CHAPTER XXXIIN WHICH WE TAKE LEAVE OF THE MEN OF MAWM
WHETHER it was fate or providence that led Maniwel Drake to risk his savings in order to procure for his enemy a few weeks liberty, who shall determine? When men are the sport of circumstances they cry, “Who can control his fate?†When kindly breezes bring them into the haven where they would be they talk smoothly of Providence. Theologians and philosophers have disputed over the terms in all ages; but amidst the clash of argument one truth stands out clearly—that a man inevitably reaps what he sows. Within a month Maniwel had lost his money and Inman his life.
“It wor fated to be so,†said old Ambrose; but Jagger regarded it as an act of Providence.
Inman came home, to the surprise of his wife, who had not believed that his pride would suffer him to face his neighbours; and in the language that was current “brazzened it out.†His features were impassive, and there was a stern repelling look in his eyes that made men chary of seeking his company. He had no doubt formed his plans from the first, but he masked his intentions with guile and succeeded in disarming suspicion. With the men of Mawm it was in his favour that he paid no lip-service to the Drakes for the kindness they had done him, and avoided all communication with them.
His business seemed to occupy all his thoughts;and the arrangements he made for its continuance during the three years his lawyer told him he might expect to be away lacked nothing in completeness. He sat for hours with Nancy and Frank, looking into accounts and discussing possibilities with something like subdued zest; but he never once referred to the subject of his arrest and the circumstances that had led up to it; and Nancy told herself that the silence was portentous. She took the precaution to bolt her bedroom door at night and slept little.
Several weeks before his liberty was to end he disappeared in circumstances that made pursuit impossible—that made even his flight doubtful.
It was a cold April day, fitfully bright, with frequent showers of sleet. Towards the middle of the afternoon the wind brought up great banks of leaden cloud which discharged themselves in snow. Before nightfall a blizzard was raging with a severity that even Mawm found exceptional, and for eighteen hours there was no cessation of its fury. Huge drifts, in some cases ten feet deep, made the roads impassable, and the farmers’ faces were clouded, for scores of ewes had perished in the storm together with their lambs, and foxes were busy in the poultry houses.
Inman was seen in the street before the snow came, and not until his dead body was found a fortnight later was it known for certain that he had planned an escape. He had pledged his word not to leave the village, and Stalker’s successor was supposed to keep an observant eye on him; but there had been no definition of boundaries, so that there was always the possibility that he had been cut off by the storm and had found shelter in some upland farm with which there was no present means of communication.
Maniwel cherished no such hope. “He’s gone, lad,†he said to Jagger, and his son nodded.
“It can’t be helped,†he replied.
A farmer, seeking his dead sheep, found him when the thaw came, in a shallow depression not two yards deep, into which he had stumbled as he walked, doubtless with his head bent to the challenge of the rising gale, across the moor.
There he had lain, stunned and with a broken leg, less than twenty feet from the path by which he had entered Mawm a year and a half before, and there death had overtaken him. On his body was the evidence of his intention—notes and gold to a large amount which he had brought from their hiding-place, and with which, no doubt, he had hoped to start life afresh.
The village of Mawm has still the carpenter’s shop, and the business is prosperous in a moderate way. Baldwin Briggs has an interest in it, but the name upon the sign-board is “Drake and Son.†Little new machinery has been added, for though capital was not entirely lacking the Drakes have the conservatism of the Yorkshire countryman, and are afraid of moving too fast. They have “made brass†but not piled it up very high; yet there is enough and a little to spare, and Nancy Drake is satisfied. She has two children, sturdy boys both of them, who are the pride of their grandfather’s heart, and a husband who grows more like his father every day. So Swithin says, and now that Ambrose, like grannie, sleeps lower down the valley there is no greater authority in Mawm.
Hannah and her father occupy the old home, and there is a rumour in the village that Jack Pearce would like to share it with them, or alternatively to take Hannah to one of his providing.
Baldwin and Keturah, too, are in familiar quarters. Nancy was glad to get away when Jagger married her, and he rented a good, square house across the stream where there is a garden for the children.
Baldwin has aged very much, and his temper is still occasionally raspy, but if he gives trouble it is only Keturah who knows it, and she is certainly no more fretful than before; indeed, there are those who assert that the fountain of her tears is almost dry.
Fate or Providence? “I was against it at t’ time,†says Jagger. “It seemed like a fool’s trick, and it was a lot o’ brass to lose; but it was a providence for all that.â€
Nancy says nothing.
THE END
Obvious misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where more than one spelling occurs, the majority used word was applied but archaic spellings, if used, were maintained. Author's consistent use of “my-sen†versus Yorkshire use of “mi sen†has been maintained.
Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.
The author’s use of contractions has been maintained with spaces removed where appropriate to conform to Yorkshire dialect: “for ’t†to “for’tâ€, “on ’t†to “on’tâ€, “in ’t†to “in’tâ€, “to ’t†to “to’tâ€, “of ’t†to “of’tâ€, “t’ other†to “t’otherâ€, “more ’n†to “more’nâ€, wi’ ’t to wi’t and all “ ’ll†contractions have been joined including “ ’at ’ll†to “ ’at’llâ€.