When Constable David tried to rise after that fall, he discovered too many reasons to believe that his leg had been broken. Constable Jonathan had fared better as to wind and limb, but upon regaining his feet he found the voice of duty silent within him as to the necessity of any further action such as might expose him to more serious disabilities. With the spirit of the professional combatant, he rather admired the prowess of their adversary, and certainly bore him no ill-will because he had vanquished them.
“The man's six foot high if he's an inch, and has the strength of an ox,” he said, as he bent over his coadjutor and inquired into the nature of his bruises.
Constable David seemed disposed to exhibit less of the resignation of a brave humility that can find solace and even food for self-flattery in defeat, than of the vexation of a cowardly pride that cannot reconcile itself to a stumble and a fall.
“It all comes of that waistrel Mister Burn-the-wind,” he said, meaning to indicate the blacksmith by this contemptuous allusion to that gentleman's profession.
Constable Jonathan could not forbear a laugh at the name, and at the idea it suggested.
“Ay, but if he'd burned the wind this time instead of blowing it,” he said, “we might have raised it between us. Come, let me raise you into this saddle instead. Hegh, hegh, though,” he continued, as the horse lurched from him with every gust, “no need to raise the wind up here. Easy—there—you're right now, I think. You'll need to ride on one stirrup.”
It was perhaps natural that the constabulary view of the disaster should be limited to the purely legal aspect of the loss of a prisoner; but the subject of the constable's reproaches was not so far dominated by official ardor as to be insensible to the terrible accident of the flight of the horse with the corpse. Mr. Garth had brought his own horse to a stand at some twenty paces from the spot where Ralph Ray had thrown his companions from their saddles, and in the combat ensuing he had not experienced any unconquerable impulse to participate on the side of what stood to him for united revenge and profit, if not for justice also. When, in the result, the mare fled over the fells, he sat as one petrified until Robbie Anderson, who had earlier recovered from his own feeling of stupefaction, and in the first moment of returning consciousness had recognized the blacksmith and guessed the sequel of the rencontre, brought him up to a very lively sense of the situation by bringing him down to his full length on the ground with the timely administration of a well-planted blow. Mr. Garth was probably too much taken by surprise to repay the obligation in kind, but he rapped out a volley of vigorous oaths that fell about his adversary as fast as a hen could peck. Then he remounted his horse, and, with such show of valorous reluctance as could still be assumed after so unequivocal an overthrow, he made the best of haste away.
He was not yet, however, entirely rewarded for his share in the day's proceedings. He had almost reached Wythburn on his return home when he had the singular ill-fortune to encounter Liza. That young damsel was huddled, rather than seated, on the back of a horse, the property of one of the mourners whom Rotha had succeeded in hailing to their rescue. With Rhoda walking by her side, she was now plodding along towards the city in a temper primed by the accidents of the day to a condition of the highest irascibility. As a matter of fact, Liza, in her secret heart, was chiefly angry with herself for the reckless leap over a big stone that had given the sprained ankle, under the pains of which she now groaned; but it was due to the illogical instincts of her sex that she could not consciously take so Spartan a view of her position as to blame herself for what had happened.
It was at this scarcely promising juncture of accident and temper that she came upon the blacksmith, and at the first sight of him all the bitterness of feeling that had been brewing and fermenting within her, and in default of a proper object had been discharged on the horse, on the saddle, on the roads, and even on Rotha, found a full and magnificent outlet on the person of Mr. Joseph Garth.
While that gentleman had been jogging along homewards he had been fostering uncomfortable sentiments of spite respecting the “laal hussy” who had betrayed him. He had been mentally rehearsing the withering reproaches and yet more withering glances which he meant to launch forth upon her when next it should be her misfortune to cross his path. Such disloyalty, such an underhand way of playing double, seemed to Mr. Garth deserving of any punishment short of that physical one which it would be most enjoyable to inflict, but which it might not, with that Robbie in the way, be quite so pleasant to stand responsible for. Perhaps it was due to an illogical instinct of the blacksmith's sex that his conscience did not trouble him when he was concocting these pains and penalties for duplicity. Certainly, when the two persons in question came face to face at the turning of the pack-horse road towards the city, logic played an infinitesimal part in their animated intercourse.
Mr. Garth meant to direct a scorching sneer as silent preamble to his discourse; but owing to the fact that Robbie's blow had fallen about the blacksmith's eyes, and that those organs had since become sensibly eclipsed by a prodigious and discolored swelling, what was meant for a withering glance looked more like a meaningless grin. At this apparent levity under her many distresses, Liza's wrath rose to boiling point, and she burst out upon Mr. Joseph with more of the home-spun of the country-side than ever fell from her lips in calmer moments.
