"Who's there?" came Greta's voice, a little tremulous.
"Gabriel Hirst. For God's sake, open!"
The bolts flew back and Greta stood on the threshold.
"You frightened me, Mr. Hirst. Father is away for the night, and Nancy is in bed. I thought you might be——"
"A murderer," finished the preacher, with horrible calm. "You were right. I have killed my friend."
She looked at his face, and sickened. But there was strength under that maiden timidity of hers, and she loved this man. She put her arm through his and led him into the parlour; then she went to lock the door again—it gave her a moment's respite—and crept back to the preacher's side, and did not care now if her secret showed plain in her eyes.
"Gabriel, what is it? I have a right to know," she said.
He saw it all now. It was very plain to be read, even by Gabriel Hirst, who had ever been slow to learn these womanish matters. The swift knowledge that she loved him seemed to give him nerve to go forward with his tale.
"I came up Hazel Dene this morning," he began, without any beating about the bush. "I saw you and Griff Lomax—the woman I loved, and the friend I trusted—sitting beside the stream. You were laughing and jesting—at me and my blundering love-ways, I told myself—I thought you had met there often. I waited for Griff on the moor, and we fought. It was close to the edge of Whins Quarry, though it had gone clean out of my head how near we were. The devil entered fairly into me at last, and I closed with Griff a second time and flung him over my shoulder. He dropped clean into the quarry, and I heard him splash into the water at the bottom."
She loosened her hold of him and fell back with a moan. There could be no doubting his story.
Soon she began to frame excuses for him, with a woman's nimble wit. She spoke after a long while.
"Gabriel, it was a fair fight. You did not know of the quarry; you—— Gabriel, did you do it for my sake?"
"Not for your sake," he muttered huskily. "Don't think, child, thatthe sinwas for your sake; that couldn't be. I was mad with jealousy."
"But the jealousy was mine?" Strange how she had already set aside the catastrophe, as being a matter of lighter moment.
"I loved you too well, Greta, and the Lord grudged it," said the preacher simply.
The girl got up from her chair and stood eye to eye with him.
"Love!" she cried, with a little sobbing catch in her voice. "What do you mean by love, Gabriel Hirst?"
A quiver ran through the preacher. His eyes dilated. His hands went out and gripped invisible shapes.
"Love is a thing that makes you run mad and grovel like a beast—that makes you run sane and soar like an angel. Love is more than the Law and the Prophets, and a lifetime of fighting with the devil.—Nay, Greta, forgive me. Lass, I yearn for you so—and—I—forget that I am a murderer."
"You love like that?" said Greta, slowly. "Then, dear, you can take me and do what you will with me."
The preacher felt two arms about his neck, and a warm mouth against his own. Murder, and sin, and vengeance of the Lord, they were all blotted out for one full moment. He knew himself a man.
Just as Greta and the preacher, in Miller Rotherson's parlour, were struggling out of their dream—just as the woman was beginning to wonder how it would fare with Gabriel if Lomax were really dead, while the man was framing a resolve that touched the present—there came a rattle, and a whirr, and a grinding of iron against iron from outside the house. The rattle settled into a steady, rhythmic boom. Gabriel thought of Invisible Powers, but Greta could have cried tears of joy because of the relief afforded by the interruption.
"The mill-wheel has broken loose; we must go and see to it," she said.
It was a queer old building. The mill was separated from the house by a strip of kitchen garden, but a rickety wooden bridge crossed from the upper floor of the mill to the miller's bedroom; the bridge dated back to a time when most of the house itself was used as a granary, and old Rotherson still crossed by it whenever the fancy took him. Greta led the way upstairs to-night; sound sleeper as Nancy was, her mistress did not care to risk unbarring the heavy kitchen door; she and Gabriel wanted no third person to intrude just now.
Across the swaying bridge they went, the preacher silent, Greta chattering glibly, with hysterical eagerness to hoodwink her knowledge of calamity. Gabriel's eyes were devouring her greedily, hopelessly; the shadow of a parting stood between them and that short-lived happiness of a moment ago.
"The sluice-gates must have given way," said Greta. "Father said, not long since, they were getting too old to seemuch more service, but he thought they would last a little longer."
"The beck was in flood as I came up the Dene to-night." The preacher's voice had a far-away note in it, as if his words had no bearing on the matter in hand.
"Yes, that must be it. Do you know anything about the machinery, Gabriel? We can't stop the wheel. What will happen if we let it turn the whole night through?"
They were standing close to a pair of mill-stones. Gabriel, still regardless of aught beyond the bitter expiation that lay before him, let his eyes wander to the "shoe" which fed the stones.
"Know about the machinery?" he repeated vaguely. "Yes, I know the ins and outs. Your father explained it all to me one afternoon."
He no longer dared to look at Greta, but kept his eyes upon the grain, as the hopper doled it out to the shoe, and the shoe to the running-stone. The supply of grain stopped; a curious grating noise sounded from below, as the upper stone found no better work to do than to grind at its neighbour's face.
Suddenly Gabriel recalled what the miller had told him about the danger of leaving the stones unsupplied with grist. Like a flash he was down the ladder and across the littered floor to where the driving-belt was going its merry round. He took a stick that was lying close to his hand, and pushed the belt from one of the supporting pulleys; the belt hung limp, and the mill-wheel might turn as it would now for all Gabriel cared. The sweat was running off his face as he came back to Greta's side.
"What is the matter? What have you been doing?" she asked, at a loss to account for this fresh perturbation of his.
"Switching off the belt. Lass, if we had let those stones grind much longer, they would have blown the place up."
"Blown the mill up? But how?"
"They'd have grown hot enough to set fire to the dust between them—and that would have meant death to all in the house, Greta."
Greta, troubled with the glimmerings of a new hope, rested her forehead against the cool stonework of the window. The idea took shape at last; she turned to the preacher with a motherly, protecting air.
"Gabriel, suppose you have kil—suppose some one did fall over the quarry-edge—haven't you saved two lives to-night? If you had not come, I should never have known the danger, and—Gabriel, isn't it worth something to have saved my life?"
For a moment the preacher clutched at this specious solace. He had paid two human lives for the one he had taken—would not the Almighty think that a fair exchange? But he lost the hope.
"There's no expiation, save one. Come away, Greta, and get to bed," he said doggedly.
As they re-crossed the bridge, Gabriel glanced instinctively towards the swirling water on their left. What gleams of light were abroad caught the tips of the wavelets, the slimy paddles of the wheel. He shivered as he watched; his mind flew back to that other stretch of water, where his friend was lying. The din and hurry of the mill-wheel seemed cheery by contrast with the silence of the quarry.
They passed through the door that opened into the miller's room. Greta set down her candle on the washing-stand.
"You want to get rid of me. What are you going to do, Gabriel?"
"Never mind, lass, never mind."
She took fright at his wildness of look; she feared he would do himself an injury if left alone. Forgetful of all else, she just held open her arms, and—
"Gabriel," she said softly, "stay with me. I can't bear to let you go."
