The ground was too slippery to encourage riding. He swallowed some food standing, and set off on foot at a brisk pace across Ling Crag Moor. Thence he gained Marshcotes Moor, struck into an ill-defined track that brought him out at Sorrowstones Spring, went a little way down the highroad at this point, and turned into the fields behind the Quarryman's Arms. Soon he was on the moor again, with frozen peat for a road, and sharp, dry air for stimulus.
On he strode till Lawfoot Water lay below him, with the reddening sun shimmering across the ice. Another turn, sharp to the right, past the further edge of the water, led him at the end of half an hour more to the crest of the ridge overlooking Frender's Folly.
Fifty years before, Luke Frender had ridden safely and well on the top of the rising trade-tide. When he sold his cotton-mill at Lutherton, and the business appertaining thereto, he was still a young man, with a taste for high living, and half a million sterling in the bank. Being a man of some imagination, and anxious to use his money in ways that had not occurred to his neighbours, he built himself a huge place in the very heart of the moors—not an ordinary square-built mansion with stuccoed walls, but a faithful imitation of the mediæval. There is a spacious courtyard on the north side, with a fountain in the middle, guarded by four great stone dogs. Loop-holes grin from the castle walls, and at one corner the steps of an unbuilt tower climb up to the second-floor windows. The windows are long, narrow, deep-browed; and here and there crumbling warts of masonry are tacked on to the walls. As it stands to-day, blackened by fifty years of the wind and rain and frost that is no child's play in the heart of Cranshaw Moor, Castle Frender—better known to the neighbourhood as Frender's Folly—has a certain dignity of its own. If itbe palpably an imitation, it is at least not jerry-built. Its walls are thick and well knit; its situation is harsh to the verge of terror; and the smooth lawns, the sweeping circle of carriage drive, the banked masses of rhododendron that climb the valley sides, serve only to accentuate the unshorn roughness that hems them in.
Nor is the Folly wanting in tradition of a sombre sort; short as its life has been, it has lived fast, just as its stones have greyed before their time. Luke Frender gambled away his money, his credit—his wife, too, some say—within its walls; and he shot himself in the big room overlooking the courtyard, which, half in mockery, he had built to serve as a private chapel. Then the friend who had robbed him of money and wife alike, lived on at the castle, and took to hard drinking, and died in raving delirium; his son, succeeding to the property, married one of his own housemaids, realized in a very brief time that he, too, had sold his honour to the devil, and avenged Luke Frender's end, in a fashion, by hanging himself to a beam in the same private chapel overlooking the great gateway and the courtyard. This was five years before Captain Laverack bought the place. Its history had become common talk throughout the countryside; prospective buyers shunned alike the grimness of its surroundings and the uncanny trend of its history, and Laverack had been able to buy it for a tithe of the amount which had originally been spent on the building. The shooting was excellent, and the situation exactly such a one as the Captain, in the present state of his domestic affairs, would have chosen before all others.
Roddick knew nothing of the story attaching to Frender's Folly, except that the building was almost of yesterday; yet now, as he looked down on that level circle of lawn and shrubbery, with the gloomy pile at its centre, he felt no whit disposed to gibe at the pretentiousness of what he had once termed the Cotton Castle. The sun, a crimson ball, was touching the moor-edge with its lower rim; a grey gloaming crept across the everlasting waste of heath; the wind sobbed piteously. A strip of green, a fringe of naked branches, a broadband of moor, were mirrored dimly in the big lake that stretched to the northern end of the valley. It was all inexpressibly lonesome, terrible beyond words.
The sun died wholly, while Roddick crept down the hill-side towards the trysting-place. He awoke from his sense of awe to find that his eyes were wet and his throat troubled. He cursed himself for a fool, but the pity had gripped his heart, for all that; the pathos that underlies all this bluster and wildness of the moors had struck to some inner sense, and made him womanish. He shivered as he stood beneath the grim old fir-tree that had found it hard work enough to stick to its post halfway up the hill-side. A sheep, away above him on the moor, bleated its half-witted protest against the fate that had set it there. If only a good, honest dog would give one good, honest bark, thought Roddick, he would not mind it half as much.
But the ungainly brute—half mastiff, half collie—that came creeping up towards the trysting-oak uttered no bark. He crouched close to Roddick's side, and wagged his rope of a tail, and smuggled his head into the man's hand for approbation; but he had been trained to hold his tongue, and he feared rebuke from the girl who followed him a few paces behind.
"Janet!"
No other word came to Roddick's lips. The tragedy, the desolation, the pathos,—they were all absorbed in that slim, girlish figure whose every line betokened eagerness. Wreck and ruin were chiselled deep into the stones below them; yearning that had no limits, aloofness that dared not seek for sympathy, were above them; but they two were close in each other's arms, and looked neither above nor below.
"Leo," she said at last, "was I foolish to drag you so far across the moor?"
"Be quiet, child!"
"I would have met you nearer Wynyates, but I could not get away for long enough. There is a crowd of people down there, dear, all expecting me to entertain them."
"Let them expect," muttered Roddick, gruffly.
As of old, he understood the folly of these meetings; the strain was greater than any sane man would subject himself to willingly.
"But I shall be missed if I stay here long, and I dread father finding us out; it would put an end to—to all the world, I think, Leo."
"Janet!" he said sharply.
"Yes?" She looked up, shocked by his tone.
"You shall not say those things. Do you know what it makes me ready to do—when you show your naked heart to me like that? It makes me tell myself that I have only to carry you away from all this to put an end to the struggle. You are such a flimsy weight, too; I could carry you with ease, whether you liked it or not, and then——"
He stopped. A supple strength came into the girl's figure—a strength one would not have expected from its slenderness.
"Leo," she said slowly, "I ask nothing better. I am not afraid to face it."
He hesitated—just for one half-moment. Then he shook her as if she had been a naughty child.
"You little fool! Whoisafraid to face a danger that he does not understand? If ever you dare to try me as far as that again, I'll—— Good God, Janet!" he broke off, with irritable tenderness, "you mustn't cry. Can't you see that a man who wants to be—unselfish, you know, and nonsense of that kind—has to behave like a fiend incarnate. It's easy to be soft when you have not to keep the fight hot in you."