“Thoo dummel-head, thoo,” she said, “thoo'rt as daft as a besom. Thoo hes made a botch on't, thoo blatherskite. Stick that in thy gizzern, and don't thoo go bumman aboot like a bee in a bottle—thoo Judas, thoo.”
Mr. Garth was undoubtedly taken by surprise this time. To be attacked in such a way by the very person he meant to attack, to be accounted the injurer by the very person who, he thought, had injured him, sufficed to stagger the blacksmith's dull brains.
“Nay, nay,” he said, when he had recovered his breath; “who's the Judas?—that's a 'batable point, I reckon.”
“Giss!” cried Liza, without waiting to comprehend the significance of the insinuation, and—like a true woman—not dreaming that a charge of disloyalty could be advanced against her,—“giss! giss!”—the call to swine—“thoo'rt thy mother's awn son—the witch.”
Utterly deprived of speech by this maidenly outburst of vituperation, Mr. Garth lost all that self-control which his quieter judgment had recognized as probably necessary to the safety of his own person. White with anger, he raised his hand to strike Liza, who thereupon drew up, and, giving him a vigorous slap on each cheek, said, “Keep thy neb oot of that, thoo bummeller, and go fratch with Robbie Anderson—I hear he dinged thee ower, thoo sow-faced 'un.”
The mention of this name served as a timely reminder to Mr. Garth, who dropped his arm and rode away, muttering savagely under his breath.
“Don't come hankerin' after me again,” cried Liza (rather unnecessarily) after his vanishing figure.
This outburst was at least serviceable in discharging all the ill-nature from the girl's breast; and when she had watched the blacksmith until he had disappeared, she replied to Rotha's remonstrances as so much scarcely girl-like abuse by a burst of the heartiest girlish laughter.
There was much commotion at the Red Lion that night. The “maister men” who had left the funeral procession at Watendlath made their way first to the village inn, intending to spend there the hours that must intervene before the return of the mourners to Shoulthwaite. They had not been long seated over their pots when the premature arrival of John Jackson and some of the other dalesmen who had been “sett” on the way to Gosforth led to an explanation of the disaster that had occurred on the pass. The consternation of the frequenters of the Red Lion, as of the citizens of Wythburn generally, was as great as their surprise. Nothing so terrible had happened within their experience. They had the old Cumbrian horror of an accident to the dead. No prospect was dearer to their hope than that of a happy death, and no reflection was more comforting than that one day they would have a suitable burial. Neither of these had Angus had. A violent end, and no grave at all; nothing but this wild ride across the fells that might last for days or months. There was surely something of Fate in it.
The dalesmen gathered about the fire at the Red Lion with the silence that comes of awe.
“A sad hap, this,” said Reuben Thwaite, lifting both hands.
“I reckon we must all turn out at the edge of the dawn to-morrow, and see what we can do to find old Betsy,” said Mr. Jackson.
Matthew Branthwaite's sagest saws had failed him. Such a contingency as this had never been foreseen by that dispenser of proverbs. It had lifted him out of himself. Matthew's sturdy individualism might have taken the form of liberalism, or perhaps materialism, if it had appeared two centuries later; but in the period in which his years were cast, the art of keeping close to the ground had not been fully learned. Matthew was filled with a sentiment which he neither knew nor attempted to define. At least he was sure that the mare was not to be caught. It was to be a dispensation somehow and someway that the horse should gallop over the hills with its dead burden to its back from year's end to year's end. When Mr. Jackson suggested that they should start out in search of it, Matthew said,—
“Nay, John, nowt of the sort. Ye may gang ower the fell, but ye'll git na Betsy. It's as I telt thee; it's a Fate. It'll be a tale for iv'ry mother to flyte childer with.”
“The wind did come with a great bouze,” said John. “It must have been the helm-wind, for sure; yet I cannot mind that I saw the helm-bar. Never in my born days did I see a horse go off with such a burr.”
“And you could not catch hold on it, any of you, ey?” asked one of the company with a shadow of a sneer.
“Shaf! dost thoo think yon fell's like a blind lonnin?” said Matthew.
“Nay, but it's a bent place,” continued Mr. Jackson. “How it dizzied and dozzled, too! And what a fratch yon was! My word! but Ralph did ding them over, both of them!”
“He favors his father, does Ralph,” said Matthew.
“Ey! he's his father's awn git,” chimed Reuben. “But that Joe Garth is a merry-begot, I'll swear.”
