Complete works of hall c.., p.30
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 30
“If he could but sleep!” said Mrs. Branthwaite; “but he cannot.”
Liza got up and went out.
Robbie struggled to raise himself on one elbow. His face, red as a furnace, was turned aside as though in the act of listening for some noise far away. Then in a thick whisper he said, —
“Fifty strides north of the bridge. No dreaming about it — north, I say, north.”
Robbie sank back exhausted, and Rotha prepared to leave.
“It were that ducking of his heed did it, sure enough,” said Mattha, “that and the drink together. I mind Bobbie’s father — just sic like, just sic like! Poor auld Martha, she hed a sad bout of it, she hed, what with father and son. And baith good at the bottom, too, baith, poor lads.”
A graver result than any that Mattha dreamt of hung at this moment on Robbie’s insensibility, and when consciousness returned the catastrophe had fallen.
CHAPTER XL. GARTH AND THE QUAKERS.
As Rotha left the weaver’s cottage she found Liza in the porch.
“I’m just laughing at the new preachers,” she said huskily. She was turning her head aside slyly to brush the tears from her eyes into a shawl which was over her head.
“There they are by the Lion. It’s wrong to laugh, but they are real funny, aye!”
The artifice was too palpable to escape Rotha’s observation. Without a word she put her arms about Liza and kissed her. Then the lurking tears gushed out openly, and the girl wept on her breast. They parted in silence, and Rotha walked towards a little company gathered under the glow of a red sun on the highway, and almost in front of the village inn. They were the “new preachers” of whom Liza had spoken. The same that had, according to Robbie’s landlady, foretold the plague. They were three men, and they stood in the middle of a ring of men, women, and children. One of them, tall and gaunt, with long gray hair and wild eyes, was speaking at the full pitch of his voice. Another was emphasizing his words with loud hallelujahs. Then the third dropped down on his knees in the road, and prayed with earnestness in a voice that rang along the village street — silent to-day, save for him — and echoed back and back. Before the prayer had quite ended a hymn was begun in a jaunting measure, with a chorus that danced to a spirit of joyfulness.
Then came another exhortation. It was heavy with gloomy prediction. The world was full of oppression, and envy, and drunkenness, and vain pleasures. Men had forsaken the light that should enlighten all men. They were full of deceit and vanities. They put their trust in priests and professors who were but empty hollow casks. “Yet the Lord is at hand,” cried the preacher, “to thrash the mountains, and beat them to dust.”
Another hymn followed, more jubilant than before. One by one the people around caught the contagion of excitement. There were old men there with haggard faces that told of the long hard fight with the world in which they were of the multitude of the vanquished; old women, too, jaded and tired, and ready to slip into oblivion, their long day’s duty done; mothers with babes in their arms and young children nestling close at their sides; rollicking boys and girls as well, with all the struggle of life in front of them.
The simple Quaker hymn told of a great home of rest far away, yet very near.
The tumult had attracted the frequenters of the Red Lion, and some of these had stepped out on to the causeway. Two or three of them were already drunk. Among them was Garth, the blacksmith. He laughed frantically, and shrieked and crowed at every address and every hymn. When the preachers shouted “Hallelujah,” he shouted “Hallelujah” also; shouted again and again, in season and out of season; shouted until he was hoarse, and the perspiration poured down his crimsoning face. His tipsy companions at first assisted him with noisy cheers. When one of the men in the ring lifted up his voice in the ardor of prayer, Garth yelled out yet louder to ask if he thought God Almighty was deaf.
The people began to tremble at the blacksmith’s blasphemies. The tipsiest of his fellows slunk away from his side.
The preacher spoke at one moment of the numbers of their following.
“You carry a bottle of liquor somewhere,” cried Garth; “that’s why they follow you.”
Wearied out by such a shrieking storm of discord, one of the three Quakers — a little man with quick eyes and nervous lips — made his way through the crowd to where the blacksmith stood at the outskirts of it. Garth propped his back against the wall of the inn and laughed hysterically at the preacher’s remonstrance: “Woe to thee and such as thee when God’s love passes away from thee.”
