Though she lost the best of her faculties, Mrs. Ray did not succumb to the paralytic seizure occasioned by the twofold shock which she had experienced. On the morning after Ralph's departure from Wythburn she seemed to awake from the torpor in which she had lain throughout the two preceding days. She opened her eyes and looked up into the faces that were bent above her.
There were evidences of intelligence surviving the wreck of physical strength. Speech had gone, but her eyes remained full of meaning. When they spoke to her she seemed to hear. At some moments she, appeared to struggle with the impulse to answer, but the momentary effort subsided into an inarticulate gurgle, and then it was noticed that for an instant the tears stood in her eyes.
“She wants to say, 'God bless you,'” said Rotha when she observed these impotent manifestations, and at such times the girl would stoop and put her lips to the forehead of the poor dear soul.
There grew to be a kind of commerce in kind between these two, destitute as the one was of nearly every channel of communication. The hundred tricks of dumb show, the glance, the lifted brow, the touch of the hand, the smile, the kiss,—all these acquired their several meanings, and somehow they seemed to speak to the silent sufferer in a language as definite as words. It came to be realized that this was a condition in which Mrs. Ray might live for years.
After a week, or less, they made a bed for her in a room adjoining the kitchen, and once a day they put her in a great arm-chair and wheeled her into her place by the neuk window.
“It will be more heartsome for her,” said Rotha when she suggested the change; “she'll like for us to talk to her all the same that she can't answer us, poor soul.”
So it came about that every morning the invalid spent an hour or two in her familiar seat by the great ingle, the chair she had sat in day after day in the bygone times, before these terrible disasters had come like the breath of a plague-wind and bereft her of her powers.
“I wonder if she remembers what happened,” said Willy; “do you think she has missed them—father and Ralph?”
“Why, surely,” said Rotha. “But her ears are better than her eyes. Don't you mark how quick her breath comes sometimes when she has heard your voice outside, and how bright her eyes are, and how she tries to say, 'God bless you!' as you come up to her?”
“Yes, I think I've marked it,” said Willy, “and I've seen that light in her eyes die away into a blank stare or puzzled look, as if she wanted to ask some question while she lifted them to my face.”
“And Laddie there, when he barks down the lonnin—haven't you seen her then—her breast heaving, the fingers of that hand of hers twitching, and the mumble of her poor lost voice, as though she'd say, 'Come, Rotha, my lass, be quick with the supper—he's here, my lass, he's back?'”
“I think you must be right in that, Rotha—that she misses Ralph,” said Willy.
“She's nobbut a laal bit quieter, that's all,” said Matthew Branthwaite one morning when he turned in at Shoulthwaite. “The dame nivver were much of a talker—not to say a talker, thoo knows; but mark me, she loves a crack all the same.”
Matthew acted pretty fully upon his own diagnosis of his old neighbor's seizure. He came to see her frequently, stayed long, rehearsed for her benefit all the gossip of the village, fired off his sapient proverbs, and generally conducted himself in his intercourse with the invalid precisely as he had done before. In answer to any inquiries put to him at the Red Lion he invariably contented himself with his single explanation of Mrs. Ray's condition, “She's nobbut a laal bit quieter, and the dame nivver were much of a talker, thoo knows.”
Rotha Stagg remained at Shoulthwaite in accordance with her promise given to Ralph. It was well for the household that she did so. Young as the girl was, she alone seemed to possess either the self-command or the requisite energy and foresight to keep the affairs of the home and of the farm in motion. It was not until many days after the disasters that had befallen the family that Willy Ray recovered enough self-possession to engage once more in his ordinary occupations. He had spent the first few days in the room with his stricken mother, almost as unconscious as herself of what was going on about him; and indeed his nature had experienced a shock only less serious.
Meantime, Rotha undertook the management of the home-stead. None ever disputed her authority. The tailor's daughter had stepped into her place as head of the household at the Moss, and ruled it by that force of will which inferior natures usually obey without question, and almost without consciousness of servitude. She alone knew rightly what had to be done.
As for the tailor himself, he had also submitted—at least partially—to his daughter's passive government. A day or two after Ralph Ray's departure, Rotha had gone in search of her father, and had brought him back with her. She had given him his work to do, and had tried to interest him in his occupations. But a sense of dependence seemed to cling to him, and at times he had the look of some wild creature of the hills which had been captured indeed, but was watching his opportunity of escape.
Sim rose at daybreak, and, wet or dry, he first went up on to the hills. In an hour or two he was back again. Rotha understood his purpose, but no word of explanation passed between them. She looked into his face inquiringly day' after day, but nothing she saw there gave hint of hope. The mare was lost. She would never be recovered.
Sometimes a fit of peculiar despondency would come upon Sim. At such times he would go off without warning, and be seen no more for days. Rotha knew that he had gone to his old haunts on the hill, for nothing induced him to return to his cottage at Fornside. No one went in pursuit of him. In a day or two he would come back and take up his occupation as if he had never been away. Walking leisurely into the court-yard, he would lift a besom and sweep, or step into the stable and set to work at stitching up a rent in the old harness.
