
"The man was very good; he took me to the doctors at a hospital, and they said—oh, they said I might lose my sight!"
"Poor little Mercy!" said Hugh.
He was now ashamed of his own sufferings. How loud they had clamored awhile ago; yet, what were they side by side with this poor girl's tangible sorrows! Mere things of the air, with no reality.
"But no matter!" she burst out. "That's no matter."
"You must keep up heart, Mercy. I spoke angrily to you the other night, but it's over now, is it not?"
"Oh, why didn't you leave me alone?" said the girl.
"Hush, Mercy; it will be well with you yet." His own eyes were growing dim, but even then his heart was bitter. Had he not said in his wrath that passion was the demon of the world? He might say it in his sorrow, too. The simple heart of this girl loved him, even as his own lustier soul loved Greta. He had wronged her. But that was only a tithe of the trouble. If she could but return him hate for wrong, how soon everything would be right with her! "What brought you here, Mercy?"
"One of the sisters—they visit the sick—one of them visited the house where they gave me lodgings, and I heard that they sometimes took homeless girls into the convent. And I thought I was homeless, now, and—and—"
"Poor little woman!"
"I came the night before last, but saw your brother Paul walking here in front. So I went away."
"Paul?"
"Then I came last night, and he was here again. So I went away once more, and to-night I came earlier, and he wasn't here, but just as I was going to ring the bell, and say that I had no home, and that my eyes were growing worse, something seemed to say they would ask if I had a father, and why I had left him; and then I couldn't ring—and then I thought if only I could die—yes, if only I could die and forget, and never wake up again in the morning—"
"Hush, Mercy. You shall go back home to your father."
"No, no, no!"
"Yes; and I shall go with you."
There was silence. The bleared eyes looked stealthily up into his face. A light smile played there.
"Ah!"
A bright vision came to her of a fair day when, hand in hand with him she loved, she should return to her forsaken home in the mountains, and hold up her head, and wipe away her father's tears. She was in the dark street of the city, then; she and her home were very far apart.
He laughed inwardly at a different vision. In a grim spirit of humor he saw all his unquenchable passion conquered, and he saw himself the plain, homely, respectable husband of this simple wife.
"Was Paul alone when you saw him?" said Hugh.
"Yes. And would you tell them all?"
The girl's sidelong glance was far away.
"Mercy, I want you to do something for me."
"Yes, yes."
Again the sidelong glance.
Hugh lifted the girl's head with his hand to recall her wandering thoughts.
"Paul will come again to-night. I want you to wait for him and speak to him."
"Yes, yes; but won't he ask me questions?"
"What if he does? Answer them all. Only don't say that I have told you to speak to him. Tell him—will you remember it?—are you listening?—look me in the face, little woman."
"Yes, yes."
"Tell him that Mr. Christian—Parson Christian, you know—has come to London and wishes to see him at once. Say he has looked for him at the hotel in Regent Street and not found him there, and is now at the inn in Hendon. Will you remember?"
"Yes."
"Where were you going, Mercy—back to your poor friends?"
"No. But will he be sure to come to-night?"
"No doubt. At what time was he here last night?"
"Ten o'clock."
"It is now hard on nine. Tell him to go to Hendon at once, and when he goes, you go with him. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Don't forget—to-night; to-morrow night will not do. If he does not come, you must follow me to Hendon and tell me so. I shall be there. Don't tell him that—do you hear?"
The girl gave a meek assent.
"And now good-bye for an hour or two, little one."
He turned away, and she was left alone before the dark convent. But, she was not all alone. A new-born dream was with her, and her soul was radiant with light.
CHAPTER XIV.
Hugh Ritson walked rapidly through Dean's Yard in the direction of the sanctuary. As he turned into Parliament Street the half moon rose above the roof of Westminster Hall. But the night was still dark.
He passed through Trafalgar Square and into the Haymarket. The streets were thronged. Crowds on crowds went languidly by. Dim ghosts of men and women, most of them, who loitered at this hour in these streets. Old men, with the souls long years dead within them, and the corruption reeking up with every breath to poison every word, or lurking like charnel lights in the eyes to blink contagion in every glance. Young girls hopping like birds beside them, the spectres of roses in their cheeks, but the real thorns at their hearts. There had been no way for them but this—this and one other way: either to drift into the Thames and be swallowed up in the waters of death, or to be carried along for a brief minute on the froth of the waves of life.
