The Marshcotes Moor was bounded, on the side remote from the village, by a broad stretch of "intake"—sparsely covered grass land, wrested from the heath by long years of sweat and perseverance. Beyond this again was an undulating valley, scarcely more than a dip in the moor plateau, which was full of rushes and swampy tracts, with here and there a bog. Above this valley lay Gorsthwaite Moor, where ling and bilberry-plants had less of their own way than on the Marshcotes side; great patches of gorse dotted the moor, and the sun never rose, summer or winter, without finding at least a few outstanding spots of yellow on which to shine.
At one corner of this moor, some two miles away from Marshcotes village, stood Gorsthwaite Hall, a fine specimen of the grim architecture in which the old moor squires delighted. The rectangular windows peered out at you, watchful and cold, from under their rugged brows of blackened sandstone. The door, plainly fashioned and massive, seemed to grudge the wonted breadth of entry, though its narrowness was more in appearance than in fact. The round-topped walls that guarded its paved courtyard harboured few of the kindly green sorts of mosses, but they were friends with bleak, grey lichens. The very chimney-stacks looked stiff and unbending, as if they had little to do with the roof that supported them; and the water-butt under the eaves, with its round black belly, was suggestive, in some vague, elusive way, of tragedies half-forgotten.
Yet Griff and his wife were as merry as the old house was sad. The spring had come and gone, and summer had run wellon into August, and still they would hug themselves, these two, in the thought of their isolation. There were a couple of attics at the top of the house, well-lighted from the roof, which Griff had knocked into one room and fitted up as a studio. The itch for painting had taken hold of him with more than its old-time vigour, and the one perpetual ground of disagreement between Kate and himself was the fact that he would insist on making some fresh sketch of his wife's face every other day or so.
"What do you find to talk about all your time?" Roddick had snarled one day.
"We live; we don't talk much about it," Griff had assured him, with a laugh that was entirely one of satisfaction.
That was just it. He had known wittier women than Kate, and some that were more beautiful in their own way; but Kate—well, she rounded off his life for him, and there was an end of it.
Mrs. Lomax, who often ran across from the Manor to spend a night or two with them, was speedily convinced that Griff's foolhardy experiment had proved a success. Now and then, indeed, she would throw out tentative warnings to "the children," a suggestion that they should see more people, or a doubt lest presently they might find themselves suffering from an overdose of a very good thing; and to all these hints Griff always made the same response—that they would fly in search of outside help directly the first symptoms of weariness set in.
But the Marshcotes doctor, who had grown grey in friendship with the Lomaxes, used to shake his head when he came away from his periodical visits to Kate. It was no use bothering Griff about it—or, at least, he could find no heart to do it—but not all Kate's brightness of spirits served to hide that underlying weakness of hers from the old man's eyes. Sometimes, as he recrossed the moor to Marshcotes, he would swear softly to himself, in a way ill-befitting the whiteness of his hair, and would murmur that it was a damned shame young Lomax had not come into Kate's life in time to save her.
Griff, when he was not at work, or at play, with his wife, wasgenerally to be found somewhere about the farm. There had been a farm attached to the Manor for many years after his father's death, and he had picked up a good deal of practical knowledge as a lad, which Simeon, his farm-man at Gorsthwaite, helped him to furbish up from day to day. Simeon distrusted his master's interference in these matters, as being "one what nobbut laked at wark," but he was bound to admit, underneath all his sneers, that Griff must have been to the manner born, so kindly did he take to the details of his education.
It was in the middle of August that Lomax, taking a short cut home one morning, discovered a pleasing fact in connection with Gorsthwaite Moor. The moor folk know well enough that gorse never grows on a peaty soil, and few of them guessed that Gorsthwaite, for all its splashes of yellow bloom, had a rich peat-bed on the side away from Marshcotes. Griff, chancing this morning to have his eyes on the bilberry clumps, to see if the second crop of berries would be worth the gathering, saw a rusty spade on the ground in front of him—a long, narrow spade, turned over at the right-hand side perpendicularly to the main face. A little further some crumbling peats were scattered on the top of a reddish-brown gash in the cheek of the moor.
"Simeon," said he to his farm-man, directly he got home, "there's peat to be had for the asking a mile away. Why should I go on paying for the stuff they bring from Cranshaw Moor?"
"It's noan o' th' best, isn't th' Cranshaw peät, but I niver heärd tell on there being peäts just hereabouts. Besides, it's ower late i' th' year to dry 'em now."
"We'll see about that. The time of year doesn't matter a button, so long as there is sun enough to dry them. Our stack is not big enough, I fancy, to last us through the winter."
Simeon growled. Your upland labourer is a terrible radical in respect of persons, but hopelessly conservative whenever farming operations are in question.
"Cut peäts i' August? Ye mud as weel mak hay at Kersmas: th' back-end o' May, or th' for-end o' June—that'swhen Simeon Hey leärned to cut an' dry an' stack 'em; nay, ye cannot get ower what is, an' is to be."
"Can't I? Just go and hunt up a spade, Simeon; I saw one in the lathe not long ago—back of the turnip-chopper, if I remember rightly. We'll go this afternoon."
Mid-day dinner over, Simeon slouched along at his master's heels, like a dog that is loth to accompany an indifferent sportsman. Griff took the spade and set to work at the peat-bed. First, he removed a few inches of the top layer of heather stumps and bilberry roots; then he drove the blade straight down, prized out the sod, and so moved along the whole line from left to right, the upturned perpendicular edge and flat back of the spade shaping clean faces to the peats.
"Ye may know nowt about th' time to cut, but ye frame weel at th' cutting," muttered Simeon, with grudging praise, as he picked up the falling peats and spread them out on the heather.
"And the sun will frame well at the drying, if the sweat of my body just now is anything to go by. Why, man, you don't often get a dry heat like this in June."
"Well, I'm noan saying th' peäts willun't dry. What I says is, it isn't nat'ral; an', dry 'em or no, there'll no gooid come on't. They willun't burn like good Chirstian peäts what's been led i' June."
But Griff only laughed, and shed his waistcoat, and went on with the cutting. The crack-crack of guns came to their ears from over Cranshaw way.
"Part shooiting about," dropped Simeon.
"Yes, that must be some of the Frender's Folly party. How far does Captain Laverack's shooting come, Simeon?"
"Fair across to a mile this side o' Wynyates. He's by way o' heving us know he's a tip-topper, is th' Captain; so he mun needs tak Gorsthet Moor, an' a slice out o' Ling Crag Moor, too, as if his own waren't big enow for fifty sich.Sport?Ay, he knows a sight about sport, does yon. I seed him ower this way a two or three day back, an' I fair laughed to see th' legs on him—as thin as a bog-reed, wi' a smattering o' stripedstocking ower 'em to keep th' wind fro' bending 'em double-ways."
Griff leaned on his spade, and laughed as he watched Simeon's dispassioned face.