"Leo," said she, "if you don't kiss me at once, I shall hate you for ever.—Have you stopped to think," she went on, as if in apology for obtaining her demand, "to think what the life here means to me? I loathe the moors; they frighten me; it is all so dreary. And the people father brings to make things livelier for me, they only aggravate the loneliness. Leo, if I were one little bitmoreof a fool, I should either cry myself blind or—well, the lake is deep enough, and the cold would only be for the first minute or two."
Roddick's voice was in rags when he spoke.
"I'm a brute, child; why didn't you learn it in time?"
He took her to him, and petted her with a helpless mixture of the father and the lover that was infinitely pitiable.
"Leo," she whispered, looking up and smiling through her sobs, "is this our happy Christmas?"
Before Roddick could reply, the dog began to whine in a way that called for attention. He had his nose to the ground, and evidently scented something not to his liking. Then he was off like a rocket, and a dismal shriek came from a clump of heather just above them. The night was clear, with stars enough to show things in a sort of gloaming light. In the middle of the clump was a writhing mass of rags and dishevelled hair.
"My wife, by——! Janet, call off the dog and run back home. It is no place for you!" cried Roddick.
But Tramp was too excited to hear the girl's call. He was running round and round the figure, a stifled bark cutting into his growls now and then. Janet ran forward and gripped him by the collar—none too soon, for every moment he was on the point of making a spring. The figure got up out of the heather. Roddick cursed the light, because it was enough to show Janet the hideous contortions of the creature's face.
The silence grew unbearable.
"Well, what are you doing here?" demanded Roddick.
"Nay, Leo, you mustn't speak to me like that, when I've followed you, mile on mile, across the desolate places. Will you never learn what a true woman's love means?"
Janet winced cruelly. Roddick's eyes blazed as he watched the delicate girl shrink from this evil hag who was yet his wife.
"How often must I tell you to stay where you are bidden?" The effort to keep his hands off was trying him sorely.
"I can't obey when I'm drunk, Leo—I can't. I go wild for you, I—— Who's the white girl standing there?"
"Janet, go, I tell you! Go!"
She shook off the numbness that held her.
"I can't, I won't, leave you! Leo, are not your battles mine? How can I leave you to face—that?"
"Why didn't we let the dog do its work?" muttered Roddick.
Janet caught the words and gripped him by the arm.
"No, no—not that, Leo. That is what I meant—you will kill her if I leave you, and we should lose our chance of happiness, you and I, for ever. Oh, can't you see it? You who shook the breath out of my body because I asked you to take me away."
The creature glared from one to another and tried to speak, but Roddick checked her roughly.
"It is better to run away than commit murder," went on the girl, with eager persistence. "Will nothing make you understand, Leo?"
He pulled himself together.
"It is well to do neither, child. You can trust me."
"Will you swear to do—that thing—no harm?"
"Yes, I swear it. Now go."
She hesitated, glanced at the bundle of rags, then held up her face. He kissed it gravely.
"That is our protest, dear," she said.
He watched her out of sight. He turned to the wife of his bosom.
"Come along, you devil!" he said dispassionately.
Together they set off across the moor. Roddick laughed harshly from time to time.
The mistal at the rear of Gabriel Hirst's house was noisy, this May evening, with the clatter of milking-pails, the mooing of cattle in their stalls, and the semi-audible running comments of Jose Binns. Jose, it will be remembered, in addition to looking after the chapel and giving sound advice to the preacher, was Gabriel's right hand in the management of the farm.
Now the Ling Crag folk were keen as nails in their bargainings with the Almighty, and they were just as keen in their conduct of more carnal transactions. Jose Binns, indeed, had a really remarkable aptitude for trafficking of both sorts; it was his favourite occupation, while milking or engaged in any other work that left his thoughts free, to drive imaginary bargains with non-existent purchasers touching property which was not his to sell. This was his substitute for the reading of fiction, and it certainly betokened a higher order of intelligence than that of the merely practical man who chaffers with realities.
The mistal door stood open to-night. Jose and the roan cow he was milking showed vague at the far end of the byre; the honey-rich flavour of kine mingled with the summer dusk within. The roan cow was more patient than usual, and Jose, feeling himself in consequence at liberty to take a little imaginative run, dropped his mumbled adjurations. His voice grew distinct and earnest as he commenced a spirited duologue, with one William Feather as second party, Jose acting as sponsor for William in that individual's absence.
"Now, William, I've getten a grand beäst for sale. What mud tha be after gieing?"
"Nay, I see nowt so mich i' her. Nay, I'm noan so set on naming a price."
"Lad, tha'rt daft, letting sich a chance go by. She gi'es sixteen quart a day, that she does—eight i' th' morn, an' eight at neet. She hesn't a bad trick wi' her, an' milks quiet as a lamb. Now, come, William; she's dirt cheap at twelve pun ten."
"Twelve pun ten, say'st 'a? What! for a ill-fettled beäst like yon? Fiddle o' that tale! I'll gie thee nine pun, an' mak thee shut on a bad bargain for old sake's sake."
"Nay, nay, I willun't tak a ha'penny less nor twelve pun. There's not another like her i' Ling Crag—nay, nor for twenty mile round, nawther. She's muck cheäp, I tell thee, at twelve pun. Only yestermorn Dick o' Rag war here, an' he tried to beat me down to eleven pun; but I warn't sich a softy, I warn't, an' I telled Dick he could tak her at twelve pun ten or lump it, just as it suited him. I'll mak it twelve, though, as it's thee, lad, an' that's more nor I'd do for Dick. He'll be back to-morn, likely, wi' th' brass i' his pocket; an' a sorry chap tha'll be, William, when tha sees thy bargain goan."
The argument went on briskly till Jose was nearly through with his last pair of udders; William had certainly the lesser half of the talking to do, but this was a pardonable human trait in old Binns. Finally, a compromise was effected at ten pounds, and Jose Binns got up from his stool. He smacked the roan cow's flanks, uttering the while a quiet cackle of delight.
"Tha girt lanky bitch," cried he, "tha artn't worth seven pun, let alone ten. Tha knows tha kicks th' pail ower ivery time ony but me shapes to milk thee, an' oftens then; tha ho'ds thy milk; tha's as full o' jade's tricks as a egg is full o' meät. Eh, lass! but William mun ha' bin doiting when he gie ten pun for thee."
