At four of the same afternoon, while the sun was setting redly into the snow-banks, Griff Lomax sat in the parlour of Gorsthwaite, with his child's dead body on his knees. The grate was fireless, and the failing twilight left all but the table and a chair near the window in darkness. The two maid-servants, and Simeon, the farm-man, moved uneasily about the kitchen, and asked one another in muffled tones how it was likely to fare with the master. Early that morning the child had followed its mother, and Griff, alone here in the parlour, was dumbly kicking against the pricks. One after another, all that he had in the world had gone into that shadowy Beyond of which he had neither fear nor hope. On his knees lay the refutation of all the dreams he had cherished, the plans he had framed, for the future of another Lomax who should carry down the name, who should add one more to the list of moor-men that had thriven under the old Manor roof. From time to time he stroked the little cold body with his own cold hands, and laughed softly to himself: it seemed a hideous jest that this scrap of tissue, which would soon be worse than the earth that covered it, should have caused such fantasies. It was to have grown to a lusty manhood, and fought and loved and hated—and now—and now—
Such utter vacuum, of mind and purpose, could not go on. No man, with strength at his command, can see life for long as an empty mirror of his own emptiness. Something must be done, was the thought that flashed into Griff's mind. He got up from his chair and laid the body on it; then walked slowly up and down the darkened room, striking against the furniture, and feeling vaguely glad of the smarts.
A cry broke from him. Round and round his brain, in a dizzy, never-ending circle, ran those words of the doctor's—
It is all owing to that brute Strangeways; he led her a dog's life for years.
The frightened servants, listening by the kitchen fire, heard the door of the parlour open with a clash. The master went heavily down the passage and out at the front door. There was work for him yet in the world.
"Poor lad!" murmured the cook, who was older than her master, and eager to mother him with her phrases. "Poor lad, it fair goes to a body's heart to see th' way he's taking on."
"He war bad enow when th' missus died; but it's nowt to what's ta'en him since," said the housemaid, with a tug at her apron-corner.
"We've getten to dee, all on us. He mun grin an' bear it, same as other fowk do." But there was a huskiness in Simeon's voice that belied his avowed philosophical outlook on the tragedy.
One thought only held Griff—that he must find his enemy and exact an eye for an eye, a death for a death. Not a hint of carrying out a moral law, of ensuring justice where the law was powerless to demand it, lay at the bottom of his mind. Such weak shifts for the excusing of his deed were foreign to all Griff's ways: the splendid vengefulness of the savage was on him now, unspotted by weakness or self-questioning.
Instinct drove him back to the stables after he had traversed half a mile of the moor: he might have far to go in search of his quarry, and a horse would serve him better. The roads were bad enough for riding, but Lassie was well-sharpened against the frost, and she was sure-footed. At any rate, his neck mattered little, so long as he could reach Joe Strangeways before it was broken.
Off they went, he and Lassie, through the thickening snow to Sorrowstones Spring, where Strangeways had come to live since the old witch's death. Griff leaped from the mare's back and ran to the door. It was locked, and no trace of light showed through the unshuttered window on the left. He kicked at the door till the bottom panels gave way; then crept through the opening. But the cottage was empty.
"Where shall we go next, old girl?" he cried, with a hoarse laugh, as Lassie turned her head at his approach.
But Lassie had no counsel to give, and his eyes went up to the line of sentinel stoups: the white under-part could not be seen, and each blackened tip seemed to hang, self-supported, in mid air. Vague echoes of a sorrow spent long ago came to Griff: the stoups seemed to speak to him in some sad, far-off way. Perhaps they pointed the road he should go—at least he might try a mile or two of it, and gallop an inspiration into his musty brain. A Marshcotes man, trudging lumpily down the hill, stopped in amazement as horse and rider clattered past him.
"Griff Lummax, I'll warrant, though it's ower dark to be sartin sure. What's agate wi' th' lad, ony way?" he muttered.
Griff turned as soon as he gained the top of the hill. What fool's errand was this—riding straight to Ludworth, when the man he sought was to be found either in Cranshaw or Marshcotes? He must go first to Cranshaw, straight down the highroad, and search the inns there; then to Marshcotes; and, if that failed, he would look in at Jack o' Ling Crag's hostelry.
Joe Strangeways, meanwhile, was drinking in the bar of the Bull at Marshcotes. He had failed in his quarry-business since his wife left him, and he laid the blame of this on Griff. If, he reasoned, he had not been robbed of his one inducement to keep sober, he would have gone less on the drink; and if he had gone less on the drink, then he would have kept his quarries. He forgot how little influence of any kind Kate had had over him; he grew to believe that she had been the pole-star of his life, and he thought with lachrymose tenderness of the cosy hearth that had once tempted him away from the Bull. And now here he was, spending his last half-crown in the beer that had leagued with Griff Lomax to ruin him.
"Has tha heärd o' young Lummax's trouble?" some one dropped to his neighbour.