"But he doesn't shoot with his legs. Come now, he may be a decent shot, for all that."
"What, driving th' birds an' sich? Nay, there's no mak o' sport i' driving. He mud as weel sit i' his own back parlour, an' hev th' grouse driven in at th' door. I reckon nowt o' your new-fangled, snipper-legged sporting chaps."
Griff's trust in the weather seemed likely to be justified. In a very few days the peats were dry enough to be set up on end, two and two, one leaning against the other in the form of an upturned V; and, as Simeon had to go to Saxilton to buy six head of cattle, the master saw to the work in person. August was more than half through, but there was no diminution of the heat. Griff had again doffed coat and waistcoat alike; the sleeves of his coarse woollen shirt were rolled up to the shoulder, and a broad leather strap held up his corduroy trousers. He had his back to a man who was approaching him, with a gun under his arm and a dog at his heels; the first Griff heard of his approach was a thin, querulous shout.
"Here, I say, my man. Damn it all!" piped the voice.
Griff arranged his couple of peats to his satisfaction, and turned slowly round.
"I beg your pardon?" he observed. Then he smiled, rather broadly, as he saw the legs of the spokesman, and thought of Simeon's version of the reed shaken with the wind.
"I said,damn it all!"
"Not a particularly original remark, but I don't see why you shouldn't make it. Is that all, sir?" Griff knew, quite as well as his assailant, what was amiss, but he had no intention of relinquishing his peats.
"All, all? No, it is not all. What are you doing on my moor? What do you mean by digging here while the shooting season is on? No wonder we've had poor sport this morning,with you here to frighten every bird for a mile round. Didn't you hear our shots?"
Another figure appeared on the crest of the rise some two hundred yards away, and moved towards them.
"I believe I did, but they seemed a good distance off, and I was too busy to trouble. It is a serious matter, you see, to be short of peats for the winter, and a poor man must make the most of the weather."
The little man in knickerbockers began to jerk himself up and down. The stiff grey hair, close-cropped round the crown of his head, seemed to stick up straighter than ever. For the stranger was not only furious, but a little non-plussed; he could not reconcile Griff's speech and bearing with his occupation and his clothes.
"Do you know who I am, my man?" he sputtered at length.
"Rather too well. Captain Laverack, if I am not mistaken?" Griff's voice was quiet, but the smile had died from his lips, and his eyes showed hard.
"Yes, I am Captain Laverack. Perhaps you know, then, that I have rented the shooting over this moor?"
The little man was tempering wrath with an air of faint irony.
"I know that you played my father one of the lowest tricks I ever heard of. I am pleased to meet you, Captain Laverack; it will do me good to tell you what a rascally little cad I think you."
Laverack was speechless with amazement. Before he could find words, the second stranger had come up. Griff looked hard at the new-comer, and looked again; then he held out his hand.
"How do you do, Dereham?" he said nonchalantly.
Dereham hesitated a moment, then shook the proffered hand with as near an approach to warmth as he ever exhibited.
"Lomax—Griff Lomax—by all that's wonderful! I didn't recognize you at first—how could I, when I suddenly cameupon you masquerading as a son of toil? I always thought you were as mad as a hatter, Lomax, and now I know it."
"Lomax? Was Joshua Lomax your father?" interrupted Laverack. His self-assertiveness had crawled away out of sight.
Griff neither looked at him nor answered. The man was too much his senior, he felt, to admit of his knocking him down, and the temptation bore rather heavily on him just now. Dereham stared at them both, and wondered. Laverack shuffled his feet noiselessly among the peat-rubble; twice he made as if to speak, then thought better of it; finally, he turned on his heel, whistled to his dog, and set off across the moor. He turned after awhile.
"Are you coming, Dereham?" he asked.
"Directly. If we miss each other we shall meet at the lodge for lunch?"
Again Laverack hesitated, glancing from Dereham to Lomax, and making a rapid mental calculation as to the chances of Griff's silence.
"All right, one o'clock, sharp," he said, and went forward.
"What the deuce are you playing at, you and Laverack?" asked Dereham.
"Nothing; we don't like each other, that's all. If he asks you, when you rejoin him, how much I have told you—he is sure to do that—say to him from me that the Lomaxes carry their own burdens and never gossip about other people's."
Dereham laughed easily.
"By Jove, it sounds intense; but you always had a twist for intensity, Lomax, so I'm prepared for it.—Do you know, by the way, that Sybil Ogilvie is staying at Laverack's place?" he added, with a swift glance of inquiry.
Griff caught the glance full, but seemed untroubled. Then he looked down at his corduroys, and tightened his leather belt with a pleased chuckle.
"I hope we may meet; she would like me in this sort of rig. There's a good deal of stable-manure on my boots,too, which would round off the idyll. Bah! Dereham, you wasted me a lot of my time, you little people in London."
Dereham lit a cigar before responding, and perched himself on a heathery knoll.
"I always did like you, Lomax," he drawled at last. "You're such an engaging original, and this last piece of foolery suits you better than any you've tried yet. Still that air of the Almighty about you, only a little more so. Where's the poor devil of a woman?"
Griff's face took an ugly shade.
"Whom do you mean?"
"Why, the cattle-dealer's wife—quarryman's—what was it? It would have done your vanity good—or your love, was it? only a matter of terms—to see the way Mrs. Ogilvie sickened when the affair became common gossip in our set."
"Dereham!"
Dereham removed his eyes from their lazy contemplation of the heat-waves dancing across the heather. Something in the other's voice startled him—some odd mixture of trouble and resentment.
"Have I put my foot in it? I'm beastly sorry if I have; I always was too lazy to think before I spoke. Was it—er—a bit serious?"
"Any man who speaks againstmy wiferuns the risk of getting his neck broken."
Dereham changed colour; but he held out his hand with unaffected regret, and—
"Old fellow," said he, "I hadn't the least idea. You'd better kick me and have done with it."
Griff took the proffered hand and tried to laugh.
"All right, Dereham; only, I wish you hadn't."
"Well, yes; I fancy we both do. Coming, Rover, boy!" This to the pointer, who, after much uneasiness, had started off on his own account with a very business-like air.
Dereham, glad of a break in the discomfort, followed hard after the dog. Presently Rover put up a brace, and Dereham claimed one with each barrel. He returned to his former seat,and Rover brought the birds to him, eyeing him the while with encouraging approval.
"I've made my peace with Rover," said Dereham, nodding lazily at the dog. "You never saw his equal for intelligence, Lomax. Before I sighted you this morning, he put up three almost under my nose, and I missed with both barrels. And that dog just turned his head round and said to me, as plain as could be, 'What a fool of a shotyouare.' But I've retrieved my good name, haven't I, old boy?"
Rover implied an affirmative with his tail, and Dereham, for lack of certainty as to how he should proceed with his friend, began to stuff the grouse slowly into his game-bag.
"Well?" said Griff at length.
