Complete works of hall c.., p.7
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 7
Dame Ray sat in a chair before the kitchen fire. She had sat there the whole night through, moaning sometimes, but speaking hardly at all. Sleep had not come near her, yet she scarcely seemed to be awake. Last night’s shock had more than half shattered her senses, but it had flashed upon her mind a vision of her whole life. Only half conscious of what was going on about her, she saw vividly as in a glass the incidents of those bygone years, that had lain so long unremembered. The little cottage under Castenand; her old father playing his fiddle in the quiet of a summer evening; herself, a fresh young maiden, busied about him with a hundred tender cares; then a great sorrow and a dead waste of silence, — all this appeared to belong to some earlier existence. And then the sun had seemed to rise on a fuller life that came later. A holy change had come over her, and to her transfigured feeling the world looked different. But that bright sun had set now, and all around was gloom. Slowly she swayed herself to and fro hour after hour in her chair, as one by one these memories came back to her — came, and went, and came again.
On Rotha the care of the household had fallen. The young girl had sat long by the old dame overnight, holding her hand and speaking softly to her between the outbursts of her own grief. She had whispered something about brave sons who would yet be her great stay, and then the comforter herself had needed comfort and her voice of solace had been stilled. When the daylight came in at the covered windows, Rotha rose up unrefreshed; but with a resolute heart she set herself to the duties that had dropped so unexpectedly upon her. She put the spinning-wheel into the neuk window-stand and the woo-wheel against the wall. They would not be wanted now. She cleared the sconce and took down the flitches that hung from the rannel-tree to dry. Then she cooked the early breakfast of oatmeal porridge, and took the milk that the boy brought from the cow shed and put it into the dishes that she had placed on the long oak table which stretched across the kitchen.
Willy Ray had been coming and going most of the night from the kitchen to his own room — a little carpeted closet of a bedroom that went out from the first landing on the stairs, and looked up to the ghyll at the back. The wee place was more than his sleeping-room; he had his books there, but he had neither slept nor read that night. He wandered about aimlessly, with the eyes of one walking in his sleep, breaking out sometimes into a little hysterical scream, followed by a shudder, and then a sudden disappearance. Death had come to him for the first time, and in a fearful guise. Its visible presence appalled him. He was as feeble as a child now. He was ready to lean on the first strong human arm that offered; and though Rotha understood but vaguely the troubles that beset his mind, her quick instinct found a sure way to those that lay heavy at his heart. She comforted him with what good words she could summon, and he came again and again to her with his odd fancies and his recollections of the poor feeble philosophy which he had gleaned from books. The look in the eyes of this simple girl and the touch of her hand made death less fearsome than anything besides. Willy seemed to lean on Rotha, and she on her part appeared to grow stronger as she felt this.
Ralph had gone to bed much as usual the night before — after he had borne upstairs what lay there. He was not seen again until morning, and when he came down and stood for a moment over his mother’s chair as she sat gazing steadfastly into the fire, Rotha was stooping over the pan, with the porridge thivle in her hand. She looked up into his face, while his hand rested with a speechless sympathy on his mother’s arm, and she thought that, mingled with a softened sorrow, there was something like hope there. The sadness of last night was neither in his face nor in his voice. He was even quieter than usual, but he appeared to have grown older in the few hours that had intervened. Nevertheless, he went through his ordinary morning’s work about the homestead with the air of one whose mind was with him in what he did. After breakfast he took his staff out of the corner and set out for the hills, his dog beside him.
During the day, Rotha, with such neighborly help as it was the custom to tender, did all the little offices incident to the situation. She went in and out of the chamber of the dead, not without awe, but without fear. She had only once before looked on death, or, if she had seen it twice before this day, her first sight of it was long ago, in that old time of which memory scarcely held a record, when she was carried in her father’s arms into a darkened room like this and held for a moment over the white face that she knew to be the face of her mother. But, unused as she had been to scenes made solemn by death, she appeared to know her part in this one.