"Ay; an' they say th' bairn is nobbut weakly like, an' noan like to live. It's been a sorry winter for young Lummax, that it hes."
"A sorry winter?" flashed Joe from his corner. "It'll be a sorrier afore I've done wi' him."
"We've heärd a like tale afore now, Joe. Happen tha's getten to think there's summat in it, same as a cock makes fine sense out on his crowing when he's been at it a bit."
"Thee bide, lad, thee nobbut bide."
"We hev bided—a seet o' months; an' nowt has come on 't yet, as I can see on."
"Tha's getten thy chance, if tha wants it," chimed in another. "I war coming ower th' Ludworth road a while back, an' just by Sorrowstones Spring a horse comes racketting by me. It war main dark, save for a kind o' glint on th' snaw, but I knew who th' rider war: he war tearing along fair as if owd Nick hed hold on his coat-tails, an' there's none hereabouts, saving Griff Lummax, what flies about at that fooil's pace. He war off to Ludworth, likely, an' tha'll be i' nice time to meet him as he comes back."
Joe looked savagely from one to another.
"Ye think yourselns a fearful clever lot, doan't ye? I'll show ye—ay, th' whole damned lot on ye—whether I'm talking straight or no. Gie us a crowbar, i'stead o' sitting there like grinning gawks, an' let me be off about my business."
A shout of laughter went up as one of the company dived into his tool-bag, and, fetching out a neat little two-foot crowbar, handed the weapon to Joe with a face of great solemnity. Joe seized it and lurched out into the passage, muttering as he went.
"He'll be back afore long. A rare old wind-bag is Joe," laughed the owner of the crowbar.
And they all fell to at their mugs again, waiting for the fun that was in store, when Joe should return, shambling and shamefaced, for another pint of beer.
But Joe, in his own way, was as desperate as Griff. He was a beggar, and likely to remain so; his body was a worn-out machine, and work of any kind seemed little short of torture. And then he had nursed that feud of his till it had grown into a mania. The fight on the moor came to him to-night—the fight in which he had had his knife close at Griff's throat. There should be no mistake this time.
And so, while the snow fell ever thicker, these two, Lomax and Strangeways, went hither and thither across the moor, one in search of the other. Only the tallest heather-plants kept their heads above ground, and even they were bound to go under soon. Nothing stirred but the flakes, and these had a ghastly dumbness.
Joe came to Sorrowstones Spring at last, and cowered under the highroad wall, a field's-length off from his cottage.
"Hell alive, it's fit to rot a man's heart in his body, is wark on a neet like this!" he muttered. "If he'd nobbut come afore my fingers are stark an' stiff!"
He handled the crowbar lovingly, and began to talk to it. First he confided to it what he was set on doing, and then, as the waiting grew more tedious, he told it all that had gone before—dilating on Kate's beauty, their happiness before Griff came to spoil it, his lonely after-life, with only drink to sweeten it.
And to all this the slim, two-foot crowbar listened patiently; but it was cold in his grasp when he began, and cold when his story was done. It seemed callous to all claims of sympathy.
The cold and the beer between them sent Joe off into a fit of dizziness. He leaned hard against the wall to recover himself, and laughed thickly to the little iron bar.
"It's gooid hot blood we want, my beauty, thee an' me—thee to warm thy heart, an' me to warm my belly. Well, lass, we'll bide a bit longer; he can't be such a fearful while i' coming now.—What's that?"
Away up the road, far beyond the last of the stoups that could be seen from Sorrowstones, there sounded a faint pit-pat. On it came—pit-pat, pit-pat—the muffled beat of hoofs, striking through the snow to the frozen underground.
Joe moved from his sheltering wall. His sickness was forgotten, his crowbar passively awaited commands. Out of the whirling whiteness came a man and a horse, creeping warily down the steepest bit of the hill. The road ran between high banks of ling and bents, and on the right bank the quarrymaster waited. Nearer and nearer came the two figures; they moved from side to side of the road, to lessen the steepness of the descent, until at last they passed close to where Strangeways was cowering in the snow. Like a flash Joe sprang at his victim, and brought the crowbar down on his skull.
The rider's shoulders dropped forward, his head lying heavy between them. The horse, not counting on this sudden slackening of the reins, lost his footing, and came heavily to ground, his fore-feet doubled under him. His master flew out of the saddle, and lay, a shapeless heap, in the middle of the road.
The horse had broken both knees, and was crying piteously; but Strangeways never so much as heard it. He went to the dead man's body, and sat on his upturned breast. Into his brain stole the words of a grim jest that a comrade had passed with him not many days before.
"Thy next suit will be thy coffin; thy next suit will be thy coffin, Griff! Griff, lad, I've getten thee at last; bide still an' wait for thy shroud." He paused to chuckle at the flavour of his little phrase, then repeated it again and again. "Thy next suit will be thy coffin."
After a while he found his seat a hard one, and knelt in the snow to see what it was that inconvenienced him. He felt in the man's breast-pocket, and brought out a large brandy-flask, three-parts full.