"Exactly. I was thinking that you've improved since I last saw you. By Jove, I like the way you flashed out on me just now! You're like a horse that has been out to grass for a month. Honestly, Lomax, I'm confoundedly glad you have dropped the Ogilvie nonsense. You didn't seem either excited or surprised when I told you how near she is at this moment."
"What is it? There shall the eagles be gathered together—something. You were always the alternate string to her bow."
"Ah, well, I find her excellent comedy, and that is the most you can expect from any woman. That was what irritated me, you know, when you took her in such screaming sincerity. You won't mind my saying, will you, that you were an astonishing fool in that particular?"
"I shan't mind in the least. I like it."
"Too much fetch and carry, too little compensation, unless you took it funnily. The fair Sybil was altogether too fond of pets in the old days."
"Has she changed particularly?"
Dereham grinned pleasantly at his friend.
"She treated you badly, in my opinion, and I'm hanged if I don't give you your revenge now—even at the price of your modesty. When you left town suddenly, after making an intolerable bear of yourself for three months on end, weall prophesied—and Mrs. Ogilvie was sure—that you would come back. But you didn't, and Sybil began to feel it. The others said that she merely missed the most pronounced of those delicate little flirtations of hers, which did no one the least harm in the world—except the odd idiots who took her seriously. But I fancied it was more than that, and I've proved it since. The woman is wild for you; if I were to tell her you were here, she would forget—the interim—would forget every mortal thing except that she wanted you; she'd come——"
"Then for God's sake keep her away!" cried Griff, fervently.
"Her husband died in the spring, you know. Sybil is a changed woman, but she hasn't the heart even to pretend that it is due to his death. She just mopes, Lomax, and if revenge is any satisfaction to you, you've got it—as much as a man could want."
Griff went back through those fevered months—recalled how the touch of her hand had maddened him, how the curve of her baby lips had seemed to be the end and aim of all things. Yet, for the life of him, he could not make a substantial working memory of it now. The thing he had called love showed merely as a spineless, filmy ghost; the thing he knew to be love stood between him and the woman who had seduced him in all but the letter.
"Dereham," he said abruptly, "will you come and see my wife?"
"I was going to ask if I might. It's generous of you to suggest it after——"
"Never mind that. Will you come?"
"Yes; when?"
"To-morrow, if you can get off. Drop in for lunch—I call it dinner now—and we'll give you mutton and apple-dumplings."
"I bar the dumplings, but otherwise you may depend on me. Is your quarrel with Laverack serious, by the way?"
"Yes; it goes back to my father, and that means it is unforgivable.—It will make matters awkward for you?"
"Then let it. Laverack is all very well, but he's not going to stand between you and me. If he doesn't like it, I'll remove my traps to a pub, and spend the rest of my time helping you to farm."
After Griff had done with his peats, and had eaten a dinner proportionate to his labours, he set off for Marshcotes. Mrs. Lomax, with a cross-country tramp in mind, was just coming out of the gate when he arrived at the Manor.
"What, going for a walk? Absurd, little mother, under such a blazing sun."
"It is, rather; but what would you have, Griff? I must fill up my time somehow."
"That is another of your covert reproaches. I believe you are horribly jealous of Kate, if the truth were known."
The mother looked him wistfully up and down.
"Yes, I am—as jealous as possible. I miss you so, dear."
Griff, in a man's way, had not been wont to give an over-careful regard to the looks of those who were constantly about him. Something in his mother's tone, however, a certain touch of helplessness that was foreign to her character, set him scrutinizing her face. She seemed older and more worn, he thought, than when he first returned home, a year ago.
"You don't look quite yourself, old lady," he said tenderly. "Let's spend the afternoon in the garden, under that ridiculous lilac-tree which thinks it can grow at the edge of a moor."
"It is a very fine lilac, Griff," snapped Mrs. Lomax.
"Ah, I thought the fight wasn't all dead in you. Well, I won't abuse the lilac, and I'll even drink your home-made wine without a murmur, if only you will promise to amuse me this afternoon. I'm lazy, mother; don't let us go for a walk."
"Which means that you thinkmefeebler than I was. Oh, yes, you do! I saw it in your face as you looked at me just now. I have a good mind to show you what I can do when I choose."
By way of answer Griff threaded his arm through hers, led her into the garden, and set her down by main force in the shady seat under the lilac-bushes.
"I have good news for you, mother," he said, breaking a long pause.
"About Kate?" flashed the old lady, with a woman's perspective, and a mother's half-resentful pride where a grandchild is in question.
But Griff missed her point utterly.
"No; what good news could I bring of her except that she is just as much Kate as ever? It is about Laverack; you remember telling me father's relations with him?"
"Yes, I remember well. Only—it is not a topic that pleases me, Griff."
"Not if I tell you that I met him this morning, and made myself known to him, and called him a cad to his face?"
Her keen old eyes brightened.
"You did that, Griff? Yes, itisgood news. It may be unchristian, but I loathe that man. And if one is framed to love well, how can one help hating with a will, too?"
"Mother, mother, I despair of you! You're a dreadful Pagan, like the rest of us," laughed the son, anxious to glance off to other topics, now that he had conveyed his piece of information.
"Well, your father was a Pagan, right through to the core of him. I have had worse examples to follow, Griff."
"Did you object to his poaching, I wonder?" said Griff, teasingly. "After he was married, I mean."
"That, rude boy, is a question I don't choose to answer. It is unwise, though, they say, to deny a man his luxuries; but the pursuit is a discreditable one at best."
"I've done with it, at any rate."
An impatient half-sigh accompanied the words.
"I am glad of it."
"But, mother, you have no idea of the glorious rough-and-tumbles we used to have. Kate, though, has made me promise to keep a whole skin, and there's an end of it. Heigho! I'm glad the Squire and I made a decent finish to my career in that line."
A rattling of the garden gate came to them round the corner of the house.
"Some one seems to be trying to get in," said Mrs. Lomax. "Just run and open the gate, will you, Griff? You always bang it so hard, and the latch, like myself, is getting worn out."
Again that helpless note in her voice. Griff did not like it at all.
"Worn out?" he echoed. "Not till you give better proof of it, foolish mother."
"Boy, kindly flatter your wife, and leave tag-ends of sincerity for your mother." She tried to laugh, but the effort was not very successful.
Griff did as he was bid, and went to open the gate. At the other side stood Greta Rotherson.
"How do you do?" he observed, holding out his hand across the top bar.
"I'm very hot, rather cross, and exceedingly anxious to get under shelter. How would it be, Mr. Lomax, if you opened the gate?"
"Not just yet. I enjoy making you really angry; it brings such a quaint little flush to your cheeks."
"I don't want compliments," protested Greta, blushing rosier with pleasure all the same.
"You'll have to put up with them, I fear, if you won't change your looks. Even a staid married man like myself——"
"Married you may be, sir, but staid you will never become," said Greta, demurely. "I am going to knock at the back door, if you won't let me in at the front."
