When Ralph retired to his own room on the night of his father's death
there lay a heavier burden at his heart than even that dread
occurrence could lodge there. To such a man as he was, death itself
was not so terrible but that many passions could conquer the fear of
it. As for his father, he had not tasted death; he had not seen it;
his death was but a word; and the grave was not deep. No, the grave
was not deep. Ah, what sting lay in that thought!--what fresh sting
lay there!
Ralph called up again the expression on the face of Simeon Stagg as he
asked him in the inn that night (how long ago it seemed!) to give the
name of the man who had murdered Wilson. “It's your duty in the sight
of Heaven,” he had said; “would you tarnish the child's name with the
guilt laid on the father's?” Then there had come into Sim's eyes
something that gave a meaning to his earlier words, “Ralph, you don't
know what you ask.” Ah, did he not know now but too well? Ralph walked
across the room with a sense as of a great burden of guilt weighing
him down. The grave was not deep--oh, would it were, would it were!
Would that the grave were the end of all! But no, it was as the old
book said: when one dies, those who survive ask what he has left
behind; the angel who bends above him asks what he has sent before.
And the father who had borne him in his arms--whom he had borne--what
had he sent before?
Ralph tramped heavily to and fro. His dog slept on the mat outside his
door, and, unused to such continued sounds within, began to scrape and
growl.
After all, there was no certain evidence yet. To-morrow morning he
would go up the fell and see Sim alone. He must know the truth. If it
concerned him as closely as he divined, the occasion to conceal it was
surely gone by with this night's event. Then Robbie Anderson,--what
did he mean? Ralph recalled some dim memory of the young dalesman
asking about his father. Robbie was kind to Sim, too, when the others
shunned him. What did it all mean?
With a heavy heart Ralph began to undress. He had unbelted himself and
thrown off his jerkin, when he thought of the paper that had fallen
from his father's open breast as he lifted him on to the mare. What
was it? Yes, there it was in his pocket, and with a feverish anxiety
Ralph opened it.
Had he clung to any hope that the black cloud that appeared to be
hanging over him would not, after all, envelop him? Alas! that last
vestige of hope must leave him. The paper was a warrant for his own
arrest on a charge of treason. It had been issued at the court of the
high constable at Carlisle, and set forth that Ralph Ray had conspired
to subvert the government of his sovereign while a captain in the
trained bands of the rebel army of the “late usurper.” It was signed
and countersigned, and was marked for the service of James Wilson,
King's agent. It was dated too; yes, two days before Wilson's death.
All was over now; this was the beginning of the end; the shadow had
fallen. By that paradox of nature which makes disaster itself less
hard to bear than the apprehension of disaster, Ralph felt relieved
when he knew the worst. There was much of the mystery still
unexplained, but the morrow would reveal it; and Ralph lay down to
sleep, and rose at daybreak, not with a lighter, but with an easier
heart.
When he took up his shepherd's staff that morning, he turned towards
Fornside Fell. Rising out of the Vale of Wanthwaite, the fell half
faced the purple heights of Blencathra. It was brant from side to
side, and as rugged as steep. Ralph did not ascend the screes, out
went up by Castle Rock, and walked northwards among the huge bowlders.
The frost lay on the loose fragments of rock, and made a firm but
perilous causeway. The sun was shining feebly and glinting over the
frost. It had sparkled among the icicles that hung in Styx Ghyll as he
passed, and the ravine had been hard to cross. The hardy black sheep
of the mountains bleated in the cold from unseen places, and the wind
carried their call away until it died off into a moan.
When Ralph got well within the shadow cast on to the fell from the
protruding head of the Castle Rock, he paused and looked about him.
Yes, he was somewhat too high. He began to descend. The rock's head
sheltered him from the wind now, and in the silence he could hear the
thud of a pick or hammer, and then the indistinct murmur of a man's
voice singing. It was Sim's voice; and here was Sim's cave. It was a
cleft in the side of the mountain, high enough and broad enough for a
man to pass in. Great bowlders stood above and about it.
The sun could never shine into it. A huge rock stood alone and
apparently unsupported near its mouth, as though aeons long gone by an
iceberg had perched it there. The dog would have bounded in upon Sim
where he sat and sang at his work, but Ralph checked him with a look.
Inexpressibly eerie sounded the half-buried voice of the singer in
that Solitary place. The weird ditty suited well with both.
She lean'd her head against a thorn,
_The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa'_;
And there she has her young babe born,
_And the lyon shall be lord of a'_.
She's howket a grave by the light o' the moon,
_The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa'_;
And there she's buried her sweet babe in,
_And the lyon shall be lord of a'_.
The singer stopped, as though conscious of the presence of a listener,
and looking up from where he sat on a round block of timber, cutting
up a similar block into firewood, he saw Ralph Ray leaning on his
staff near the cave's mouth. He had already heard of the sorrow that
had fallen on the household at Shoulthwaite. With an unspeakable look
of sympathy in his wild, timid eyes, as though some impulse of
affection urged him to throw his arms about Ralph and embrace him,
while some sense of shame impelled him to kneel at his feet, Sim
approached him, and appeared to make an effort to speak. But he could
say nothing. Ralph understood his silence and was grateful for it.