Garth replied with a mocking blasphemy too terrible for record. He repeated it, shouted it, screamed it.
In sheer horror the Quaker dropped on his knees in front of the blacksmith and muttered a prayer that was almost inaudible: —
“God grant that the seven devils, yea seven times seven, may come out of him!”
Then Garth was silent for a moment.
“I knew such a one as thou art five years ago,” said the Quaker; “and where thinkest thou he died?”
“Where?” said Garth, with a drunken hiccup.
“But he was a saved man at last — saved by the light with which Christ enlightened all men — saved—”
“Where?” repeated Garth, with a hideous imprecation.
“On the gallows — he had killed his own father — he was—”
“Curse you! Curse you on earth and in hell!”
The people who had crowded round held their hands to their ears to shut out the fearful blasphemies. Garth, sobered somewhat by rage which was no longer assumed but real, pushed them aside and strode down the lane.
Rotha turned away from the crowd and walked towards Shoulthwaite. Before her, at fifty paces, the blacksmith tramped doggedly on, with head towards the ground. Drunk, mad, devilish as at this moment he might be, Rotha felt an impulse to overtake him. She knew not what power prompted her, or what idea or what hope. Never before had she felt an instinct drawing her to this man. Yet she wished to speak with him now. Would she had done so! Would she had done so — not for his sake or yet for hers — but now, even now, while the impieties were hot on his burning lips!
Rotha ran a step or two and stopped. Garth shambled sullenly on. He never lifted his eyes to the sky.
When he reached his home he threw himself on the skemmel drawn up to the hearth. He was sober now. His mother had been taking her Sunday afternoon’s sleep on the settle, which stood at one side of the kitchen. His noisy entrance awoke her. He broke the peat with the peat-stick and kicked it into the fire.
“What’s come ower thee?” said Mrs. Garth, opening her eyes and yawning.
“What’s come over you more like?” growled Joe.
“What now?”
“Do you sell your own flesh and blood?” said Joe. “Sell? What’s thy mare’s nest now, thou weathercock? One wouldn’t think that butter wad melt in thy mouth sometimes, and then agen—”
“I’m none so daft as daftly dealt with, mother,” interrupted the blacksmith.
“I’ve telt thee afore thou’rt yan of the wise asses. What do you mean by sell?”
“I reckon you know when strangers in the street can tell me.”
The blacksmith coiled himself up in his gloomy reserve and stared into the fire.
“Oh, thou’s heard ‘at yon man’s in Doomsdale, eh?”
Joe grunted something that was inarticulate.
“I mean to hear the trial,” continued Mrs. Garth, with a purr of satisfaction.
“Maybe you wouldn’t like to see me in his place, mother? Oh, no; certainly not.”
“Thou great bledderen fool,” cried Mrs. Garth, getting on to her feet and lifting her voice to a threatening pitch; “whearaway hast been?”
Joe growled again, and crept closer over the fire, his mother’s brawny figure towering above him.
CHAPTER XLI. A HORSE’S NEIGH.
A bleared winter sun was sinking down through a scarf of mist. Rotha was walking hurriedly down the lonnin that led from the house on the Moss. Laddie, the collie, had attached himself to her since Ralph’s departure, and now he was running by her side.
She was on her way to Fornside, but on no errand of which she was conscious. Willy Ray had not yet returned. Her father had not come back from his long journey. Where was Willy? Where was her father? What kept them away? And what of Ralph — standing as he did, in the jaws of that Death into which her own hands had thrust him! Would hope ever again be possible? These questions Rotha had asked herself a hundred times, and through the responseless hours of the long days and longer nights of more than a week she had lived on somehow, somehow, somehow.
The anxiety was burning her heart away; it would be burnt as dry as ashes soon. And she had been born a woman — a weak woman — a thing meant to sit at home with her foot on the treadle of her poor little wheel, while dear lives were risked and lost elsewhere.
