When the dawn of another day rose over Shoulthwaite, a great silence
had fallen on the old house on the moss. The man who had made it what
it was--the man who had been its vital spirit--slept his last deep
sleep in the bedroom known as the kitchen loft. Throughout forty years
his had been the voice first heard in that mountain home when the
earliest gleams of morning struggled through the deep recesses of the
low mullioned windows. Perhaps on the day following market day he
sometimes lay an hour longer; but his stern rule of life spared none,
and himself least of all. If at sixty his powerful limbs were less
supple than of old, if his Jove-like head with its flowing beard had
become tipped with the hoar frost, he had relaxed nothing of his rigid
self-government on that account. When the clock in the kitchen had
struck ten at night, Angus had risen up, whatever his occupation,
whatever his company, and retired to rest. And the day had hardly
dawned when he was astir in the morning, rousing first the men and
next the women of his household. Every one had waited for his call.
There had been no sound more familiar than that of his firm footstep,
followed by the occasional creak of the old timbers, breaking the
early stillness. That footstep would be heard no more.
Dame Ray sat in a chair before the kitchen fire. She had sat there the
whole night through, moaning sometimes, but speaking hardly at all.
Sleep had not come near her, yet she scarcely seemed to be awake. Last
night's shock had more than half shattered her senses, but it had
flashed upon her mind a vision of her whole life. Only half conscious
of what was going on about her, she saw vividly as in a glass the
incidents of those bygone years, that had lain so long unremembered.
The little cottage under Castenand; her old father playing his fiddle
in the quiet of a summer evening; herself, a fresh young maiden,
busied about him with a hundred tender cares; then a great sorrow and
a dead waste of silence,--all this appeared to belong to some earlier
existence. And then the sun had seemed to rise on a fuller life that
came later. A holy change had come over her, and to her transfigured
feeling the world looked different. But that bright sun had set now,
and all around was gloom. Slowly she swayed herself to and fro hour
after hour in her chair, as one by one these memories came back to
her--came, and went, and came again.
On Rotha the care of the household had fallen. The young girl had sat
long by the old dame overnight, holding her hand and speaking softly
to her between the outbursts of her own grief. She had whispered
something about brave sons who would yet be her great stay, and then
the comforter herself had needed comfort and her voice of solace had
been stilled. When the daylight came in at the covered windows, Rotha
rose up unrefreshed; but with a resolute heart she set herself to the
duties that had dropped so unexpectedly upon her. She put the
spinning-wheel into the neuk window-stand and the woo-wheel against
the wall. They would not be wanted now. She cleared the sconce and
took down the flitches that hung from the rannel-tree to dry. Then she
cooked the early breakfast of oatmeal porridge, and took the milk that
the boy brought from the cow shed and put it into the dishes that she
had placed on the long oak table which stretched across the kitchen.
Willy Ray had been coming and going most of the night from the kitchen
to his own room--a little carpeted closet of a bedroom that went out
from the first landing on the stairs, and looked up to the ghyll at
the back. The wee place was more than his sleeping-room; he had his
books there, but he had neither slept nor read that night. He wandered
about aimlessly, with the eyes of one walking in his sleep, breaking
out sometimes into a little hysterical scream, followed by a shudder,
and then a sudden disappearance. Death had come to him for the first
time, and in a fearful guise. Its visible presence appalled him. He
was as feeble as a child now. He was ready to lean on the first strong
human arm that offered; and though Rotha understood but vaguely the
troubles that beset his mind, her quick instinct found a sure way to
those that lay heavy at his heart. She comforted him with what good
words she could summon, and he came again and again to her with his
odd fancies and his recollections of the poor feeble philosophy which
he had gleaned from books. The look in the eyes of this simple girl
and the touch of her hand made death less fearsome than anything
besides. Willy seemed to lean on Rotha, and she on her part appeared
to grow stronger as she felt this.
Ralph had gone to bed much as usual the night before--after he had
borne upstairs what lay there. He was not seen again until morning,
and when he came down and stood for a moment over his mother's chair
as she sat gazing steadfastly into the fire, Rotha was stooping over
the pan, with the porridge thivle in her hand. She looked up into his
face, while his hand rested with a speechless sympathy on his mother's
arm, and she thought that, mingled with a softened sorrow, there was
something like hope there. The sadness of last night was neither in
his face nor in his voice. He was even quieter than usual, but he
appeared to have grown older in the few hours that had intervened.
Nevertheless, he went through his ordinary morning's work about the
homestead with the air of one whose mind was with him in what he did.
After breakfast he took his staff out of the corner and set out for
the hills, his dog beside him.
During the day, Rotha, with such neighborly help as it was the custom
to tender, did all the little offices incident to the situation. She
went in and out of the chamber of the dead, not without awe, but
without fear. She had only once before looked on death, or, if she had
seen it twice before this day, her first sight of it was long ago, in
that old time of which memory scarcely held a record, when she was
carried in her father's arms into a darkened room like this and held
for a moment over the white face that she knew to be the face of her
mother. But, unused as she had been to scenes made solemn by death,
she appeared to know her part in this one.
Intelligence of the disaster that had fallen on the household at
Shoulthwaite Moss was not long in circulating through Wythburn. One
after another, the shepherds and their wives called in, and were taken
to the silent room upstairs. Some offered such rude comfort as their
sympathetic hearts but not too fecund intellects could devise, and as
often as not it was sorry comfort enough. Some stood all but
speechless, only gasping out at intervals, “Deary me.” Others, again,
seemed afflicted with what old Matthew Branthwaite called “doddering”
and a fit of the “gapes.”