Her cheeks grew red with shame when she had got half way through with the words; but what did anything—anything—matter, so only she could keep Gabriel from harm? So long she had waited for him; was she to lose him in the first flush of possession?
Whatever there was of passion in the preacher—and he was full of it, to the finger-tips—leaped to the front. He trembled from head to foot; those soft arms seemed to draw him beyond all resistance. With a cry he stepped towards her—then stopped. The habit of a lifetime, in this supreme moment, was not minded to stand idly by, taking no part in the struggle; were his sins against God so slight that he dared add one more to their number? He moaned in the agony of repression. And down the girl's crimsoned cheeks ran tears of helplessness. The candle went out and left them in darkness.
"Greta," said the preacher at last, "his wife will be waiting up for him." The quiet voice, the commonplace words, sounded odd after the stress that had preceded them.
"Whose wife?" she whispered, not daring to acknowledge the certain answer.
"Griff's. My way lies plain, lass; I must go and tell her." He went out to the stair-head; Greta followed him into the lamplight.
"You shan't—you shan't! No one need know. No one saw you. Perhaps he isn't dead, after all, Gabriel? You fell and lost your senses, you say. It may have been all a dream—a kind of nightmare—and you said there was no body to be seen. We will wait, and if"—she crept close and looked at him with horror-stricken eyes—"if an accident did happen, we must go away together, you and I—I shan't mind it a bit, dear; we will begin in a new country, and——" She had forgotten her father in the first wild panic for Gabriel's safety.
"No, Greta. My way lies clear, and you can't turn me. First to tell his wife, and then to give myself up—it's as plain as can be."
"And what of me?" cried the girl. "Don't you understand that there are two to reckon for now? For your own peace of mind you must go—but what of mine?"
The tears rose in the preacher's eyes.
"Lass, don't make it too hard to bear. I am not fit to claim you, and you'll be well rid of a scoundrel. Let me go, and have done with it."
She put her arms round his neck, but he forced them away and went down the stairs. Without one backward look he left the house and struck up towards the moor; it was the hardest effort—save one—that he had made in all his life of conflict. He did not hear the footsteps that sounded behind him all the way up from the mill.
As he gained the moor he started to feel a hand laid in his. Greta was nestling to his side.
"Go back, go back, I tell you!" he cried.
"Never, Gabriel. You thought it was a light thing to win a woman's heart? You thought I should stay safe indoors, while you went across the moor—in the darkness? If you must go to his wife, I go with you, and tell her the things you leave out of your story."
He turned, desperately. It seemed that his every instinct towards the right was being frustrated.
"Greta, haven't I enough to bear? Your shoulders are over young, lass, to take their share. Go back; and put me out of mind."
For answer she took his hand and led him towards Gorsthwaite. He gave up the contest, suffering himself to be led. Together, in an awful quiet, they crossed the nodding sweep of heather. Late as it was, a light shone out from the old Hall.
"She is waiting up; I knew how it would be," whispered the preacher. "Can you see her there, Greta, listening to the wind—starting up at each fresh sound—thinking her husband's come home at last? Can you see her face when she opens the door for us? Can you see her drop on the floor, as I blurt out the truth, never stopping to break it gently, for fear of going mad if I didn't get it over at once?"
"Hush, dear, hush!" pleaded Greta.
He was quiet for a space; then, "Vengeance is Thine, O Lord!" he cried. "Vengeance is Thine; only make me less of a coward for this one short while!"
The back-thrust from his sense of failing purpose made him beat noisily on the door with his fists. From within they heard a man's shout—
"He's here! I knew he'd come."
The preacher leaned heavily against the door-post. It was Griff's voice—Griff's, who was lying at the bottom of Whins Quarry. But Greta was quicker to hope than he, and she guessed the truth.
"You are later than I expected; come in, old fellow," said the figure on the doorstep. "What! you're not alone! Miss Rotherson, is that you?"
She came and rested both hands on his shoulders, out of sheer gratitude to him for being alive.
"I have brought Gabriel to tell you"—she stopped, and laughed like a child—"to tell you we can't live without one another."
The preacher moved forward, groping his way till he found Lomax. He ran his hands over him, this way and that, like a blind man.
"Griff, is it true; is it true, lad?"
Griff caught him by the hands and wrung them till the preacher's arms were like to start from their sockets.
"Do I feel like a dead man?" he laughed. Then he pulled them both indoors. A couple of tumblers and a spirit-case stood on the table. "Do you see those, Gabriel?" he asked, pointing to the glasses. "I was so sure of your coming that I made ready for you. Don't look so scared, man! Put down this brandy, and you'll see things a bit more squarely."
The brandy did wonders for Gabriel; it gave him nerve, and discounted the supernatural. Griff showed plainly enough now as a being of flesh and blood.
"Tell me about it," he said at last.
"There is little to tell. A touch of fight wasn't amiss, but we were fools to stand at the edge of the quarry. You got me over your head—the devil knows how you did it—and the next thing was that I found myself stuck in the middle of a thorn-bush growing out of the rock-side. My face will show you that I had a pretty warm reception. When I got the hang of things again, and began to wonder how I was to climb out of the mess, I remembered that hospitable thorn-bush well; I used to comebird's-nesting there when I was a boy, and I reached it by a broadish ledge of rock that jutted out from side to side of the quarry just below the bush. I let the dizziness get clear, and a crawl of a few yards brought me safe across. That's the whole story."
"But I heard you splash into the water," said Gabriel.
"That you didn't! I'll warrant that, and I ought to know. What you heard, I fancy, was a big stone that came tumbling down from above while I was stuck in the bush; it missed my head by about six inches."
"Then I nearly killed you twice," murmured the preacher. "I remember loosening a piece of the wall when I fell back against it. Griff, lad, I have done you a fearful wrong."
"Fudge; drop that sickly over-sentimentality of yours. Misses don't count in the rough-and-tumble of life, and anyhow it was a sheer mischance.—So you've arranged matters, you two, at last? Well, it was about time. Gabriel is so dull-witted, Miss Rotherson, where his happiness is concerned."
Greta wondered that he could stoop to light banter at such a time. But she looked at him more closely, and she read in his face what the effort meant to him. Yet Griff was smiling a moment later with genuine merriment; he was thinking that it was a more awkward scene for Gabriel than if he had really been dead, instead of very much alive.
"Does your wife know?" asked Gabriel, suddenly.
"Of course not. No one knows but we three. I told Kate I had slipped over the quarry accidentally—so I had, in a way. I said you might be coming in to-night to talk over your worries, because I guessed you would rush off here to blurt out what had happened. I know you to a hair's-breadth, Gabriel, you see. Make your mind easy on that score, old chap."
"I shall tell her," said the preacher, quietly.