Rotha was a changed being. She was no longer the heartsome lassie who had taken captive the stoical fancy of old Angus. Tutored by suffering, she had become a resolute woman. Goaded by something akin to despair, she was now more dangerous than resolute.
She was to do strange things soon. Even her sunny and girlish ingenuousness was to desert her. She was to become as cunning as dauntless. Do you doubt it? Put yourself in her place. Think of what she had done, and why she had done it; think of what came of it, and may yet come of it. Then look into your own heart; or, better far, look into the heart of another — you will be quicker to detect the truth and the falsehood that lies there.
Then listen to what the next six days will bring forth.
The cottage at Fornside has never been occupied since the tailor abandoned it. Hardly in Wythburn was there any one so poor as to covet such shelter for a home. It was a single-storied house with its back to the road. Its porch was entered from five or six steps that led downwards from a little garden. It had three small rooms, with low ceilings and paved floors. In the summer the fuchsia flecked its front with white and red. In these winter days the dark ivy was all that grew about it.
Lonely, cheerless, and now proscribed by the fears and superstitions of the villagers, it stood as gaunt as a solitary pine on the mountain head that has been blasted and charred by the lightning.
When Rotha reached it she hesitated as if uncertain whether to go in or go back. She stood at the little wicket, while the dog bounded into the garden. In another moment Laddie had run into the house itself.
How was this? She had locked the door. The key had been hidden as usual in the place known only to her father and herself. Rotha hurried down, and pushed her hand deep into the thatch covering the porch. The key was gone. The door stood open.
And now, besides the pat of the dog’s feet, she heard noises from within.
Rotha put her hand to her heart. Could it be that her father had come home? Was he here, here?
The girl stepped into the kitchen. Then a loud clash, as of a closing chest, came from an inner room. In an instant there was the rustle of a dress, and Mrs. Garth and Rotha were face to face in that dim twilight.
The recoil of emotion was too much for the girl. She stood silent. The woman looked at her for an instant with something more like a frightened expression than had yet been seen on her hard face.
Then she brushed past her and away.
“Stop!” cried Rotha, recovering herself.
The woman was gone, and the girl did not pursue her.
Rotha went into the room which Mrs. Garth had come from. It was Wilson’s room. There was his trunk still, which none had claimed. The trunk — the hasty closing of its lid had been the noise she heard! But it had always been heavily locked. With feverish fingers Rotha clutched at the great padlock that hung from the front of the trunk. It had a bunch of keys suspended from it. They were strange to her. Whose keys were they?
The trunk was not locked; the lid had merely been shut down. Rotha raised it with trembling hands. Inside were clothes of various kinds, but these had been thrust hurriedly aside, and beneath them were papers — many papers — scattered loosely at the bottom. What were they?
It was growing dark. Rotha remembered that there was no candle in the house, and no lamp that had oil. She thrust her hand down to snatch up the papers, meaning to carry them away. She touched the dead man’s clothes, and shrank back affrighted. The lid fell heavily again.
The girl began to quiver in every limb.
Who could say that the spirits of the dead did not haunt the scenes of their lives and deaths? Gracious heaven! she was in Wilson’s room!
Rotha tottered her way out in the gathering gloom, clutching at the door as she went. Back in the porch again, she felt for the key to the outer door. It was in the lock. She should carry it with her this time. Then she remembered the keys in the trunk. She must carry them away also. She never asked herself why. What power of good or evil was prompting the girl?
Calling the dog, she went boldly into the house again, and once more into the dead man’s room. She fixed the padlock, turned the key, drew it out of its wards, and put the bunch of keys in her pocket. In two minutes more she was on the high road, walking back to Shoulthwaite.
There was something in her heart that told her that to-day’s event was big with issues. And, truly, an angel of light had led her to that dark house.