Willy Ray can hardly be said to have avoided Sim; he ignored him. There was a more potent relation between these two than any of which Willy had an idea. Satisfied as he had professed himself to be that Sim was an innocent man, he was nevertheless unable to shake off an uneasy sentiment of repulsion experienced in his presence. He struggled to hold this in check, for Rotha's sake. But there was only one way in which to avoid the palpable manifestation of his distrust, and that was to conduct himself in such a manner as to appear unconscious of Sim's presence in the house.
“The girl is not to blame,” he said to himself again and again. “Rotha is innocent, whoever may be guilty.”
He put the case to himself so frequently in this way, he tried so hard to explain to his own mind that Rotha at least was free of all taint, that the very effort made him conscious of a latent suspicion respecting Sim.
As to Sim's bearing towards Willy, it was the same as he had adopted towards almost the whole of the little world in which he lived; he took up the position of the guilty man, the man to be shunned, the man from whose contaminating touch all other men might fairly shrink. It never occurred to Sim that there lay buried at his own heart a secret that could change the relations in which he stood towards this younger and more self-righteous son of Angus Ray.
Perhaps, if it had once been borne in upon him that another than himself was involved in the suspicion which had settled upon his name—if he had even come to realize that Rotha might suffer the stigma of a fatal reproach for no worse offence than that she was her father's daughter—perhaps, if he had once felt this as a possible contingency, he would have shaken off the black cloud that seemed to justify the odium in which he was held by those about him, and lifted up his head for her sake if not for his own.
But Sim lacked virile strength. The disease of melancholy had long kept its seat at his heart, and that any shadow of doubt could rest on Rotha as a result of a misdeed, or supposed misdeed, of his had never yet occurred to Sim's mind.
And truly Rotha was above the blight of withering doubt. Rude daughter of a rude age, in a rude country and without the refinements of education, still how pure and sweet she was; how strong, and yet how tender; how unconscious in her instinct of self-sacrifice; how devoted in her loyalty; how absolute in her trust!
But deep and rich as was Rotha's simple nature, it was yet incomplete. She herself was made aware that a great change was even now coming to pass. She understood the transformation little, if at all; but it seemed as though, somehow, a new sense were taking hold of her. And, indeed, a new light had floated into her little orbit. Was it too bright as yet for her to see it for what it was? It flooded everything about her, and bathed the world in other hues than the old time. Disaster had followed on disaster in the days that had just gone by, but nevertheless—she knew not how—it was not all gloom in her heart. In the waking hours of the night there was more than the memory of the late events in her mind; her dreams were not all nightmares; and in the morning, when the swift recoil of sad thoughts rushed in at her first awakening, a sentiment of indefinite solace came close behind it. What was it that was coming to pass?
It was love that was now dawning upon her, though still vague and indeterminate; it hardly knew its object.
Willy Ray took note of this change in the girl, and thought he understood it. He accepted it as the one remaining gleam of hope and happiness for both of them amid the prevailing gloom. Rotha avoided the searching light of his glances. When the work of the household was in hand she shook off the glamour of the new-found emotion.
In the morning when the men came down for breakfast, and again in the evening when they came in for supper, the girl busied herself in her duties with the ardor of one having no thought behind them and no feeling in which they did not share. But when the quieter hours of the day left her free for other thoughts, she would stand and look long into the face of the poor invalid to whom she had become nurse and foster-child in one; or walk, without knowing why, to the window neuk, and put her hand on the old wheel, that now rested quiet and unused beneath it, while she looked towards the south through eyes that saw nothing that was there.
She was standing so one morning a fortnight or more after Ralph's departure from Wythburn, when Willy came into the kitchen, and, before she was conscious of his presence, sat in the seat of the little alcove within which she stood.
He took the hand that lay disengaged by her side and told her in a word or two of his love. He had loved her long in silence. He had loved her before she became the blessing she now was to him and to his; to-day he loved her more than ever before.
It was a simple story, and it came with the accent of sincerity in every word.
He thought perhaps she loved him in return—he had sometimes thought so—was he wrong?
There was a pause between them. Regaining some momentary composure, the girl turned her eyes once more aside and looked through the neuk window towards the south. She felt the color mounting to her cheeks, and knew that the young man had risen to his feet beside her. He, on his part, saw only the fair face before him, and felt only the little hand that lay passively in his own.
“It's a sad sort of home to bring you to. It would be idle to ask if you have been happy here—it would be a mockery; but—but—”
“I have been happy; that is, happy to do as Ralph wished me.”
“And as I wished?”
“As you wished too, Willy.”
“You've been a blessing to us, Rotha. I sometimes think, though, that it was hardly fair to bring you into the middle of this trouble.”
“He did it for the best,” said Rotha.
“Who?”
There was a little start of recovering consciousness.
“Ralph,” she answered, and dropped her head.
“True—he did it for the best,” repeated Willy, and relapsed into silence.
“Besides, I had no home then, you know.”
How steadfastly the girl's eyes were fixed oh the distant south!
“You had your father's home, Rotha.”
“Ah, no! When it ceased to be poor father's home, how could it be mine any longer? No, I was homeless.”
There was another pause.
“Then let me ask you to make this house your home forever. Can you not do so?”
