It was Thursday when they were condemned, and the sentence was to be carried into effect on the Thursday following. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday passed by without any event of consequence. On Tuesday the under gaoler opened the door of their prison, and the sheriff entered. Ralph stepped out face to face with him. Sim crept closer into the shadow.
“The King's warrant has arrived,” he said abruptly.
“And is this all you come to tell us?” said Ralph, no less curtly.
“Ray, there is no love between you and me, and we need dissemble none.”
“And no hate—at least on my part,” Ralph added.
“I had good earnest of your affections,” answered the sheriff with a sneer; “five years' imprisonment.” Then waving his hand with a gesture indicative of impatience, he continued, “Let that be as it may. I come to talk of other matters.”
Resting on a bench, he added,—
“When the trial closed on Thursday, Justice Hide, who showed you more favor than seemed to some persons of credit to be meet and seemly, beckoned me to the antechamber. There he explained that the evidence against you being mainly circumstantial, the sentence might perchance, by the leniency of the King, be commuted to one of imprisonment for life.”
A cold smile passed over Ralph's face.
“But this great mercy—whereof I would counsel you to cherish no certain hope—would depend upon your being able and willing to render an account of how you came by the document—the warrant for your own arrest—which was found upon your person. Furnish a credible story of how you came to be possessed, of that instrument, and it may occur—I say it may occur—that by our Sovereign's grace and favor this sentence of death can yet be put aside.”
Sim had risen to his feet in obvious excitement.
Ralph calmly shook his head.
“I neither will nor can,” he said emphatically.
Sim sank back into his seat.
A look of surprise in the sheriff's face quickly gave way to a look of content and satisfaction.
“We know each other of old, and I say there is no love between us,” he observed, “but it is by no doing of mine that you are here. Nevertheless, your response to this merciful tender shows but too plainly how well you merit your position.”
“It took you five days to bring it—this merciful tender, as you term it,” said Ralph.
“The King is now at Newcastle, and there at this moment is also Justice Hide, in whom, had you been an innocent man, you must have found an earnest sponsor. I bid you good day.”
The sheriff rose, and, bowing to the prisoner with a ridiculous affectation of mingled deference and superiority, he stepped to the door.
“Stop,” said Ralph: “you say we know each other of old. That is false! To this hour you have never known, nor do you know now, why I stand here condemned to die, and doomed by a harder fate to take the life of this innocent old man. You have never known me: no, nor yourself neither—never! But you shall know both before you leave this room. Sit down.”
“I have no time to waste in idle disputation,” said the sheriff testily; but he sat down, nevertheless, at his prisoner's bidding, as meekly as if the positions had been reversed.
“That scar across your brow.” said Ralph, “you have carried since the day I have now to speak of.”
“You know it well,” said the sheriff bitterly. “You have cause to know it.”
“I have,” Ralph answered.
After a pause, in which he was catching the thread of a story half forgotten, he continued: “You said I supplanted you in your captaincy. Pehaps so; perhaps not. God will judge between us. You went over to the Royalist camp, and you were among the garrison that had reduced this very castle. The troops of the Parliament came up one day and summoned you to surrender. The only answer your general gave us was to order the tunnel guns to fire on the white flag. It went down. We lay entrenched about you for six days. Then you sent out a dispatch assuring us that your garrison was well prepared for a siege, and that nothing would prevail with you to open your gates. That was a lie!”
“Well?”
“Your general lied; the man who carried your general's dispatch was a liar too, but he told the truth for a bribe.”
“Ah! then the saints were not above warming the palm?”
“He assured our commander we might expect a mutiny in your city if we continued before it one day longer; that your castle was garrisoned only by a handful of horse, and two raw, undisciplined regiments of militia; that even from these desertions occurred hourly, and that some of your companies were left with only a score of men. This was at night, and we were under an order to break up next morning. That order was countermanded. Your messenger was sent back the richer by twenty pounds.”
“How does this concern me?” asked the sheriff.
“You shall hear. I had been on the outposts that night, and, returning to the camp, I surprised two men robbing, beating, and, as I thought, murdering a third. One of the vagabonds escaped undetected, but with a blow from the butt of my musket which he will carry to his grave. The other I thrashed on the spot. He was the bailiff Scroope, whom you put up to witness against me. Their victim was the messenger from the castle, and he was James Wilson, otherwise Wilson Garth. You know this? No? Then listen. Rumor of his treachery, and of the price he had been paid for it, had already been bruited abroad, and the two scoundrels had gone out to waylay and rob him. He was lamed in the struggle and faint from loss of blood. I took him back and bound up his wound. He limped to the end of his life.”
“Still I fail to see how this touches myself,” interrupted the sheriff.