"Strong, by God! It'll be a merry neet an' a warm now," he laughed, as he reseated himself on the corpse, after an experimental pull at the flask. "Shut thy din, wilt 'a!" he cried to the horse, a moment later, as the poor brute shrieked in agony.
Then he turned to the brandy again, and drank it slowly, rocking himself to and fro on the body and setting to a kind of guttural chant his two-line hymn—"Thy next suit—next suit—next suit—thy next suit will surely be thy coffin and a shroud—coffin and—coffin and—coffin and a shroud."
Gradually his eyelids fell upon his cheeks, tried to lift themselves, and failed. He rolled off into the snow, and clasped his victim tight in his arms, snoring with drunken noisiness. But the horse cried and whimpered, whimpered and cried, till the hurrying snowflakes seemed to be running this way and that in search of aid.
Up the highroad from Cranshaw, Griff and Lassie were toiling heavily. They had had a hard cross-country night of it, and both were fagged out.
"All right, Lassie, all right, girl; just to Sorrowstones Spring, to see if he's back yet, and then home," murmured Griff.
He had stopped at every inn in Marshcotes and Cranshaw and Ling Crag, and only at the Bull had he found news of Strangeways. Surely he must be home by this time.
But Lassie had her head low down and her ears set back; she was shivering from head to foot, for that cry of one of her own race had reached her long before Griff was aware of it. Every forward step made her more restive, till at last they reached the two black splashes on the snow. Griff slid from the saddle, and stooped to examine the first splash. He found his father's foe, Laverack, locked tight in the arms of the enemy he sought. Into the gloom ahead, between the sentinel stoups, pointed a little, deep ravine, where the blood had melted the snow.
He stood up and cursed the Providence that had robbed him of his right of action. He turned Joe's body over with his foot. The snoring, that had grown fainter and fainter, ceased altogether; a dull kind of grunt was Joe's only acknowledgment of the attention.
"You hog! Why aren't you fit to stand on your legs and fight me?" cried Griff.
He halted awhile, his hands going nervously to and fro above the body.
"No, I can't do it," he muttered dully, and went to that other patch of black.
In a trice his sympathies were awake, though they had seemed stone dead a moment ago. He knelt beside the quivering beast, and his tears dropped hot on the sweating coat.
"They needn't have mixed you up with our quarrels," he said softly.
He felt the broken limbs, and saw that there was only one thing to be done.
But how to do it? He looked at the crowbar lying in the snow at his feet; that was useless. Then he bethought him of the cottage, and ran hot-foot to see if Strangeways had left a gun about. He crept through the broken panels again, felt round the room till his hands fell on a tinder-box, and lit a rushlight that stood on the chimney-piece. A cumbersome muzzle-loader lay in one corner—the same corner in which Mother Strangeways' bed had stood that night when she called him in out of the storm. He took up the gun, found it loaded and primed, and went back to the highroad.
"There will be a row soon, old lady. I'd better fasten you up," he said quietly, as he hitched Lassie's reins to the gate-post.
He put the gun-muzzle close to the ear of the horse lying on the ground, and pulled the trigger.
"God forgive me!" he muttered. "I had it in mind to kill a man just now—but a horse——"
He went to the two men lying a little further down the hill. Laverack's heart made no response to the hand that was laid on it, and the snow lay unmelted on Joe's set lips.
"Come, Lassie; it's home now," said Griff, as he untethered the mare.
By the time that Lassie had been put up in the stable, groomed, and fed, the snow had ceased, though the frost bit harder than ever. Griff fastened the stable-door, and moved irresolutely towards the house. Then he remembered what was inside, on the seat in the parlour where he had laid it. The bairn, indeed, was lying on a bed upstairs, washed and laid out by the women-folk; but to Griff's fancy it was still in the chair, and he shrank from the thought of entering.
Out there in the cold he stood and tried to feel, and wondered at the hideous blank that stretched on, on before him, characterless as the even plain of snow to north and south and east and west of this mid-moor house. He cried aloud in his desolation, and hard on the heels of the need to voice his trouble came the need for fellowship. He must have touch of human sympathy; that was the one thing needful, the one thing vital. Then, slowly, he began to think of the preacher, of Greta, of Leo Roddick. And Roddick seemed the strongest of them all, the fittest to give him help.
Yes; he would hurry across to Wynyates. Old Roddick was never the man to mind being knocked up in the middle of the night, if there were need for it. And God knew there was need for it now; he must save his reason, since all else had gone by the board.
The snow was crisping under the frost fingers, and the stars shone clear. He tried not to let the quick motion, the keen air, bring back his scattered impressions of all that had happened during the past few days. When a memory cut at his heart, he walked faster, thinking to drive it out; when the memory returned, he quickened to a run, as if to dodge it by flight. He reached Wynyates at last, and pounded at the door with his fists. From within sounded a low cry, in a woman's voice, and the patter of feet across the hall.