“I think so—I can scarcely tell—he said it might be best—”
Willy let loose her hand. Had he dreamed? Was it a wild hallucination—the bright gleam of happiness that had penetrated the darkness that lay about him at every step?
How yearningly the girl's eyes still inclined to yonder distant south.
“Let us say no more about it now, Rotha,” he said huskily. “If you wish it, we'll talk again on this matter—that is, I say, if you wish it; if not, no matter.”
The young man was turning away. Without moving the fixed determination of her gaze, Rotha said quietly,—
“Willy, I think perhaps I do love you—perhaps—I don't know. I remember he said that our hearts lay open before each other—”
“Who said so, Rotha?”
There was another start of recovering consciousness. Then the wide eyes looked full into his, and the tongue that would have spoken refused that instant to speak. The name that trembled in a half-articulate whisper on the parted lips came upwards from the heart.
But the girl was ignorant of her own secret even yet.
“We'll say no more about it now, Rotha,” repeated Willy in a broken voice. “If you wish it, we'll talk again; give me a sign, and perhaps we'll talk on this matter again.”
In another moment the young man was gone.
It was not till she was alone that the girl realized the situation. She put her hand over her eyes—the hand that still tingled with the light pressure of his touch.
What had happened? Had Willy asked her to become his wife? And had she seemed to say No?
The sound of his voice was still lingering on her ears; it was a low broken murmur, such as might have fallen to a sob.
Had she, then, refused? That could not be. She was but a poor homeless girl, with nothing to recommend her to such a man as he was. Yet she knew—she had heard—that he loved her, and would one day ask her to be his wife. She had thought that day was far distant. She had never realized that it would be now. Why had he not given her time to think? If Ralph knew what she had done!
For an hour or two Rotha went about the house with a look of bewilderment in her eyes.
Willy came back soon afterwards, and helped her to wheel his mother in her chair to her place by the hearth. He had regained his wonted composure, and spoke to her as if nothing unusual had occurred. Perhaps it had been something like a dream, all this that haunted her. Willy was speaking cheerfully enough. Just then her father came into the kitchen, and slunk away silently to a seat in the remotest corner of the wide ingle. Willy went out almost immediately. Everything was in a maze. Could it be that she had seemed to say No?
Rotha was rudely awakened from her trance by the entrance at this moment of the parson of the chapel on the Raise. The present was the first visit the Reverend Nicholas Stevens had paid since the day of the funeral. He had heard of the latest disaster which had befallen the family at the Moss. He had also learned something of the paralytic seizure which the disaster had occasioned. He could not any longer put away the solemn duty of visitation. To take the comfort of his presence, to give the light of his countenance to the smitten, was a part of his sacred function. These accidents were among the sore trials incident to a cure of souls. The Reverend Nicholas had brushed himself spick-and-span that morning, and, taking up his gold-headed cane, had walked the two miles to Shoulthwaite.
Rotha was tying the ribbons of Mrs. Ray's white cap under her chin as the vicar entered. She took up a chair for him, and placed it near the invalid. But he did not sit immediately. His eye traversed the kitchen at a glance. He saw Mrs. Ray propped up with her pillows, and looking vacantly about her, but his attention seemed to be riveted on Sim, who sat uneasily on the bench, apparently trying to escape the concentrated gaze.
“What have we here?” he said in a cold and strident voice. “The man Simeon Stagg? Is he here too?”
The moment before Rotha had gone into the dairy adjoining, and, coming back, she was handing a bowl of milk to her father. Sim clutched at the dish with nervous fingers.
The Reverend Nicholas walked with measured paces towards where he sat. Then he paused, and stood a yard or two behind Sim, whose eyes were still averted.
“I was told you had made your habitation on the hillside; a fitting home, no doubt, for one unfit to house with his fellows.”
Sim's hand trembled violently, and he set the bowl of milk on the floor beside him. Rotha was standing a yard or two apart, her breast heaving.
“Have you left it for good, pray?” There was the suspicion of a sneer in the tone with which the question was asked.
“Yes, he has left it for good,” said Rotha, catching her breath.
Sim had dropped his head on his hand, his elbow resting on his knee.
“More's the shame, perhaps; who knows but it may have been the best place for shame to hide in!”
Sim got up, and turning about, with his eyes still fixed on the ground, he hurried out of the house.
“You've driven him away again—do you know that?” said Rotha, regaining her voice, and looking fall into the vicar's face, her eyes aflame.
“If so, I have done well, young woman.” Then surveying her with a look of lofty condescension, he added, “And what is your business here?”
“To nurse Mrs. Ray; that is part of it.”
“Even so? And were you asked to come?”
“Surely.”
“By whom?”
“Ralph, her son.”
“Small respect he could have had for you, young woman.”
“Tell me what you mean, sir,” said the girl, with a glance of mingled pride and defiance.
“Tell you what I mean, young woman! Have you, then, no modesty? Has that followed the shame of the hang-dog vagrant who has just left us?”
“Not another word about him! If you have anything to say about me, say it, sir.”
“What!—the father dead! the mother stricken into unconsciousness—two sons—and you a young woman—was there no matron in the parish, that a young woman must come here?”