Intelligence of the disaster that had fallen on the household at Shoulthwaite Moss was not long in circulating through Wythburn. One after another, the shepherds and their wives called in, and were taken to the silent room upstairs. Some offered such rude comfort as their sympathetic hearts but not too fecund intellects could devise, and as often as not it was sorry comfort enough. Some stood all but speechless, only gasping out at intervals, “Deary me.” Others, again, seemed afflicted with what old Matthew Branthwaite called “doddering” and a fit of the “gapes.”
It was towards nightfall when Matthew himself came to Shoulthwaite. “I’m the dame’s auldest neighbor,” he had said at the Red Lion that afternoon, when the event of the night previous had been discussed. “It’s nobbut reet ‘at I should gang alang to her this awesome day. She’ll be glad of the neighborhood of an auld friend’s crack.” They were at their evening meal of sweet broth when Matthew’s knock came to the door, followed, without much interval, by his somewhat gaunt figure on the threshold.
“Come your ways in,” said Mrs. Ray. “And how fend you, Mattha?”
“For mysel’, I’s gayly. Are ye middlin’ weel?” the old man said.
“I’m a lang way better, but I’m going yon way too. It’s far away the bainer way for me now.” And Mrs. Ray put her apron to her eyes.
“Ye’ll na boune yit, Mary,” said Matthew. “Ye’ll na boune yon way for mony a lang year yit. So dunnet ye beurt, Mary.”
Mattha’s blubbering tones somewhat discredited his stoical advice.
Rotha had taken down a cup, and put the old man to sit between herself and Willy, facing Mrs. Ray.
“I met Ralph in the morning part,” said Matthew; “he telt me all the ins and outs aboot it. I reckon he were going to the kirk garth aboot the berryin’.”
Mrs. Ray raised her apron to her eyes again. Willy got up and left the room. He at least was tortured by this kind of comfort.
“He’s of the bettermer sort, he is,” said Matthew with a motion of his head towards the door at which Willy had gone out. “He taks it bad, does Willy. Ralph was chapfallen a laal bit, but not ower much. Deary me, but ye’ve gat all sorts of sons though you’ve nobbut two. Weel, weel,” he added, as though reconciling himself to Willy’s tenderness and Ralph’s hardness of heart, “if there were na fells there wad be na dales.”
Matthew had turned over his cup to denote that his meal was finished. The dame rose and resumed her seat by the fire. During the day she had been more cheerful, but with the return of the night she grew again silent, and rocked herself in her chair.
“It’s just t’edge o’ dark, lass,” said Matthew to Rotha while filling his pipe. “Wilt thoo fetch the cannels?”
The candles were brought, and the old man lit his pipe from one of them and sat down with Mrs. Ray before the fire.
“Dus’ta mind when Angus coomt first to these parts?” he said. “I do reet weel. I can a’ but fancy I see him now at the manor’al court at Deer Garth Bottom. What a man he was, to be sure! Ralph’s nobbut a bit boy to what his father was then. Folks say father and son are as like as peas, but nowt of the sort. Ye could nivver hev matched Angus in yon days for limb and wind. Na, nor sin’ nowther. And there was yan o’ the lasses frae Castenand had set een on Angus, but she nivver let wit. As bonny a lass as there was in the country side, she was. They say beauty withoot bounty’s but bauch, but she was good a’ roond. She was greetly thought on. Dus’ta mind I was amang the lads that went ahint her — I was, mysel’. But she wad hev nowt wi’ me; she trysted wid Angus; so I went back home and broke the click reel of my new loom straight away. And it’s parlish odd I’ve not lived marraless iver sin’.”
This reminiscence of his early and all but only love adventure seemed to touch a sensitive place in the old man’s nature, and he pulled for a time more vigorously at his pipe.
Mrs. Ray Still sat gazing into the fire, hardly heeding the old weaver’s garrulity, and letting him chatter on as he pleased. Occasionally she would look anxiously over her shoulder to ask Rotha if Ralph had got back, and on receiving answer that he had not yet been seen she would resume her position, and, with an absent look in her eyes, gaze back into the fire. When a dog’s bark would be heard in the distance above the sound of the wind, she would break into consciousness afresh, and bid Rotha prepare the supper. But still Ralph did not come. Where could he be?