“Really? I shall show you. Next morning, under cover of a thick fog, we besieged the city. We got beneath your guns and against your gates before we were seen. Then a company of horse came out to us. You were there. You remember it? Yes? At one moment we came within four yards. I saw you struck down and reel out of the saddle. 'This man,' I thought, 'believes in his heart that I did him a grievous wrong. I shall now do him a signal service, though he never hear of it until the Judgment Day.' I dismounted, lifted you up, bound a kerchief about your head, and was about to replace you on your horse. At that instant a musket-shot struck the poor beast, and it fell dead. At the same instant one of our own men fell, and his riderless horse was prancing away. I caught it, threw you on to its back, turned his head towards the castle, and drove it hard among your troops. Do you know what happened next?”
“Happened next—” repeated the sheriff mechanically, with astonishment written on every feature of his face.
“No, you were insensible,” continued Ralph. “At that luckless moment the drum beat to arms in a regiment of foot behind us. The horse knew the call and answered it. Wheeling about, it carried you into the heart of our own camp. There you were known, tried as a deserter, and imprisoned. Perhaps it was natural that you should set down your ill fortune to me.”
The sheriff's eyes were riveted on Ralph's face, and for a time he seemed incapable of speech.
“Is this truth?” he asked at length.
“God's truth,” Ralph answered.
“The kerchief—what color was it?”
“Yellow.”
“Any name or mark on it? I have it to this day.”
“None—wait; there was a rose pricked out in worsted on one corner.”
The sheriff got up, with lips compressed and wide eyes. He made for the door, and pulled at it with wasted violence. It was opened from the other side by the under gaoler, and the sheriff rushed out.
Without turning to the right or left, he went direct to the common gaol. There, in the cell which Ralph had occupied between the first trial and the second one, Mark Garth, the perjurer, lay imprisoned.
“You hell-hound,” cried the sheriff, grasping him by the hair and dragging him into the middle of the floor. “I have found out your devilish treachery,” he said, speaking between gusts of breath. “Did you not tell me that it was Ray who struck me this blow—this” (beating with his palm the scar on his brow)? “It was a lie—a damned lie!”
“It was,” said the man, glaring back, with eyes afire with fury.
“And did you not say it was Ray who carried me into their camp—an insensible prisoner?”
“That was a lie also,” the man gasped, never struggling to release himself from the grip that held him on the floor.
“And did you not set me on to compass the death of this man, but for whom I should now myself be dead?”
“You speak with marvellous accuracy, Master Lawson,” returned the perjurer.
The sheriff looked down at him for a moment, and then flung him away.
“Man, man! do you know what you have done?” he cried in an altered tone. “You have charged my soul with your loathsome crime.”
The perjurer curled his lip.
“It was I who gave you that blow,” he said, with a cruel smile, pointing with his thin finger at the sheriff's forehead. It was false.
“You devil!” cried the sheriff, “and you have killed the man who saved your brother's life, and consorted with one of two who would have been his murderers.”
“I was myself the second,” said the man, with fiendish calmness. It was the truth. “I carry the proof of it here,” he added, touching a place at the back of his head where the hair, being shorn away, disclosed a deep mark.
The sheriff staggered back with frenzied eyes and dilated nostrils. His breast heaved; he seemed unable to catch his breath.
The man looked at him with a mocking smile struggling over clinched teeth. As if a reptile had crossed his path, Wilfrey Lawson turned about and passed out without another word.
He returned to the castle and ascended the Donjon tower.
“Tell me how you became possessed of the warrant,” he said. “Tell me, I beg of you, for my soul's sake as well as for your life's sake.”
Ralph shook his head.
“It is not even yet too late. I shall take horse instantly for Newcastle.”
Sim had crept up, and, standing behind Ralph, was plucking at his jerkin.
Ralph turned about and looked wistfully into the old man's face. For an instant his purpose wavered.
“For the love of God,” cried the sheriff, “for your own life's sake, for this poor man's sake, by all that is near and dear to both, I charge you, if you are an innocent man, give me the means to prove you such.”
But again Ralph shook his head.
“Then you are resolved to die?”
“Yes! But for my old friend here—save him if you will and can.”
“You will give me no word as to the warrant?”
“None.”
“Then all is over.”
But going at once to the stables in the courtyard, he called to a stableman,—
“Saddle a horse and bring it round to my quarters in half an hour.”
In less time than that Wilfrey Lawson was riding hard towards Newcastle.
Next morning after Rotha's struggle with Mrs. Garth at the bridge, the rumor passed through Wythburn that the plague was in the district. Since the advent of the new preachers the people had seen the dreaded scourge dangling from the sleeve of every stranger who came from the fearsome world without. They had watched for the fatal symptoms: they had waited for them: they had invited them. Every breeze seemed to be freighted with the plague wind; every harmless ailment seemed to be the epidemic itself.
Not faith in the will of God, not belief in destiny, not fortitude or fatalism, not unselfishness or devil-may-care indifference, had saved the people from the haunting dread of being mown down by the unseen and insidious foe.
And now in very truth the plague seemed to have reached their doors. It was at the cottage by the smithy. Rumor said that Mrs. Garth had brought it with her from Carlisle, but it was her son who was stricken down.