"Is that my cow you're selling, Jose?" asked the preacher, from the doorway.
"Ay, I war doing part bargaining. I selled th' owd roän cow for ten pun. Eh, it war grand—grand! He's noan what he war at a bargain, isn't William."
Gabriel laughed, as one accustomed to these visionary sales.
"I want the trap to-morrow. See that it's well cleaned—spick and span as you can make it."
"Isn't it allus well cleäned?" grumbled Jose, settling himself to the last of the cows.
"Well, yes; but this is a special occasion. Mr. Lomax comes home with his wife in the afternoon, and I'm going to meet them at Heathley. It isn't every day, Jose, I have to meet a honeymoon couple."
"Notsicha couple," said Jose, slowly.
"What do you mean, man? You look as sour as a winter apple over it."
"I've heärd tales as are like to set a man's back up. Oh, ay, there's been queer goings on up to Teewit House."
Partly from habit, partly from the spirit of the country, Gabriel was wont to humour old Binns; but he frowned to-night as Jose touched on matters about which he himself had been sorely exercised.
"Nonsense! I wonder at you, Jose, listening to such old woman's talk."
"Wondering won't shape things different, an' that's Bible truth. What for doesn't th' Manor trap wend to th' station, i' place o' yourn?"
"Because," said the preacher, with an accent there was no mistaking—"because I asked Mrs. Lomax to let me go and meet them. There are too many idle tongues about; but I fancy folks know I shouldn't run after wastrels—and it may be as well to show what I think at once, and have done with it."
"I doan't hold wi' kissing," muttered Jose, doggedly—"leastways, while thy wife's another chap's. Afore marriage, I allus did say, fowks ought to think shame to kiss an' slaver ower one another; an' after ye're wed—well, ye're noan so set on it, an' there's no harm done. Them'smyviews—gie ower, lass! Dost 'a want to upset th' pail, tha silly wench?"
The set of Jose's shoulders indicated that the subject was closed, so far as he was concerned; so Gabriel, with another reminder about the conveyance, went back to the house, thereto reckon up, for the hundredth time, the twisted ways of his friend's wooing.
But the May sun was shining bravely as he drove to Heathley at three of the following afternoon, and loyalty to Griff seemed just part and parcel of the quickening landscape. Step by step with the loyalty ran that unalterable egoism of the preacher's. If he could feel himself singled out, now for Divine wrath, now for commendation at the Deity's hands, how much easier was it for him to believe that Marshcotes and Ling Crag set great store by his example? They knew him, all these villagers who had been shaken by the scandal in their midst; they saw in him a resolute and a God-fearing man, one whose opinion on a point of morals was worth the having; how could it fail to make Griff's road the smoother for him if he, Gabriel Hirst, ostentatiously went forward to greet him on his arrival? Perhaps, then, it was almost a disappointment to Gabriel when he reached Heathley and discovered that certain daring minds had chosen to act on their own initiative. The good coach "Airedale" ran from Landford to Heathley in those days, and it had been noised abroad among those who knew Lomax that he and his wife would reach the Spotted Heifer at two of the afternoon. The preacher found the inn-yard black with chattering groups of Marshcotes folk, gathered from widely different sections of the community. Some had walked to Heathley, others had come by omnibus; all, by the look of their faces, were prepared to give young Lomax as hearty a greeting as he could wish for.
The same impulse which had moved the preacher to side with the weaker cause was not likely to leave unmoved others of these sturdy dwellers on the moors. The weak, the irresolute and the ultra-pious were dead against Griff and his wife; they forgot old likings, and remembered only what had been proved up to the hilt in a court of law. And this attitude had roused the more independent men and women; they brought to mind the fact that no one in Marshcotes had had a word to say against Griff until this trouble came; none could urge that the lad's treatment of Kate was simply a corollary of previousconduct of his; but plenty of people were mindful of the open-handed way in which Griff and his mother had gone in and out among their neighbours. Before the trouble with Strangeway's wife, indeed, there had been a remarkable unanimity in the mind of the countryside as to the Lomaxes. Some were wont to style Griff "a raffle-coppin," meaning thereby a kind of ne'er-do-weel whom everybody loved; but that was the worst name you were likely to hear attached to him through the length and breadth of Marshcotes parish. And though they had their faults—these upland folk—forgetfulness of old friendships was not among their vices.
So the preacher, as he jumped from the trap and threw the reins to a boy who chanced to be near, felt as though a little cold water had been sprinkled over the fine warmth of his enthusiasm. He recommenced the searchings of soul, the anxious appeals to Providence as to whether he were doing the right thing, now that he stood as one of a band of well-wishers, not as a solitary ally against a crowd of backbiters.
But the waiting groups were unmistakably glad to see Gabriel Hirst come into the inn-yard. If they had failed to look to him for inspiration to perform a kindly act, they were at least deeply sensible of the sanction given to that act by the presence of one who was pre-eminently a man of God. Even Jack o' Ling Crag, with his satellites, Will Reddiough and the rest, warmed to the conviction "that Gabriel Hirst war noan sich a bad sort of a chap, when he left his praching-tackle behind him."
The coach was late, according to a precedent not unknown at Heathley; but no diminution of good spirits was apparent in the jolly crowd that thronged the yard. The demonstration had none of the dreary formality peculiar to organized gatherings. Each little handful of men and women had come here on its own account, expecting to be the sole representative of the village, and casting uneasy glances at its neighbours as it set off down the village street, lest its destination should be guessed and commented on; each little knot, on arriving at the inn, looked at the next group, first with surprise, then withbroadening grins. Every one—with the exception of the preacher—felt that it was pleasant to have company while arguing for the doubtful side of a moral question.
As for Jack o' Ling Crag, he was all a-bubble with suppressed glee. When Reddiough observed that there was a fine welcome in store for the travellers, Jack winked very knowingly, and, "Thee bide a bit," he answered darkly; "happen there's summat i' th' way on a extra surprise i' store."
At last the coach came in, with a mighty screech of the horn and a rattling of horses' hoofs on the cobbles. Gabriel Hirst sent his self-communing to the winds as he saw Griff—old Griff—standing on the top of the coach, his head somewhere up about the level of the Spotted Heifer's chimney-stacks, his face one comprehensive laugh of satisfaction. Three-times-three went up from the crowd, and old Jim, of cheery memory, gave a gallant blast from his horn, and a mixed collection of children, dogs, and loafers gathered round the outskirts of the throng, to see what all the fuss was about.