"Tell her? You'll do nothing of the kind! Nay, Gabriel, there is a limit. Once let you do this, and the next thing you will be standing on the churchyard steps to admit all Marshcotes to the secret."
"Your wife must know," persisted Gabriel.
Greta stole a look at him; and dearly she loved that rugged light of determination in his face—the face that had once seemed plain to her.
So absorbed were they in their own affairs that they had not noted the figure standing in the doorway. It was Kate, her hair tumbled about her nightgown, her bare feet heedless of the cold oak on which they were resting.
"Gabriel Hirst," she said, "was it you who sent him over the quarry-edge?"
The preacher tried to look her in the face, and failed; tried to speak, but his throat was dry. Kate repeated her question, in the same deep, relentless tone.
"It was," whispered Gabriel, hoarsely.
"Then God forgive you, for it's little forgiveness you'll ever get from me."
Griff, for the first time since he had known her, was furious with his wife.
"Kate, for shame—for shame!" he thundered.
But across the room she sent him such a look of tenderness—of idolatry, almost—that his anger died within him, and the shame returned on himself.
The preacher stood with head downcast; he had not come here to plead against a fair judgment, he had come to bear his punishment. A hush settled over the two men, and over the women who loved them.
Then it was borne in on Greta that the man of her choice was being cruelly ill-used. An anger, fierce as Kate's own, gave her words with which to meet the crisis.
"Have you never loved your husband, Kate Lomax?" she cried. "Have you never felt what it would mean if some other woman came between you—some woman who pretended to be your friend, and played you false behind your back? Would you want to kill her, or is this talk of your moor-bred women so much idle chatter?"
Kate looked at her husband again. That graphic touch of rivalry brought a grim smile to her lips.
"I think I should kill her," she said quietly.
"Yet you rail at Gabriel, just because he made the like jealousy a cause for fighting. You have not heard the whole tale yet. Your husband met me by chance this morning in the Dene; Gabriel saw us laughing and talking together, and jumped to a stupid conclusion."
"Is that all your defence?" said Kate, with a curl of the lip. "Was that his excuse for—what he did?"
"It was enough. He was blind, because he loved me and feared everything; he was strong, because he thought he had right on his side. And now, since he showed himself the better man, he crawls in the dust before you. I would not have done; I am proud that he fought so well for me."
Kate had ever been too quick in passion to dwell long with resentment. Her nature was generous, too, and no doubt of her husband's share in the adventure stepped in to mar her generosity. She admired this quiet girl for the way in which she had suddenly blazed forth in defence of the man she loved. She had a struggle with her pride, and then proved it by submission. She came across to Greta and took her by both hands.
"I will forgive him," she said, in her grave way, "because a good woman has pleaded well for him."
Not till Greta had given way and sobbed out furtive little apologies in Kate's arms did it occur to the older woman that her costume left certain details wanting. From the moment when she had first heard the voices outside her window, until the last clearing storm, she had thought of nothing but the new light that was thrown on Griff's recent danger. But now she looked down at her ten pink toes, and flushed dismayedly.
"Come upstairs with me," she said to the girl, and fled.
"Well, old fellow, I hope this is the last word about an unlucky job," said Griff, venturing at last to break the silence.
"Nay, not the last," answered the preacher, gravely. "There is expiation, lad, ahead of me."
"Kate," said Lomax, a few days after his adventure with the preacher, "not a stroke of work shall I do this morning; the sun is hot, and the breeze cool, and altogether it's a day in a hundred. Come out with me, and we'll lie in the heather and look up at the sky. It will do you good, little woman."
The sweetness of a wifely confession came between their glances nowadays. There was a new wonder in meeting each other's eyes, and Kate nestled close to his arm on the slightest pretext. She came to him now, and ruffled the hair away from his forehead.
"What a forgetful boy you are. One day you make your mother promise to come and see me, and the next you forget all about it. Only, I wish we could have had our morning together," she added wistfully.
"Fie on you for a witch! I never used to forget anything to do with mother before I knew you. Would you like to walk as far as Marshcotes, and we can all come back together?"
"I don't think I ought, Griff. The doctor may know nothing about it—he probably doesn't—but he was very anxious that I should not do much walking."
"Then you shall wait here for us. Get the maid to pack up a hamper; I'll bring mother, and we will find a picnic ground somewhere on Gorsthwaite Moor. You need not walk more than a mile all told, and it is a sin for you to miss a day like this."
But Griff did not reach Marshcotes. His stride slackenedto a saunter, and even the saunter was too much exertion by the time he had gone half the distance. Knowing that Mrs. Lomax would pass him on her way to Gorsthwaite, he tumbled into a warm bed of heather, lit his pipe, and watched the shifting colours of the moor. The pulsing crimson-purple of the heather, shot here and there with fainter splashes of heliotrope, the hoarse chuckle of the grouse, and shriller wail of the plover, the peaty reek creeping from a rush-girdled marsh on his right—all these things were emphatic in their assertion that it was exceeding good to be alive. His thoughts went out to the child that was to be born to him: pride in his race, and zeal for its continuance, quickened the paternal instinct in him; he travelled far into the future, and saw another Lomax at the Manor, strong as himself, who would poach as his fathers had poached before him, who would ride fearlessly and fight like a man, and keep a big slice of his heart for the love that should one day come to him.
The sunlight grew fainter. A fitful breeze ruffled the heather-tops. A haze crept across the sky, from the horizon upwards. The sun failed altogether, and flying squadrons of mist appeared, now making eager forward rushes, now wheeling, gyrating, eddying to and fro in their efforts to dodge the pursuing breeze. The mist-wreaths grew denser; they turned but little now, and fled across the darkening purple like a band of hunted witches.
Still Griff did not move. He was watching the elfin-revel, and thinking of the old moor legend that a White Lady rides on the swirling mist, tempting men to their doom in the bogs that take, but render never again.
"It would need a marvellous White Lady to tempt me astray nowadays," murmured Griff, and laughed as he thought of Kate.
A voice came out of the mist.
"Bertie, is that you? How can you lie on your back there, while I am dying of fright in the middle of this horrid moor?"
Griff knew the voice at once; it had thrilled him too often in times past to admit of doubt. He rose slowly and lifted hiscap to a figure that loomed out of the fog-wall a few yards away.
"No, I'm not Dereham. Perhaps you have forgotten me, Mrs. Ogilvie?" he said.
She came close up to him—a little hothouse woman, with a delicate, rounded waist, and lips that were always either pouting or pleading. The blush-rose tints deepened against the waxy white of her cheeks, as she held out her hand. After a pause—
"Who would have thought of meeting you here, Griff?" broke out the woman, impetuously. "And yet I—half expected it. Bertie told me you had buried yourself in this wretched place, and I—yes, I did—IhopedI should run across you here. There! I should never, never have confessed the half of that, if I had not been so awfully frightened."
She was devouring him with her eyes, in a strange, famine-stricken way that startled this quondam slave of hers. Griff, remembering certain remarks of Dereham's, realized vaguely that she would be in his arms before the end of the scene, unless he took strong measures.