The blacksmith had returned home soon after Rotha had left him. His mother was there, and she talked to him of what she had heard of the plague. This was in order to divert his attention from the subject that she knew to be uppermost in his thoughts—the trial, and what had come of it. She succeeded but too well.
Garth listened in silence, and then slunk off doggedly to the smithy.
“I'm scarce well enough for work to-day,” he said, coming back in half an hour.
His mother drew the settle to the fire, and fixed the cushions that he might lie and rest.
But no rest was to be his. He went back to the anvil and worked till the perspiration dripped from his forehead. Then he returned to the house.
“My mouth is parched to-day, somehow,” he said; “did you say a parched mouth was a sign?”
“Shaf, lad! thou'rt hot wi' thy wark.”
Garth went back once more to the smithy, and, writhing under the torture of suspense, he worked until the very clothes he wore were moist to the surface. Then he went into the house again.
“How my brain throbs!” he said; “surely you said the throbbing brain was a sign, mother; and my brain does throb.”
“Tut, tut! it's nobbut some maggot thou's gitten intil it.”
“My pulse, too, it gallops, mother. You said the galloping pulse was a sign. Don't say you did not. I'm sure of it, I'm sure of it; and my pulse gallops. I could bear the parched mouth and the throbbing brain if this pulse did not run so fast.”
“Get away wi' thee, thou dummel-heed. What fagot has got hold on thy fancy now?”
There was only the swollen gland wanted to make the dread symptoms complete.
Garth went back to the anvil once more. His eyes rolled in his head. They grew as red as the iron that he was welding. He swore at the boy who helped him, and struck him fiercely. He shouted frantically, and flung away the hammer at every third blow. The boy slunk off, and went home affrighted. At a sudden impulse, Garth tore away the shirt from his breast, and thrust his left hand beneath his right arm. With that the suspense was ended. A mood of the deepest sadness and dejection supervened. Shuddering in every limb beneath all his perspiration, the blacksmith returned for the last time to the house.
“I wouldn't mind the parched mouth and the throbbing brain; no, nor the galloping pulse, mother; but oh, mother, mother, the gland, it's swelled; ey, ey, it's swelled. I'm doomed, I'm doomed. No use saying no. I'm a dead man, that's the truth, that's the truth, mother.”
And then the disease, whether plague or other fever, passed its fiery hand over the throbbing brain of the blacksmith, and he was put to bed raving.
Little Betsy, like the boy in the smithy, stole away to her own home with ghastly stories of the blacksmith's illness and delirium.
At first the neighbors came to inquire, prompted partly by curiosity, but mainly by fear. Mrs. Garth shut the door, and refused to open it to any comers.
To enforce seclusion was not long a necessity. Desertion was soon the portion of the Garths, mother and son. More swift than a bad name passed the terrible conviction among the people at Wythburn that at last, at long last, the plague, the plague itself, was in their midst.
The smithy cottage stood by the bridge, and to reach the market town by the road it was necessary to pass it within five yards. Pitiful, indeed, were the artifices to escape contagion resorted to by some who professed the largest faith in the will of God. They condemned themselves to imprisonment within their own houses, or abandoned their visits to Gaskarth, or made a circuit of a mile across the breast of a hill, in order to avoid coming within range of the proscribed dwelling.
After three days of rumor and surmise, there was not a soul in the district would go within fifty yards of the house that was believed to hold the pestilence. No doctor approached it, for none had been summoned. The people who brought provisions left them in the road outside, and hailed the inmates. Mrs. Garth sat alone with her stricken son, and if there had been eyes to see her there in her solitude and desolation, perhaps the woman who seemed hard as flint to the world was softening in her sorrow. When the delirium passed away, and Garth lay conscious, but still feverish, his mother was bewailing their desertion.
“None come nigh to us, Joey, none come nigh. That's what the worth of neighbors is, my lad. They'd leave us to die, both on us; they'd leave us alone to die, and none wad come nigh.”
“Alone, mother! Did you say alone?” asked Garth.
“We're not alone, mother. Some one has come nigh to us.”
Mrs. Garth looked up amazed, and half turned in her seat to glance watchfully around.
“Mother,” said Garth, “did you ever pray?”
“Hod thy tongue, lad, hod thy tongue,” said Mrs. Garth, with a whimper.
“Did you ever pray, mother?” repeated Garth, his red eyes aflame, and his voice cracking in his throat. “Whisht, Joey, whisht!”
“Mother, we've not lived over well, you and I; but maybe God would forgive us, after all.”
“Hod thy tongue, my lad; do, now, do.”
Mrs. Garth fumbled with the bedclothes, and tucked them about the sufferer.
Her son turned his face full upon hers, and their eyes met.
“Dunnet look at me like that,” she said, trying to escape his gaze. “What's comin' ower thee, my lad, that thou looks so, and talks so?”