He opened at that, after weighty argument with the latch, and Greta tripped in, looking like a bit of fleecy, fair-weathercloud in her muslin dress. Griff could never quite rid himself of the notion that she was just a pretty child, and he treated her accordingly. He wondered, in a way, at the preacher's infatuation; and, with his mole-like outlook on women as a whole, he asked himself sometimes if little Greta would be able to weather foul days as well as fair.
Mrs. Lomax brightened as she saw the girl. She had a better notion of these matters than her son, and never felt the least doubt but that Greta, for all her butterfly prettiness, was just the sort of woman to come out strong in a crisis.
"You are earlier than I expected you, my dear. I am glad," said the old lady, simply.
"Yes, father had to go off to Saxilton on business, and I thought you might like a chat—which means that I wanted one badly myself."
Then she and Griff began teasing each other, till Greta was likely to have the worst of it, and Mrs. Lomax interfered. And after awhile there came another rattling at the gate, followed by the scrunch of heavy boots on the gravel. Greta talked faster, without waiting for any one to answer her, and her cheeks were an honest crimson.
Gabriel Hirst, for once in a way, had come in a garb that was likely to advance his cause; though the accident of his taking Marshcotes Manor at the end of a long ride must not be set down to any cunning forethought on the preacher's part. He bungled less than usual as he came across the grass, and Griff smiled as he noted that his horseback humour was on him.
Presently Mrs. Lomax snared Griff into the house, on the pretext of talking over some business matters with him.
"Did you arrange this meeting, mother?" he asked, as he opened the parlour door for her.
"Didn't I tell you," she smiled, "that I have to find things to do nowadays?"
"I like the notion of your turning matchmaker. Pray, is this kind of meeting a regular occurrence?"
"I have very few luxuries, Griff.—Not that it is the leastgood in the world. Gabriel seems always to be falling between two stools. He can't work properly, because he is in love with the girl, and he won't speak out like a man, because he is not sure yet whether she is a temptation of the flesh or not. You men—you men! If only you understood what a true woman's love is worth."
"The lassie would have him—eh, mother?"
"The lassie, sir, will wait till she is asked," retorted the mother.
When Griff reached Gorsthwaite that evening, it struck him that something was amiss with Kate. His late uneasiness about his mother had sharpened his eyes, and he was awake to the restlessness in Kate's movements. From time to time, too, she looked wistfully at him, and seemed on the point of speaking. More than all, he noted that she was disposed to be lavish of caresses, in a way that fitted ill with her wonted undemonstrative strength.
"What ails you, wife?" he ventured once.
"Nothing—nothing at all, dear. Why do you ask?"
"You are so unlike yourself. Have I left you alone too much lately? Say the word, Katey, and I'll give up the farming, and—and the horse. They take me away a good deal between them."
"Nonsense, Griff. You are going to give up nothing at all, except your foolish suspicions of me. I am the happiest woman in the world at this moment."
Alas for his inexperience! In that curious, half-hysterical assertion of happiness, he might have read all that she longed to tell him. But he missed it, and went on to talk of Dereham's coming on the morrow.
"He is rather fastidious, you know," laughed Griff; "what can we give him to eat? Luckily we have a brace of grouse ready for cooking. How would an omelette be?"
"I can't make them," protested Kate, vaguely uneasy at the mention of Dereham's fastidiousness.
"But I can—beauties! It is high time you learned; I'll give you a lesson in the morning. Oh, yes, we shall managefamously! Tell the cook, wifey, that she can have a morning off to-morrow, because I mean to turn her kitchen upside down."
"Indeed, I shall tell her nothing of the kind. I don't trust you, Griff—you talk too glibly about it."
Griff stroked her cheek playfully.
"You think that omelette will turn out like the women I used to paint—half-cooked inside, and dried to a cinder outside? Well, we shall see."
As a matter of fact, the omelette, as well as the rest of the dinner, turned out remarkably well. Dereham had entered Gorsthwaite with an uncomfortable feeling that he was here to be bored by a friend's wife, to make the best of a foolish job; but as the meal went on, and Kate, in her straightforward way, took up his tentative comments on men and matters, emphasizing points of view which were too simple ever to have occurred to him, he began to wonder. From wonder he passed to interest; he clean forgot the passivity which was his especial pride; he talked little, and listened much to the words he enticed by strategy from his hostess. Finally, he felt regretful when Kate left them to their smoke.
"I begin to understand," observed Dereham, after he had silently worked his way through the half of a cigar.
"What do you understand, you oracle?"
"There you're off it, old fellow. Oracles never understand—they only pretend to. That is by the way, though. What I meant was, that you seem to be really established here."
"Why, yes. I should be sorry to desert Gorsthwaite in favour of any place you could name."
"I thought it was just a pose, you see; we all thought so. You're a different man altogether, Lomax, from the Ogilvie lap-dog I used to know. Suits you better, I think."
"Dereham, will you let Mrs. Ogilvie alone? You have exacted penance enough for that folly already."
"All right, my dear chap; I plead guilty. What I want to know, though, is, when are we to have another picture? Are you sinking into an animal pure and simple—a sort ofsuperior hog, that eats and drinks, and fills in the between-times with sleep?"
Griff, by way of answer, took Dereham up to the room he used as a studio. A large canvas stood on an easel in the middle of the floor. Dereham went close to the picture, to which the finishing touches had been put early that morning, and stood regarding it attentively.
"Humph!" he dropped at length. "Same style as the two eccentric daubs that the elderly critics profess to think so much of. Gad, though, there's something in it! Why, bless my soul, the figure in the foreground is your wife!"
Yes, Griff had struck a fine idea, undoubtedly. The background was a rush-fringed tarn, with a sweep of rust-coloured bracken on the right and a clump of heathery knolls on the left; in the foreground, standing on a peat-bed of brownish-black, was the figure of a woman, her eyes looking steadfastly out from the canvas, her body set to a careless strength of pose. One corner of the tarn, and the bracken to the right of it, were lit by the dying sun; the rest of the moorscape lay in brooding darkness. On the face of the woman was just that blending of light and sombre shade in which the moor-features themselves had been picked out. It was impossible to say which was the more alive, the woman or the lonely strip of heath; each seemed able to stand alone, yet each helped the other's strength.
"Anything else?" asked Dereham, after a pause, in his usual nonchalant tone.
"Yes; the companion to this. One I call 'Moor Calm,' the other 'Moor Storm.'"
Griff uncovered a second canvas lying against the wall. This time the background was a swirling sea of heather-tips below; and above, lightning and tempest and wind-driven, scudding night-clouds. The naked figure of a man held the foreground—a man eye to eye with the lightning, shoulder to shoulder with the storm; on his lips sat determination, but grim laughter lay in his eyes. The whole smote one with a sense of fearless, Fate-defying nudity.
Dereham shuddered a little as he looked—then shrugged his shoulders when he saw that Griff was watching him.