“Shaf! he hesn't a bit of nater intil him, nowther back nor end. He's now't but riffraff,” said Matthew. Ralph Ray's peril and escape were incidents too unimportant to break the spell of the accident to the body of his father.
Robbie Anderson turned in late in the evening.
“Here's a sorry home coming,” he said as he entered.
It was easy to see that Robbie was profoundly agitated. His eyes were aflame; he rose and sat, walked a pace or two and stood, passed his fingers repeatedly through his short curly beard, slapped his knee, and called again and again for ale. When he spoke of the accident on the fell, he laughed with a wild effort at a forced and unnatural gayety.
“It's all along of my being dintless, so it is,” he muttered, after little Reuben Thwaite had repeated for some fresh batch of inquirers the story, so often told, of how the mare took to flight, and of how Ralph leaped on to the young horse in pursuit of it.
“All along of you, Robbie; how's that, man?”
“If I'd chained the young horse at the bottom of the hill there would have been no mare to run away, none.”
“It's like that were thy orders, then, Robbie?”
“It were that, damn me, it were—the schoolmaster there, he knows it.”
“Ralph told him to do it; I heard him myself,” said Monsey, from his place in the chimney-nook, where he sat bereft of his sportive spirit, yet quite oblivious of the important part which his own loquacity had unwittingly played in the direful tragedy.
“But never bother now. Bring me more ale, mistress: quick now, my lass.”
Robbie had risen once more, and was tramping across the floor in his excitement. “What's come over Robbie?” whispered Reuben to Matthew. “What fettle's he in—doldrums, I reckon.”
“Tak na note on him. Robbie's going off agen I'm afeart. He's broken loose. This awesome thing is like to turn the lad's heed, for he'd the say ower it all.”
“Come, lass, quick with the ale.”
“Ye've had eneuf, Robbie,” said the hostess. “Go thy ways home. Thou findst the beer very heady, lad. Thou shalt have more in the morning.”
“To-night, lass; I must have some to-night, that I must.”
“Robbie is going off agen, surely,” whispered Reuben. “It's a sorry sight when yon lad takes to the drink. He'll be deed drunk soon.”
“Say nowt to him,” answered Matthew. “He's fair daft to-neet.”
The evening was far advanced when the dalesmen rose to go.
“Our work's cut out for us in the morning, men.” said John Jackson. “Let's off to our beds.”
It was not at first that Ralph was a prey to sentiments of horror. His physical energy dominated all emotion, and left no room for terrible imaginings—no room for a full realization of what had occurred. That which appeared to paralyze the others—that which by its ghastly reality appeared to fix them to the earth with the rigidity of stone—endowed him with a power that seemed all but superhuman, and inspired him with an impulse that leapt to its fulfilment.
Mounted on the young horse, he galloped after the mare along the long range of the pikes, in and out of their deep cavernous alcoves, up and down their hillocks and hollows, over bowlders, over streams, across ghylls, through sinking sloughs and with a drizzling rain overhead. At one moment he caught sight of the mare and her burden as they passed swiftly over a protruding headland which was capped from his point of view by nothing but the mist and the sky. Then he followed on the harder; but faster than his horse could gallop over the pathless mountains galloped the horse of which he was in pursuit. He could see the mare no more. Yet he rode on and on.
When he reached the extremity of the dark range and stood at that point where Great Howe fringes downward to the plain, he turned about and rode back on the opposite side of the pikes. Once more he rode in and out of cavernous alcoves, up and down hillocks and hollows, over bowlders, over streams, across rivers, through sinking sloughs, and still with a drizzling rain overhead. The mare was nowhere to be seen.
Then he rode on to where the three ranges of mountains meet at Angle Tarn and taking first the range nearest the pikes he rode under the Bow Fell, past the Crinkle Crags to the Three-Shire Stones at the foot of Greyfriars, where the mountains slope downward to the Duddon valley. Still the mare was nowhere to be seen.
Returning then to the Angle Tarn, he followed the only remaining range past the Pike of Stickle until he looked into the black depths of the Dungeon Ghyll. And still the mare was nowhere to be seen. Fear was behind her, and only by fear could she be overtaken. It was at about two o'clock in the afternoon that the disaster had occurred. It was now fully three hours later, and the horse Ralph rode, fatigued and wellnigh spent, was slipping its feet in the gathering darkness. He turned its head towards Wythburn, and rode down to the city by Harrop Tarn.
At the first house—it was Luke Cockrigg's, and it stood on the bank above the burn—he left the horse, and borrowed a lantern. The family would have dissuaded him from an attempt to return to the fells, but he was resolved. There was no reasoning against the resolution pictured on his rigid and cadaverous countenance.