"I've brought the trap for you; we'll be at the Manor in no time, with the chestnut between the shafts," said the preacher, salutations over.
"Axing your pardon, sir," interrupted Jack o' Ling Crag, "th' chestnut isn't no longer atween th' shafts; there's shanks's mare i' place o' horseflesh, if so be as Mr. Lummax——"
"Here, I say!" broke in Griff, with a jolly laugh; "a joke's a joke, Jacky boy, but it's four good miles to Marshcotes Manor; you can't pull us all the way?"
"An' a home-coming's a home-coming, an' a welcome's a welcome," answered mine host of the Dog and Grouse; "an' what's four mile to Marshcotes lads? We'll tak turn an' turn about; there's plenty on us for that little journey."
"And there's a house-side called Marshcotes main street at the end of it. Have you thought of that, boys?" said Griff, still laughing.
"Tak what the Lord gi'es ye, sir, an' mak no bones about it. Up ye get, an' away we go; an' if we're as willing as your wife's bonny, ye won't be lang on th' roäd."
Jack o' Ling Crag, having exhausted himself in this effort of gallantry, ran forward and took his place at the left shaft of the conveyance. Kate was a little bewildered, and vastly pleased, by the unexpected symptoms of good-will; but her confusion did not signify in the least, since she was only expected to blush rosy red and look her best. They had cheered for Griff, and they had cheered for Kate, this crowd of hard uplanders, who could let themselves out for a holiday on occasion. So up went another three-times-three for the "little pracher," and Gabriel found himself swung by mighty arms on to the back seat of the trap. Jack was joined by five other stalwart volunteers, and away they rattled through the market-place, along the rutty, narrow streets, and so into the smooth highway that led to Marshcotes. All who had come on foot kept pace beside the gig; a little behind followed the green omnibus from the Bull, and the red 'bus from the White Hart just across the way.
At the foot of Marshcotes main street was the surprise which old poacher Jack's innocent heart had devised, as likely to give his comrade about as much pleasure as a man could hold without unduly stretching his anatomy. The local band struck up its own private version of the wedding-march, and headed the triumphal procession with a vigour that was unimpeachable.
"Now, sir, hes Marshcotes gi'en ye a welcome, or hesn't it?" demanded Jack, relinquishing his post at the shaft and going to Griff's side.
"It has that! We'll not forget to-day, Kate, will we?"
"Durn it, it's nowt so mich to crack on—on'y we thowt as we'd just try our best, Mr. Lummax," muttered Jack, and dropped modestly to the rear of the procession.
Mrs. Lomax was at the Manor gate when they arrived. She had heard the shouting, and a tune that seemed vaguely connected with wedding festivals, and the clatter of clogs on the stones; but she could scarcely believe her eyes when she saw the fashion of Griff's home-coming, nor her ears when she heard the shouts of good fellowship. The old lady's eyesdimmed with tears; it was good to believe in such friendliness as had prompted these rackety demonstrations.
Much would have more, and up went three cheers for the mother. Griff helped Kate down, kissed his mother, and turned to the crowd.
"We can't entertain you all here," he laughed, "but come in, as many as can squeeze a way."
"An' them as can't, will find quarters at th' Dog an' Grouse!" cried Jack o' Ling Crag.
"An' th' Bull can mak room for a two or three," chimed in the rival landlord.
After the noisy crowd had been got rid of, they had supper, the three of them; and after that Griff lit his pipe, and stretched out his long legs to the blaze, and looked from the mother on one side of the hearth to the wife on the other—wondering the while that this vexed problem of marriage worked itself out so exceeding smoothly in practice.
It seemed odd to Kate to find herself once again in that firelit parlour, where she had waited till Griff might return to claim her, where she had sickened with dread lest an ever-watchful Providence should snatch the coming happiness from her grasp. She had forgotten, in the midst of her dread, that it is only the things we fear most abjectly which never happen; keen terror would seem to act as a buffer between its object and its fulfilment, but she had not stopped to think of that. And now she was here, with Griff beside her—with an earnest, too, from those she had known, her life through, that they were minded to esteem her a woman of honour. Impulsively she put her arms round Griff's neck and drew his face down.
"I had never dreamed such things could be," she whispered.
The honeymoon had left her with her illusions sweet and sound. She was no girl, to be outraged by necessities, to quiver under the little jars that make up the wear and tear of a privacy shared with another. Her idols were a woman's; her hopes of the new life were of tougher fabric than the girl's peach-bloom romanticism, to be rubbed bare by any passing sleeve; and those two months they had had together, she andGriff, had given her no cause to doubt the future. Whether the Providence she held in superstitious dread had chosen prose instead of poetry, had elected to rob her, hour by weary hour after she had once settled into her new life, of the happiness that now almost hurt her by its intensity—whether Providence thought surfeit a subtler cruelty than the mere dashing away of an untasted cup, remained to be seen—but Kate's dreads did not lie that way, and her home-coming had not a drop of bitter in among the sweets.
The mother's keen eyes took stock of them both, and the doubt in her face resolved itself slowly as she watched. Like all homely women, she had a quick scent for harmony or discord between married people, and she felt that Kate and Griff were "all right."
"Well, mother?" said Griff, when Kate had left them.
"That is a big question to ask, dear, is it not? But you will do, I fancy, the pair of you. I have been anxious, terribly anxious, about the effect these eight weeks would have on you. You went away gaily enough, boy, butIknew that it was kill or cure."
"What do you mean, quite?"
"You would not have asked me that if the experiment had gone wrong. Suppose you had made a mistake, Griff? Considering your impulsiveness, it is the least one could have expected of you—to make a mistake. Don't you think two months in each other's company, with no one to fill up the gaps, would have made the truth clear to you?"
"If you knew Kate as I do, mother," said the son, with a ridiculous air of possession, "you would see therecouldhave been no mistake."
"Very proper, dear. You sound just like a lover, and I wouldn't be in any hurry, if I were you, to become a mere husband. Your father always forgot, to the end of the chapter, that we hadn't tumbled into love with each other the day before."