"Frightened by what? A touch of mist in the middle of a summer's morning? You are a baby, Sybil."
She fell back a step. Her mouth trembled, her eyes filled with tears. Over and over again she had reasoned out Griff's faithlessness to her by woman's logic. His flight from London, his vulgar after-dissipation—or what had seemed such to her—his failure to come back to her side—they had all been twisted into proofs of his hopeless captivity under her yoke. It had been so easy to believe this, while away from him—and now, he showed hard and cold as an iceberg.
She tried to smile with her old winning artlessness.
"You are awfully rude, Griff, but perhaps I shall forgive you that; it is not a newrôle, this of the barbarian. Still, you might at least say you are glad to meet an old—friend. I haven't approved of you lately, you know, and you were horribly brusque before you left town, but——"
"I am always glad to meet an old friend. Do you mind if I smoke?" said Griff, refilling his pipe.
Sybil Ogilvie saw that the battle was to be to the strong, and she kept back her tears, though again they were very near the surface. Neither spoke for awhile. Griff was stinging under the lash of remembered follies. He saw, as if it had been written under his eyes, how this woman had fooled him in the past; he writhed as he looked at her, and understood what flimsy excuse he had had for raving about her. And now that he was out of reach, her passion had ceased to be a plaything; spoiled to the last, she only cared to have what was beyond her grasp. Her voice, her eyes, her hair, all irritated him beyond measure; chivalry was out of court, and he would not pity her.
"How did you get here?" he asked, in a hard, matter-of-fact voice.
"I walked up with Bertie Dereham to hunt for white heather. The mist came on; he went ever such a little distance away to find the track, and the fog swallowed him up. We shouted to each other, but 'here' sounded to be just anywhere, and I rushed about the moor till I nearly dropped with terror and weariness. Then I found you, and—I don't mind the mist, Griff, any longer."
"Your compliments were always pretty, Sybil. I used to believe them."
"When you were half a bear only, it didn't matter; but now I am getting awfully afraid lest you should eat me up." Yet her playfulness was dulled by the pitiful tremor in her voice.
"You came in search of white heath? Our blood runs red up here, and so does the heather. It was a wild-goose chase at best," said Griff, deliberately, with a meaning she could not fail to catch.
Still she would not give in. It had become her life, this yearning for the love she had trifled away.
"Griff, you don't, you can't mean to be so brutal! When are you coming to live in town again? You are more yourself there."
"Never," said Griff, bluntly.
She laid one hand on his sleeve.
"Griff, dear, haven't you a little—just a little—considerationfor us poor wretches who happen to be—to be fond of you? It is a sin to hide yourself among these barren moors."
Still he felt no twinge of pity—only the goad of past weakness.
"It is a sin toseekat times, Sybil. You have told me as much—often. You were so very good that you shamed me into virtue, and sent me up here out of the reach of temptation; why do you not let well alone?"
The irony in his voice made her wince. She turned and moved away from him, into the whirling mist. The first suggestion of pity touched him.
"Don't go like this," he said, more gently. "Let us part friends, for old times' sake."
She faltered and came back. Even those few steps away from him had taught her what a final separation would mean, and she resolved to risk all on a single throw. Without parley, with a suddenness that left Griff resourceless, she was in his arms.
"Griff, will you never understand? Take me, take me, for I can't live without you. Things are all changed, dear; I am free now, and—Griff, I love you so." Her voice broke, her helplessness was pitiably real.
Once, Sybil Ogilvie would have said that it was only country hoydens who indulged in these crude lapses of taste. Yet there were few farm-wenches in all the Marshcotes moorside who could have brought themselves to show so little restraint, so little of the pride of shame; this dainty, well-bred child of the world had outfaced them all.
Griff held her away from him, looking straight into her eyes, with a glance that was half of contempt, half of impatient pity.
"You never stopped to ask, Sybil, if we were both free."
In this supreme moment of his revenge, vengeance seemed a sorry thing. Men cannot but deaden themselves to the faults of a woman who is wise enough to love them; yet under all this Griff was chivalrously ashamed that any woman should so have humbled herself before him.
Mrs. Ogilvie looked at him with startled eyes.
"What do you mean? Not that—oh, Griff, not thatyouare bound—married?"
He nodded silently. He was marvelling that he, or any man, had been able to strike down to a bit of real feeling in this baby-temptress.
"Do you care for her, Griff?" she asked suddenly.
Again he nodded. Protestations seemed out of place.
Sybil turned her face from him, and looked for inspiration to the white-armed maidens of the mist. The gambler's madness was on her now. If Griff were to be won, she must stake, not pride only, but honour and good fame; it was too late to draw back to half measures. Four walls of fog shut in their little square of beaded heather, giving the woman courage to believe that no hint from the outside world could reach them there.
"Griff," she cried, stamping one little foot on the ground, "I won't believe that you love her—I won't—I won't! You were mine two years ago, you are mine now. How dare you mock me with this talk of another woman!" The anger died; her voice grew low and soft; her baby lips pleaded with him. "Such a warm little nest I have always kept for you, dear, in my heart—warmer than ever you dreamed of in the old days. And when my husband died, I thought you would come back to me, I thought you would ask me to tell you what I was free to tell without staining my honour. But you never came, and I feared I should lose every bit of prettiness I had, Griff, in crying my eyes out for you." She was watching his face, and the pity in it nerved her to the last effort. "I have gone too far, too far. Oh, my dearest! what is honour if it goes with a barren life?"
Griff moved impatiently up and down, gnawing at the stem of his pipe. What an utter baby she was—spoiled and selfish, with never a thought for any happiness but her own. His anger was rising quickly. What would Kate say to all this, he wondered?
Before he could speak, another figure staggered out of themist—a short, thick-set man with a scrubby beard and a flushed face. He tripped over a clump of cranberries, and fell prone at Mrs. Ogilvie's feet. She clung to Griff's arm in terror.
"It's thee, is't?" said Joe Strangeways, scrambling to his feet again and looking from one to the other, his hands in his pockets, his legs moving backwards and forwards to maintain their perilous equilibrium. "It's thee, Griff Lummax—robbing another chap of his wench, I'll go bail. Tha'rt a bonny un, thou art, an' proper." He turned to Sybil. "Clout his lugs for him, woman, an' send him trapesing home again. He'll bring thee to shame, will Griff. It's all th' trade he's getten."
Mrs. Ogilvie began to laugh, in a false key. Griff had seen her in hysterics once, and he knew the symptoms; without more ado he gave her a good, hearty smack on the cheek, and, "Don't be a little fool, Sybil!" he muttered harshly. Then he took Joe by the arm, and led him into a sheep-track that crossed the Gorsthwaite path at right angles. "That is your road, Strangeways," he said quietly. "The mist is clearing already. You'll get home by night with luck."