"Very fine, my friend, for those who understand it. I don't, for my part; it makes me feel cold and wet through."
"But I understand it!" interrupted Griff, giving a loose rein to his enthusiasm. "I never see the moor without thanking God that I took to painting instead of literature. The moor shifts her expression every hour, every minute: you can't stir without getting a fine, strong bit of canvas-work. Yet fools go wasting their time on waterfalls, and buttercup meadows, and milkmaids going kine-wards. Does it never occur to them that there is something worth painting, if they will only take the trouble to climb a few hundred feet to get it?"
"Well, I dare say it will bring youkudos," said Dereham, with a yawn that was intended as an apology for certain twinges of enthusiasm discernible in his own person. "For my part, I find these moors of yours devilish healthy, and devilish dull. I'm frankly in love with houses, and warm fires, and theatres, and the rest of it. If I hadn't met you, I think not even the shooting would have compensated me for coming."
"Like it or not, old chap," laughed Griff, "you will hear of me again when these pictures appear. Have another weed."
"I daren't, in this temple of the rough, the savage, and the naked. You can't imagine primitive man sitting with a cigar-stump in his mouth. No, it shall be a pipe.—Lomax," he went on, after he had lit up, "how do you find time to paint? I thought you were farming all day long."
"I only work when it suits me. My man is dependable enough, and he keeps things going. But farming puts me into condition, and that saves me from conceiving the flabby subjects which boomed me. I'm in the thick of it up here, too—right in the middle of human nature that isn't ashamed of its simpleness. Every day of my life I rub against good, sharp angles, and every day I thank the Lord that I am not planed down to a model human yet."
"Lomax," put in the other, with an air of grave profundity, "don't begin thanking the Lord that you are a publican and sinner, or you may be turned into a Pharisee."
"Away with your word-twists! I've done with them.—I say, Dereham, let's have a round with the gloves," he broke off, as his eyes fell on a couple of pairs that had been tossed into one corner.
Dereham looked Griff's lengthy muscularity up and down.
"Hit a man your own size," he observed, with a pleasant grin.
But he put on the gloves for all that, and they went at it hammer-and-tongs, as of old. Griff was more than a match for his opponent in height and driving power, but the slighter man had the advantage in quickness; and at the end of the bout they were on pretty equal terms with regard to blows given and received.
"That does one good," panted Griff. "I am not allowed to slip out at nights now, Dereham; little moonlight picnics have been knocked on the head. It's a big responsibility getting married."
"Of course it is. Preserve me from having a woman pin her heart to my coat-tails; it must be no end of a drag."
"You are an ass, old fellow," retorted Griff, tranquilly; "it is the finest spur a man can have."
"Lord, Lord! this life is dulling you; I knew it would. Let's talk of the weather."
"It is odd to think of four of the old set coming together on one narrow strip of moor," said Griff, breaking a lengthy silence.
"Four? Who's the fourth?" asked Dereham, sharply.
Griff, remembering Roddick's secret, bit his lips and answered nothing.
"I think I can guess," said the other, presently. "The other night I saw something up above the Folly that gave me a clue; it was lucky for them that the stars and I had the sight to ourselves. Roddick disappeared from town as suddenly as you did. Is that the secret? Well, it is safe enoughwith me. Roddick may be a fool for his pains, but he's a jolly good sort. As to the oddity, I don't quite see it. I have been due to come to the Folly for a fortnight's shooting ever since last winter; so has Sybil Ogilvie; Roddick follows for the best, and the worst, of all possible reasons—and, hey presto! where has your mystery gone?"
"Shall you go to see him?"
"Yes. Where does he live? I can't leave without saying how-d'ye-do to him. Do you know his story, by the way?"
"From start to finish. Poor beggar, he's in a tight place."
"I sometimes think," said Dereham, with a carelessness that sat oddly on his words, "I sometimes think that if I had lost all that makes life worth living, I should go and strangle that beast-wife of Roddick's. Not that I should, really; but it would be the truest service one could do him."
"I have played with that notion, too; it would be a tough problem to settle, if——," said Lomax, musingly.
When Dereham had gone, Kate came and stood by the mantelshelf, and looked down at her husband, who was sprawling contentedly in his big easy-chair. He was well satisfied with their little luncheon-party. Truth to tell, he had been anxious as to the effect which Kate would produce on this half-tender, half-cynical friend of his butterfly days; it was not, he told himself, that he really cared a straw that his own opinion should be endorsed, but he did shrink from the thought that Dereham might go away and vaguely pity him—that smacked too much of insult to his wife. Dereham, however, had left no doubt of his admiration for Kate. As he shook Griff's hand at the door, he had muttered, "You'll do, old fellow. Can I come to see your wife again?" And this meant more than it seemed—it meant, in brief, that he envied his friend his prize. And a man likes to feel this, be he never so secure in his own judgment.
So, being content, it did not occur to Griff that there was any underlying trouble in his wife's eyes—though the trouble was more in evidence than it had been when he noticed it thenight before. She crept to his knee presently, and took his two big hands in hers.
"Griff!"
"Yes, little woman? How very solemn we sound."
"You won't be angry if I ask you a question? Did I—did I shame you, Griff, before your friend? I know so little of the world, and——"
"Child, be quiet! How dare you hint at such a thing?"
Griff was frowning more than he knew of. He hated this resurrected doubt, after it had been laid to rest once and for all; he had not been proud of himself for feeling it, and Kate had no business to allow it to come into her head.
She saw the frown. Her lip trembled. The next moment she had buried her face, and was sobbing like a child.
"Wife, wife! what is it all about? Did I speak harshly? I didn't mean to; only, it was so absurd that you could shame me in any one's eyes, and—Kate, what is it? You have never given way like this before."
She made no answer for a long while; when she did raise her head at last, it was to whisper something that set strange new pulses beating in the man. He understood now; and as he took her on his knee and let her cry it out against his shoulder, all his wildness seemed to have merged into one steady wave of tenderness.
And then Kate laughed, low and soft, with a note in her voice that dated forward.
"He is to be a boy, Griff—hemustbe a boy—and—and—you will not be ashamed ofhimwhen he comes, will you, dear?"