"Well?" demanded Roddick, as Griff thrust his head in at the open window of the Wynyates parlour. "How does marriage go?"
"Like the weather, old man; soft, variable winds, no showers to speak of, and a touch of green showing everywhere."
"Come in, can't you? Why do you stand there with that perennial grin on your face, as if you were posing for a full-length portrait of the happy bridegroom? Away with you newly-married people!"
"Thanks," said Griff, striding over the low window-sill.
"You think the whole world must be looking through your rose-tinted spectacles. Wait till the glass gets smoked, and walk delicately in the meanwhile; you're not a degree higher than a cat on a glass-bottled wall, and if you go prancing along in this style——"
"You are in very good form this morning, Roddick. It does a man good to listen to your breadth of epithet."
"Breadth of epithet! Why talk like a book, Lomax? Call them swears, and have done with it. What have you come for?"
"To be congratulated. I couldn't miss your pretty way of putting things, so here I am, the very morning after my return."
"I suspect you want comfort," snarled Roddick. "I can give you that. There's a heap of fools in the same box with you, so you won't run a chance of feeling lonely. About how soon do you think of bolting for good and all?"
"Roddick, you're going a bit too far——" began Griff, hotly. But he caught a wicked light of satisfaction in the other's face, and made up his mind that he would not be guyed—"trailed," as they called it in Marshcotes—however much the amusement might give Roddick a vent for his ill-humour.
"I mostly am. Once I went very much too far, and—have some tobacco."
They smoked on in silence for awhile. Griff ventured a remark at length; his companion took no notice whatever, but went on frowning at the live peats in the grate.
"About that woman," said Roddick, finally.
"Which woman?"
"The thing you mistook for a vampire when you were last here. What did the pretty little beast do to you, Lomax, out there in the darkness?"
Griff shuddered; he had almost forgotten the incident under stress of the quick march of later events.
"She leaped out of the wind and rain like a storm-elf, and glued her flabby lips to mine, and called me 'Leo.'"
"Only that? You'd get used to it with practice," said Roddick, with a grim caricature of cheeriness; "one does to anything. Leo happens to be my own name, if you remember. On my soul, Lomax, I'm jealous! You've stolen one of the kisses that are my exclusive property. Gad, I've a mind to horsewhip you!"
Roddick was swung by passion into the very worst of his moods. All through this bitter levity ran a streak of blasphemy—a silent, strenuous blasphemy that was worse than any red-hot flow of words could have been.
"But who is she?" said his companion, gravely.
"Who is she?" Roddick's laugh burst out as if it had been half-strangled on its way to his mouth. "Innocent friend, who is a woman usually that prowls round one's doorway in the dark, and leaps into one's arms, and—the rest of it? The woman is my wife, of course."
Another dead silence. The first of the summer's bees forsook the white arabis that was coming into blossom underthe parlour window, and flew into the room. Roddick watched it as it buzzed from wall to wall; then it wanted to escape, and made a dive for the upper window, banging itself against the glass.
"It's fun getting in, but how are you going to get out again, little fool?" muttered Roddick. He went to the window and squashed the bee flat against the glass; then returned to his place. "Lomax," he said quietly, "you'd better hear all about it; half a true story is worse than a whole lie. You want to know how this Venus became my cherished wife?"
"Oh, drop that tone, old man!" cried Griff. "You don't mean it, and it grinds at one's nerves horribly. Is she really your wife? From what I could see of her in the dark, she seemed too old—any age she might have been——"
"She's forty-five, as you are rude enough to call a lady's age in question," said Roddick, still in the same voice. "Drink has delicate fingers, you know, for modelling a woman's face, and she looks older. As to her being my wife, there is no question: she carries her marriage-lines like a talisman next to her breast. She brought the paper out, only a day or two ago, and asked me to gloat over it with her in Darby and Joan fashion; but you can understand that I find it rather difficult nowadays to play therôleof dutiful husband."
Griff had abandoned thought of interruption. It was frightful to listen to the man's cold-blooded rendering of his tragedy, but Roddick must tell his story in his own way, or not at all.
"We'll begin with the idyllic stage, Lomax, as you've rather a taste for sweetmeats. When I was twenty, and charmingly innocent, I went for a week's fishing in Devonshire. I put up at a little inn, a hundred miles from anywhere, and the landlord's daughter—who was scarcely innocent, I believe, at the moment she was born—took me in hand. You know what that means, when a young cub just let loose from school is flattered and fawned on by a woman five years his senior. The girl was passably pretty, too. Well, I came down again to theinn a few months later, and I was greeted with news—news, and tears, and entreaties from the girl that I would marry her. I was soft in those days—tender, you know—and I did marry her, more out of pity than anything else. I have never been tender since," he added, with a sudden deepening of his voice.
"Then—you were married all the five years we knew each other in town? Did Dereham, or any others of our set, know about it?"
"No, though I nearly blurted it out more than once, when they came to me with their doll's-house prettinesses about women.Youthought you were a cynic, now and then, didn't you, Lomax, when the Ogilvie woman touched you up a bit too hard? Lord, I could have taught you a cynicism that grips your vitals! You'll never learn it now, so it's lucky you've struck into optimism—it fits you better."
"Never mind me, Roddick. Finish your story."
"Six months after I married my picturesque maid of the inn—the child died a day or two after its birth—she began to take opium for sleeplessness; she continued it as a luxury. From that she passed, with true catholicity, to wine, brandy, whisky—or, failing these, gin. She grew more beast-like every year, till now it's only the clothes and the walking on her hind legs that stamp her as a woman. Three times she has tried to kill me, and once—my cursed conscience won't let me do anything else—I have saved her from death."
"I thought you disclaimed tenderness just now," put in Griff, scarce knowing what to say. "In your place, I should have let her die."
"You wouldn't, when it came to the point," snapped Roddick. "We've most of us been murderers in theory, but it rings differently when it comes to practice. Not that tenderness has anything to do with it. I loathe her, and wish she were dead: it's my fool of a conscience, I tell you, that ought to have perished ofennuiyears ago. But neither will die; they're tough as nails, both the wife and the conscience. Wherever I go, I take the woman with me, like a monkey in a cage, with anurse to look after her. When I lived in town, I planted my menagerie down in Hampstead; when I came here, I put her in a cottage as far in the heart of the moor as I could manage—she's there at this moment, unless she has given her nurse the slip again and come in search of me."