“What's coming over me, mother? Shall I tell thee? It's Death that's coming over me; that's what it is, mother—Death!”
“Dunnet say that, Joey.”
The old woman threw her apron over her head and sobbed.
Garth looked at her, with never a tear in his wide eyes.
“Mother,” said the poor fellow again in his weak, cracked voice,—“mother, did you ever pray?”
Mrs. Garth uncovered her head. Her furrowed face was wet. She rocked herself and moaned.
“Ey, lad, I mind that I did when I was a wee bit of a girl. I had rosy cheeks then, and my own auld mother wad kiss me then. Ey, it's true. We went to church on a Sunday mornin' and all the bells ringin'. Ey, I mind that, but it's a wa', wa' off, my lad, it's a wa', wa' off.”
The day was gaunt and dreary. Toward nightfall the wind arose, and sometimes its dismal wail seemed to run around the house. The river, too, now swollen and turbulent, that flowed beneath the neighboring bridge, added its voice of lamentation as it wandered on and on to the ocean far away.
In the blacksmith's cottage another wanderer was journeying yet faster to a more distant ocean. The darkness closed in. Garth was tossing on his bed. His mother was rocking herself at his side. All else was still.
Then a step was heard on the shingle without, and a knock came to the door. The blacksmith struggled to lift his head and listen. Mrs. Garth paused in her rocking and ceased to moan.
“Who ever is it?” whispered Garth.
“Let them stay where they are, whoever it be,” his mother mumbled, never shifting from her seat. The knock came again.
“Nay, mother, nay; it is too late to—”
He had said no more when the latch was lifted, and Rotha Stagg walked into the room.
“I've come to help to nurse you, if you please,” she said, addressing the sick man.
Garth looked steadily at her for a moment, every feature quivering. Shame, fear, horror—any sentiment but welcome—was written on his face. Then he straggled to twist his poor helpless body away; his head, at least, he turned from her to the wall.
“It wad look better of folk if they'd wait till they're axt,” muttered Mrs. Garth, with downcast eyes.
Rotha unpinned the shawls that had wrapped her from the cold, and threw them over a chair. She stirred the fire and made it burn brightly; there was no other light in the room. The counterpane, which had been dragged away in the restlessness of the sufferer, she spread afresh. Reaching over the bed, she raised the sick man's head tenderly on her arm while she beat out his pillow. Never once did he lift his eyes to hers.
Mrs. Garth still rocked herself in her seat. “Folks should wait till they're wanted,” she mumbled again; but the words broke down into a stifled sob.
Rotha lit a candle that stood at hand, went to the cupboard in the corner of the adjoining kitchen, and took out a jar of barley; then to the hearth and took up a saucepan. In two minutes she was boiling something on the fire.
Mrs. Garth was following every movement with watchful eyes.
Presently the girl came to the bedside again with a basin in her hand.
“Take a little of this, Mr. Garth,” she said. “Your mouth is parched.”
“How did you know that?” he muttered, lifting his eyes at last.
She made no reply, but held her cool hand to his burning forehead. He motioned to her to draw it away. She did so.
“It's not safe—it's not safe for you, girl,” he said in his thin whisper, his breath coming and going between every word.
She smiled, put back her hand and brushed the dank hair from his moist brow.
Mrs. Garth got up from her seat by the bedside and hobbled to the fire. There she sat on a low stool, and threw her apron over her head.
Again raising the blacksmith from his pillow, Rotha put a spoonful of barley-water to his withered lips. He was more docile than a child now, and let her have her will.
For a moment he looked at her with melancholy eyes, and then, shifting his gaze, he said,—
“You had troubles enow of your own, Rotha, without coming to share ours—mother's and mine.”
“Yes,” she answered, and a shadow crossed the cheerful face.
“Will they banish him?” he said with quick-coming breath. “Mother says so; will they banish him from the country?”
“Yes, perhaps; but it will be to another and a better country,” said Rotha, and dropped her head.
Garth glanced inquiringly into her face. His mother shifted on her stool.
“How, how?” he said, nervously clutching at the bedclothes.
“Why do you bother him, girl?” said Mrs. Garth, turning about. “Rest thee, my lad, rest thee still.”
“Mother,” said Garth, drawing back his head, but never shifting the determination of his gaze from Rotha's face, “what does she mean?”
“Haud thy tongue, Joey.”
“What does she mean, mother?”
“Whisht! Never heed folks that meddle afore they're axt.”
Mrs. Garth spoke peevishly, rose from her seat, and walked between Rotha and the bed.
Garth's wide eyes were still riveted on the girl's face.
“Never mind that she's not asked,” he said; “but what does she mean, mother? What lie is it that she comes to tell us!”
“No lie, Mr. Garth,” said Rotha, with tearful eyes. “Ralph and father are condemned to die, and they are innocent.”