They went into the cave, and sat down in the dusk.
“You can tell me all about it, now,” Ralph said, without preamble of
any sort, for each knew well what lay closest at the other's heart.
“He is gone now, and we are here together, with none but ourselves to
hear.”
“I knew you must know it one day,” Sim said, “but I tried hard to hide
it from you--I did, believe me, I tried hard--I tried, but it was not
to be.”
“It is best so,” Ralph answered; “you must not bear the burden of
guilt that is not your own.”
“I'm no better than guilty myself,” said Sim. “I don't reckon myself
innocent; not I. No, I don't reckon myself innocent.”
“I think I understand you, Sim; but you were not guilty of the deed?”
“No, but I might have been--I might but for an accident--the accident
of a moment; but I've thought sometimes that the crime is not in the
deed, but the intention. No, Ralph, I _am_ the guilty man, after all:
your father had never thought of the crime, not he, but I had brooded
over it.”
“Did you go out that night intending to do it?” Ralph said.
“Yes; at least I think I did, but I don't feel sure; my mind was in a
broil; I hardly knew what I meant to do. If Wilson had told me as I
met him in the road--as I intended to meet him--that he had come back
to do what he had threatened to do so often--then--yes, _then_, I must
have done it--I _must_.”
“What had he threatened?” Ralph asked, but there was no note of
inquiry in his voice. “Whom did it concern?”
“It concerned yourself, Ralph,” said Sim, turning his head aside. “But
no matter about that,” he added. “It's over now, it is.”
Ralph drew out of his pocket the paper that had fallen from his
father's breast.
“Is this what you mean?” he said, handing it to Sim.
Sim carried it to the light to read it. Returning to where Ralph sat,
he cried in a shrill voice,--
“Then he _had_ come back to do it. O God, why should it be murder to
kill a scoundrel?”
“Did you know nothing of this until now?”
“Nothing. Wilson threatened it, as I say; he told me he'd hang you on
the nearest gibbet, he did--you who'd saved his life--leastways, so
they say--the barren-hearted monster!”
“It's ill-luck to serve a bad man, Sim. Well?”
“I never quite thought he'd do it; no, I never did quite think it. Why
is it not a good deed to kill a bad man?”
“How did it happen, Sim?” said Ralph.
“I hardly know--that's the truth. You mind well enough it was the day
that Abraham Coward, my landlord, called for his rent. It was the day
the poor woman and her two wee barns took shelter with me. You looked
in on me that night, you remember. Well, when you left me--do you
recollect _how_?”
“Yes, Sim.”
“My heart was fair maizlet before, but that--that--kiss infected my
brain. I must have been mad, Ralph, that's the fact, when I thought of
what the man meant to do to the only friend I had left in the
world--my own friend and my poor little girl's. I went out to the
lanes and wandered about. It was very dark. Suddenly the awful thought
came back upon me, it did. I was standing at the crossways, where the
road goes off to Gaskarth. I knew Wilson must come by that road.
Something commanded me to walk on. I had been halting, but now a
dreadful force compelled me to go--ay, compelled me. I don't know what
it was, but it seemed as if I'd no power against it, none. It stifled
all my scruples, all of them, and I ran--yes, ran. But I was weak, and
had to stop for breath. My heart was beating loud, and I pressed my
hand hard upon it as I leaned against the wall of the old bridge
yonder. It went thump, thump. Then I could hear him coming. I knew his
step. He was not far off, but I couldn't stir; no, not stir. My breath
seemed all to leave me when I moved. He was coming closer, he was, and
in the distance beyont him I could hear the clatter of a horse's feet
on the road. The man on the horse was far off, but he galloped, he
galloped. It must be done now, I thought; now or not at all. I--I
picked up a stone that lay near, I did, and tried to go forward, but
fell back, back. I was powerless. That weakness was agony, it was.
Wilson had not reached the spot where I stood when the man on the
horse had overtaken him. I heard him speak as the man rode past. Then
I saw it was your father, and that he turned back. There were high
words on his side, and I could hear Wilson's bitter laugh--you
recollect that laugh?”
“Yes, yes; well?”
“In a moment Angus had jumped from the horse's back--and then I heard
a thud--and that's all.”
“Is that all you know?”
“Not all; no, not all, neither. Your father had got up into the saddle
in an instant, and I labored out into the middle of the road. He saw
me and stopped. 'Ye've earned nowt of late,' he said; 'tak this, my
man, and gae off and pay your rent.' Then he put some money into my
hand from his purse and galloped on. I thought he'd killed Wilson, and
I crept along to look at the dead man. I couldn't find him at first,
and groped about in the darkness till my hand touched his face. Then I
thought he was alive, I did. The touch flayt me, and I fled away--I
don't know how. Ralph, I saw the mark of my hand on his face when they
drew me up to it next day in the bedroom of the inn. That night I paid
my rent with your father's money, and then I went home.”
“It was my father's money, then--not Wilson's?” said Ralph.
“It was as I say,” Sim answered, as though hurt by the implication.
Ralph put his hand on Sim's shoulder. Self-condemned, this poor man's
conscience was already a whirlpool that drew everything to itself.