"And you see her often?"
"I have to," said Roddick, with bitter weariness; "sometimes it takes a strong pairs of arms to hold her. But her tantrums are the part of our married life I find the easiest to bear. She is not always mad, you know. She only tries to throttle me in and between whiles, by way of variety; at other times she loves me dearly, she fawns on me, she—— Never mind, Lomax; it makes me sick to talk of it."
"Poor old chap—poor old chap!" muttered Griff, vaguely. "Why the devil can't she die? A year or two of such a life would finish off any ordinary woman."
"Don't repeat that!" cried Roddick, sharply. "The next step is, what a fool I am not to kill her, and I kick ideas of that kind out of my mind before they get a chance."
"Roddick," said Griff—with a sudden glimpse of the reason that had brought his friend to this out-of-the-way moor—"Roddick, have you told me all?"
The other was silent for a space. His brows came together, overhanging his deep-sunken eyes like a jagged thatch.
"No, it is not all. When I said I had shelved tenderness, I lied. Dereham learned that end of my story, because he happened to know the girl's people."
Griff bethought him of Frender's Folly—of the coincidence between the coming of Laverack and the letting of Wynyates Hall—of the hint that Gabriel Hirst had once given him as to the distress of Laverack's daughter.
"The Laveracks, you mean?" he said bluntly.
"How did you guess that?"
"I remembered that you and they turned up almost together, that was all."
"Well, it doesn't signify, I suppose. You're not the man to gabble, are you, Lomax? I used to wonder at what youartistic people call illicit passions; close upon forty, with a wife who had taught me my lesson, it never occurred to me that I should be bothered by love. But Dereham took me one afternoon to the Laveracks'; why I went with him, the Lord only knows, hating tea-cup frippery as I did. Anyhow, I went, and Janet was there; you can piece the beginning together for yourself. The thing was as inevitable, Lomax, as thunder after lightning; we had been waiting all our lives for each other, and—there I go, slipping into the old, weather-beaten tags. A man can't touch love with words, any more than he can describe a sunrise."
"Did you strive against it?" The question was out and away before Griff could capture it. He was curious to know how a man of Roddick's stamp would behave under such an unexpected stress.
"Strive? No, you fool! It's the half-way people who flutter and beat their wings against the cage. A man either cuts the whole thing at once, or yields unconditionally. I yielded. Then Laverack got wind of it, and took the Folly in a hurry, and carried off Janet to the moors here."
Roddick got up from his chair, and began to pace about the room.
"Old man," he cried suddenly, "thank your God you have never had that to fight against—to live chained to a woman you loathe, and to know that a word will give you the love you crave for. And sometimes"—his voice sank to a whisper—"sometimes my little lady, in her innocence and passion, entreats me to take her away somewhere, and end it all. Then, Lomax, it is just hell."
Griff was driven to bay, as we all are when our friends force us to be helpless spectators of their distress.
"Do you remember the advice you once gave me—to cut and run, and snatch happiness while I could? A man, you say, doesn't beat his wings against the cage—but you are doing it," he said, impotently.
Roddick turned and blazed out on him.
"Do you know what that would mean for Janet? Do youknow that I'd pawn my beggarly soul to save her little finger an ache?"
"Can't you get a divorce?" said Griff, breaking a long silence.
"No valid excuse, or shouldn't I have jumped at it? A woman may drink one's good name away and attempt one's life, and be faithful for all that. Drink comes under the sickness or health, richer or poorer, clause."
Griff also rose from his chair and fidgeted nervously up and down the floor.
"I'm off, Roddick," he said at last. "God help you, old fellow!"
Roddick grinned.
"I used to say that, but I had less experience then. You're not going to leave me yet. I'll saddle the grey, and we must have a gallop together. There's nothing like a horse for driving sanity into a man."
But all along the road, gallop, canter, or trot, Griff could not rid himself of the burden—
"If only the woman would die; if only the woman would die."
They had been at the Manor for a week, Kate and he, before it seriously occurred to Griff that they could not go on living here for ever. Mrs. Lomax had been very urgent, more than once since his return, that they should make the Manor their home; but Griff knew his mother too well to dream for a moment that she could endure a second mistress in the house. Kate was as strong and unbending in some ways as the older woman, and the position was sure to be productive, in the long run, of jar and discomfort.
So Griff went for a long walk one afternoon, in order to think out what was best to be done. To tell his mother straightforwardly that it was time he sought a house elsewhere seemed likely to result in a quarrel between them; and he shirked the idea of that more instinctively than he shrank from the thought of letting their lives drift into a state of perpetual, half-felt friction. At the end of his walk he was no nearer to a solution of the difficulty than when he started, and he turned into the Bull, not feeling over anxious to meet his women-folk while he was still in this pitiable state of doubt.
"You're looking bothered, like, Mr. Lummax," said the landlord, bustling in to serve his favourite customer.
"Iambothered, Crabtree. Give me a Scotch whisky, and we'll see if that will help me."
Crabtree loitered about, as his habit was, after bringing the whisky. He finally came to rest against the window, pointing his meditations by an up-and-down motion of the straw between his teeth.
"Well, how's the world?" asked Griff.
"Nobbut sadly, sir, nobbut sadly. They tell us it's th' best world we've getten, but I niver did see how that helped a body. What wi' th' sheep lambing too forrard-like i' th' spring, an' th' frost taking half th' lambkins off, an' th' rain when I should hev been leäding my hay, an' th' drought when th' tummits wanted watter, an' th' wife slipping away under-sod fair at t' thrangest time she could ha' chosen—nay, it's a poor mak on a world, tak it how ye will. Thank ye, Mr. Lummax, I will hev a fill; baccy an' strong drink is all as us poor men can look to for comfort."
"You're a fine hand at the grumbles, Crabtree. I warrant you've turned over a tidy penny this year, for all your growls. As to your wife, you've soon found another, eh?"
There was the faintest trace of a smile at that corner of the landlord's mouth which was not occupied by the straw; but the rest of his face was expressive of sad rebuke.