Griff Lomax, waking at half-past five of a morning towards the end of August, lay on his back for awhile, and thought how fine the moors would be looking at this time of day. Then he pictured that wooded cleft below Ling Crag, where the water came down sweet and cold from the uplands. He had not had a dip there since he learned that the old mill was occupied again; the aloofness of what he had once regarded as his own private bathing-place seemed to be violated, and he had not cared to risk a meeting, while under water, or during the process of towelling himself, with either of the miller's women-folk. But he argued, as he lay on his back this morning and watched the sun-chequers on the ceiling, that no one would be abroad at this time of day, and that if he made shift to slip into flannels forthwith, and run to the stream, he could enjoy his bath in peace. So he jumped out of bed without more ado, leaving Kate fast asleep, and crossed the moor at a gentle trot. He made his way through the dew-weighted grass, and reached the pool where Greta Rotherson had paddled on that long-ago Sunday when the preacher came over the crest of the ridge above. The rains had been heavy of late, and the water came dancing down at a rattling pace, white with foam-flecks, and brown with moorland peat. The pool, though neither deep nor wide enough for a swim, could give a tolerable bath to one who knew it as Griff did. He slipped out of his flannels, plunged in, grasped an outstanding branch of hazel that leaned low to the water, and let the current carry the rest of him as far as his six-feet-three would go; the stream broadened intoshallows an inch beyond his toes, and Griff had always flattered himself with the belief that the pool had been made expressly for him. He shouted with glee, and kicked up his heels, and buried his head among the scattering minnows; and when he had had enough of it, he sought the fallen pine-log on the bank. The log, too, was an old friend; time and weather had stripped it of its bark, and the surface, smooth and porous, was quick at catching the sun-rays and keeping them. Griff filled a big pipe and lit it; then he lay along the log, and mutely thanked Heaven for a good many things, and left all drying operations to the sun and the log between them.
The sound of a door creaking on its hinges came to him round the bend of the stream.
"By Jove, they get up early at the mill!" he cried. "I suppose I had better tumble into my clothes."
He had slipped into his trousers and shirt, and was stooping for his coat, when Greta Rotherson ran lightly down the path. She stopped on seeing the intruder and half turned her head, as if meditating flight.
"Good morning, Miss Rotherson," laughed Griff. "I've been having a bathe. May I put on my coat in your presence?"
"I think you had better, Mr. Lomax."
The girl came forward a few steps, smiling at the absurdity of his question.
"I have no right to be here, I'm afraid; but I used to bathe in this pool a good deal, and I could not resist the thought of it this morning."
"How did you find it out? I thought no one bathed here but myself."
"How did I find it out? Do you know how long I have lived on Marshcotes Moor?"
"I couldn't guess," said Miss Rotherson, demurely, seating herself on one end of the log.
"Thirty odd years. Is it likely, now, that I should miss a stream as good as this one is?"
"You are like the rest of them, Mr. Lomax. You're awfully proud of having lived here all your life, and you—notexactly look down on, but you—pityus who come from the South."
"Do I?" smiled Griff. "How do you know that?"
"Oh, you do; you all do! I don't like your people up here; they're toohard."
"Did you ever get to the heart of one of us? We're as soft as butter, once you smash through the rind."
"But you never confess it when—when people want you to."
Greta Rotherson blushed, as she spoke, in a vexed kind of way, and Griff knew, as well as could be, that she was thinking of the preacher. But he daren't so much as hint that he knew the state of affairs, though he was always jogging Gabriel's elbow, and striving to push the silly fellow nearer to his goal.
"We are crossed in the grain, I fear. Don't be too hard on us, Miss Rotherson," he laughed.
And so, what with one thing and another, they talked for half an hour, these two, seated one on each end of the warm pine-log. They laughed, and jested, and teased each other, from sheer vigour of youth and good spirits, until Griff looked at the sun, which was a reliable watch to him.
"It is getting late," he said, rising and stretching his long legs. "Have I been keeping you from your bath all this time?"
"You have, but it doesn't matter. I daren't ever risk it again, though, now that I know people intrude. Good-bye. When are you coming to have a pipe with father?"
"As soon as I can, if you'll have me. Good-bye."
"They are hard in a way," mused Greta, when he had gone, "but they'regritsomehow. Why on earth hasn't Gabriel a little of Mr. Lomax's easiness? It is so silly being in love with a man you have to give a helping hand to. And Gabriel isn't a bit sure yet whether I am a wile of the devil or merely an angel. Did I say I loved him? Well, I don't. He's stupid. I am going for a run on the moors instead of thinking about him."
Griff strolled gently homeward across the moor, withthe tingle of cold water on his skin and the morning wind fresh in his face. What was left a man to desire, he wondered? He opened his shoulders, his mouth, his nostrils, to the wind and the peat-reek, and watched the sun-rays dance across the moor. Cobwebs were slung, like fairy hammocks, from heather-bough to heather-bough; the peat was springy to the tread; a lark was vowing that he'd never grow tired of singing, and a moor-emperor moth, a dandy gallant in gorgeous raiment, flitted across his path.
"What fools there are in the world!" said Griff to himself. "When I think of people living in the valleys—as I did myself for a goodly number of years—it makes me laugh."
But Gabriel Hirst, at that moment, felt no gratitude towards the sun, nor did he realize how good it was to be alive. Five minutes after Miss Rotherson had perched herself on the log, the preacher turned out of the Ling Crag high-road and walked quickly towards the mill. It was his wont nowadays to creep about the mill purlieus, in the hope of catching a glimpse of Greta—or a glimpse of her casement, if the greater boon were denied him. He could not live through the twenty-four hours without this pilgrimage of his; sometimes he came at noon, oftener at twilight, but he rarely had courage to step forward and claim a word with the girl; it never occurred to him that a passion so overmastering as his could meet with a like response, and he feared to blurt out the sum-total of his folly if he spoke with her overmuch. Greta, of course, knew a good deal about his stealthy approaches to the mill, as women will get to know these things; and she wondered how a man could be a man in all else, and yet be such a sorry fool in matters of love.
This morning Gabriel Hirst had awakened at four, and could not get to sleep again for thinking of Greta. He tried to drive the thought away; for one of his old frenzies had been coming to a head lately, and he was keenly alive to the wiles of the flesh. He ran over St. Peter's words on the subject of plaitings of the hair, and cringed at the thought that he had only yesterday feasted his eyes on the brown glory coiled aboveGreta's shapely little head. He told himself, as he turned into the wood-path through Hazel Dene, that this must be the last of his tributes to carnal desire, that he must never—— But down below him sat Greta on her pine-log, with Lomax jesting at her side. Like a man struck blind was the preacher; he stood quite still at the gap in the bushes that had first shown him the scene, but his eyes were too full of dancing lights to see more than the one quick glance had shown him. Away went doubts of the spiritual future in dread of the concrete present. This could be no chance meeting; the hour was too early, the Dene too far out of Griff's way. Were they laughing at himself, at his clumsy ways and honest love-fears? He pressed his hand tight above his heart, as if he had received a mortal hurt. Griff was false—that was the thought which shaped itself in his mind, after long struggling with the numbness. Vaguely he crept away from the spot—up the steep hillside, through the pastureland above, on into the moor. No lust for vengeance had yet crept in to goad his manhood; he followed the instinct of all sorely stricken creatures and tottered to some unknown hiding-place—anywhere, so long as he got out of reach of his fellows.