The drizzling rain still fell and the night had closed in when Ralph set his face afresh towards the mountains.
And now the sickening horrors of sentiment overtook him, for now he had time to reflect upon what had occurred. The figure of the riderless horse flying with its dead burden before the wind had fixed itself on his imagination; and while the darkness was concealing the physical surroundings, it was revealing the phantasm in the glimmering outlines of every rock and tree. Look where he would, peering long and deep into the blackness of a night without moon or stars, without cloud or sky, with only a blank density around and about, Ralph seemed to see in fitful flashes that came and went—now on the right and now on the left of him, now in front and now behind, now on the earth at his feet and now in the dumb vapor floating above him—the spectre of that riderless horse. Sometimes he would stop and listen, thinking he heard a horse canter close past him; but no, it was the noise of a hidden river as its waters leapt over the stones. Sometimes he thought he heard the neigh of a horse in the distance; but no, it was only the whinny of the wind. His dog had followed close behind him when he fled from the pass, and it was still at his heels. Sometimes Laddie would dart away and be lost for a few minutes in the darkness. Then the dog's muffled bark would be heard, and Ralph's blood would seem to stand still with a dread apprehension that dared not to take the name of hope. No; it was only a sheep that had strayed from its fold, and had taken shelter from wind and rain beneath a stone in a narrow cleft, and was now sending up into the night the pitiful cry of a lost and desolate creature.
No, no, no; nowhere would the hills give up the object of his search; and Ralph walked on and on with a heart that sank and still sank.
He knew these trackless uplands as few knew them, and not even the abstraction of mind that came with these solitary hours caused him an uncertain step. On and on, through the long dark night, to the Stye Head once more, and again along the range of the rugged pikes, calling the mare by the half-articulate cry she knew so well, and listening for her answering neigh, but hearing only the surging of the wind or the rumble of the falling ghyll; then on and on, and still on.
When the earliest gleams of light flecked the east, Ralph was standing at the head of the Screes. Slowly the gray bars stretched across the sky, wider and more wide, brighter and more bright, now changed to yellow and now to pink, chasing the black walls of darkness that died away on every side. In the basin below, at the foot of the steep Screes, whose sides rumbled with rolling stones, lay the black mere, half veiled by the morning mist. Still veiled, too, were the dales of Ireton, but far away, across the undulating plains through which the river rambled, flowed the wide Western Sea, touched at its utmost bar by the silvery light of the now risen sun.
Ralph turned about and walked back, with the flush of the sky reflected on his pale and stony face. His lantern, not yet extinguished, burned small and feeble in his hand. Another night was breaking to another day; another and another would yet break, and all the desolation of a heart, the ruin of many hearts—what was it before Nature's unswerving and unalterable course! The phantasms of a night that had answered to his hallucinations were as nothing to the realities of a morning whose cruel light showed him only more plainly the blackness of his despair.
The sentiments of horror which now possessed him were more terrible because more spiritual than before. To know no sepulture! The idea was horrible in itself, horrible in its association with an old Hebrew curse more remorseless than the curse of Cain, most horrible of all because to Ralph's heightened imagination it seemed to be a symbol—a symbol of retribution past and to come.
Yes, it was as he had thought, as he had half thought; God's hand was on him—on him of all others, and on others only through him. Having once conceived this idea in its grim totality, having once fully received the impress of it from the violence and suddenness of a ghastly occurrence, Ralph seemed to watch with complete self-consciousness the action of the morbid fancy on his mind. He traced it back to the moment when the truth (or what seemed to him the truth) touching the murder of Wilson had been flashed upon him by a look from Simeon Stagg. He traced it yet farther back to that night at Dunbar, when, at the prompting of what he mistook for mercy, he had saved the life of the enemy that was to wreck his own life and the lives of all that were near and dear to him. To his tortured soul guilt seemed everywhere about him, whether his own guilt or the guilt of others, was still the same; and now God had given this dread disaster for a sign that vengeance was His, that retribution had come and would come.
Was it the dream of an overpowered imagination—the nightmare of a distempered fancy? Yet it would not be shaken off. It had bathed the whole world in another light—a lurid light.
Ralph walked fast over the fells, snatching at sprigs of heather, plucking the slim boughs from the bushes, pausing sometimes to look long at a stone, or a river, or a path that last night appeared to be as familiar to him as the palm of his hand, and had suddenly become strange and a mystery. The shadow of a supernatural presence hung over all.