Rotha's color, that had tinged her cheeks, mounted to her eyes and descended to her neck. The prudery that was itself a sin had penetrated the armor of her innocence. Without another word, she turned and left the kitchen.
“Well, Widow Ray,” she heard his reverence say, in an altered tone, as he faced the invalid. She listened for no more.
Her trance was over now, and rude indeed had been the awakening. Perhaps, after all, she had no business in this house—perhaps the vicar was right. Yet that could not be. She thought of Mrs. Ray smitten down and dependent upon those about her for help in every simple office of life, and she thought of the promise she had made to Ralph. “Promise me,” he had said, “that you will stay in the old home as long as mother lives.” And she had promised; her pledged word was registered in heaven.
But then, again, perhaps Ralph had not foreseen that his mother might live for years in her present state. No doubt he thought her near to death. He could not have intended that she should live long in his brother's house.
Yet he had so intended. “He will ask you to be his wife, Rotha,” Ralph had said, “but he can't do so yet.”
This brought her memory back to the earlier events of the morning. Willy Ray had already asked her to become his wife. And what had she done on her part? Had she not seemed to say No?
Willy was far above her. It was true enough that she was a poor homeless girl, without lands, without anything but the hands she worked with. Willy was now a statesman, and he was something of a scholar too. Yes, he was in every way far above her. Were there not others who might love him? Yet Ralph had seemed to wish her to become his brother's wife, and what Ralph had said would be best, must of course be so.
She could not bring herself to leave Shoulthwaite—that was clear enough to her bewildered sense. Nor could she remain on the present terms of relation—that, also, was but too clear. If Ralph were at home, how different everything would be! He would lead her with a word out of this distressing maze.
When Willy Ray parted from Rotha after he had told her of his love, he felt that the sunshine had gone out of his life forever. He had been living for weeks and months in a paradise that was not his own. Why he had loved this girl he could hardly say. She was—every one knew it—the daughter of a poor tailor, and he was the poorest and meanest creature in the country round about.
The young man could not help telling himself that he might have looked to marry the daughter of the largest statesman in a radius of miles.
But then, the girl herself was a noble creature—none could question it. Rude, perhaps, in some ways, without other learning than the hard usage of life had given her; yet she was a fine soul, as deep as the tarn on the mountain-top, and as pure and clear.
And he had fancied she loved him. No disaster had quite overshadowed the bright hope of that surmise. Yet had she not loved Ralph instead? Perhaps the girl herself did not realize that in reality the love of his brother had taken hold of her. Did Ralph himself love the girl? That could not be, or he should have guessed the truth the night they spoke together. Still, it might be that Ralph loved her after all.
By the following morning Rotha had decided that her duty at this crisis lay one way only, and that way she must take. Ralph had said it would be well for her to become Willy's wife, and she had promised him never to leave the Moss while his mother lived. She would do as he had said.
Willy had asked her for a sign, and she must give hint, one—a sign that she was willing to say “Yes” if he spoke again to-day as he had spoken yesterday.
Having once settled this point, her spirits experienced a complete elevation. What should the sign be? Rotha walked to the neuk window and stood to think, her hand on the wheel and her eyes towards the south. What, then, should the sign be?
It was by no means easy to hit on a sign that would show him at a glance that her mind was made up; that, however she may have wavered in her purpose yesterday, her resolve was fixed to-day. She stood long and thought of many plans, but none harmonized with her mood.
“Why should I not tell him—just in a word?” Often as she put if to herself so, she shrank from the ordeal involved.
No, she must hit on a sign, but she began to despair of lighting on a fitting one. Then she shifted her gaze from the landscape through the window, and turned to where Mrs. Ray sat in her chair close by. How vague and vacant was the look in those dear eyes! how mute hung the lips that were wont to say, “God bless you!” how motionless lay the fingers that once spun with the old wheel so deftly!
The old spinning-wheel—here it was, and Rotha's right hand still rested upon it. Ah! the wheel—surely that was, the sign she wanted.
She would sit and spin—yes, she could spin, too, though it was long since she had done so—she would sit in his mother's chair—the one his mother used to sit in when she spun—and perhaps he would understand from that sign that she would try to take his mother's place if he wished her so to do.
Quick, let it be done at once. He usually came up to the house at this time of the morning.
She looked at the clock. He would be here soon, she thought; he might be coming now.
And Willy Ray was, in truth, only a few yards from the house at the moment. He had been up on to the hills that morning. He had been there on a similar errand several mornings before, and had never told himself frankly what that errand really was. Returning homewards on this occasion, he had revolved afresh the subject that lay nearest to his heart.
If Ralph really loved the girl—but how should he know the truth as to that, unless Rotha knew it? If the girl loved his brother, he could relinquish her. He was conscious of no pang of what was called jealousy in this matter. An idol that he had worshipped seemed to be shattered—that was all.
If he saw that Rotha loved Ralph, he must give up forever his one dream of happiness—and there an end.
It was in this mood that he opened the kitchen door, just as Rotha had put her foot on the treadle and taken the flax in her hand.
There the girl sat, side by side with his mother, spinning at the wheel which within his recollection no hand but one had touched. How fresh and fair the young face looked, tinged, as it was at this moment, too, with a conscious blush!