"Is that you, Leo?" said the voice. "Dear, I have waited so long for you."
The door was opened, and on the threshold stood Janet Laverack, never doubting but that it was Roddick who waited on the other side. She was dressed as she had been for dinner that night at the Folly; but she had taken off her sodden shoes and stockings, and her little white feet peeped out from a pair of Roddick's old slippers, absurdly too large for her. The bottom of her skirt, too, was grievously bedrabbled.
Griff stepped into the light.
"I am Roddick's friend," he said vaguely.
The girl looked and looked at him. He would have been an alarming object enough in broad daylight, and with help to be had for the asking; but to-night he showed ghastly, dishevelled as he was, his clothes steaming like a moor fog now that he had come into the warmth. Janet, however, knowing that she must face the danger by aid of her wits alone, neither screamed nor gave way.
"Who are you?" she asked in a low voice.
"Griff Lomax. I—I came to ask Roddick's help. Isn't he at home?"
A curious half-smile played about the girl's lips.
"I came to ask his help, too; so we are friends so far. I know you well by name. You have had trouble lately?"
Griff went light-headed for a moment. The oak panelling of the hall circled round him; he lifted his eyes to the girl's to steady himself.
"Trouble?" he repeated, with an empty laugh. "Oh, nothing to speak of—wife and child left me for good, that is all—died, you know——"
"Come and sit down here; you are not yourself," said the girl, peremptorily.
The last of her fear had vanished at sight of his helplessness, and she was feeling that same need for action which had weighed so heavily on Griff a while ago.
He dropped obediently into the armchair.
"When did you last have food?" went on Janet.
"I—I forget. Some time this morning, I believe—just before the child died."
She went off to the pantry without another word, and brought out cold beef and bread. A bottle of whisky was standing on the sideboard, and she poured him out a liberal allowance.
"Now, eat and drink. It was high time you sought some one who could look after you."
Griff shook his head.
"I can't," he muttered obstinately.
"You shall," she answered quietly, putting a plate on his knee, and the tumbler on the hob beside him.
Again he succumbed to the stronger will, and did as he was bid. His appetite grew with each mouthful, and he passed his plate for more when he had finished. And after that he mechanically pulled out his pipe, filled and lit it.
"There!" said Janet, approvingly. "Smoke away, and tell me all about it."
Griff almost smiled at her quaint, elderly air. It seemed very much like a dream, all this; and easily as in a dream he found himself telling Janet all that had happened. She was quiet for a little after he had finished; then—
"We were talking about you, Leo and I, not long ago. He told me of your wife's death, and I was, oh, so sorry for you, though I had never even seen you. Only, I can guess what the feeling must be. If Leo were to die, I think I should just stop living and have done with it." She was craftily drawing him away from his own trouble, and into hers. "You won't think it odd of me to be talking to you like this? Because, you see, Leo tells me you know all our story."
"How do you come to be here?" said Griff, abruptly.
"I couldn't bear it any longer, so I came; that's why. And Leo was—was a brute to me. That is why I hadn't the heart to be afraid of you when you came."
"A brute? How do you mean?"
"He talked of my sacrificing myself, and he lectured me, just as if I had been a silly school-girl, following the first romantic notion she had got into her head. If Leo could have killed my love, he would have done it long ago: he shocks and hurts me when he is angry. Poor old boy!" she broke off suddenly. "He is doing more for that—that woman, than I would ever do. And here am I blaming him for being a brute."
"Which woman?" asked Griff, who was still struggling with his faculties.
"The woman who calls herself his wife. The nurse sent across, soon after I came, to say that she was unmanageable, and Leo went with her. I expect him home every minute. I want him back, too, though I know he will be angrier than ever with me; he always is after these struggles. It costs him so much not to let her die at these times."
"Did Roddick allow you to stay here?"
This was another of Griff's childishly direct questions. He had got a little away from his own worries, and was growing responsive to the interest in his friend's situation. Somewhere, too deep down to be brought to the surface as yet, was a feeling that a certain plan, if he could once hit on it, would give all three of them relief.
"He had to. There could be no question of my returning across the moors, so he was going to sit up here all night, leaving his room to me. He had packed me off to bed a moment before the nurse came, but I listened at the head of the stairs and slipped down when he had gone, to see that everything was nice and warm for him on his return."
"Just as Kate used to do, just as Kate used to do for me," muttered Griff.
"But it will all have to be fought out again to-morrow," the girl went on. "And father will guess where I am and fetch me, when they find out in the morning that I have run away; and that will be the end of it, if Leo won't let me be strong, instead of just good in a worldly way."
She felt, somehow, that this shaggy, unkempt man was rather on the plane of the animals, to whom we talk freely of the things that lie nearest our hearts. She was already losing sight of the bitter personal grief that had brought him here.
Griff remembered that her father could never in this world come to fetch her; but that seemed a matter of lighter moment, and he waited to hear more from her. That fugitive idea was taking more definite shape in his brain.