It was growing late when Matthew got up to go. He had tried his best to comfort his old neighbor in her sorrow. He had used up all his saws and proverbs that were in the remotest degree appropriate to the occasion, and he had thrown in a few that were not remarkable for appositeness or compatibility. All alike had passed by unheeded. The dame had taken the good will for the good deed, and had not looked the gift-horses too closely in the mouth.
“Good night, Mattha Branthet,” she said, in answer to his good by; “good night, and God bless thee.”
Matthew had opened the door, and was looking out preparatory to his final leavetaking.
“The sky’s over-kessen to-neet,” he said. “There’s na moon yit, and t’wind’s high as iver. Good neet, Mary; it’s like ye’ll be a’ thrang eneuf to-morrow wi’ the feast for the berryin’, and it’s like eneuf ma mistress and laal Liza will be ower at the windin’.”
The dame sighed audibly.
“And keep up a blithe heart, Mary. Remember, he that has gude crops may thole some thistles.”
When the door had closed behind the weaver, Willy came back to the kitchen from his little room.
“Ralph not home yet?” he said, addressing Rotha.
“Not yet,” the girl answered, trying vainly to conceal some uneasiness.
“I wonder what Robbie Anderson wanted with him? He was here twice, you know, in the morning. And the schoolmaster — what could little Monsey have to say that he looked so eager? It is not his way.”
“Be sure it was nothing out of the common,” said Rotha. “What happened last night makes us all so nervous.”
“True; but there was a strange look about both of them — at least I thought so, though I didn’t heed it then. They say misfortunes never come singly. I wish Ralph were home.”
Mrs. Ray had risen from her seat at the fire, and was placing one of the candles upon a small table that stood before the neuk window.
With her back to the old dame, Rotha put her finger on her lip as a motion to Willy to say no more.
CHAPTER VII. SIM’S CAVE.
When Ralph retired to his own room on the night of his father’s death there lay a heavier burden at his heart than even that dread occurrence could lodge there. To such a man as he was, death itself was not so terrible but that many passions could conquer the fear of it. As for his father, he had not tasted death; he had not seen it; his death was but a word; and the grave was not deep. No, the grave was not deep. Ah, what sting lay in that thought! — what fresh sting lay there!
Ralph called up again the expression on the face of Simeon Stagg as he asked him in the inn that night (how long ago it seemed!) to give the name of the man who had murdered Wilson. “It’s your duty in the sight of Heaven,” he had said; “would you tarnish the child’s name with the guilt laid on the father’s?” Then there had come into Sim’s eyes something that gave a meaning to his earlier words, “Ralph, you don’t know what you ask.” Ah, did he not know now but too well? Ralph walked across the room with a sense as of a great burden of guilt weighing him down. The grave was not deep — oh, would it were, would it were! Would that the grave were the end of all! But no, it was as the old book said: when one dies, those who survive ask what he has left behind; the angel who bends above him asks what he has sent before. And the father who had borne him in his arms — whom he had borne — what had he sent before?
Ralph tramped heavily to and fro. His dog slept on the mat outside his door, and, unused to such continued sounds within, began to scrape and growl.
After all, there was no certain evidence yet. To-morrow morning he would go up the fell and see Sim alone. He must know the truth. If it concerned him as closely as he divined, the occasion to conceal it was surely gone by with this night’s event. Then Robbie Anderson, — what did he mean? Ralph recalled some dim memory of the young dalesman asking about his father. Robbie was kind to Sim, too, when the others shunned him. What did it all mean?
With a heavy heart Ralph began to undress. He had unbelted himself and thrown off his jerkin, when he thought of the paper that had fallen from his father’s open breast as he lifted him on to the mare. What was it? Yes, there it was in his pocket, and with a feverish anxiety Ralph opened it.