Slowly the need of vindication slid into his consciousness. He quickened his pace a little. Righteous anger followed stealthily, telling him that Griff had stooped to the meanest treachery that a man can play his friend. His feet went forward more bravely. Finally, he was all aglow with a rage that swept clean away every despairing thought of loss. He ran like a wild thing through the purpling heather, till Hazel Dene lay a good three miles behind him; he was out of breath by this time, and he sat down in a clump of cranberries to rest awhile. He had gone out that morning with a copy of "Baxter's Call to the Unconverted" under his arm—a book, much in vogue with an earlier generation, in which Gabriel was wont to find strong stuff of a quality he loved. He opened the book at random, hoping to chance upon some counsel fitted to the occasion; but he drew blank, and shut the stained old pages with a snap. One solitary quotation from theScriptures assailed him with untiring pertinacity. "Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord," he muttered.
He got up from the cranberry-bushes and strode off again across the moor. It hurt him to feel that excuse for action rested, not with himself, but with a Higher Power. A sense of futility weighed him down.
The sun was dropping westward before hunger insisted on a hearing. He had been fasting lately, and his body was weakened; old stubbornness bade him fight the hunger, but he remembered that there was no longer a reason for self-castigation—no longer a reason, it seemed, for anything in earth or sky. The scepticism which, years before, had preceded his conversion came and went, alternating with the dulling consciousness that vengeance belonged to the Lord, not to himself. Gabriel Hirst was rudderless in the depths of a stormy sea.
Desire for food was the one straightforward agent. He looked across the moor and saw a black-walled cottage standing up against the sky; without conscious thought he took a bee-line, over bog-land and dry, to the cottage. At another time he would have recognized Sorrowstones Spring, but this afternoon the country showed only a blurred, unknown waste. A surly admonition to enter greeted his knock, and he went in. Old Mother Strangeways was taking down a canister of tea from her cupboard; she turned and looked him up and down.
"Oh, it's thee, Gabriel Hirst?" she croaked. "What dost 'a want?"
"Food. I'm like to drop with hunger."
She laughed mirthlessly.
"Then drop, tha praching crow. I know thee well; tha'rt friends wi' young Lummax, if I'm noan mista'en."
The preacher winced.
"I'm no friend of his, nor he of mine."
"Art'n't 'a? Sin' when?"
"Since the morning. He's played me false, and it's a pity that vengeance belongs to the Lord."
Rachel dropped into her chair and motioned Gabriel to take the other.
"Tha looks too mich of a fooil to be a liar, Gabriel Hirst," she said meditatively; "what's agate atween thee an' him?"
The preacher was tired and disposed to seek sympathy. The aptness of Mother Strangeways' questions seemed to call for straightforward answers. He told her what he had seen in Hazel Dene. The woman's face ran into queer wrinkles as she listened; it seemed that her prayers had brought to Sorrowstones Spring a man well fitted to compass what was now her one aim in life.
"It's i' th' breed; it's a trick of his father's, yon. He'll hev his way wi' th' lass, an' then he'll leave her i' th' mud, to fend for herseln an' th' babby," she muttered eagerly.
The preacher rose, his face on fire.
"Woman!" he cried, "if you frame your unclean lips to such words again, I'll——"
"Nay, nay, lad. It's noan me 'at wants to hurt thee. Tak a bit o' that sperrit wi' thee when next tha wends to Griff Lummax.—Summat to eat, sayst 'a? Ay, an' gladly, though I'd hev seen thee starve on th' doorstun if tha'd been a friend o' Lummax's."
Gabriel's fire went out; there was no bodily fuel to keep it going. He ate of the coarse stuff that was set before him, and drank of Mother Strangeways' rum. She watched him from under her white eyelashes.
"Vengeance is th' Lord's, tha says?" she muttered. "Happen it is, if tha taks th' thing far enow back. But this I tell thee, Gabriel Hirst, th' Lord 'ull damn thee for a fooil if tha waits for Him to help thee. Dost think summat is bahn to shooit out on th' sky an' strike this Lummax deäd? I thowt that myseln, lad, for a while; but now I know 'at just as mich as a man fends for hisseln, so mich will th' Lord fend for him. It's share an' share alike wi' wark o' yon kind, an' tha cannot look to get all an' do nowt."
Gabriel muttered incoherently to himself, and Rachel Strangeways thought that a new intensity of purpose was gripping him.
"If tha's getten a doubt i' thy heäd still, tha can mind what Griff Lummax did to my Joe's wife. He telled thee he war innocent as a sucking lamb, likely. Well, a man that 'ull do one kind o' dirty wark 'ull do another. What's a two or three lies when a Lummax hes owt to gain by telling 'em? An' now he's tired o' th' wench, an' off he goes speering after thy sweetheart. It's th' talk o' th' moorside; tha mun be daft to sit so long wi' thy hands i' thy lap."
Gabriel Hirst, in the simplicity of his nature, was always apt to fall into the delusion that, if any one prefaced a statement by a generous exposure of some other person's falsity, then the statement in question became at least doubled in value. It was easy just now to attribute dishonesty to Griff, and Griff's accuser shone by the contrast in the light of a rigid truth-teller. He pushed his empty plate from him and leaned his head on his arms.
"Well, tha's etten enow, seemingly," croaked the witch; "put thy mouth to th' bottle again, an' off tha wends to Griff Lummax, to settle thy scores like a man."
The preacher would have taken well-nigh any counsel in his present shiftlessness of mind. The withered hag, glowering across the peat-smoke at him, seemed to be preaching a new, an inspired, gospel. Her words smacked more of the Old Testament, which he loved, than of the New, which in his wilder moods he only tolerated. Slowly he got up from the table and went to the door.
"Lad, I've summat to ask of thee afore tha goes," said Mother Strangeways, shifting her voice to a whine.
Gabriel turned and glared at her, but said no word.
"Tha knows how th' owd clock goes a-wobbling, wobbling, wobbling, hour in an' hour out? Well, it's getten past all; it dithers fit to drive a body dizzy-crazy, an' my lad Joe, th' gaumless wastrel, willun't bring me a two or three screw-nails—nobbut a two or three screw-nails; that's all I'm fashed for, an' he willun't bring 'em—an' me that hes reared him fro' being a babby. Tha'll happen along wi' th' screw-nails, willun't tha, lad, sooin as tha's done wi' Griff Lummax?"
But Gabriel, before she had finished her appeal, was out of the door and off across the heather towards Gorsthwaite Hall. Now that he had a purpose, he could see the moor as he had known it from boyhood; he knew his way.
Kate was going in at the door of Gorsthwaite as he came up. She turned and smiled a welcome on him.
"It's long since you've been here, Mr. Hirst," she said. "Will you come in and wait for Griff? He has gone to the Manor for the afternoon."
The preacher stood dumbfounded. He had had the one simple plan in his head, and this deviation from the settled order of things left him witless. Kate decided that he had been wrestling with the devil on an empty stomach, and pitied him.
"I—I'll not come in," he stammered at last. "I'll—walk back—to Marshcotes. I may meet him on the way."
"I can't promise that you will. Sometimes he stays late—but you'll find him at the Manor, if you are anxious to see him."