"Do you think we ought to wait, year after year, till my hair is grey, and my face wrinkled, and I'm too unspeakably hideous to give him a moment's pleasure?" demanded the girl, after a reflective pause. She leaned forward eagerly for his answer.
"No, I don't," said Griff, with sudden energy. "Take your chance while you have it, and thank the Lord for every scrap of happiness you snatch out of the fire."
"Ah, I thought you would be on my side. Will you tell Leo that? Will you help me to show him that waiting is the only real sacrifice? It is only me he thinks of, you know, all through, and that makes it all the harder to bear when I know how blind he is to my needs."
That nascent idea leaped in Griff's brain.
"I can help you to more than that, if once I see my way clear," he said.
She looked doubtfully at him, fearing a return of his first distraught condition. But his mouth was firm, his eyes bright.
"I don't understand you," she murmured.
"I don't understand myself yet. Give me time.—There's Roddick. Shall I let him in?" he broke off, as a strong hand was laid on the outer door.
She flushed a little.
"No, I can't let you do that. It is my privilege."
Griff, sitting quietly by the fire, knew that she was lying in Roddick's arms out there, and for a moment he grudged them their partial happiness. Then he smiled gravely, and tried to understand how he might help these two. If only he could find a deed of real charity to do, he might yet win peace for himself.
In the midst of his pondering, Roddick stamped across the hall and into the parlour.
"So you're here," he began, with more than his usual gruffness. But he stopped at sight of his friend's face. "Old man, what has happened to you? You look like a corpse, and your clothes are dripping wet!"
"I came to talk things over with you, and found Miss Laverack here instead. She has done me a world of good," said Griff, simply.
"She ought never to have been out of bed at this time. Janet, off you go. Lomax and I will make an all-night sitting of it, and thrash our troubles out together."
She came and gave Griff her hand, smiling at him with royal friendliness.
"Good night," she whispered. "Try to make the best of it." Then, turning before she had got half across the room, "Leo, can't you give your friend a change? I ought to have thought of it sooner. He will catch his death of cold."
"I won't bother. I'm used to getting wet through."
"Yes, you will bother," put in Roddick. "Upstairs you come, and put dry things on at once. Janet, can you wait down here a little? We shan't be long."
When at last they were alone together, Roddick drew Griff on to talk of his troubles, and afterwards—just as Janet had done, but with less of self in his motive—he tried to beguile him with details of his own sufferings.
"This place goes by the name of Wynyates—'Gates of the Wind,' it means, they tell me; and, God, I can well believe it! They couldn't have hit on a better name. Half a mile north lives a woman I go out of my way to take care of, lest she should give me my liberty; five miles to the other side Janet lives. A cold blast and a warm wind screech and whimper, day and night, round Wynyates. They seem to blow clean through me, Lomax; but I daren't evade them. It gets on the nerves in time," he finished, tranquilly.
Griff sat up in his chair and glared across the hearth. "You're an immaculate fool, Roddick. Every time you save your wife, conscience or no conscience, you stab the woman you are in love with.—Was she bad to-night?"
"Worse than I've seen her yet. The poor devil of a nurse is half-killed with the work. She said I could leave her for the rest of the night; but I shouldn't have done if Janet had not been here. I expect to have the nurse on my hands next. Then there's Janet; how am I going to steer her through the pretty mess she has got herself into?"
Griff had got hold of the right end of his idea now. "Tell me more about your wife," he said eagerly. "Where does she live?"
"At a cottage called Bents Foot, half a mile further up the hill. You seem interested in the woman; are you thinking of dropping a piece of paste-board on her?" snapped Roddick, with bitter levity.
"You're sure you can't get a divorce?" went on Griff, with the same eager persistence.
"No, I tell you!"
The other gave vent to a sigh that was oddly suggestive of relief. "She can live any length of time, can't she?"
"Heaven only knows. Years ago she ought to have died; years ahead she may be living. And meanwhile my little darling is killing herself by inches."
Again that quick, sharp sigh from Griff.
"Killing herself by inches?" he repeated.
"Yes, damn you! why play the parrot to a beggarly statement of fact?"
Griff threw a couple of peats on a fire that needed no replenishing.
"Well," he said, settling back into his seat, "let us put away our worries, old man; we're getting morbid. Perhaps a talk about old times will do us good."
Roddick failed to notice a something that lay very near to the surface of the other's apparent carelessness; after chatting of this and that, he began to nod, then to doze; until finally he was sleeping as soundly as if there were no perplexities to be faced on the morrow.
But Griff had no inclination to sleep. He sat there, watching now the live peats, now his friend's face. As the dawn crept white over the white snow, he went quickly from the house towards a cottage called Bents Foot.
At the top of the rise that overlooked Wynyates, the chimney-stack of Bents Foot stood out, black and rigid as a funeral mute, against the grey-white of the sky. Griff plodded his way through the snow, till he stood at the cottage window. A figure was standing inside, its queer, distorted face pressed close against the glass. He motioned towards the door, and the figure fell back a little, so that he could no longer see anything more than a faint shadow moving up and down in the twilight of the room. He tried the door, and found it locked, as he had expected. But he felt no impatience; he only stood and looked out over the snow-sea, wondering at his calm and thinking it sanity.