Throughout that day he walked about the fells, looking for the riderless horse, and calling to it, but neither expecting to see nor to hear it. He saw once and again the people of Wythburn abroad on the errand that kept him abroad, but they never came within hail, and a stifling sense of shame kept him apart, none the less that he knew not wherefore such shame should fall on him, all the same that they knew not that it had fallen.
The day would come when all men would see that God's hand was on him.
Yes, Ralph; but when that day does indeed come, then all men shall also see that whom God's hand rests on has God at his right hand.
When the darkness was closing in upon a second night, Ralph was descending High Seat towards Shoulthwaite Moss. Behind him lagged the jaded dog, walking a few paces with drooping head and tail; then lying for a minute, and rising to walk languidly again.
When he reached the old house, Ralph was prepared for the results of any further disaster, for disaster had few further results for which it was needful to prepare. A light burned in the kitchen, and another in that room above it where lately his father had lain. When Ralph entered, Willy Ray was seated before the fire, his hand in the hand of Rotha, who sat by his side. On every feature of his pallid face were traces of suffering.
“What of mother?” said Ralph huskily, his eyes traversing the kitchen.
Willy rose and put his hand on Ralph's shoulder. “We will go together,” he said, and they walked towards the stair that led to the floor above.
There she lay, the mother of these stricken sons, unconscious of their sufferings, unconscious of her own. Yet she lived. Since the terrible intelligence had reached her of what had happened on the pass she had remained in this state of insensibility, being stricken into such torpidity by the shock of the occurrence. Willy's tears fell fast as he stood by the bed, and his anguish was subdued thereby to a quieter mood. Ralph's sufferings were not so easily fathomable. He stooped and kissed the unconscious face without relaxing a muscle in the settled fixity of his own face. Leaving his brother in the room, he returned to the kitchen. How strange the old place looked to him now! Had everything grown strange? There were the tall clock in the corner, the big black worm-eaten oak cabinet, half-cupboard, half-drawers; there was the long table like a rock of granite; there was the spinning wheel in the neuk window; and there were the whips and the horns on the rafters overhead—yet how unfamiliar it all seemed to be!
Rotha was hastily preparing supper for him. He sat on the settle that was drawn up before the fire, and threw off his heavy and sodden shoes. His clothes, which had been saturated by the rain of the preceding night, had dried upon his back. He was hungry; he had hot eaten since yesterday at midday; and when food was put upon the table he ate with the voracious appetite that so often follows upon a long period of mental distress.
As he sat at his supper, his eyes followed constantly the movements of the girl, who was busied about him in the duties of the household. It were not easy to say with what passion or sentiment his heart was struggling with respect to her. He saw her as a hope gone from him, a joy not to be grasped, a possible fulfilment of that part of his nature which was never to be fulfilled. And she? Was she conscious of any sentiment peculiar to herself respecting this brave rude man, whose heart was tender enough to be drawn towards her and yet strong enough to be held apart at the awful bidding of an iron fate? Perhaps not. She in turn felt drawn towards him; she knew the force of a feeling that made him a centre of her thoughts, a point round which her deeper emotions insensibly radiated. But this was associated in her mind with no idea of love. If affection touched her at all, perhaps at this moment it went out where her pity—rather, her pride—first found play. Perhaps Ralph seemed too high above her to inspire her love. His brother's weaker, more womanly nature came closer within her range.
There was now a long silence between them.
“Rotha,” said Ralph at length, “this will be my last night at the Moss; the last for a long time, at least—I didn't expect to be here to-night. Can you promise one thing, my girl? It won't be hard for you now—not very hard now.” He paused.
“What is it, Ralph?” said Rotha, in a voice of apprehension.
“Only that you won't leave the old house while my mother lives.”
Rotha dropped her head. She thought of the lonely cottage at Fornside, and of him who should live there. Ralph divined the thought that was written in her face.
“Get him to come here if you can,” he said. “He could help Willy with the farm.”
“He would not come,” she said. “I'm afraid he would not.”
“Then neither will he return to Fornside. Promise me that while she lives—it can't be long, Rotha, it may be but too short—promise me that you'll make this house your home.”
“My first duty is to him,” said Rotha with her hand to her eyes.
“True—that's true,” said Ralph; and the sense that two homes were made desolate silenced him with something that stole upon him like stifling shame. There was only one way out of the difficulty, and that was to make two homes one. If she loved his brother, as he knew that his brother loved her, then—
“Rotha,” said Ralph, with a perceptible tremulousness of voice, “I will ask you another question, and, perhaps—who knows rightly?—perhaps it is harder for me to ask than for you to answer; but you will answer me—will you not?—for I ask you solemnly and with the light of Heaven on my words—on the most earnest words, I think, that ever came out of my heart.”