The sun was gone. A vapory mist was preceding the night. The dead day lay clammy on her hands and cheeks.
When she reached the Fornside road, her eyes turned towards the smithy. There it was, and a bright red glow from the fire, white at its hissing heart, lit up the air about it. Rotha could hear the thick breathing of the bellows and the thin tinkle of the anvil. Save for these all was silent. What was the secret of the woman who lived there? That it concerned her father, Ralph, herself, and all people dear to her, was as clear as day to Rotha. The girl then resolved that, come what should or could, that secret should be torn from the woman’s heart.
The moon was struggling feebly through a ridge of cloud, lighting the sky at moments like a revolving lamp at sea. On the road home Rotha passed two young people who were tripping along and laughing as they went.
“Good night, Rotha,” said the young dalesman.
“Good night, dear,” said his sweetheart.
Rotha returned the salutations.
“Fine lass that,” said the young fellow in a whisper.
“Do you think so? She’s too moapy for me,” replied his companion. “I hate moapy folks.”
After this slight interruption the two resumed the sport of their good spirits.
The moon had cleared the clouds now.
It was to be just such a night — save for the frost and wind — as that fateful one on which Ralph and Rotha walked together from the Red Lion. How happy that night had seemed to her then to be — happy, at least, until the end! She had even sung under the moonlight. But her songs had been truer than she knew — terribly, horribly true.
One lonely foot sounds on the keep,
And that’s the warder’s tread.
Step by step Rotha retraced every incident of that night’s walk; every word of Ralph’s and every tone.
He had told her that her father was innocent, and that he knew it was so.
He had asked her if she did not love her father, and she had said, “Better than all the world.”
Had that been true, quite true? Rotha stopped and plucked at a bough in the fence.
When she had asked him the cause of his sadness, when she had hinted that perhaps he was keeping something behind which might yet take all the joy out of the glad news that he gave her — what, then, had he said? He had told her there was nothing to come that need mar her happiness or disturb her love. Had that also been true, quite true? No, no, no, neither had been true; but the falsehood had been hers.
She loved her father, yes; but not, no, not better than all the world. And what had come after had marred her happiness and disturbed her love. Where lay her love — where?
Rotha stopped again, and as though to catch her breath. Nature within her seemed at war with itself. It was struggling to tear away a mask that hid its own face. That mask must soon be plucked aside.
Rotha thought of her betrothal to Willy, and then a cold chill passed over her.
She walked on until she came under the shadow of the trees beneath which Angus Ray had met his death. There she paused and looked down. She could almost conjure up the hour of the finding of the body.
At that moment the dog was snuffling at the very spot. Here it was that she herself had slipped; here that Ralph had caught her in his arms; here, again, that he had drawn her forward; here that they had heard noises from the court beyond.
Stop — what noise was that! It was the whinny of a horse! They had heard that too. Her dream of the past and the present reality were jumbling themselves together.
Again? No, no; that was the neigh — the real neigh — of a horse. Rotha hastened forward. The dog had run on. A minute later Laddie was barking furiously. Rotha reached the courtyard.
There stood the old mare, exactly as before!
Was it a dream? Had she gone mad? Rotha ran and caught the bridle.
Yes, yes! It was a reality. It was Betsy!
There was no coffin on her back; the straps that had bound it now dangled to the ground.
But it was the mare herself, and no dream.
Yes, Betsy had come home.
CHAPTER XLII. THE FATAL WITNESS.
Long before the hour appointed for the resumption of the trial of Ralph Ray, a great crowd filled the Market Place at Carlisle, and lined the steps of the old Town Hall, to await the opening of the doors. As the clock in the cupola was striking ten, three men inside the building walked along the corridor to unbar the public entrance.
“I half regret it,” said one; “you have forced me into it. I should never have touched it but for you.”
“Tut, man,” whispered another, “you saw how it was going. With yon man on the bench and yon other crafty waistrel at the bar, the chance was wellnigh gone. What hope was there of a conviction?”