After awhile he heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. Roddick's wife crept out, and came and peered into his face.
"What do you want? Have you come to take me to Leo?" she mumbled.
"No."
"Then you can go away. I must find him myself." She, too, looked across the waste of snow, and shivered. "It's only a little way off, but the road is hid. I might fall in the snow and die; and Leo, for all his rough ways, would break his heart if he lost me." She was in one of her cringeing moods; her words came ramblingly, and dropped with the helpless fall of a withered leaf. "He'd break his heart if he lost me," she wailed.
"So he would," said Griff, with equal gravity. "Wait till he comes for you. I'll stay with you, if you'll give me something to drink."
Her eyes brightened as she clutched at his arm.
"Drink? How can I give you drink, when he—he, and she, the woman in there—lock it all up out of reach?"
"We can soon alter that. What's the nurse doing?"
She rubbed her hands together and chuckled softly.
"Fast asleep. After Leo went, her eyes were too tired to keep open. It isn't often she goes to sleep."
Griff followed her into the room, through the window of which he had first seen her. The nurse was half-sitting, half-lying in a long cane-chair near the fireplace. The peats were smouldering dully in the grate. Roddick's wife pointed across at her, but would not go near; when her quieter fits were on, she dreaded the great, raw-boned woman in the chair, who helped Leo to keep the drink from her.
"It's all in here," she whispered, scratching at the door of a cupboard just above her head. "The key is in her pocket."
With the deftness of a pickpocket Griff felt for the key and took it out. He unlocked the cupboard, and crossed over to the window.
"Take what you want," he said.
The mad woman peered into the cupboard, uttering little screams of delight. She ran her hand caressingly along the bottles. The nurse moved in her sleep, then opened her eyes.
"It's all right," murmured Griff; "I am looking after her."
"Mind you do. It's death if she touches a drop to-day," said the nurse, drowsily, and closed her eyes again.
When Griff came out into the road again, the sun was sparkling on the frozen snow. The strain of his great endeavour was not past yet; his face showed strong, his mind was clear. He was thinking—not of what he had done, but of the happiness he had secured for two of his friends. It seemed almost better than if he had won happiness for himself. The glow of a fine altruism lit up his eyes.
He walked quickly down till he came opposite Wynyates Hall, and turned as if to go through the garden gate. But he thought better of it.
"Good news is better for the keeping; I will wait a while," he said to himself softly.
Then he fell to wondering what the old home looked like, and a yearning to see it again took hold of him. He went down the hill, and up the other side, and on until he gained Ling Crag. As he passed Gabriel Hirst's house, the preacher was standing in the doorway, kissing Greta good-bye before he went out. Griff smiled in a fatherly way, and called to Gabriel by name.
"What, you?" cried the preacher, hastening across the newly-swept flagstones to the gate.
Greta followed him, and they stood there, staring at Griff's dishevelled hair and happy face.
"You mean to make a honeymoon of your whole lives, you two?" said Griff.
The preacher's hand went out to him.
"I've lived a life of fear, Griff—constant fear. And now I'm free at last; free to look the sun in the face, and hob-nob with the wind, and feel that God's strength is His mercy, too. There is none like Greta."
"Except Gabriel," whispered the lass. But the laugh died on her lips, for she remembered the man's troubles. "What can any one say to help you?" she asked simply.
"Help? I don't need help. All's for the best in the long run. God bless you both! Good-bye."
"But, man——" began Gabriel.
His friend did not hear—or, hearing, disregarded it. He swung out along the road to Marshcotes.
Greta looked after him, and shook her head.
"He is not in his senses, Gabriel."
"Likely not, poor chap. He's had enough to turn any man's head. But I never dreamed it would take him like this—he might be off to his wedding. Greta, lass, you must never leave me as Griff's wife left him."
Instinctively his arms went round her—to protect her even against God; and old Jose Binns, coming round at that moment from the lathe, set his mouth to a cynical shape.
"Kissing an' cuddling," muttered Joe. "Nay, there's no mak o' gooid can come o' yon."
The hard weather had driven grouse and plover alike to tameness. They walked up and down the streets of Marshcotes, and perched on the window-sills in search of crumbs, and looked at passers-by in the light of old foes turned allies. A mirthless old cock grouse, and a drabbled hen, sat on the Manor wall as Griff came up, and made their plaints to him; but the cock-bird's call had none of that noisy self-assurance about it which had startled Griff many a time in the darkness of the moors. The same tenderness that had prompted his pity for Laverack's horse bade him go to the baker's at the corner and buy a quartern loaf. He took the bread with him into the Manor garden and crumbled it on the doorstep. It was an act his father would have applauded, he thought.