He paused again. Rotha sat on the end of the settle, and with fingers intertwined, with eyelids quivering and lips trembling, she gazed in silence into the fire.
“This is no time for idle vanities,” he said; “it's no time to indulge unreal modesties; and you have none of either if it were. God has laid His hand on us all, Rotha; yes, and our hearts are open without disguise before Him—and before each other, too, I think.”
“Yes,” said Rotha. She scarcely knew what to say, or whither Ralph's words tended. She only knew that he was speaking as she had never heard him speak before. “Yes, Ralph,” she repeated.
“Perhaps, as I say, it's harder for me to ask than for you to answer, Rotha,” he continued, and the strong man looked into the girl's eyes with a world of tenderness. “Do you think you have any feeling for Willy—that is, more than the common? I saw how you sat together as I came in to you. I've marked you before, when he has been by. I've marked him, too. You've been strength and solace to him in this trouble. Do you think if he loved you, Rotha—do you think, then, you could love him? Wait,” he added, as she raised her eyes, and with parted lips seemed prepared to speak. “It is not for him I ask. God knows it is as much for you as for him, and perhaps—perhaps, I say, most of all—for myself.”
With a frank voice and face, with luminous eyes in which there was neither fear nor shame, Rotha answered,—
“Yes, I could love him; I think I do so now.”
She spoke to Ralph as she might have spoken to a father whom she reverenced, and from whom no secret of her soul should be hid. He heard her in silence. Not until now, not until he had heard her last word, had he realized what it would cost him to hear it. The agony of a lifetime seemed crushed into that short moment. But he had made it for himself, and now at length it was over. To yield her up—perhaps it was a link in the chain of retribution. To say nothing of his own love—perhaps it would be accepted as a dumb atonement. To see her win the love and be won by the love of his brother—perhaps it would soften his exile with thoughts of recompense for a wrong that it had been his fate to do to her and hers, though she knew it not. There was something like the white heat of subdued passion in his voice when he spoke again.
“He does love you, Rotha,” he said quietly, “and he will ask you to be his wife. But he cannot do so yet, and, meantime, while my mother lives—while I am gone—God knows where—while I am away from the old home—I ask you now once more to stay.”
The great clock in the corner ticked out loud in the silence of the next minute; only that and the slow breathing of the dog sleeping on the hearth fell on the ear.
“Yes, I will stay,” said the girl; and while she spoke Willy Ray walked into the kitchen.
Then they talked together long and earnestly, these three, under the shadow of the terrible mystery that hung above them all, of life and death. Ralph spoke as one overawed by a sense of fatality. The world and its vicissitudes had left behind engraven on his heart a message and lesson, and it was not altogether a hopeful one. He saw that fate hung by a thread; that our lives are turned on the pivot of some mere chance; that, traced back to their source, all our joys and all our sorrows appear to come of some accident no more momentous than a word or a look. In solemn tones he seemed to say that there is a plague-spot of evil at the core of this world and this life, and that it infects everything. We may do our best—we should do our best—but we are not therefore to expect reward. Perhaps that reward will come to us while we live. More likely it will be the crown laid on our grave. Happy are we if our loves find fulfilment—if no curse rests upon them. Should we hope on? He hardly knew. Destiny works her own way!
Thus they talked in that solitary house among the mountains. They sat far into the night, these rude sons and this daughter of the hills, groping in their own uncertain, unlearned way after solutions of life's problems that wiser heads than theirs ages on ages before and since have never compassed, shouting for echoes into the voiceless caverns of the world's great and awful mysteries.
At sunrise the following morning two men walked through Wythburn towards the hillock known as the Raise, down the long road that led to the south. The younger man had attained to the maturity of full manhood. Brawny and stalwart, with limbs that strode firmly over the ground; with an air of quiet and reposeful power; with a steadily poised head; with a full bass voice, soft, yet deep; with a face that had for its utmost beauty the beauty of virile strength and resolution, softened, perhaps, into tenderness of expression by washing in the waters of sorrow,—such, now, was Ralph Ray. Over a jerkin he wore the long sack coat, belted and buckled, of the dalesmen of his country. Beneath a close-fitting goatskin cap his short, wavy hair lay thick and black. A pack was strapped about him from shoulder to waist. He carried the long staff of a mountaineer.