Both his victims stood irresolute from surprise. Sybil had forgotten hysterics altogether in the smart of the blow and her anger at such unwarrantable treatment. Joe found it hard to meet his enemy's matter-of-fact item of information. Finally, the quarryman, swearing and grumbling, took himself off along the track indicated, and Griff returned to Mrs. Ogilvie.
"I'm very sorry," he said, laughing at the absurdity of this last scene in the drama; "I'm very sorry if I hurt you, Sybil, but I was not going to have you on my hands in the middle of the moor. See, we shall have the sun out again in a minute or two. I believe we went to sleep, you and I, and dreamed we were in a fog, and you, or I, or both of us, said a quantity of foolish things, which we can't remember now. Shall I put you on your way to the Folly?"
She went with him passively. Nothing mattered very much now; it was kind of him, she felt vaguely, to smooth over his denial, but what did words signify? Her passion crept under shelter, whimpering.
The mist dispersed as quickly as it had gathered. The piled banks melted to fleecy, lace-like bits of scudding vapour. The moor was a twinkling sea of mist-beads, that shamed to fainter crimson the heather-tips from which they hung. Gorsthwaite Hall showed clear at the top of the rising ground ahead.
"Who was that brute? He seemed to have some quarrel with you," said Mrs. Ogilvie, at last.
"I robbed him of the best woman God ever made. Let him be," Griff answered, with a warm impulse to acknowledge the place which Kate held in his regard.
Sybil flashed round on him, her eyes ablaze.
"Then I have loved a fool—just a fool?" She shrugged her pretty shoulders, and laughed mirthlessly. "I have made a mess of my self-respect," she went on, with bitter frankness; "I should have minded less if the woman who claims you had been other than the cast-off wife of a clown. Griff, you will make me hate you yet; love cannot survive the jar of absurdity."
Griff answered nothing, for Kate herself was standing at the Hall gate. He had thought of skirting the house at the rear, instead of risking this meeting by following the proper track; but he disliked the suggestion of cowardice in such a plan. As he glanced from the delicate bundle of drapery and affectation at his side to the steady, splendid grace of the wife he loved, he was glad of the meeting.
"Kate, here is an old friend of my London days, whom I have just rescued from the mist. Mrs. Ogilvie, this is my wife." For a fleeting moment Griff understood that revenge may be exceeding sweet; then he crushed the feeling.
Kate inclined her head, and smiled with the ease of a woman who trusts her husband. Sybil Ogilvie, too, tried to smile; but she did not mind one whit the less now that she found her rival worthier than she had thought her.
"You will come in and rest after your walk?" suggested Kate, in her even, rounded voice.
"Thank you, no. I shall be late for luncheon as it is, I am afraid. If your—your husband will be kind enough to show me my way——"
"I'll come with you; you will never find it alone."
"No,pleasedon't. I can manage quite well if you put me into the road."
"Nonsense. You would drown in a bog, or something. Kate, if mother walks over now the mist has cleared, will you tell her I shall be back in the afternoon? Don't wait dinner."
At the end of ten minutes' walking—
"You were very careful to call me Mrs. Ogilvie before your wife. Is she jealous in these cases, Griff?" cooed Sybil, feeling it wiser to taunt than to cry, since she had only the two alternatives from which to choose.
Griff muttered something softly to himself, and they walked on in unbroken silence for another mile. The cold, impersonal bearing of her companion roused something of Mrs. Ogilvie's pitiful prudence.
"You won't—how shall I put it?—I have made myself ridiculous—you won't breathe a word of it to any one, will you—to Bertie Dereham, I mean, or——"
He simply stared at her in unfeigned wonder. Ill-advised her late confession might have been, but it had seemed passionate enough. Surely she might have let this old hedging mood of hers wait until another day.
"Don't look so shocked, Griff!" she went on hurriedly. "Of course I don't for a moment think you will—be unlike yourself in that way—only——"
"Only you are not sure; thanks," put in Griff, curtly, looking straight before him.
She put her hand on his sleeve.
"Don't be harsh, dear; we have not long together."
He shook off her touch, laughing bitterly. How could he feel compassion for her, when she let her detestable little suspicions kill pity before it was half awake?
"No, we have not long together, Sybil. Let us talk of the last new play, or the old after-theatre suppers, or some topic we are sure to agree upon."
"Be quiet!" she cried, the tears starting to her eyes.
But the tears were wasted, for Griff would not look at her. Mrs. Ogilvie, now that she had disposed of her mean instinct towards prudence, came swiftly back to the desire for a forbidden plaything which she mistook for love; she shivered at thought of her coming loneliness; she was ready to accept this half-tamed bear on his own terms, though he had laughed at her pleading and slighted her tenderness. She wanted him either to kiss or to thrash her—it scarcely mattered which, so long as she broke through his indifference.
They reached the wind-driven fir-tree under which Roddick and Janet Laverack had kept their Christmas tryst. The sun was warm on Frender's Folly, but no sunshine could overlay the brooding sadness of the place; rather, there seemed an added desolation, as when light shines dumbly on a dead man's eyes. Sybil stopped, and pointed across the smooth-shaven lawns that lay beneath them.
"Isn't it like a grave? Griff, you don't know how eerie it is down there; I dread going back to it."
"Come, Sybil, don't talk about graves in the middle of a September day. The Folly is well enough; eat a good lunch, and you'll find it twice as desirable a place. Good-bye; I must turn back here."
She clutched at him with her little gloved hands.
"You shan't go in this way, you shan't!Eat a good lunch—is that your farewell, Griff, after—after all that has been?"
"Anddrink a half-bottle of Burgundy; I forgot that." Not at any cost was he going to have a repetition of the scene on Marshcotes Moor. And that unwarrantable pity was beginning to touch him again.
She looked from the castle keep to the sweeping purple of the moor. Twice she was on the point of speaking, and twice she stopped herself. Then she crept close to him, and held up her face, and pursed out her baby-mouth.
"Sweetheart, have you no pity?" she murmured.
He took her two hands and touched them lightly with his lips.
"It would do us no good, child. Go back to the old life;you'll forget me soon enough, if you only make up your mind to it. There, don't cry! I'm a brute, and there is an end of it. Good-bye."
He turned sharp on his heel and left her. Sorry he was, but nothing more; he knew that she would forget, and the present trouble seemed to him scarcely more than a child's first taste of toothache. He forgot that the agony of a fall into a two-foot pond is very real if the victim imagines it to be as deep as the sea.
Once he looked back. Amid the glowing waste stood a little hothouse figure of a woman, with yellow hair and a dimpled white-and-pink face. He thought it a quaint picture, and waved his hand twice, and swung off across the heather to the wife who would be impatiently awaiting his home-coming.