He stood for awhile, looking at the grey old walls with eyes that saw only the past. But the sharp stab of the present took him unawares, and blinded his eyes with tears. He turned, knowing himself for evermore an outcast.
The reaction came on apace, as he crossed the churchyard and struck into the moor. He had an old man's look, an old man's droop of the shoulders. He began to mutter as he walked, in a disjointed, senile way. The clear conception of duty, the needlessness of self-excuse, were fast disappearing; he had to explain to himself why his course had been the right one.
"No one can say I have wasted my life now. But for me, she might have lived for years; and Roddick and the girl would have grown old in misery. So easy, too: it wasn't as if I killed her; she did it herself. Strange—to watch her drink and drink—her head falling lower—how could any sane man have stopped her? Just a bit of filthy clay she was, standing between Roddick and his heart's desire. Roddick, old man, you are free of your love at last; may she stick to your side longer than—— God, how still the moor is! Why doesn't it blow and rain and hail, in the good moor way? Nothing but snow, and snow on the top of that, with mile on mile of that devilish, everlasting sun-shimmer."
He stopped and gazed fearfully across the waste. It seemed that even the moor-face, his friend, had hid itself in anger at his deed. He was homeless altogether. His hands clawed fitfully through the air.
"What's that whisper going abroad? Murder. No, no; merely a drinking bout, and a good riddance. I must be the first to tell Roddick. It seems further to Wynyates than it used to do."
He crossed at the head of Hazel Dene, and the drone of the mill-wheel sounded below him.
"They are grinding corn for bread down there," he said; then laughed at some odd side-shaft of incongruity that the thought suggested.
He hurried on till he gained Wynyates. One window of the parlour was open to the dry, sharp air, and he heard voices within. Cautiously he crept under the window and raised his head a few inches above the sill.
Roddick was standing with his back to the window. Facing him was Janet, her eyes red with weeping, her whole body shaken with sobs.
"Listen, child," Roddick was saying; "you must go back at once. I will walk home with you across the moor. Come quickly, for God's sake! I am arguing against myself all the while, and I cannot hold out much longer. Come!"
He dropped her hands, and turned to the chair over which her cloak was hanging. He took the cloak and tried to place it round her shoulders. She struggled, threw it aside, put both hands about his neck.
"Leo, Leo!" she sobbed; "I won't, I can't go back! I have eaten my heart out long enough. We have waited and waited, you and I, for that other woman to die, and we have done enough."
A feeble chuckle came from without, but they did not hear it.
"Wait a little longer, sweetheart," Roddick pleaded. His voice was strained and husky. "It cannot be for long. Think of the future; suppose we went away together to-night, and she died to-morrow—should we ever forgive ourselves?"
"Yes, we should. It may be years yet—and meanwhile it is killing us. Soon we shall be too old, too grey, too riven by the strain of it all. Leo, darling, come away while we can!"
She kissed him, wildly, beseechingly. For a moment he trembled, fell weak, all but gave in. But he was made of stubborn stuff; love was to conquer desire, so long as he had a trace of will-power left to him.
The man outside, with his pale face peering above the window-ledge, forgot everything in the excitement of this terrible drama. Mile on mile of desolate moor, and in the middle of it two people, a man and a woman, taking opposite sides in a conflict of honour; the man pleading for what he knew to be the woman's gain, and she pleading for a change of misery. Not a hope of interruption; the battle to be fought out just by these two. The impartial moor was willing to show them a path of flight, if they needed it—or a way to honour, if so the issue ran. Not a sound stirred; the wind and Griff spoke not a word.
"Wait!" gasped Roddick.
"I have waited too long, too long," she wailed, with childish repetition. "Leo, do you care for me so much, after all? You cannot, or you would not be hard like this."
He made as if to kiss her, then drew back. He dared not risk it.
"Oh, hush, Janet! You know I care for you. If I cared less, should I hesitate like this? You don't understand what you are asking me to do—you see only the first few steps."
"No, I have set it all before me—all. I will risk it, Leo."
The man outside, seeing the girl's full beauty, the tearfulness of her entreaty, scrabbled with his finger-nails up and down the stone of the window-sill.
"Roddick, you fool," he gasped, "why don't you take love in your two hands while you have the chance! Life is so damnably short—and liable to accident—yes, accidents—the girl mayn't live. Oh, you unutterable fool, why don't you take the bit between your teeth? Cut and run; you told me to do as much once."
But Roddick was answering Janet in the same tone of eager entreaty. And Griff, forgetting his own feelings again, lost himself in the progress of the drama.
"Such a life, Janet, would grind you into the dust. It is easy to say you will face it—now. But wherever we went, however we hid ourselves, some one would drive it home to us. They would shatter your peace of mind, Janet, and I should go mad for pity of what I had brought you to. Come, little girl," he finished, with quiet decision. "I know you will trust me to do what is best."
"Bravo, Roddick! A plucky fight you're making!" cried the man without, breathlessly. The intensity of his excitement hurt him. He wanted the scene to close now.