"It's easy to jest, sir, when ye've getten the lump of your troubles afore ye. She war a grand lass, th' first 'un, an' niver a wrang word between us, save when it jumped out accidental-like. But what can a feckless man do wi' a public on his hands, an' none to see to th' sarving-maid, an' th' washing, an' th' cooking? I've nowt agen t' other missuses, ye'll understand, but they're more, as a man might say, i' th' way o' meät an' drink—a thing 'at cannot be done without. But th' first wife—it war more i' th' way of a pleasure, like, nor a business, my marrying her. Well, well, it's up an' it's down i' this life, an' afore ye've rightly getten used to one position, ye're shifted to t' other. My head fair swims, whiles, when I fall to thinking o' th' whirligig."
Griff's eyes had wandered from his host to the half-dozen bills of sale that lined the opposite wall.
"I say, Crabtree!" he interrupted; "I didn't know Gorsthwaite Hall was for sale. Have you noticed that bill up there—the middle one?"
"I can't say as I hev, sir. They come an' they go, does farms—like wives, in a manner o' speaking—an' a man gets ower used to th' shiftings to pay much heed to 'em."
Crabtree moved to the printed sheet and slowly read out the contents.
"Mr. Crowther Crowther is honoured, by the executors of the late Thomas Widdop, with instructions to sell that valuable freehold property known as Gorsthwaite Hall, with all the farm buildings, implements, live and dead stock, as under." Then followed a list of horses, heifers, cows in calf, waggons, turnip and hay choppers, and the like; and an exposition of the agricultural merits of the "Three closes of land adjoining thereto, comprising in all about thirty acres."
"A fine old place it is, too," said Griff, thoughtfully.
"It's like a sight of other fine old places hereabouts, sir—gone to wrack an' ruin. Ay, I mind th' time when there war more Widdops at Gorsthet nor old Thomas: he war nobbut a young 'un' then, an' I war nobbut a young 'un, an' there war three as bonny lasses—sisters o' Thomas's—as ever stepped i' shoe leather used to cross th' Gorsthet doorstuns day in an' day out. But they're all owered wi', is th' Widdops, an' I misdoubt th' owd spot will be selled, so to say, for th' price of a pint."
"There's no telling. Well, Crabtree, your whisky has set me up again, and I think it's about time I was off."
"Afore ye go, sir, there's a bit of a matter I wanted to tell ye on. Happen ye've forgetten Joe Strangeways?"
Griff perceptibly changed colour.
"Not likely," he said brusquely.
"Meaning no offence, Mr. Lummax—me that hes known ye, man an' boy, these thirty year. But he's getting forrarder i' drink, is Joe, an' there comes a time when drink 'ull mak th' softest mammy's lad i' th' land shape courageous-like. He's a wind-bag, says t' others; but I've getten my own notions about that, an' he swears at ye summat fearful, sir, nowadays—says he'll hev your life; an' a mak o' foul-mouthed words he's getten to say it in. I'd advise ye to hev a care, an' that's what I set out to tell ye, sir."
"It's good of you to bother, Crabtree—but you can trust me to look after myself. Good day."
"Short an' sharp, as th' gentry allus is when their women-folkis in case. Nay, nay, they're kittle cattle, is women, an' kittle they mak their men; an' Ishouldhev a right to know," muttered Crabtree, as he strolled into the kitchen to watch the fourth of his wives rolling out the dough for a gooseberry-pasty.
Griff went straight back to the Manor, his good spirits restored now that he had made up his mind how to act. But he said nothing of his resolve, and merely told his mother, when mare Lassie and he set off after breakfast the next morning, that he had to go to Saxilton on business. His destination was a certain office, half-way up the narrow main street of Saxilton, which had been given at the bottom of the poster as the address of the trustees of the late Thomas Widdop's estate. Griff, though he knew there was a reckoning in store for him, felt something of a lad's blithe glee in truantry as he rode down the trough of the valley, and up the other side, and down again till he came to the wood-road that lies between Saxilton and Plover Court, where old Squire Daneholme lived. The air was moist and kindly, and the young green things were sprouting up through the withered leaves of the under-brush: cock-pheasants were exhibiting their charms to admiring wives in many a glade of the open park-land that divided the woods here and there; weasels and stoats kept peeping at him from clefts in the mossy walls, and squirrels lay flat along their tree-branches at his approach, in a well-feigned stiffness that was suggestive of death. Griff laughed as he passed the sweep of sandy carriage-drive that struck up the hill to Plover Court.
"You gave me a merry time not long since, Squire. Shall I take you at your word, and drop in to dinner to-night?" he thought.
And no sooner had he turned the corner where the highway runs over the river-bridge and past the corn-mill, than whom should he meet but the bluff old Squire himself, coming cantering home on a chestnut thoroughbred. Griff saluted him merrily with his whip at his cap, and the Squire pulled up.
"You're young Lomax, aren't you? We've met before, I fancy."
"We have. I hope you were no worse, sir, for the meeting?"
"Worse for it? No, you young sinner; it did me good, after my jaws unstiffened enough to let me eat. Your face was scratched a bit, by the way, wasn't it?"
They laughed heartily at that, the Squire's chestnut fidgeting all the while as if he thought to take his master unawares at last. Old Daneholme swore most pleasantly at the brute, and then looked Griff up and down.
"You've a pretty seat on horseback, lad. I like to look at a figure like yours, in these damned round-shouldered, narrow-chested times. If you had seen all the changes for the worse in the race that I have, you'd be sorry that you were not born when I was—a generation sooner. Well, are you coming home with me to lunch?"
"Not to-day, I'm afraid. I have business to attend to in Saxilton, and after that I must put my best foot forward to Marshcotes."
"Ah, yes! I remember now—something in the papers—you're married, eh?"
"Yes. Just what did you see in the papers, Mr. Daneholme?" said Griff, with a sudden flush.
"Something about a divorce, and then a notice that you were married. Humph! A riskier enterprise, marriage, than poaching an old fool's game."
Griff thought that the poaching of game was merely a simile, and he resented the innuendo. If he had known the Squire better, he would not have credited him with any such beating about the bush.
"The divorce came through no fault of ours, sir; the story was a trumped-up lie," said he, hotly.
Roger Daneholme opened his mouth for a guffaw that showed his splendid double row of teeth, scarce one of which was a whit the worse for wear.