Were there in the wide world of varying forms and faces a form and a face so much unlike his own as were those of the man who walked, nay, jerked along, in short, fitful paces, by his side? Little and slight, with long thin gray hair and dishevelled beard, with the startled eyes of a frighted fawn, and with its short, fearful glances, with a sharp face, worn into deep ridges that changed their shape with every step and every word, with nervous, twitching fingers, with a shrill voice and quick speech,—it was Simeon Stagg, the outcast, the castaway.
These two were to part company soon. Not more devoted to its master was the dog that ran about them than was Sim to Ralph. He was now to lose the only friend who had the will and the strength to shield him against the cruel world that was all the world to him.
They were walking along the pack-horse road on the breast of the fell, and they walked long in silence. Each was busy with his thoughts—the one too weak, the other too strong, to give them utterance.
“There,” said Ralph as they reached the top of the Raise, “we must part now, old friend.” He tried to give a cheery tone to his voice. “You'll go on to the fell every day and look around—an idle task, I fear, but still you'll go, as I would have gone if I might have stayed in the old country.”
Sim nodded assent.
“And now you'll go back to the Mess, as I told you. Rotha will want you there, and Willy too. You'll fill my place till I return, you know.”
Sim shook his head.
“I'd be nothing but an ache and a stound to the lass, as I've olas been—nothing but an ache and a stound to them all.”
“No, not that; a comfort, if only you will try to have it so. Be a man, Sim—look men in the face—things will mend with you now. Go back and live with them at the old home; they'll want you there.”
“Since you will not let me come with you, Ralph, tell me when will you come back? I'm afeart—I don't know why—but some'at tells me you'll not come back—tell me, Ralph, that you will.”
“These troublous times will soon be past,” said Ralph. “There'll be a great reckoning day soon, I fear. Then we'll meet again—never doubt it. And now good bye—good bye once more, old friend, and God be with you.”
Ralph turned about and walked a few paces southward. The dog followed him.
“Go back, Laddie,” said Ralph. Laddie stood and looked into his face with something of the supplicatory appeal that was on the countenance of the man he had just left. The faithful creature had followed Ralph throughout life; he had been to his master a companion more constant than his shadow; he had never before been driven away.
“Go back, Laddie,” said Ralph again, and not without a tremor in his deep voice. The dog dropped his head and slunk towards Sim.
Then Ralph walked on.
The sun had risen over Lauvellen, and the white wings of a fair morning lay on the hamlet in the vale below. Sim stood long on the Raise, straining dim eyes into the south, where the diminishing figure of his friend was passing out of his ken.
It was gone at length; the encircling hills had hidden it. Then the unfriended outcast turned slowly away.
The smoke was rising lazily in blue coils from many a chimney as Sim turned his back on the Raise and retraced his steps to Wythburn.
In the cottage by the smithy—they stood together near the bridge—the fire had been newly kindled. Beneath a huge kettle, swung from an unseen iron hook, the boughs crackled and puffed and gave out the odor of green wood.
Bared up to the armpits and down to the breast, the blacksmith was washing himself in a bowl of water placed on a chair. His mother sat on a low stool, with a pair of iron tongs in her hands, feeding the fire from a bundle of gorse that lay at one side of the hearth. She was a big, brawny, elderly woman with large bony hands, and a face that had hard and heavy features, which were dotted here and there with discolored warts. Her dress was slatternly and somewhat dirty. A soiled linen cap covered a mop of streaky hair, mouse-colored and unkempt.
“He's backset and foreset,” she said in a low tone. “Ey, eye; he's made a sad mull on't.”
Mrs. Garth purred to herself as she lifted another pile of gorse on to the crackling fire.
Joe answered with a grating laugh, and then with a burr he applied a towel to his face.
“Nay, nay, mother. He has a gay bit of gumption in him, has Ray. It'll be no kitten play to catch hold on him, and they know that they do.”
The emphasis was accompanied by a lowered tone, and a sidelong motion of the head towards a doorway that led out of the kitchen.
“Kitten play or cat play, it's dicky with him; nought so sure, Joey,” said Mrs. Garth; and her cold eyes sparkled as she purred again with satisfaction.
“That's what you're always saying,” said Joe testily; “but it never comes to anything and never will.”
“Weel, weel, there's nought so queer as folk,” mumbled Mrs. Garth.
Joe seemed to understand his mother's implication.
“I'm moider'd to death,” he said, “what with yourself and them. I'm right glad they're going off this morning, that's the truth.”
This declaration of Mr. Garth's veracity was not conducive to amiability.
He looked as black as his sanguine complexion would allow.
Mrs. Garth glanced up at him. “Why, laddie, what ails thee? Thou'rt as crook't as a tiphorn this morning,” she said, in a tone that was meant to coax her son out of a cantankerous temper.