Roddick had taken the girl in his arms with his last words; he was whispering tender incoherencies to her, as one does to a frightened child. Then he wrapped her, unresisting this time, in her cloak. The tears had dried in long stains down her white face, and she was gazing at him apprehensively.
"Leo."
"Yes, sweetheart?"
"You are right, quite right, and I am wrong. It was wicked of me to come here and tempt you. Only, you don't know how hard the home life is. Others come and make love to me, Leo, and it seems such an insult—to both of us. Yet I can say nothing, do nothing. But I oughtn't to have tempted you. Can you forgive me?"
"Forgive you? Come along, little woman, and we won't talk about forgiveness till we have struck home across the moor; and then——"
"And then, dear?" she asked wistfully. It seemed so cold, this homeward journey.
"Then I shall plead for your forgiveness. You must have thought me a brute, Janet."
The man outside the window breathed again. The play, to all intents and purposes, was finished. Roddick had won, and there was only that twitching of the mouth to show how much it had cost him.
Griff Lomax awoke to a sense of his own importance in the drama. He remembered that a certain disreputable waif-and-stray, with a shipwrecked heart and a partially deranged understanding, held the key of the situation. He went to the door, opened it without ceremony, and stepped into the room.
Roddick turned quickly on the intruder. Janet cowered back against the window.
"What do you want?" demanded Roddick. The room was low and gloomy, and he failed to recognize Griff at a first glance.
"Don't you know me? I'm Lomax," laughed the new-comer.
Roddick stood staring at him for awhile; then went up to him.
"God in Heaven, man! what have you been doing? Last night you looked wild enough in all conscience, but now——"
"Doing?" interrupted Griff. "Something you will approve of, you two. I've tramped across the moor—and a pretty cold moor it is, by the way—to tell you that your wife is dead."
They noticed nothing out of the way in his voice or manner of giving the information. The tidings were too great to allow room for any thought of the bearer's looks.
"Dead?" cried Roddick.
"Yes, dead. I saw her not long ago."
Roddick fell back against the mantelpiece. A giddiness came over him. He could move neither hand nor foot, he could not speak, though he realized vaguely that he ought to shake his friend by the hand and give him hearty thanks.
But Janet made ample atonement for his remissness. She fell at Griff's feet, and kissed his hands, and named him the dearest man in the world. She was beside herself with joy; she scarcely knew what she was doing.
Griff raised the girl and gravely put her away from him.
"I killed her," he said, quietly.
Roddick stared at him from his place against the mantel-shelf. He had had a stiff fight with conscience not long ago, and the pace of these new developments was altogether too fast for him.
Janet shuddered, and put the width of the room between herself and the man whom she had lately named a saviour.
"You—killed—her?" she whispered.
"Yes. Don't look at me like that. It is a mere nothing." His manner was growing wild. He laughed causelessly at intervals, and seemed to think his story rather humorous than otherwise. "I came last night, you remember, to see if old Roddick here could help me. I was going mad for want of a purpose. I felt like a derelict ship that has been tossing about aimlessly, day after day, week after week. I was willing to give anything to the man who would fit me out with sails and a rudder. Well, I found you, instead of Roddick, and you stood me a true friend—told me there was a woman to be killed—fitted a purpose to my hand at once. God bless you both!"
He ceased. Down the side of Roddick's nose a ridiculous tear was creeping, but Griff smiled, with a sort of paternal tenderness, on the two people for whom he had lately performed a trifling service.
"Old man!" cried Roddick. His voice was a woman's, inaudible almost in its desperate pity.
"Don't trouble about that," put in the other briskly, as if in answer to unspoken words of gratitude. "The least said, the soonest mended. You want to thank me, I know, and talk nonsense generally. I won't have it. Why, man, it's the easiest thing I ever did in my life!" On the sudden his face fell. He gibbered dumbly, like some voiceless ghost. "The moor, the moor," he whispered at last. "How still and white it is. It's not the moor I have known—not the moor I have loved my life through—it seems to shudder."
Still Roddick watched him. He could not break through the miserable, obstinate silence that hid his sympathy. Reason came back to Griff's face, and firmness to his voice.
"There are two pictures in my studio at Gorsthwaite. I seem to care so little for that sort of thing now, but I know they are good. Will you look after them, Roddick, old man? Send them out into the world; they are the best work I ever did—and Kate lives in one of them."
Janet had forgotten Griff while teaching herself to realize the glad news he had brought them. In the utter selfishness of her love, in the sudden lifting of a burden she had borne too long, she surrendered herself wholly to delight. Her joy grew intolerable; she had to cry aloud.
"Leo, Leo, you are mine, mine altogether!" she said, in a voice between laughter and tears.
But Roddick, thinking of his true friend in need, was silent. He turned his back on them, and leaned his forehead on the mantelshelf, and wondered what would be the end of it for Lomax.
And Griff, meanwhile, passed quietly out into the stillness of the moor.
THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.