“Tush! get away wi' thee!” mumbled Mrs. Garth, brushing the girl aside with her elbow. The blacksmith glared at her, and seemed to gasp for breath.
“It is a lie; mother, tell her it is a lie.”
“God knows it is not,” cried Rotha passionately.
“Say I believed it,” said Garth, rising convulsively on one elbow, with a ghastly stare; “say I believed that the idiots had condemned them to death for a crime they never committed—never; say I believed it—but it's a lie, that's what it is. Girl, girl, how can you come with a lie on your lips to a poor dying man? Cruel! cruel! Have you no pity, none, for a wretched dying man?”
The tears rolled down Rotha's cheeks. Mrs. Garth returned to her stool, and rocked herself and moaned.
The blacksmith glared from one to the other, the sweat standing in heavy beads on his forehead.
Then an awful scream burst from his lips. His face was horribly distorted.
“It is true,” he cried, and fell back and rolled on the bed.
All that night the fiery hand lay on the blacksmith's brain, and he tossed in a wild delirium.
The wind's wail ran round the house, and the voice of that brother wanderer, the river beneath the bridge crept over the silence when the sufferer lay quiet and the wind was still.
No candle was now lighted, but the fire on the hearth burnt bright. Mrs. Garth sat before it, hardly once glancing up.
Again and again her son cried to her with the yearning cry of a little child. At such times the old woman would shrink within herself, and moan and cower over the fire, and smoke a little black pipe.
Hour after hour the blacksmith rolled in his bed in a madness too terrible to record. The memory of his blasphemies seemed to come back upon him in his raving, and add fresh agony to his despair.
A naked soul stood face to face with the last reality, battling meantime, with an unseen foe. There was to be no jugglery now.
Oh! that awful night, that void night, that night of the wind's wail and the dismal moan of the wandering river, and the frequent cry of a poor, miserable, desolate, despairing, naked soul! Had its black wings settled forever over all the earth?
No. The dawn came at last. Its faint streak of light crept lazily in at the curtainless window.
Then Garth raised himself in his bed.
“Give me paper—paper and a pen—quick, quick!” he cried.
“What would you write, Joe?” said Rotha.
“I want to write to him—to Ralph—Ralph Ray,” he said, in a voice quite unlike his own.
Rotha ran to the chest in the kitchen and opened it. In a side shelf pens were there and paper too. She came back, and put them before the sick man.
But he was unconscious of what she had done.
She looked into his face. His eyes seemed not to see.
“The paper and pen!” he cried again, yet more eagerly.
She put the quill into his hand and spread the paper before him.
“What writing is this,” he cried, pointing to the white sheet; “this writing in red?”
“Where?”
“Here—everywhere.”
The pen dropped from his nerveless fingers.
“To think they will take a dying man!” he said. “You would scarce think they would have the heart, these people. You would scarce think it, would you?” he said, lifting his poor glassy eyes to Rotha's face.
“Perhaps they don't know,” she answered soothingly, and tried to replace him on his pillow.
“That's true,” he muttered; “perhaps they don't know how ill I am.”
At that instant he caught sight of his mother's ill-shapen figure cowering over the fire. Clutching Rotha's arm with one hand, he pointed at his mother with the other, and said, with an access of strength,—
“I've found her out; I've found her out.”
Then he laughed till it seemed to Rotha that the blood stood still in her heart.
When the full flood of daylight streamed into the little room, Garth had sunk into a deep sleep.
As the clock struck eight Rotha drew her shawls about her shoulders and hurried up the road.
At the turning of the lonnin to Shoulthwaite she met Willy Ray. “I was coming to meet you,” he said, approaching.
“Come no closer,” said Rotha, thrusting out the palm of one hand; “you know where I've been—there, that is near enough.”
“Nonsense, Rotha!” said Willy, stepping up to her and putting a hand on her arm. There was confidence in the touch.
“To-morrow is the day,” Willy added, in an altered tone. “I am leaving for Carlisle at noon—that is, in four hours.”
“Could you not wait four hours longer?” said Rotha.
“I could if you wish it; but why?”
“I don't know—that is, I can't say—but wait until four o'clock, I beg of you.”
The girl spoke with deep earnestness.
“I shall wait,” said Willy, after a pause.
“And you'll meet me at the bridge by the smithy?” said Rotha.
Willy nodded assent.
“At four precisely,” he said.
“This is all I came to ask. I must go back.”
“Rotha, a word: what is your interest in these Garths? Does it concern your father and Ralph?”
“I'll tell you at the bridge,” said Rotha, sidling off.
“Every one is aghast at your going,” he said.
“I have better reasons than any one knows of,” she replied.
“And better faith, and a nobler heart,” he added feelingly as he turned his head away.
Garth was still asleep when she got back to the cottage. A feeble gleam of winter sunshine came languidly through the little window. It fell across the bed and lit up the blue eyelids and discolored lips of the troubled sleeper.
The fire had smouldered out. Only a charred bough and a damp clod of peat lay black among the gray ashes on the hearth.