"What do I care about that, eh?" said he, good-humouredly. "Bless me, a young man must love, or he's no man at all. But marriage—it's risky. So you'll take Plover on your way back, will you?"
There was no resisting the cheery, persistent hospitality ofthe man, and Griff gave in. He could well believe now that the Marshcotes folk had spoken a true word when they said that the Squire was a devil to those he hated, and the best of good fellows to any who happened to take his fancy.
The stocks and the old market-place have gone from Saxilton main street now, but in those days they fronted the lawyer's office of which Griff had come in search. After saying good-bye to the Squire, he cantered up the narrow street, hitched Lassie's bridle to a ring at the end of the stocks, and went inside to get through his business with what expedition he might, since they lunched sharp at one at Plover. Gorsthwaite Hall, as Crabtree of the Bull had prophesied, was to be had for a song; the lawyers were only too glad to get rid of it at a trifle over the price which Griff first named, and the place was his in a very short space of time. Then, his business settled, he set off for Plover Court, and reached it within five minutes of the luncheon hour.
It was lucky that Griff had a good head for liquor; for the Squire kept him drinking long after Mrs. Daneholme had left the table, with the avowed intention of seeing which was the better man at the bottle.
"You worsted me with your fists, you puppy—not that you would find it easy to do as much a second time—but I'm hanged if I haven't the stronger head for port."
"We can only decide that in one way," laughed Griff, who was always quick to take up a challenge.
They cracked a second bottle, and a third, the Squire chatting ceaselessly of this and that harum-scarum adventure in which he had taken part—when he was younger, he never failed to add. And the longer Griff listened, the better he liked the man's healthy energy. Old Daneholme had no conscience whatever, save on certain points where a rough-and-tumble honesty was concerned. By his own showing, he had indulged in some rough vices, and even generosity he carried recklessly past the point where it ceased to be a virtue. Yet, with it all, there was a fresh, inborn strenuousness about old Roger; he never stopped to ask himself if he were good or bad—could nothave been certain, indeed, what so absurd a question implied—but just took life at a gallop, over hedge and ditch, and enjoyed such frolic as Heaven sent in his way. There was a vein of sound humour in him, too,—a trifle rough and biting to the taste, may be, but sound for all that—and his fine grey eyes looked out at you with a twinkle which said, as plainly as possible, that he cared not one button for your opinion. A man of the true old Yorkshire breed.
"Get on to your legs, my boy," said the Squire, when they were half through with the fourth bottle.
Griff complied with the request, and stood looking down at his host with humorous gravity. Then he went the length of the room and back again, with the action of a horse being put through its paces. Finally, he resumed his seat, with a—
"Can you do as much, sir?"
"Can I do as much?" roared the Squire. "Confound your impertinence, sir! I'm scarcely warmed with the wine as yet. Gad, though, you don't turn a hair! I wish that son of mine had been at home to see you; it would have knocked some of the conceit out of him. He can't touch me, Lomax, not if I give him one bottle handicap. Come, drink up!"
He went over to the bell and put his hand on the rope. Not for a fortune would Griff have suggested that they had drunk enough, though he could see only one end to the adventure—and that a most annoying one, with Kate awaiting his return. But the Squire thought better of it, and flashed round on his guest with merry boisterousness.
"Well, well, I'll let you off another bottle. You are young in marriage yet, and your wife might not altogether like it if you turned up happily drunk. Women are such fools about these matters."
When Griff succeeded at last in making his escape, Squire Daneholme walked with him down the drive as far as the Saxilton highroad. There was a faint tinge of regret in his tone as he held out his hand to his guest.
"I thought the fresh air might help a bit, Lomax. But you're as steady as a rock, confound you! You must comeagain when marriage wears thin, and we'll make a night of it. Bless you, boy, I have not taken to any one for years as I have to you."
Griff, laughing off the compliment, sprang into the saddle.
"Stay, lad!" shouted the Squire, as Lassie was breaking into a trot. "A piece of parting advice. Ride straight, drink level, never repent of your sins, and die as I find you—a jolly good fellow. Good-bye."
Late that evening, when Kate had left him alone with the mother, Griff summoned up all his courage and blurted out what had been the trend of his morning's business.
"I have bought Gorsthwaite Hall, mother."
She looked up sharply at him.
"So it has come at last, Griff? I feared it would, some day—but scarcely as soon as this."
"Now, old lady, don't be foolish about it. Do you want it to be said that I beat you in the matter of common sense? Kate and I must leave you sooner or later."
She fell into an obstinate silence, her face averted from her son's; it seemed as if she heard nothing of his fragmentary explanations. Then, at last—
"It is I who ought to leave. The Manor is yours, not mine."
"Mother, how can you!" He knelt at her feet, and took her hands, and tried to force her eyes to meet his.
But she would neither look at him nor suffer his endearments.
"Get up, Griff, and leave me alone. I don't want to hear any more excuses."
There was such a peremptory sharpness in her voice that Griff had no choice but to obey. The quarrel had come, but he had not dreamed that his mother would have taken it as badly as this.
The fire had burnt very low when he next ventured into the room. The old lady was still in the same attitude.
"Mother," whispered Griff.
She made no answer for awhile; then the tears ran slowlydown her cheeks—those scanty tears of the old, which are so much bitterer, so much more heavily laden, at the end of a lifetime's disappointments.
"It is time I went, Griff. You are tired of the old woman, you and Kate."
Then there followed such a storm of lover-like protestations, such a fondling of the wrinkled face and hands, that these two might never have been mother and son at all, but just a pair of newly-married youngsters getting through the business of their first quarrel. And Griff vowed, at the end of it all, that nothing would induce him to leave the Manor, since the dearest old lady in the world wanted him to stay. Whereupon the mother got up from her chair, wiped her eyes, smoothed out the rumples in her dress, and put twice as much asperity as usual into her voice.
"Now you are ridiculous, Griff. Dear, dear; here have I been wasting my time in crying—it was only a tear or two, though, was it?—when I should have been supplying you with wits. Stay on at the Manor, when you have bought Gorsthwaite? Waste your money, and let the house drop to pieces for want of looking after? Boy, whereisyour common sense?"
And that was how Griff came to take his wife to Gorsthwaite Hall.