Rotha had tried to lift her eyes as Willy entered. She intended to meet his glance with a smile. She wished to catch the significance of his expression. But the lids were heavier than lead that kept her gaze fixed on the “rock” and flax below her.
She felt that after a step or two he had stood still in front of her. She knew that her face was crimson. Her eyes, too, were growing dim.
“Rotha, my darling!” She heard no more.
The spinning-wheel had been pushed hastily aside. She was on her feet, and Willy's arms were about her.
As the parson left Shoulthwaite that morning he encountered Joe Garth at the turning of the lonnin. The blacksmith was swinging along the road, with a hoop over his shoulder. He lifted his cap as the Reverend Nicholas came abreast of him. That worthy was usually too much absorbed to return such salutations, but he stopped on this occasion.
“Would any mortal think it?” he said; “the man Simeon Stagg is here housed at the home of my old friend and esteemed parishioner, Angus Ray!”
Mr. Garth appeared to be puzzled to catch the relevancy of the remark. He made no reply.
“The audacity of the man is past belief,” continued the parson. “Think of his effrontery! Does he imagine that God or man has forgotten the mystery of that night in Martinmas?”
The blacksmith realized that some response was expected from him. With eyes bent on the ground, he muttered, “He's getting above with himself, sir.”
“Getting above himself! I should think so, forsooth. But verily a reckoning day is at hand. Woe to him who carries a load of guilt at his heart and thinks that no man knows of it. Better a millstone were about his neck, and he were swallowed up in the great deep.”
The parson turned away. Garth stood for a moment without perceiving that he was alone, his eyes still bent on the ground. Then he walked moodily in the other direction.
When he reached his home, Joe threw down the hoop in the smithy and went into the house. His mother was there.
“Sim, he's at Shoulthwaite,” he said. “It's like enough his daughter is there, too.”
A sneer crossed Mrs. Garth's face.
“Tut, she's yan as wad wed the midden for sake of the muck.”
“You mean she's setting herself at one of the Rays?”
Mrs. Garth snorted, but gave no more explicit reply.
“Ey, she's none so daft, is yon lass,” observed the blacksmith.
This was not quite the trace he had meant to follow. After a pause he said, “What came of his papers—in the trunk?”
“Whose?”
“Thou knows.”
Mrs. Garth gave her son a quick glance.
“It's like they're still at Fornside. I must see to 'em again.”
The blacksmith responded eagerly,—
“Do, mother, do.”
There was another pause. Joe made some pretence of scraping a file which he had picked up from a bench.
“Thou hasn't found out if old Angus made a will?” said Mrs. Garth.
“No.”
“No, of course not,” said Mrs. Garth, with a curl of the lip. “What I want doing I must do myself. Always has been so, and always will be.”
“I wish it were true, mother,” muttered Joe in a voice scarcely audible.
“What's that?”
“Nowt.”
“I'll go over to Shoulth'et to-morrow,” purred Mrs. Garth. “If the old man made no will, I'll maybe have summat to say as may startle them a gay bit.”
The woman grunted to herself at the prospect. “Ey, ey,” she mumbled, “it'll stop their match-makin'. Ey, ey, and what's mair, what's mair, it'll bring yon Ralph back helter-skelter.”
“Mother, mother,” cried the blacksmith, “can you never leave that ugly thing alone?”
The next day or two passed by with Rotha like a dream. Her manners had become even gentler and her voice even softer than before, and the light of self-consciousness had stolen into her eyes. Towards the evening of the following day Liza Branthwaite ran up to the Moss to visit her. Rotha was in the dairy at the churn, and when Liza pushed open the door and came unexpectedly upon her she experienced a momentary sense of confusion which was both painful and unaccountable. The little lady was herself flushed with a sharp walk, and muffled up to the throat from a cutting wind.
“Why, Rotha, my girl, what ever may be the matter with you?” said Liza, coming to a pause in the middle of the floor, and, without removing the hands that had been stuffed up her sleeves from the cold, looking fixedly in her face.
“I don't know, Liza; I wish you could tell me, lass,” said Rotha, recovering enough self-possession to simulate a subterfuge.
“Here I've been churning and churning since morning, and don't seem much nigher the butter yet.”
“It's more than the butter that pests you,” said Liza, with a wise shake of the head.
“Yes; it must be the churn. I can make nothing of it.”
“Shaf on the churn, girl! You just look like Bessie MacNab when they said Jamie o' the Glen had coddled her at the durdum yon night at Robin Forbes's.”
“Hush, Liza,” said Rotha, stooping unnecessarily low to investigate the progress of her labors, and then adding, from the depths of the churn, “why, and how did Bessie look?”
“Look? look?” cried Liza, with a tip of the chin upwards, as though the word itself ought to have been sufficiently explicit,—“look, you say? Why,” continued Liza, condescending at length to be more definite as to the aforesaid young lady's appearance after a kiss at a country dance, “why, she looked just for the world like you, Rotha.”
Then throwing off her thick outer garment without waiting for any kind of formal invitation, Liza proceeded to make herself at home in a very practical way.