"Yes, I'm anxious—anxious; that is just it," he muttered.
The preacher turned and set off towards the village. He passed a wide-lipped tarn that lay in the valley between Gorsthwaite and Marshcotes Moor, and stared at its sulky waters; he hesitated awhile, then passed on. Another mile brought him to a disused shaft—Whins Quarry, it was called—and a look that was almost of joy came into his face as he peered over the fifty feet of rock-face, down to the pool that swallowed up the old cart-track on the far side.
"I can't face other folk—his mother, say. I'll just wait here till he comes," muttered Gabriel.
The sun crept lower, and still Gabriel lay among the heather. The sun went to bed, and the long summer twilight drew to its close; still the preacher waited. A four days' moon showed in the paling sky—a mere wisp of yellowish light, that served, for all that, to make some sort of atonement for the vanished day. A light-hearted song came drifting across the quiet moor. Gabriel Hirst leaped to his feet. A quick thought seizedhim; he raised his head proudly, as if he were looking God straight between the eyes.
"Vengeance is Thine, O Lord!" he cried. "But Thou knowest I am the fulfiller of Thy desire."
The song came clearer. Gabriel could hear the words now.
"The fulfiller—O Lord of Heaven, give me strength!" he prayed.
A figure swung into view and neared the quarry with easy strides. The preacher went to meet him.
"Griff Lomax!" he called.
"At your service; but who the deuce are you?"
"Gabriel Hirst."
"Of course you are. I ought to have known your voice anywhere. Have you come from Gorsthwaite?"
"I've come to tell you that you are false—a liar and a thief."
Griff took the preacher by the arm, but he shook it off.
"Gabriel, you're out of your mind. What ails you, man?"
"You thought it was safe to meet in Hazel Dene, before folk were out of their beds. You laughed to yourself often, I'll warrant, when I told you what store I set by Greta—and all the while you were——"
His friend broke in with a hearty laugh.
"Is that all? I knew you were a tolerable ass, old fellow; but I didn't credit you with going quite so far as this. The last time you turned jealous, you were very drunk; are you sober now? Why, the girl has eyes for none but you, and I've done all I can to plead your cause. This very morning I was telling her that we are soft at the core up here, though hard in the rind; and she said, with a pout in her voice, 'But you never confess it when people want you to.'"
"She said that?" cried the preacher, hoarsely.
"She did. You should know best what she meant, Gabriel."
Again Griff laughed, and Hirst fancied the laugh was one of mockery. He had his settled view of that meeting by thestream, and Griff was assuredly taunting him with Greta's own avowed preference for his rival.
"You're a liar, and I'll fight to prove it," he yelled, and leaped on his adversary.
Despite ill-treatment of his body, the preacher was tough; but Lomax was the better man in a tussle. They were locked close together now, swaying this way and that. Griff, though, was not heated as Hirst was; he was conscious of the mistaken cause of fight and felt loth to do his mad friend a hurt; and Gabriel, consequently, had the better of it at the first. Then Griff roused himself; he hoisted the other well into the air and let him drop with a thud.
"It's soft falling, Gabriel; lie there awhile till you're cool enough to listen to reason."
But the preacher was up again. He knew little of wrestling in the theory, yet by force of blind instinct he compassed a good imitation of the trick known to Cornishmen as the "Flying Mare." One hand he planted in the pit of Griff's stomach; with the other he seized him by the right arm, and lifted him clean over his head. The force of his own throw sent Gabriel staggering back; he was conscious of coming to rest against some hard body, while down below he heard the splash, splash, splash, of loosened stones and rubble—that, and the deeper sound of some heavy mass plunging into the water that filled the pit-shaft.
The preacher began to understand matters, as he recovered from the struggle, from the surprise consequent on the miraculous fashion in which he had lifted Griff. There had been death in his mind when he chose the quarry as the meeting-place—a hazy, theoretic notion that one of them had better go over the edge. But he had lost all that in the stress of the fight; he had been bent only on throwing his enemy; he had never stopped to think how close they might be to the low wall that guarded the quarry from the moor. Yet here was he, leaning against the wall—it had saved him from falling—and peering down at the stagnant pool which lay, fifty feet below, at the bottom of Whins Quarry. That dull splash echoed and re-echoed in hisears; the faint light showed him no more than a few feet of the rock-face, but memory brought that surly pool before his eyes as plainly as if it had been broad day—and in fancy he saw there the body of his friend lying face upward to the stars.
With a start the preacher came to himself. He did not pause to call himself a murderer; he only knew that, if Lomax were dead, he had cut one half of himself clean away for ever. The man's great love for his friend—never quite realized till now—made the thought of Griff's death such unbearable agony that perforce he must do something. Yes, he must act. He had but one thought now—he might save old Griff, if that clear drop of fifty feet had not broken his neck. Perhaps he was now struggling in the water, too weak to save himself from drowning. He raced along the path of sliding shale that flanked the left of the quarry-edge, caught his foot against a rock less yielding than the rest, and fell headlong down the hill, at the foot of which he lay for awhile, stunned, among the rubble.
When he next opened his eyes, the moon had set. Still half dazed, he groped his way to the cart-track that led to the quarry; the starlight, faint above, was quenched altogether by the surly face of rock that towered above the pool. A night-jar, away up on the moor, railed at the silence; only the lurid fires of God's vengeance lit the darkness, and these were powerless to break the physical gloom. He shook off his stupor. There was a wild humour in his striking a lucifer-match to show him what God's fires had failed to render clear—but he saw not the humour. The light shone fitfully across the pool, and was swallowed up by the glooming quarry-face. There was nothing floating on the surface, save the rotting carcase of a dog.
The preacher stood motionless, almost calm. He was predestined to damnation, and the striving was over, once for all; there could be no return to the old life of fruitless prayer, of wasted fight. A loosened stone dropped into the water, and that fall, too, was predestined. All, all was foreknown: the good works of the just, the evil living of the sinful, were alike predestined; there was neither virtue in holiness, nor blame in wrong-doing, since both alike had been fixed from the beginning.All responsibility was shifted from the preacher's shoulders, and he felt happier than he had yet done through the long years of strife.
Gabriel Hirst grew almost curious, with a dumb, passionless curiosity. He wondered what form his punishment would take; whether retribution would be swift and final, or tortuous and long drawn out. Perhaps—nay, certainly—a touch of pride lay, all unguessed, at the bottom of his heart; it was, in a sense, a fine thing to be the very focus of an Avenging Universe.
He went out by the cart-road, and moved faster as he gained the heather. The motion warmed his blood and quickened his pulses; he remembered Greta—Greta, who shared his heart with the dead. He fell weak at that, and must have comfort. There was none on earth to give him comfort, save Greta. As a dumb brute eats the healing herb, not knowing the reason that underlies its instinct, so the preacher went straight to Hazel Dene and knocked at the miller's door. The kitchen clock struck ten as he waited under the porch.