It was towards nightfall when Matthew himself came to Shoulthwaite.
“I'm the dame's auldest neighbor,” he had said at the Red Lion that
afternoon, when the event of the night previous had been discussed.
“It's nobbut reet 'at I should gang alang to her this awesome day.
She'll be glad of the neighborhood of an auld friend's crack.” They
were at their evening meal of sweet broth when Matthew's knock came to
the door, followed, without much interval, by his somewhat gaunt
figure on the threshold.
“Come your ways in,” said Mrs. Ray. “And how fend you, Mattha?”
“For mysel', I's gayly. Are ye middlin' weel?” the old man said.
“I'm a lang way better, but I'm going yon way too. It's far away the
bainer way for me now.” And Mrs. Ray put her apron to her eyes.
“Ye'll na boune yit, Mary,” said Matthew. “Ye'll na boune yon way for
mony a lang year yit. So dunnet ye beurt, Mary.”
Mattha's blubbering tones somewhat discredited his stoical advice.
Rotha had taken down a cup, and put the old man to sit between herself
and Willy, facing Mrs. Ray.
“I met Ralph in the morning part,” said Matthew; “he telt me all the
ins and outs aboot it. I reckon he were going to the kirk garth aboot
the berryin'.”
Mrs. Ray raised her apron to her eyes again. Willy got up and left the
room. He at least was tortured by this kind of comfort.
“He's of the bettermer sort, _he_ is,” said Matthew with a motion of
his head towards the door at which Willy had gone out. “He taks it
bad, does Willy. Ralph was chapfallen a laal bit, but not ower much.
Deary me, but ye've gat all sorts of sons though you've nobbut two.
Weel, weel,” he added, as though reconciling himself to Willy's
tenderness and Ralph's hardness of heart, “if there were na fells
there wad be na dales.”
Matthew had turned over his cup to denote that his meal was finished.
The dame rose and resumed her seat by the fire. During the day she had
been more cheerful, but with the return of the night she grew again
silent, and rocked herself in her chair.
“It's just t'edge o' dark, lass,” said Matthew to Rotha while filling
his pipe. “Wilt thoo fetch the cannels?”
The candles were brought, and the old man lit his pipe from one of
them and sat down with Mrs. Ray before the fire.
“Dus'ta mind when Angus coomt first to these parts?” he said. “_I_ do
reet weel. I can a' but fancy I see him now at the manor'al court at
Deer Garth Bottom. What a man he was, to be sure! Ralph's nobbut a bit
boy to what his father was then. Folks say father and son are as like
as peas, but nowt of the sort. Ye could nivver hev matched Angus in
yon days for limb and wind. Na, nor sin' nowther. And there was yan o'
the lasses frae Castenand had set een on Angus, but she nivver let
wit. As bonny a lass as there was in the country side, she was. They
say beauty withoot bounty's but bauch, but she was good a' roond. She
was greetly thought on. Dus'ta mind I was amang the lads that went
ahint her--I was, mysel'. But she wad hev nowt wi' me; she trysted wid
Angus; so I went back home and broke the click reel of my new loom
straight away. And it's parlish odd I've not lived marraless iver
sin'.”
This reminiscence of his early and all but only love adventure seemed
to touch a sensitive place in the old man's nature, and he pulled for
a time more vigorously at his pipe.
Mrs. Ray Still sat gazing into the fire, hardly heeding the old
weaver's garrulity, and letting him chatter on as he pleased.
Occasionally she would look anxiously over her shoulder to ask Rotha
if Ralph had got back, and on receiving answer that he had not yet
been seen she would resume her position, and, with an absent look in
her eyes, gaze back into the fire. When a dog's bark would be heard in
the distance above the sound of the wind, she would break into
consciousness afresh, and bid Rotha prepare the supper. But still
Ralph did not come. Where could he be?
It was growing late when Matthew got up to go. He had tried his best
to comfort his old neighbor in her sorrow. He had used up all his saws
and proverbs that were in the remotest degree appropriate to the
occasion, and he had thrown in a few that were not remarkable for
appositeness or compatibility. All alike had passed by unheeded. The
dame had taken the good will for the good deed, and had not looked the
gift-horses too closely in the mouth.
“Good night, Mattha Branthet,” she said, in answer to his good by;
“good night, and God bless thee.”
Matthew had opened the door, and was looking out preparatory to his
final leavetaking.
“The sky's over-kessen to-neet,” he said. “There's na moon yit, and
t'wind's high as iver. Good neet, Mary; it's like ye'll be a' thrang
eneuf to-morrow wi' the feast for the berryin', and it's like eneuf ma
mistress and laal Liza will be ower at the windin'.”
The dame sighed audibly.
“And keep up a blithe heart, Mary. Remember, he that has gude crops
may thole some thistles.”
When the door had closed behind the weaver, Willy came back to the
kitchen from his little room.
“Ralph not home yet?” he said, addressing Rotha.
“Not yet,” the girl answered, trying vainly to conceal some
uneasiness.
“I wonder what Robbie Anderson wanted with him? He was here twice, you
know, in the morning. And the schoolmaster--what could little Monsey
have to say that he looked so eager? It is not his way.”
“Be sure it was nothing out of the common,” said Rotha. “What happened
last night makes us all so nervous.”
“True; but there was a strange look about both of them--at least I
thought so, though I didn't heed it then. They say misfortunes never
come singly. I wish Ralph were home.”
Mrs. Ray had risen from her seat at the fire, and was placing one of
the candles upon a small table that stood before the neuk window.
With her back to the old dame, Rotha put her finger on her lip as a
motion to Willy to say no more.