“Come, let me have a turn at the churn,” she said, “and let us see if it is the churn that ails you—giving you two great eyes staring wide as if you were sickening for a fever, and two cheeks as red as the jowls of 'Becca Rudd's turkey.”
In another moment Liza was rolling up the sleeves of her gown, preparatory to the experimental exercise she had proposed to herself; but this was not a task that had the disadvantage of interrupting the flow of her gossip.
“But I say, lass,” she rattled on, “have you heard what that great gammerstang of a Mother Garth has been telling 'Becca Rudd about you? 'Becca told me herself, and I says to 'Becca, says I, 'Don't you believe it; it's all a lie, for that old wizzent ninny bangs them all at lying; and that's saying a deal, you know. Besides,' I says, 'what does it matter to her or to you, 'Becca, or to me, if so be that it is true, which I'm not for believing that it is, not I,' I says.”
“But what was it, Liza? You've not told me what it was, lass, that Mrs. Garth had said about me.”
Rotha had stopped churning, and was standing, with the color rising even closer round her eyes. Luckily, Liza had no time to observe the minor manifestations of her friend's uneasiness; she had taken hold of the “plunger,” and was squaring herself to her work.
“Say!” she cried; “why the old carlin will say aught in the world but her prayers—she says that you're settin' your cap at one of these Rays boys; that's about what she says the old witchwife, for she's no better. But it's as I said to 'Becca Rudd, says I, 'If it is true what traffic is it of anybody's; but it isn't true,' I says, 'and if it is, where's the girl that has more right? It can't be Ralph that she's settin' her cap at, 'Becca,' I says, 'for Ralph's gone, and mayhap never to come to these parts again the longest day he lives.'”
“Don't say that, Liza,” interrupted Rotha in a hoarse voice.
“Why not? Those redcoats are after him from Carlisle, arn't they?”
“Don't say he'll not come back. We scarce know what may happen.”
“Well, that's what father says, anyway. But, back or not back, it can't be Ralph, I says to 'Becca.”
“There's not a girl worthy of him, Liza; not a girl on the country side. But we'll not repeat their old wife's gossip, eh, lass?”
“Not if you're minded not to, Rotha. But as to there being no girl worthy of Ralph,” said Liza, pausing in her work and lifting herself into an erect position with an air of as much dignity as a lady of her stature could assume, “I'm none so sure of that, you know. He has a fine genty air, I will say; and someways you don't feel the same to him when he comes by you as you do to other men, and he certainly is a great traveller; but to say that there isn't a girl worthy of him, that's like Nabob Johnny tellin' Tibby Fowler that he never met the girl that wasn't partial to him.”
Rotha did not quite realize the parallel that had commended itself to Liza's quick perception, but she raised no objection to the sentiment, and would have shifted the subject.
“What about Robbie, my lass?” she said.
“'And as to Willy Ray,' says I to 'Becca,” continued the loquacious churner, without noticing the question, “' it isn't true as Rotha would put herself in his way; but she's full his match, and you can't show me one that is nigher his equal.'”
Rotha's confusion was increasing every minute.
“'What if her father can't leave her much gear, she has a head that's worth all the gold in Willy's pocket, and more.' Then says 'Becca, 'What about Kitty Jackson?' 'Shaf,' says I, 'she's always curlin' her hair before her bit of a looking-glass.' 'And what about Maggie of Armboth?' says 'Becca. 'She hasn't got such a head as Rotha,' says I, 'forby that she's spending a fortune on starch, what with her caps, and her capes, and her frills, and what not.'”
Liza had by this time rattled away, until by the combined exertion of arms and tongue she had brought herself to a pause for lack of breath. Resting one hand on the churn, she lifted the other to her head to push back the hair that had tumbled over her forehead. As she tossed up her head to facilitate the latter process, her eyes caught a glimpse of Rotha's crimsoning face. “Well,” she said, “I must say this churn's a funny one; it seems to make you as red as 'Becca's turkey, whether you're working at it or lookin' at some one else.”
“Do you think I could listen to all that praise of myself and not blush?” said Rotha, turning aside.
“I could—just try me and see,” responded Liza, with a laugh. “That's nothing to what Nabob Johnny said to me once, and I gave him a slap over the lug for it, the strutting and smirking old peacock. Why, he's all lace—lace at his neck and at his wrists, and on his—”
“You didn't favor him much, Liza.”
“No, but Daddie did; and he said” (the wicked little witch imitated her father's voice and manner), “'Hark ye, lass, ye must hev him and then ye'll be yan o' his heirs!' He wants one or two, I says, 'for the old carle would be bald but for the three that are left on his crown.'”
“Well, but what about Robbie Anderson?” said Rotha, regaining her composure, with a laugh.
At this question Liza's manner underwent a change. The perky chirpness that had a dash of wickedness, not to say of spite, in it, entirely disappeared. Dropping her head and her voice together, she answered,—
“I don't know what's come over the lad. He's maunderin' about all day long except when he's at the Lion, and then, I reckon, he's maunderin' in another fashion.”
“Can't you get him to bide by his work?”
“No; it's first a day for John Jackson at Armboth, and then two days for Sammy Robson at the Lion, and what comes one way goes the other. When he's sober—and that's not often in these days—he's as sour as Mother Garth's plums, and when he's tipsy his head's as soft as poddish.”