Things had gone hard with the preacher since Greta and he went hand-in-hand, like a couple of guilty children, across the moor to Gorsthwaite. It was out of the question that Greta should return that night, whatever the result of her absence might be when it came to her father's ears. Gabriel, too, was induced to spend the night at Gorsthwaite; so tired out was he with trouble and the quick succession of trying scenes. But the preacher was tough in the fibre, and the night's rest well-nigh cured his body, while it gave his mind fresh vigour to understand his own Titanic worthlessness. Had he been able to fly from Greta—lest he should contaminate her—it is probable that his first instinct on awakening would have been towards showing a clean pair of heels, under the delusion that he was doing the lassie a service; but luckily his duty ran with his pleasure for once, for it was clear, even to his perceptions, that the miller would hear of Greta's leaving home the night before, and that a sufficient explanation must be forthcoming.
So Gabriel took the girl home about eleven of the next morning, and, finding Miller Rotherson just returned from his journey, gave the kindly old man a full and faithful account of the whole affair. The miller rubbed his chin when Gabriel had finished, and looked at him quizzically.
"So you want to marry my daughter? Well, I don't know about that. It seems to me you're far too hot-headed to be comfortable as a son-in-law. For all that, I can't rightly see that you show up so badly in the matter. You fought because—but we won't go into that. At any rate, if it weren't for you, I should have neither daughter nor mill at this moment. But to marry her—it's asking a deal; well, we must think about it."
And soon after that it was known through the length and breadth of Ling Crag village and Marshcotes parish that Gabriel Hirst and the miller's daughter were "bahn to be wed." Betty Binns named Greta "a forrard young hussie, about as fit to be a godly man's wife as skim-milk is fit to butter your bread;" and the rest of the village thought as much—for was not poor Greta "a furriner"?
And this was the beginning of a hard time for the preacher. He had trafficked too little in happiness to accept it quietly when it came. He felt an earnest need for some set-off in the shape of misery, and he had that fight with Griff ready to his conscience. The more he pondered over it, the greater seemed his offence. True, Griff looked at him nowadays with a kindlier eye than ever before; true, the sin had brought him his heart's desire (next after God, he added, but the parenthesis carried little conviction even to himself). But was the sin any the less in that it had borne good fruit? If he held that, he was no better than a papist, an idolater—and that was almost the hardest rap Gabriel could give himself.
In the middle of his troublous time, there came a strange preacher to the Ling Crag chapel, to conduct the anniversary services there. He was known throughout the country, the Rev. Abel Bell, as a powerful mover of men's hearts, and the Ling Crag folk expected great things of him. Nor were they disappointed; the stranger, at the end of half a dozen sentences, had put himself out of reach of the captious criticism to which the villagers were wont to treat their superiors in godliness; before they had recovered from this unwonted sense of inability to carp, they were snared into enthusiasm. There was a meeting of the class-leaders after morning service, and they unanimously decided to ask the new preacher to stay for a few days and conduct a series of "Revival" services. Gabriel Hirst was ripe for any wildness when Wednesday came. The three Sunday services, with the evening calls to the unconvertedon Monday and Tuesday, had already wrought him to a high pitch of nervous tension; contact with Greta and that growing sense of his unworthiness combined to bring him up to fever heat.
The "Revival" enthusiasm spreads like a contagion when once it is set going. From Ling Crag and Marshcotes and the scattered farms for miles around, the people came. On Wednesday evening there was not a seat to be had; the pews were full, the long wooden benches were full, and there was scarce standing room for those at the back of the chapel. Near the front sat Griff Lomax, who had not witnessed a "Revival" for years, and who felt a purely irreligious and unbiassed interest in proceedings which were calculated to draw the naked hearts out of his usually taciturn neighbours.
The Rev. Abel Bell mounted into the pulpit, and talked with homely vigour. No simile was too wild, no illustration too commonplace, so long as he held captive the imagination of his hearers. Divinity, he held, had once walked in rough mortal garb, and in rough mortal metaphor only could the Divine truth be understood by men. The subtle fire ran in and out among the congregation. Hearts that were wont to keep within the limits of their own hardened shells leaped out to one another; as they had been strong in restraint, so they were strong in abandonment now that the fitting time had come. Each man looked at his neighbour, and yearned over him, and prayed that salvation might reach all present. The minister grew frenzied.
"The Devil is trembling!" he shouted, with a voice that seemed to be tearing at the lining of his throat. "Heaven and Hell are fighting for the souls of men. The Devil is trembling—Heaven is winning. Into the fight, brothers; give the Devil a oner! ('Praise the Lord!' 'Glory!' 'Hallelujah!') Into the thick of it, friends, and smite with the arm of God! ('Hallelujah!')" He pointed with his hand to the chapel door. "See him there—see the Devil scuttering out with his tail between his legs! Angels are rejoicing; the battle is won. The gates of Heaven stand open—one and all, come in."("Praise the Lord!" "Glory!" "Hallelujah!" reiterated the congregation.)
His voice fell to a pleading quietness, but mounted and mounted till it rang like a trumpet-call.
"Heaven, my brothers and sisters—if you knew what was meant by Heaven, there's none here to-night but would search for Jesus till he found Him. We are blinded by folly and sin, but we've got eyes that can see the sky, which is the window of Heaven. When the earth wants warming, out comes the sun, and laughs over moors and woods and fields. When the earth gapes with thirst, then God Almighty sends the blessed rain-clouds—packed up ready, carriage paid, free of charge. ('Glory! Glory!') This night we must gather the sinners in to the Lord—gather them in ('Hallelujah!'). There's a table spread in the courts of Heaven, and all that are saved can sit down to it. Ask for what you will, and you've only to pass up your plates—and all the while the golden harps will be playing, and the cymbals clashing, and God will be there at the top of the table, ready to smile on one and all and send them down whatever they ask for. Why will the sinners stay on the wrong side of the Golden Gates? It's cold out there, and it's wet, with a keen east wind that cuts you to the bone. Will you come in to the Lord, friends, out of the cold, out of the wet? Think what it means! if once you let the Gates be shut on you, from the cold you'll be hurried away to the Burning Lake, and you'll burn there for ever and ever. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Unstop the ears of the hardened, Lord; conquer their deafness; gather them into Thy bosom. Glory, glory!"
When the sermon was finished, the minister and the class-leaders went in and out among the congregation, exhorting them to effort, aiding them in the desperate struggle to "find Jesus." Groans and cries went up on every hand. The agony of doubt was bitterly real, the swift flash of belief a true and priceless blessing. Griff was the only one present who looked on the proceedings from a dispassionate, outside standpoint. There had been a little—just a little—pitying contempt at thebottom of his interest in the Revival; but now that he was in the thick of it, now that the cries of "Hallelujah!" "Found pardon!" "Glory, glory!" came thick and fast, drowning the anxious calls for aid, now that the uncouthness of his neighbours was lost in their strenuous sincerity, Griff knew that he had been minded to scoff at what was above and beyond cheap raillery; the thrill of contact with this seething enthusiasm shot through his nerves and gripped him with awed amazement.