Laughing because they might not weep; laughing because their souls were dead; laughing in their conscious travesty of the tragedy of pleasure—they tripped and lounged and sauntered along. And the lamps shone round them, and above them was the glimmering moon.
As Hugh Ritson went up the steep Haymarket, his infirmity became more marked, and he walked with a sliding gait. Seeing this, a woman who stood there halted and limped a few paces by his side, and pretending not to see him, shouted with a mocking laugh, "What is it—a man or a bat?"
How the wild, mad heart of the night leaped up!
A man passed through the throng with eyes that seemed to see nothing of its frantic frenzy and joyless joy—a stalwart man, who strode along like a giant among midgets, his vacant eyes fixed before him, his strong white face expressionless. Hugh Ritson saw him. They passed within two paces, but without recognition. The one was wandering aimlessly in his blind misery toward the Convent of St. Margaret, the other was making for the old inn at Hendon.
An hour later Hugh Ritson was standing in the bar of the Hawk and Heron. His mind was made up; his resolve was fixed; his plan was complete.
"Anybody with him?" he said to the landlady, motioning toward the stairs.
"Not as I knows on, sir, but he do seem that restless and off his wittals, and I don't know as I quite understands why—"
Hugh Ritson stopped her garrulous tongue. "I have found the girl. She will come back to you to-night, Mrs. Drayton. If she brings with her the gentleman who left these boxes in your care, take him to your son's bedroom and tell him the person he wishes to see has arrived, and will be with him directly."
With this he went up the stairs. Then, calling down, he added: "The moment he is in the room come up and tell me."
A minute later he called again: "Where's the key to this door? Let me have it."
The landlady hobbled up with the key to Drayton's bedroom; the room was empty and the door stood open. Hugh Ritson tried the key in the lock and saw that the wards moved freely. "That will do," he said, in a satisfied tone.
The old woman was hobbling back. Hugh was standing in thought, with head bent, and the nail of his forefinger on his cheek.
"By the way, Mrs. Drayton," he said, "you should get the girl to help you a little sometimes."
"Lor's, sir, I never troubles her, being as she's like a visitor."
"Nonsense, Mrs. Drayton. She's young and hearty, and your own years are just a little past their best, you know. How's your breathing to-day—any easier?"
"Well, I can't say as it's a mort better, neither, thanking you the same, sir," and a protracted fit of coughing bore timely witness to the landlady's words.
"Ah! that's' a bad bout, my good woman."
"Well, it is, sir; and I get no sympathy, neither—leastways not from him as a mother might look to—in a manner of speaking."
"Bethink you. Is there nothing the girl can do for you when she comes? Nothing wanted? No errand?"
"Well, sir, taking it kindly, sir, there's them finings in the cellar a-wants doing bad, and the boy as ought to do 'em, he's that grumpysome, as I declare—"
"Quite right, Mrs. Drayton. Send the girl down to them the moment she comes in, and keep her down until bed-time."
"Thank you, sir! I'm sure I takes it very kind and thoughtful of a gentleman to say as much, and no call, neither."
The landlady shuffled down-stairs, wagging gratefully her dense old noddle; the thoughtful gentleman left the key of Drayton's room in the lock on the outside of the door, and ascended a ladder that went up from the end of the passage. He knocked at a door at the top. At first there was no answer. A dull shuffling of feet could be heard from within. "Come, open the door," said Hugh, impatiently.
The door was opened cautiously. Drayton stood behind it. Hugh Ritson entered. There was no light in the room; the red, smoking wick of a tallow candle, newly extinguished, was filling the air with its stench.
"You take care of yourself," said Hugh. "Let us have a light."
Drayton went down on his knees in the dark, fumbled on the floor for a box of lucifers, and relighted the candle. He was in his shirt-sleeves.
"Cold without your coat, eh?" said Hugh. A sneer played about his lips.
Without answering, Drayton turned to a mattress that lay in the gloom of one corner, lifted it, took up a coat that lay under it, and put it on. It was the ulster with the torn lapel.
Hugh Ritson followed Drayton's movements, and laughed slightly. "Men like you are always cautious in the wrong place," he said. "Let them lay hands on you, and they won't be long finding your—coat." The last word had a contemptuous dig of emphasis.
"Damme if I won't burn it, for good and all," muttered Drayton. His manner was dogged and subdued.