“It was a sad day for Robbie when his old mother died,” said Rotha.
“And that was in one of his bouts” said Liza; “but I thought it had sobered him forever. He loved the old soul, did Robbie, though he didn't always do well by her. And now he's broken loose again.”
It was clearly as much as Liza could do to control her tears, and, being conscious of this, she forthwith made a determined effort to simulate the sternest anger.
“I hate to see a man behave as if his head were as soft as poddish. Not that I care,” she added, as if by an afterthought, and as though to conceal the extent to which she felt compromised; “it's nothing to me, that I can see. Only Wythburn's a hard-spoken place, and they're sure to make a scandal of it.”
“It's a pity about Robbie,” said Rotha sympathetically.
Liza could scarcely control her tears. After she had dashed a drop or two from her eyes, she said: “I cannot tell what it's all about. He's always in a ponder, ponder, with his mouth open—except when he's grindin' his teeth. I hate to see a man walking about like a haystack. And Robbie used to have so much fun once on a time.”
The tears were stealing up to Liza's eyes again.
“He can't forget what happened on the fell with the mare—that was a fearful thing, Liza.”
“Father says it's 'cause Robbie had the say over it all; but Joe Garth says it comes of Robbie sticking himself up alongside of Ralph Ray. What a genty one Robbie used to be!”
Liza's face began to brighten at some amusing memories.
“Do you mind Reuben Thwaite's merry night last winter at Aboon Beck?”
“I wasn't there, Liza,” said Rotha.
“Robbie was actin' like a play-actor, just the same as he'd seen at Carlisle. He was a captain, and he murdered a king, and then he was made king himself, and the ghost came and sat in his chair at a great feast he gave. Lord o' me! but it was queer. First he came on when he was going to do the murder and let wit he saw a dagger floating before him. He started and jumped same as our big tom cat when Mouser comes round about him. You'd have died of laughing. Then he comes on for the bank'et, and stamps his foot and tells the ghost to be off; and then he trembles and dodders from head to foot like Mouser when he's had his wash on Saturday nights. You'd have dropt, it was so queer.”
Liza's enjoyment of the tragedy had not been exhausted with the occasion, for now she laughed at the humors of her own narrative.
“But those days are gone,” she continued. “I met Robbie last night, and I says, says I, 'Have you pawned your dancing shoes, Robbie, as you're so glum?' And that's what he is, save when he's tipsy, and then what do ye think the maizelt creature does?”
“What?” said Rotha.
“Why,” answered Liza, with a big tear near to toppling over the corner of her eye, “why, the crack't 'un goes and gathers up all the maimed dogs in Wythburn; 'Becca Rudd's 'Dash,' and that's lame on a hind leg, and Nancy Grey's 'Meg,' and you know she's blind of one eye, and Grace M'Nippen's 'King Dick,' and he's been broken back't this many a long year, and they all up and follow Robbie when he's nigh almost drunk, and then he's right—away he goes with his cap a' one side, and all the folks laughin'—the big poddish-head!”
There was a great sob for Liza in the heart of the humor of that situation; and trying no longer to conceal her sorrow at her lover's relapse into drinking habits, she laid her head on Rotha's breast and wept outright.
“We must go to Mrs. Ray; she'll be lonely, poor old thing,” said Rotha, drying Liza's eyes; “besides, she hasn't had her supper, you know.”
The girls left the dairy, where the churning had made small progress as yet, and went through the kitchen towards the room where the Dame of Shoulthwaite lay in that long silence which had begun sooner with her than with others.
As they passed towards the invalid's room, Mrs. Garth came in at the porch. It was that lady's first visit for years, and her advent on this occasion seemed to the girls to forebode some ill. But her manner had undergone an extraordinary transformation. Her spiteful tone was gone, and the look of sourness, which had often suggested to Liza her affinity to the plums that grew in her own garden, had given place to what seemed to be a look of extreme benevolence.
“It's slashy and cold, but I've come to see my old neighbor,” she said. “I'm sure I've suffered lang and sair ower her affliction, poor body.”
Without much show of welcome from Rotha, the three women went into Mrs. Ray's room and sat down.
“Poor body, who wad have thought it?” said Mrs. Garth, putting her apron to her eye as she looked up at the vacant gaze in the eyes of the sufferer. “I care not now how soon my awn glass may run out. I've so fret myself ower this mischance that the wrinkles'll soon come.”
“She needn't wait much for them if she's anxious to be off,” whispered Liza to Rotha.
“Yes,” continues Mrs. Garth, in her melancholy soliloquy, “I fret mysel' the lee-lang day.”
“She's a deal over slape and smooth,” whispered Liza again. “What's it all about? There's something in the wind, mind me.”
“The good dear old creatur; and there's no knowin' now if she's provided for; there's no knowin' it, I say, is there?”
To this appeal neither of the girls showed any disposition to respond. Mrs. Garth thereupon applied the apron once more to her eye, and continued: “Who wad have thought she could have been brought down so low, she as held her head so high.”
“So she did, did she! Never heard on it,” Liza broke in.
Not noticing the interruption, Mrs. Garth continued: “And now, who knows but she may come down lower yet—who knows but she may?”