As Rotha re-entered Mrs. Garth got up from the stool on which she had sat the long night through. There was a strange look on her face. During the heavy hours she had revolved within herself a dark problem which to her was unsolvable, and the puzzle was still printed on her face. Drawing the girl aside, she said in a grating whisper,—
“Tell me, do ye think it's reet what the lad says?”
“About Ralph and father?” asked Rotha.
“Tush! about hissel'. Do ye think he'll die?”
Rotha dropped her head.
“Tell me: do ye think so?”
Rotha was still silent. Mrs. Garth looked searchingly into her face, and in answer to the unuttered reply, she whispered vehemently,—
“It's a lie. He'll be back at his anvil to-morrow. Why do you come wi' yer pale face to me? Crying? What's it for? tell me!”
And the old woman shook the girl roughly by the shoulders.
Rotha made no response. The puzzled expression on Mrs. Garth's face deepened at that instant, but as she turned aside she muttered again, with every accent of determination,—
“He'll be back at his anvil to-morrow, that he will.”
The blacksmith awoke as serene as a child. When he looked at Rotha his hard, drawn face softened to the poor semblance of a smile. Then a shadow crossed it, and once more he turned his head to the wall.
And now to Rotha the hours went by with flying feet. Every hour of them was as precious to her as her heart's blood. How few were the hours of morning! The thing which above all she came here to do was not being done. A dull dead misery seemed to sit cold on her soul.
Rotha tended the sufferer with anxious care, and when the fitful sleep slid over him, she sat motionless with folded hands, and gazed through the window. All was still, sombre, chill, and dreary. The wind had slackened; the river ran smoother. In a field across the valley a woman was picking potatoes. No other human creature was visible.
Thus the hours wore on. At one moment Garth awoke with a troubled look, and glanced watchfully around. His mother was sitting in her accustomed seat, apparently asleep. He clutched at Rotha's gown, and made a motion to her to come closer. She did so, a poor breath of hope fluttering in her breast. But just then Mrs. Garth shifted in her seat, and faced about towards them. The blacksmith drew back his hand, and dropped his half-lifted head.
Towards noon Mrs. Garth got up and left the bedroom. Her son had appeared to be asleep but he was alert to every movement. Again he plucked Rotha's gown, and essayed to speak. But Mrs. Garth returned in a moment, and not a word was said.
Rotha's spirits flagged. It was as though she were crawling hour after hour towards a gleam of hope that fled farther and farther away.
The darkness was gathering in, yet nothing was done. Then the clock struck four, and Rotha drew on her shawl once more, and walked to the bridge.
Willy was there, a saddled horse by his side.
“You look jaded and out of heart, Rotha,” he said.
“Can you stay four hours longer?” she asked.
“Until eight o'clock? It will make the night ride cold and long,” he answered.
“True, but you can stay until eight, can you not?”
“You know why I go. God knows it is not to be present at that last scene of all: that will be soon after daybreak.”
“You want to see him again. Yes; but stay until eight o'clock. I would not make an idle request, Willy. No, not at a solemn hour like this.”
“I shall stay,” he said.
The girl's grief-worn face left no doubt in his mind of her purpose. They parted.
When Rotha re-entered the sick-room a candle was burning on a table by the bedside. Mrs. Garth still crouched before the fire. The blacksmith was awake. As he lifted his eyes to Rotha's face, the girl saw that they wore the same watchful and troubled expression as before.
“Shall I read to you, Mr. Garth?” she asked, taking down from a shelf near the rafters a big leather-bound book. It was a Bible, dust-covered and with rusty clasps, which had lain untouched for years.
“Rotha,” said Garth, “read to me where it tells of sins that are as scarlet being washed whiter nor wool.”
The girl found the place. She read aloud in the rich, soft voice that was like the sigh of the wind through the long grass. The words might have brought solace to another man. The girl's voice might have rested on the ear as a cool hand rests on a throbbing brow. But neither words nor voice brought peace to Garth. His soul seemed to heave like a sea lashed by a storm.
At length he reached out a feeble hand and touched the hand of the girl.
“I have a sin that is red as scarlet,” he said. But before he could say more, his mother had roused herself and turned to him with what Rotha perceived to be a look of warning.
It was plainly evident that but for Mrs. Garth, the blacksmith would make that confession which she wished above all else to hear.
Then Rotha read again. She read of the prodigal son, and of Him who would not condemn the woman that was a sinner. It was a solemn and terrible moment. The fathomless depths of the girl's voice, breaking once and again to a low wail, then rising to a piercing cry, went with the words themselves like an arrow to the heart of the dying man. Still no peace came to him. Chill was the inmost chamber of his soul; no fire was kindled there. His face was veiled in a troubled seriousness, when, at a pause in the reading, he said,—
“There can be no rest for me, Rotha, till I tell you something that lies like iron at my heart.”