A rude bench was carried to the foot of the communion-table. Those who had found salvation rose, one by one, and went to the bench and knelt with their arms on it, to wrestle with the remnants of their unbelief. Class-leaders and minister went busily to and fro, like bees at heather-time, arguing, pleading, praying with those whose hearts would not be softened unto grace. Surely, if man's whole prayerful effort, man's utmost power of will, could bring a Presence from the Unknown Without, then God was in this little moorside chapel.
But Gabriel Hirst was not forward with exhortation, as of old. He stood in a shadowed corner, his arms folded on his breast, his eyes wild with a battle of terror and determination. Griff, glancing up with an uneasy consciousness that some one was looking through and through him, met the preacher's eyes. In a flash it came to him what Gabriel was finding heart to do; he made a movement as if to cross to him, but stopped. What could he say or do to keep back this confession of a deed that was finished with long ago? He could do nothing, save watch the preacher move forward to the front, and listen to his stumbling words of introduction. Then Gabriel, finding his manhood, faltered no more, but walked steadily up the pulpit steps. His voice was low and firm; only the piteous working of his face betrayed his torment. He told how, upon a certain day, the seed of a thorn-tree was dropped in the cleft of a quarry-face; he described the breaking of the seed-shell, the growth of the sapling; he brought before the eyes of those present the picture of a merciful God watering the tree, tending it with jealous watchfulness. Then he talked of another seed, the seed of jealousy and hate. Years were needed to measurethe growth of God's handiwork; but the evil in man increased by days, by hours, by minutes.
Then, on a sudden, his voice went deeper. He leaned over the pulpit and looked across the sea of anxious faces to the place where Griff was sitting.
"Stand up, Griff Lomax, and come to the front, and tell them all what a man did to you on the brink of Whins Quarry."
But Griff made no movement, and the preacher told his own story.
"The seed of jealousy was set in this man, and it grew in the space of a single day, till he was ripe for blows—nay, for worse. He waited for his friend at the edge of the quarry-face, and murder was in his heart."
"Glory, glory!" shouted a woman at the rear of the chapel. She was in the throes of her own personal need for salvation, and her shout of joy came with a weird irrelevancy.
"The man was myself," went on Gabriel, "and the friend that I waited for was Griff Lomax, whom I had loved as my own brother—ay, as David yearned over Jonathan I had loved the lad. But the seed of hate was planted, and grew apace. He came along by the path at the quarry-side, and I closed with him. The devil had gripped my heart; I forgot that the edge was close behind us; I cared for nothing in heaven or hell but vengeance. The devil strengthened my arms. I lifted the lad and threw him over my shoulder."
"Hallelujah! Found Jesus, found Jesus!" yelled a weather-beaten quarryman, seated under the pulpit.
Gabriel paused and dashed his hand across his forehead; the sweat ran off in a stream and dripped to the pulpit ledge. A hoarse murmur went from lip to lip of the listening crowd.
"I heard the rumbling of stones as he went over the brink, and then a splash in the pool at the bottom."
Every eye turned to Griff, sitting with a rigid face, like one returned from the dead. A superstitious awe gained on the folk; they were ripe to credit a miracle in their present exalted state.
"I ran down the hill and fell, and lay in a swoon for awhile," went on the preacher. "When I went to the pool, there was no body there, and I pictured him lying in the mud at the bottom—lying, and waiting till the trump of the Judgment Day called him to tell what he knew."
Griff hardened his face yet further. He found it a strain not to wince under those keen eye-shafts, focussed on him from every quarter of the chapel, like needles about a magnet. The preacher, regarding him steadfastly, rose to a splendid height of egoism.
"But God had been watching over this moment, watching over the feet of Gabriel Hirst, the least and most sinful of His servants. Before I came into the world, He had set the seed of a thorn-tree in the side of the quarry; the tree grew, till its branches were strong to support the fall of a man. The brother I loved, the brother I had all but killed in my hate, fell safe into the bush, as God in His mercy had ordained. The sin of will is mine, black as ever, but the sin of the deed has been lightened. Lift up your hearts, ye children of God, and thank your Father for His mercies, and take heed by my own fall how you let the devil creep into your hearts."
His voice was weakening, his grip of the ledge in front of him grew less firm. But he had something yet to say.
"Griff Lomax, I have laboured to bring you into the straight way of faith. The Lord has delivered you; turn to the Lord and believe in Him."
The Rev. Abel Bell struck up the Doxology, obeying instinct rather than the prompting of reason. The little chapelful of people joined in with one voice, till the walls seemed to rock with the clashing waves of sound.
But Gabriel Hirst had fainted on the floor of the pulpit.
Quietly Griff moved down the aisle, and took his friend in his arms. He carried him into the vestry, and was sprinkling water over his face before the congregation was fairly alive to what had happened.
When the Doxology had been sung—and sung again—there began a great harvesting of souls. Few of those present could withstand the swift excitement of such a confession asthey had lately listened to. Never before had the Rev. Abel Bell witnessed so goodly a gathering in to the Lord.
When the fervour had subsided a little, and the time was at hand for an adjournment to the class-room, there to enroll the converted, Griff moved up to the pulpit and mounted the stair. He gave them a level narrative of what had happened at Whins Quarry, and he so over-rated Gabriel's cause for hate that his after-action showed excusable; he went further, moving warily step by step, till he had proved that any man, with manhood in him, must have acted as the preacher had done. And then, as he turned to go—
"Gabriel Hirst has bidden me thank God for my escape," he said. "I do thank God, from my whole heart fervently. Neighbours, we are going to forget what has passed to-night, remembering only that we have a man among us—a man to the tips of his fingers. And his name is Gabriel Hirst."
Lomax, feeling a sudden desire to stretch his legs, set off at five of an October afternoon to walk to Ludworth. His mother was staying at Gorsthwaite for a day or two, and there was no chance of Kate's feeling lonely if he were late in getting back. Though it was fine enough overhead when he set off, he found it heavy-going on the rutty old packroad, superseded long ago by the good hard road that leads past the stoups and Sorrowstones Spring. The rains had been heavy of late; already the clouds were thickening again as he gained Tinker's Pool, and not a trace of the moon was to be seen.
Repairing, sharp-set, to the White Swan for one of the solid meals which that hostelry affected, he chanced to meet a horse-dealer of his acquaintance in the bar; the dealer had a neat little bay for sale, and Griff was in need of another horse. It was agreed, finally, that the bay should be brought to Gorsthwaite the next morning for inspection, and Griff began to talk of starting off again. But a look out-of-doors made him think twice about it. The night showed black as pitch, and rain was coming down in bucketsful.
"You'll none be crossing the moor to-night, Mr. Lomax?" said the dealer, peering over his shoulder.
"I must, sometime; but it might be as well to wait a bit and see if it lifts. We'll have another drink, at any rate."
At the end of an hour or so the rain slackened pace, and the moon tried hard to elbow her way through the clouds. Griff, grown impatient of sitting in the musty bar-room, would hear of no more delay.