“I'm like to be,” grumbled Mr. Garth.
“Why, laddie?” asked his mother, purring, now in other fashion.
“Why?” said Joe,—“why?—because I can never sleep at night now, no, nor work in the day neither—that's why.”
“Hush!” said Mrs. Garth, turning a quick eye towards the aforementioned door. Then quietly resuming her attentions to the gorse, she added, in another tone, “That's nowther nowt nor summat, lad.”
“It'll take a thicker skin nor mine, mother, to hold out much longer,” said Joe huskily, but struggling to speak beneath his breath.
“Yer skin's as thin as a cat-lug,” said Mrs. Garth in a bitter whisper.
“I've told you I cannot hold out much longer,” said Joe, “and I cannot.”
“Hod thy tongue, then,” growled Mrs. Garth over the kettle.
There was a minute's silence between them.
The blacksmith donned his upper garments. His mother listened for the simmer and bubble of the water on the fire.
“How far did ye bargain to tak them?”
“To Gaskarth—the little lame fellow will make for the Carlisle coach once they're there?”
“When was t'horse and car to be ready?”
“Nine o'clock forenoon.”
“Then it's full time they were gitten roused.”
Mrs. Garth rose from the stool, hobbled to the door which had been previously indicated by sundry nods and jerks, and gave it two or three sharp raps.
A voice from within answered sleepily, “Right—right as a trivet, old lady,” and yawned.
Mrs. Garth put her head close to the door-jamb.
“Ye'd best be putten the better leg afore, gentlemen,” she said with becoming amiability; “yer breakfast is nigh about ready, gentlemen.”
“The better leg, David, eh? Ha! ha! ha!” came from another muffled voice within.
Mrs. Garth turned about, oblivious of her own conceit. In a voice and manner that had undergone a complete and sudden change, she whispered to Joe,—
“Thou'rt a great bledderen fool.”
The blacksmith had been wrapped in his thoughts. His reply was startlingly irrelevant.
“Fool or none, I'll not do it,” said Joe emphatically.
“Do what?” asked his mother in a tone of genuine inquiry.
“What I told you.”
“Tut, what's it to thee?”
“Ay, but it is something to me, say I.”
“Tush, thou'rt yan of the wise asses.”
“If these constables,” lurching his head, “if they come back, as they say, to take Ralph, I'll have no hand in't.”
“And why did ye help them this turn?” said Mrs. Garth, with an elevation of her heavy eyebrows.
“Because I knew nowt of what they were after. If I'd but known that it were for—for—him—”
“Hod thy tongue. Thou wad mak a priest sweer,” said Mrs. Garth. The words rolled within her teeth.
“I heard what they said of the warrant, mother,” said Joe; “it were the same warrant, I reckon, as old Mattha's always preaching aboot, and it's missing, and it seems to me that they want to make out as Ray—as Ralph—”
“Wilt ye never hod yer bletheren tongue?” said Mrs. Garth in a husky whisper. Then in a mollified temper she added,—
“An what an they do, laddie; what an they do? Did ye not hear yersel that it were yan o' the Rays—yan o' them; and what's the odds which—what's the odds, I say—father and son, they were both of a swatch.”
At this moment there came from the inner room some slight noise of motion, and the old woman lifted her finger to her lip.
“And who knows it were not yan on 'em—who?” added Mrs. Garth, after a moment's silence.
“Nay, mother,” said Joe, and his gruff voice was husky in his throat,—“nay, mother, but there is them that knows.”
The woman gave a short forced titter.
“Ye wad mak a swine laugh, ye wad,” she said.
Then, coming closer to where her son now stood with a “lash” comb in his hand before a scratched and faded mirror, she said under her breath,—
“There'll be no rest for him till summat's done, none; tak my word for that. But yance they hang some riff-raff for him it will soon be forgotten. Then all will be as dead as hissel', back and end. What's it to thee, man, who they tak for't? Nowt, Theer's nea sel' like awn sel', Joey.”
Mrs. Garth emphasized her sentiment with a gentle prod of her son's breast.
“That's what you told me long ago,” said the blacksmith, “when you set me to work to help hang the tailor. I cannot bear the sight of him, I cannot.”
Mrs. Garth took her son roughly by the shoulder.
“Ye'd best git off and see to t' horse and car. Stand blubbering here and ye'll gang na farther in two days nor yan.”
There was a step on the road in front.
“Who's that gone by?” asked Mrs. Garth.
Joe stepped to the window.
“Little Sim,” he said, and dropped his head.