“Whisht thee, lad; whisht thee and sleep. Thou'rt safe to be well to-morrow,” said Mrs. Garth in a peevish whimper.
“Mother, mother,” cried Garth aloud in a piteous tone of appeal and remonstrance, “when, when will you see me as I am?”
“Tush, lad! thou'rt mending fast. Thou'rt safe to be at thy fire to-morrow.”
“Ey, mother,” replied the blacksmith, lifting himself feebly and glaring at her now with a fierce light in his eyes,—“eh, mother, but it will be the everlasting fire if I'm to die with this black sin heavy on my soul.”
In spite of her self-deception, the woman's mind had long been busy with its own secret agony, and at these words from her son the rigid wrinkles of her face relaxed, and she turned her head once more aside.
Rotha felt that the moment had at length arrived. She must speak now or never. The one hope for two innocent men who were to die as soon as the world woke again to daylight lay in this moment.
“Mr. Garth,” she began falteringly, “if a sin lies heavy on your soul, it is better to tell God of it and cast yourself on the mercy of our Heavenly Father.”
Gathering strength, the girl continued: “And if it is a dark secret that touches others than yourself—if others may suffer, or are suffering, from it even now—if this is so, I pray of you, as you hope for that Divine mercy, confess it now, confess it before it is too late—fling it forth from your stifled heart—do not bury its dead body there, and leave it to be revealed only at that judgment when every human deed, be it never so secret, shall be stripped naked before the Lord, that retribution may be measured out for ever and ever.”
Rotha had risen to her feet, and was leaning over the bed with one hand in an attitude of acutest pain, convulsively clutching the hand of the blacksmith.
“Oh, I implore you,” she continued, “speak out what is in your heart for your own sake, as well as the sake of others. Do not lose these precious moments. Be true! be true at last! at last! Then let it be with you as God shall order. Do not carry this sin to the eternal judgment. Blessed, a thousand times blessed, will be the outpouring of a contrite heart. God will hear it.”
Garth looked into the girl's inspired face.
“I don't see my way clearly,” he said. “I'm same as a man that gropes nigh midway through yon passage underground at Legberthwaite. The light behind me grows dimmer, dimmer, dimmer, and not yet comes the gleam of the light in front. I'm not at the darkest; no, I'm not.”
“A guest is knocking at your heart, Mr. Garth. Will you open to him?” Then, in another tone, she added: “To-morrow at daybreak two men will die in Carlisle—my father and Ralph Ray—and they are innocent!”
“Ey, it's true,” said the blacksmith, breaking down at length.
Then struggling once more to lift himself in bed, he cried, “Mother, tell her I did it, and not Ralph. Tell them all that it was I myself who did it. Tell them I was driven to it, as God is my judge.”
The old woman jumped up, and, putting her face close to her son's, she whispered,—
“Thou madman! What wadsta say?”
“Mother, dear mother, my mother,” he cried, “think of what you would do; think of me standing, as I must soon stand—very soon—before God's face with this black crime on my soul. Let me cast it off from me forever. Do not tempt me to hide it! Rotha, pray with her; pray that she will not let me stand before God thus miserably burthened, thus red as scarlet with a foul, foul sin!”
Garth's breath was coming and going like a tempest. It was a terrible moment. Rotha flung herself on her knees. She had not been used to pray, but the words gushed from her.
“Dear Father in heaven,” she prayed, “soften the hearts of all of us here in this solemn hour. Let us remember our everlasting souls. Let us not barter them for the poor comforts of this brief life. Father, thou readest all hearts. No secret so secret, none so closely hidden from all men's eyes, but Thou seest it and canst touch it with a finger of fire. Help us here to reveal our sins to Thee. If we have sinned deeply, forgive us in Thy heavenly mercy; in Thy infinite goodness grant us peace. Let Thy angel hover over us even now, even now, now.”
And the angel of the Lord was indeed with them in that little cottage among the desolate hills.
Rotha rose up and turned to Garth.
“Under the shadow of death,” she said, “tell me, I implore you, how and when you committed the crime for which father and Ralph are condemned to die to-morrow.”
Mrs. Garth had returned once more to her seat. The blacksmith's strength was failing him. His agitation had nigh exhausted him. Tears were now in his eyes, and when he spoke in a feeble whisper, a sob was in his throat.
“He was my father,” he said, “God forgive me—Wilson was my father—and he left us to starve, mother and me; and when he came back to us here we thought Ralph Ray had brought him to rob us of the little that we had.” “God forgive me, too,” said Mrs. Garth, “but that was wrong.”
“Wrong?” inquired the blacksmith.
“Ey, it came out at the trial,” muttered his mother.
Garth seemed overcome by a fresh flood of feeling. Rotha lifted a basin of barley-water to his lips.
“Yes, yes; but how was it done—how?”