Had he clung to any hope that the black cloud that appeared to be hanging over him would not, after all, envelop him? Alas! that last vestige of hope must leave him. The paper was a warrant for his own arrest on a charge of treason. It had been issued at the court of the high constable at Carlisle, and set forth that Ralph Ray had conspired to subvert the government of his sovereign while a captain in the trained bands of the rebel army of the “late usurper.” It was signed and countersigned, and was marked for the service of James Wilson, King’s agent. It was dated too; yes, two days before Wilson’s death.
All was over now; this was the beginning of the end; the shadow had fallen. By that paradox of nature which makes disaster itself less hard to bear than the apprehension of disaster, Ralph felt relieved when he knew the worst. There was much of the mystery still unexplained, but the morrow would reveal it; and Ralph lay down to sleep, and rose at daybreak, not with a lighter, but with an easier heart.
When he took up his shepherd’s staff that morning, he turned towards Fornside Fell. Rising out of the Vale of Wanthwaite, the fell half faced the purple heights of Blencathra. It was brant from side to side, and as rugged as steep. Ralph did not ascend the screes, out went up by Castle Rock, and walked northwards among the huge bowlders. The frost lay on the loose fragments of rock, and made a firm but perilous causeway. The sun was shining feebly and glinting over the frost. It had sparkled among the icicles that hung in Styx Ghyll as he passed, and the ravine had been hard to cross. The hardy black sheep of the mountains bleated in the cold from unseen places, and the wind carried their call away until it died off into a moan.
When Ralph got well within the shadow cast on to the fell from the protruding head of the Castle Rock, he paused and looked about him. Yes, he was somewhat too high. He began to descend. The rock’s head sheltered him from the wind now, and in the silence he could hear the thud of a pick or hammer, and then the indistinct murmur of a man’s voice singing. It was Sim’s voice; and here was Sim’s cave. It was a cleft in the side of the mountain, high enough and broad enough for a man to pass in. Great bowlders stood above and about it.
The sun could never shine into it. A huge rock stood alone and apparently unsupported near its mouth, as though aeons long gone by an iceberg had perched it there. The dog would have bounded in upon Sim where he sat and sang at his work, but Ralph checked him with a look. Inexpressibly eerie sounded the half-buried voice of the singer in that Solitary place. The weird ditty suited well with both.
She lean’d her head against a thorn,
The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa’;
And there she has her young babe born,
And the lyon shall be lord of a’.
She’s howket a grave by the light o’ the moon,
The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa’;
And there she’s buried her sweet babe in,
And the lyon shall be lord of a’.
The singer stopped, as though conscious of the presence of a listener, and looking up from where he sat on a round block of timber, cutting up a similar block into firewood, he saw Ralph Ray leaning on his staff near the cave’s mouth. He had already heard of the sorrow that had fallen on the household at Shoulthwaite. With an unspeakable look of sympathy in his wild, timid eyes, as though some impulse of affection urged him to throw his arms about Ralph and embrace him, while some sense of shame impelled him to kneel at his feet, Sim approached him, and appeared to make an effort to speak. But he could say nothing. Ralph understood his silence and was grateful for it. They went into the cave, and sat down in the dusk.
“You can tell me all about it, now,” Ralph said, without preamble of any sort, for each knew well what lay closest at the other’s heart. “He is gone now, and we are here together, with none but ourselves to hear.”
“I knew you must know it one day,” Sim said, “but I tried hard to hide it from you — I did, believe me, I tried hard — I tried, but it was not to be.”
“It is best so,” Ralph answered; “you must not bear the burden of guilt that is not your own.”
“I’m no better than guilty myself,” said Sim. “I don’t reckon myself innocent; not I. No, I don’t reckon myself innocent.”
“I think I understand you, Sim; but you were not guilty of the deed?”
“No, but I might have been — I might but for an accident — the accident of a moment; but I’ve thought sometimes that the crime is not in the deed, but the intention. No, Ralph, I am the guilty man, after all: your father had never thought of the crime, not he, but I had brooded over it.”
“Did you go out that night intending to do it?” Ralph said.