"My advice to you, sir, is—keep to the new road through Cranshaw; it'll be fearful dark the other way, and ankle-deep in water," was the dealer's parting injunction.
Griff decided to take his advice. The way was a good two miles further round, but it was better, on a night like this, to have solid ground underfoot. The sky cleared for awhile as he mounted the hill; ahead of him, shining white under the full moon, stood the first of the stoups. His thoughts went back to the father who had died on this very road—to the father whom he could barely remember, who yet had stood to him throughout life as a wonderful example of tenderness, strength, and devotion. He recalled how, when he was sixteen, he had heard an old scandal raked up, to the effect that this perfect father of his had brought old Mother Strangeways' daughter to shame; how he had leaped up, his face on fire, and knocked down the man who had thought it manly to sneer at the father in the son's presence; how he had gone straightway to his mother, and blurted out what had happened; how she had wept over him, and comforted him, and told him the whole truth of the matter.
He drew near to Sorrowstones Spring; so full had he been of the old-time sadness that he had scarcely noted the quick return of clouds and rain. A vivid lightning flash awakened him; hot-foot came the thunder in pursuit; from Cranshaw far ahead of him to Ludworth in his rear, the meeting of moor and sky seemed to be one rolling line of din. Then all was still, save for the rain, the cries of frightened grouse. He pushed on. Sorrowstones Spring was close on his left now. He could hear the wind swirling round the rickety chimney-stack.
On a sudden there came a cry that was neither of wind nor bird—a harsh, protracted wail that sliced through the tempest like a knife-stroke. No words could be heard—only that inarticulate wail—yet Lomax knew that blasphemy was abroad; he felt the skin creep on his scalp, and his sodden cap seemed to lift itself clean off his head. He came to a halt and listened; sweat and rain joined issue and rolled down his face; in all his life he had never, till now, known what real fear meant.The wind and the rain grew quieter, the wailing louder. He traced it to the cottage, and, just because his legs would scarce carry him for fright, he forced himself to draw near.
"It washerdaughter that was mixed up with father's name," he muttered, remembering on the sudden who it was that lived here.
He did not know whether it were sheer obstinacy that dragged him to the door, or the instinct to help a fellow-creature in need, or whether some overmastering ghostly force were at work; but he could not draw back now. He felt for the sneck of the door, found it after a moment's groping, and pushed his way into the cottage. For a moment he could see nothing for the peat-smoke; his eyes smarted, and the reek crept down to the bottom of his throat and set him coughing till he was hoarse. The wailing had ceased, but still the silence seemed pregnant with that sense of blasphemy. Gradually his vision cleared; he could see a farthing rushlight, almost burnt through, guttering in a dirty bottle-neck. Beyond the candle was a huddled heap of straw and blanket and human hair—something bright gleamed out from the tangled hair, something skinny and brown scratched up and down the blanket. Dazed as he was, it was some time before he grasped that this was Mother Strangeways, that the little bright circles were eyes, that the twitching object was her lean right hand. Swiftly his thoughts went back to that other hag who had pressed her lips to his just without Roddick's door. Could they be the same?—But he had little time for reflection. A crackling laugh came from the bed in the corner. Mother Strangeways was lifting herself to a sitting posture, and her shrivelled bosom showed through the tattered nightgown that made pretence of covering her.
"Griff Lummax—his father's son—an' he's come to shrive me i' th' latter end!" she mocked. "Hast 'a nowt to say for thyseln, lad? I war praying, a while back, to set een on thee afore I deed, an' th' devil he's answered my prayer, an' there tha stands as quiet as th' grave I'm bound for."
The old homely turns of speech helped to pull Grifftogether. It was flesh and blood he had to deal with, at any rate, and that was so much to the good.
"I heard your cries as I was passing, and came in to help you. What can I do for you?" he asked.
"Do? Nowt, nowt, I say, save come a step or two nearer, so as I haven't to shout to mak myseln heärd. I'm sickening to my deäth, Griff Lummax, an' afore I fetched thee out o' th' dark an' th' storm, th' pain war fit to drive me crazy. But tha's come, lad, an' I'll dee happy yet. Step closer, I tell thee!"
He halved the distance between himself and the bed; nearer he could not force himself to go just yet.
"What do you want?" he muttered.
Mother Strangeways watched him warily. She worked her arms up and down, as if testing their strength; she measured the distance between them, as if she were bent on reaching him with her bony fist. The glitter in her eyes failed to a cunning softness, while the lines of her mouth grew hard.
"I can't talk loud, lad; bend ower me," she whispered.
He made himself come to the bedside, and stooped to hear what she had to say. In a twinkling her fingers were clawing at his throat. Death-ridden as she was, the old hatred gave the woman a nervous strength of grip. Half-strangled, Griff felt for her hands, and seized them, and forced them down.
"So that's your game, is it?" he laughed. "A pretty specimen of a dying woman you are, Mother Strangeways."
Just that touch of fight had strung up his nerves to their normal pitch.
She lay back on the bed, a little stream of red trickling from her mouth. Griff stood and watched her, not knowing what to say or do, until at last she spoke in a quavering voice.
"It war truth I spoke, Griff Lummax, when I said I war deeing. Another hour—a half-hour, mebbe—'ull see me ready for th' coffin. I tried to kill thee, then, lad, but tha worsted me. Tha'd best be going thy ways, an' leave me to it."
Surely, Griff thought, there was no pretence this time. The pallor on her face, with the bluish tint dusting it here and there,could mean nothing short of death. How could he leave her there to wrestle with the end?
"Mother Strangeways," he said roughly, "I bear you no malice. What's done is done, and you must square the reckoning when you get to the other side. Can I ease the journey for you a bit?"
She turned over on her side and looked at the rushlight, which, like herself, was sputtering to an end. She pointed to the cupboard, then to the candle and back again. Griff, obeying her gesture, took a bundle of rushlights from the bottom shelf of the cupboard, lit one and rammed it tight in the bottle-neck.
"Ay," muttered the old woman, "that's th' tale, fro' generation to generation. Th' owd light dees, an' out it's chucked, an' in goes th' smooth-faced young un. An' it's little fowk think o' th' light that's gone, so only they've getten a fresh un to show 'em their way. But there's summat wrang, Griff Lummax—ay, grievous wrang—when th' young uns is ta'en first, an' th' owd uns fizzle on to th' last drop o' greäse. It's nigh on five an' thirty year sin' th' bonny lass went under-sod; why warn't it me that war ta'en? Why warn't it me, I say?" she screamed. "Doan't come to me an' crack o' thy God A'mighty, what taks young lassies i' their prime an' leaves th' owd 'uns to rot i' their skins for grief an' worry."
She sank back, weak with the effort, and the ooze ran faster from her mouth. She lay quiet for awhile, but the workings of her face showed that she was thinking hard. And her thoughts were with the daughter who had died in childbirth—childbirth to a nameless father.