“He did not die where they threw him—Ralph—Angus—whoever it was—he got up some while after and staggered to this house—he said Ray had thrown him and he was hurt—Ray, that was all. He wanted to come in and rest, but I flung the door in his face and he fell. Then he got up, and shrieked out something—it was something against myself; he called me a bastard, that's the fact. Then it was as if a hand behind me pushed me on. I opened the door and struck him. I didn't know that I had a hammer in my hand, but I had. He fell dead.”
“Well, well, what next?”
“Nothing—yes—late the same night I carried him back to where I thought he had come from—and that's all!”
The little strength Garth had left was wellnigh spent.
“Would you sign a paper saying this?” asked Rotha, bending over him.
“Ey, if there would be any good in it.”
“It might save the lives of father and Ralph; but your mother would need to witness it.”
“She will do that for me,” said Garth feebly. “It will be the last thing I'll ask of her. She will go herself and witness it.”
“Ey, ey,” sobbed the broken woman, who rocked herself before the fire.
Rotha took the pen and paper, and wrote, in a hand that betrayed her emotion,—
“This is to say that I, Joseph Garth, being near my end, yet knowing well the nature of my act, do confess to having committed the crime of killing the man known as James Wilson, for whose death Ralph Ray and Simeon Stagg stand condemned.”
“Can you sign it now, Joe?” asked Rotha, as tenderly as eagerly.
Garth nodded assent. He was lifted to a sitting position. Rotha spread the paper before him, and then supported him from behind with her arms.
He took the pen in his graspless hand, and essayed to write. Oh, the agony of that effort! How every futile stroke of that pen went to the girl's heart like a stab of remorse! The name was signed at length, and in some sorry fashion. The dying man was restored to his pillow.
Peace came to him there and then.
The clock struck eight.
Rotha hurried out of the house and down the road to the bridge. The moon had just broken over a ridge of black cloud. It was bitterly cold.
Willy Ray stood with his horse at the appointed place.
“How agitated you are, Rotha; you tremble like an aspen,” he said. “And where are your shawls?”
“Look at this paper,” she said. “You can scarce see to read it here; but it is a confession. It states that it was poor Joe Garth who committed the murder for which father and Ralph are condemned to die at daybreak.”
“At last! Thank God!” exclaimed Willy.
“Take it—put it in your breast—keep it safe as you value your eternal soul—ride to Carlisle as fast as your horse will carry you, and place it instantly before the sheriff.”
“Is it signed?”
“Yes.”
“And witnessed?”
“The witness will follow in person—a few hours—a very few—and she will be with you there.”
“Rotha, God has put it into your heart to do this thing, and He has given you more than the strength of a strong man!”
“In how many hours might one ride to Carlisle at the fastest—in the night and in a cart?” asked the girl eagerly.
“Five, perhaps, if one knew every inch of the way.”
“Then, before you set out, drive round to Armboth, and ask Mr. Jackson to bring his wagon across to this bridge at midnight. Let him not say 'No' as he hopes for his salvation! And now, good bye again, and God speed you on your journey!”
Willy carried a cloak over his arm. He was throwing it across Rotha's unprotected shoulders.
“No, no,” she said, “you need it yourself. I shall be back in a minute.”
And she was gone almost before he was aware.
Willy was turning away when he heard a step behind. It was the Reverend Nicholas Stevens, lantern in hand, lighting himself home from a coming-of-age celebration at Smeathwaite. As he approached, Willy stepped up to him.
“Stop,” cried the parson, “was she who parted from you but now the daughter of the man Simeon Stagg?”
“The same,” Willy answered.
“And she comes from the home of the infected blacksmith?”
“She is there again, even now,” said Willy. “I thought you might wish to take the solace of religion to a dying man—Garth is dying.”
“Back—away—do not touch me—let me pass,” whispered the parson in an accent of dread, shrinking meantime from the murderous stab of the cloak which Willy carried over his arm.
Rotha was in the cottage once again almost before she had been missed.
Joe was dozing fitfully. His mother was sighing and whimpering in turns. Her wrinkled face, no longer rigid, was a distressing spectacle. When Rotha came close to her she whispered,—
“The lad was wrang, but I dare not have telt 'im so. Yon man were none of a father to Joe, though he were my husband, mair's the pity.”
Then getting up, glancing nervously at her son, lifting a knife from the table, creeping to the side of the bed and ripping a hole in the ticking, she drew out a soiled and crumpled paper.
“Look you, lass, I took this frae the man's trunk when he lodged wi' yer father and yersel' at Fornside.”
It was a copy of the register of Joe's birth, showing that he was the son of a father unknown.
“I knew he must have it. He always threatened that he'd get it. He wad have made mischief wi' it somehow.”
Mrs. Garth spoke in whispers, but her voice broke her son's restless sleep. Garth was sinking fast, but he looked quieter when his eyes opened again. “I think God has forgiven me my great crime,” he said calmly, “for the sake of the merciful Saviour, who would not condemn the woman that was a sinner.”
Then he crooned over the Quaker hymn,—