"No, you won't do that," said Hugh, and he eyed him largely. The garret was empty save for the mattress and the blanket that lay on it, and two or three plates, with the refuse of food, on the floor. It was a low room, with a skylight in the rake of the roof, which sloped down to a sharp angle. There was no window. The walls were half timbered, and had once been plastered, but the laths were now bare in many places.
"Heard anything?" said Drayton, doggedly.
"Yes; I called and told the police sergeant that I thought I was on the scent."
"What? No!"
The two men looked at each other—Drayton suspicious, Hugh Ritson with amused contempt.
"Tell you what, you don't catch me hobnobbing with them gentry," said Drayton, recovering his composure.
Hugh Ritson made no other answer than a faint smile. As he looked into the face of Drayton, he was telling himself that no man had ever before been at the top of such a situation as that of which he himself was then the master. Here was a man who was the half-brother of Greta, and the living image of her husband. Here was a man who, despite vague suspicions, did not know his own identity. Here was a man over whom hung an inevitable punishment. Hugh Ritson smiled at the daring idea he had conceived of making this man personate himself.
"Drayton," he said, "I mean to stand your friend in this trouble."
"Tell you again, the best friend to me is the man as helps me to make my lucky."
"You shall do it, Drayton, this very night. Listen to me. That man, my brother, as they call him—Paul Ritson, as his name goes—is not my father's son. He is the son of my mother by another man, and his true name is Paul Lowther."
"I don't care what his true name is, nor his untrue, neither. It ain't nothing to me, say I, and no more is it."
"Would it be anything to you to inherit five thousand pounds?"
"What?"
"Paul Lowther is the heir to as much. What would you say if I could put you in Paul Lowther's place, and get you Paul Lowther's inheritance?"
"Eh? A fortune out of hand—how?"
"The way I described before."
There was a slight scraping sound, such as a rat might have made in burrowing behind the partition.
"What's that?" said Drayton, his face whitening, and his watchful eyes glancing toward the door. "A key in the lock?" he whispered.
"Tut! isn't your own key on the inside?" said Hugh Ritson.
Drayton hung his head in shame at his idle fears.
"I know—I haven't forgot," he muttered, covering his discomfiture.
"It's a pity to stay here and be taken, when you might as easily be safe," said Hugh.
"So it is," Drayton mumbled.
"And go through penal servitude for life, when another man might do it for you," added Hugh, with a ghostly smile.
"I ain't axing you to say it over. What's that?" Drayton cowered down. The bankrupt garret had dropped a cake of its rotten plaster. Hugh Ritson moved not a muscle; only the sidelong glance told of his contempt for the hulking creature's cowardice.
"The lawyer who has charge of this legacy is my friend and comrade," he said, after a moment's silence. "We should have no difficulty in that quarter. My mother is—Well, she's gone. There would be no one left to question you. If you were only half shrewd the path would be clear."
"What about her?"
"Greta? She would be your wife."
"My wife?"
"In name. You would go back, as I told you, and say: 'I, whom you have known as Paul Ritson, am really Paul Lowther, and therefore the half-brother of the woman with whom I went through the ceremony of marriage. This fact I learned immediately on reaching London. I bring the lady back as I found her, and shall ask that the marriage—which is no marriage—be annulled. I deliver up to the rightful heir, Hugh Ritson, the estates of Allan Ritson, and make claim to the legacy left me by my father, Robert Lowther.' This is what you have to say and do, and every one will praise you for an honest and upright man."
"Very conscientious, no doubt; but what about him?"
"He will then be Paul Drayton, and a felon."
Drayton chuckled. "And what about her?"
"If he is in safe keeping, she will count for nothing."
"So I'm to be Paul Lowther."
"You are to pretend to be Paul Lowther."
"I told you afore, as it won't go into my nob, and no more it will," said Drayton, scratching his head.
"You shall have time to learn your lesson; you shall have it pat," said Hugh Ritson. "Meantime—"
At that instant Drayton's eyes were riveted on the skylight with an affrighted stare.
"Look yonder!" he whispered.
"What?"
"The face on the roof!"
Hugh Ritson plucked up the candle and thrust it over his head and against the glass. "What face?" he said, contemptuously.
Again Drayton's head fell in shame at his abject fear.
There was a shuffling footstep on the ladder outside. Drayton held his head aside, and listened. "The old woman," he mumbled. "What now? Supper, I suppose."