Still failing to gain a response to her gloomy prognostications, Mrs. Garth replied to her own inquiry.
“None on us knows, I reckon! And what a down-come it wad be for her, poor creatur!”
“She's sticking to that subject like a cockelty burr,” said Liza, not troubling this time to speak beneath her breath. “What ever does she mean by it?”
Rotha was beginning to feel concerned on the same score, so she said: “Mrs. Ray, poor soul, is not likely to come to a worse pass while she has two sons to take care of her.”
“No good to her, nowther on 'em—no good, I reckon; mair's the pity,” murmured Mrs. Garth, calling her apron once more into active service.
“How so?” Rotha could not resist the temptation to probe these mysterious deliverances.
“Leastways, not 'xcept the good dear man as is gone, Angus hissel', made a will for her; and, as I say to my Joey, there's no knowin' as ever he did; and nowther is there.”
Rotha replied that it was not usual for a statesman to make a will. The law was clear enough as to inheritance. There could be no question of Mrs. Ray's share of what had been left. Besides, if there were, it would not matter much in her case, where everything that was the property of her sons was hers, and everything that was hers was theirs.
Mrs. Garth pricked up her ears at this. She could not conceal her interest in what Rotha had said, and throwing aside her languor, she asked, in anything but a melancholy tone, “So he's left all hugger-mugger, has he?”
“I know nothing of that,” replied Rotha; “but if he has not made a will it cannot concern us at all. It's all very well for the lords of the manor and such sort of folk to make their wills, for, what with one thing and another, their property runs cross and cross, and there's scarce any knowing what way it lies; but for a statesman owning maybe a hundred or two of acres and a thousand or two of sheep, forby a house and the like, it's not needful at all. The willing is all done by the law.”
“So it is, so it is, lass,” said Mrs. Garth. The girls thought there was a cruel and sinister light in the old woman's eyes as she spoke. “Ey, the willin's all done by t' law; but, as I says to my Joey, 'It isn't always done to our likin', Joey'; and nowther is it.”
Liza could bear no longer Mrs. Garth's insinuating manner. Coming forward with a defiant air, the little woman said: “Look you, don't you snurl so; but if you've anything to say, just open your mouth and tell us what it's about.”
The challenge was decidedly unequivocal.
“'Od bliss the lass!” cried Mrs. Garth with an air of profound astonishment “What ails the bit thing?”
“Look here, you've got a deal too much talk to be jannic, you have,” cried Liza, with an emphasis intended to convey a sense of profound contempt of loquaciousness in general and of Mrs. Garth's loquaciousness in particular.
Mrs. Garth's first impulse was to shame her adversary out of her warlike attitude with a little biting banter. Curling her lip, she said not very relevantly to the topic in hand, “They've telt me yer a famous sweethearter, Liza.”
“That's mair nor iver you could have been,” retorted the girl, who always dropt into the homespun of the country side in degree as she became excited.
“Yer gitten ower slape, a deal ower slippery,” said Mrs. Garth. “I always told my Joey as he'd have to throw ye up, and I'm fair pleased to see he's taken me at my word.”
“Oh, he has, has he?” said Liza, rising near to boiling point at the imputation of being the abandoned sweetheart of the blacksmith. “I always said as ye could bang them all at leein. I would not have your Joey if his lips were droppin' honey and his pockets droppin' gold. Nothing would hire me to do it. Joey indeed!” added Liza, with a vision of the blacksmith's sanguine head rising before her, “why, you might light a candle at his poll.”
Mrs. Garth's banter was not calculated to outlast this kind of assault. Rising to her feet, she said: “Weel, thou'rt a rare yan, I will say. Yer ower fond o' red ribbons, laal thing. It's aff with her apron and on with her bonnet, iv'ry chance. I reckon ye'd like a silk gown, ye wad.”
“Never mind my clothes,” said Liza. Mrs. Garth gave her no time to say more, for, at the full pitch of indignation, she turned to Rotha, and added: “And ye're a rare pauchtie damsel. Ye might have been bred at Court, you as can't muck a byre.”
“Go home to bed, old Cuddy Garth,” said Liza, “and sup more poddish, and take some of the wrinkles out of your wizzent skin.”
“Setting yer cap at the Rays boys,” continued Mrs. Garth, “but it'll be all of no use to ye, mark my word. Old Angus never made a will, and the law'll do all the willin', ye'll see.”
“Don't proddle up yon matter again, woman,” said Liza.
“And dunnet ye threep me down. I'll serve ye all out, and soon too.”
Mrs. Garth had now reached the porch. She had by this time forgotten her visit of consolation and the poor invalid, who lay on the bed gazing vacantly at her angry countenance.
“Good evening, Sarah,” cried Liza, with an air of provoking familiarity. “May you live all the days o' your life!”
Mrs. Garth was gone by this time.
Rotha stood perplexed, and looked after her as she disappeared down the lonnin. Liza burst into a prolonged fit of uproarious laughter.
“Hush, Liza; I'm afraid she means mischief.”
“The old witch-wife!” cried Liza. “If tempers were up at the Lion for sale, what a fortune yon woman's would fetch!”