“Tell me, Sim--that is, if you can--tell me how you came to suspect
Wilson of these dealings.”
As he said this Ralph tapped with his fingers the warrant which Sim
had returned to him.
“By finding that James Wilson was not his name.”
“So you found that, did you; how?”
“It was Mother Garth's doings, not mine,” said Sim.
“What did she tell you?”
“Nothing; that is, nothing about Wilson going by a false name. No; I
found that out for myself, though it was all through her that I found
it.”
“You knew it all that bad night in Martinmas, did you not?”
“That's true enough, Ralph. The old woman, she came one night and
broke open Wilson's trunk, and carried off some papers--leastways one
paper.”
“You don't know what it was?”
“No. It was in one of Wilson's bouts away at--at Gaskarth, so he said.
Rotha was at the Moss: she hadn't come home for the night. I had
worked till the darknin', and my eyes were heavy, they were, and then
I had gone into the lanes. The night came on fast, and when I turned
back I heard men singing and laughing as they came along towards me.”
“Some topers from the Red Lion, that was all?”
“Yes, that was all. I jumped the dike and crossed the fields instead
of taking the road. As I came by Fornside I saw that there was a light
in the little room looking to the back. It was Wilson's room; he would
have no other. I thought he had got back, and I crept up--I don't know
why--I crept up to the window and looked in. It was not Wilson who was
there. It was Mrs. Garth. She had the old man's trunk open, and was
rummaging among some papers at the bottom of it.”
“Did you go in to her?”
“I was afeart of the woman, Ralph; but I did go in, dotherin' and
stammerin'.”
“What did she say?”
“She was looking close at a paper as I came upon her. She started a
little, but when she saw who it was she bashed down the lid of the
trunk and brushed past me, with the paper in her hand. 'You can tell
him, if you like, that I have been here.' That was all she said, and
before I had turned about she had gone, she had. What was that paper,
Ralph; do you know?”
“Perhaps time will tell, perhaps not.”
“There was something afoot atween those two; what was it?”
“Can't you guess? You discovered his name.”
“Wilson Garth, that was it. That was the name I found on his papers.
Yes, I opened the trunk and looked at them when the woman had gone;
yes, I did that.”
“You remember how she came to these parts? That was before my time of
remembrance, but not before yours, Sim.”
“I think they said she'd wedded a waistrel on the Borders.”
“Did they ever say the man was dead?”
“No, I can't mind that they ever did. I can't mind it. He had beaten
her and soured her into the witch that she is now, and then she had
run away frae him with her little one, Joe that now is. That was what
they said, as I mind it.”
“Two and two are easily put together, Sim. Wilson Garth, not James
Wilson, was the man's name.”
“And he was Mrs. Garth's husband and the father of Joe?”
“The same, I think.”
Sim seemed to stagger under the shock of a discovery that had been
slow to dawn upon him.
“How did it come, Ralph, that you brought him here when you came home
from the wars? Everything seems, someways, to hang on that.”
“Everything; perhaps even this last disaster of all.” Ralph passed his
fingers through his hair, and then his palm across his brow. Sim
observed a change in his friend's manner.
“It was wrong of me to say that, it was,” he said. “I don't know that
it's true, either. But tell me how it came about.”
“It's a short story, old friend, and easily told, though it has never
been told till now. I had done the man some service at Carlisle.”
“Saved his life, so they say.”
“It was a good turn, truly, but I had done it--at least, the first
part of it--unawares. But that's _not_ a short story.”
“Tell me, Ralph.”
“It's dead and done with, like the man himself. What remains is not
dead, and cannot soon be done with. Some of us must meet it face to
face even yet. Wilson--that was his name in those days--was a Royalist
when I encountered him. What he had been before, God knows. At a
moment of peril he took his life at the hands of a Roundhead. He had
been guilty of treachery to the Royalists, and he was afraid to return
to his friends. I understood his position and sheltered him. When
Carlisle fell to us he clung closer to me, and when the campaign was
over he prayed to be permitted to follow me to these parts. I yielded
to him reluctantly. I distrusted him, but I took his anxiety to be
with me for gratitude, as he said it was. It was not that, Sim.”
“Was it fear? Was he afeart of being hanged by friends or foes? Hadn't
he been a taistrel to both?”
“Partly fear, but partly greed, and partly revenge. He was hardly a
week at Shoulthwaite before I guessed his secret--I couldn't be blind
to that. When he married his young wife on the Borders, folks didn't
use to call her a witch. She had a little fortune coming to her one
day, and when she fled the prospect of it was lost to her husband.
Wilson was in no hurry to recover her while she was poor-a vagrant
woman with his child at her breast. The sense of his rights as a
husband became keener a little later. Do you remember the time when
young Joe Garth set himself up in the smithy yonder?”
“I do,” said Sim; “it was the time of the war. The neighbors told of
some maiden aunt, an old crone like herself, who had left Joe's mother
aboon a hundred pound.”
“Wilson knew that much better than our neighbors. He knew, too, where
his wife had hidden herself, as she thought, though it had served his
turn to seem ignorant of it until then. Sim, he used _me_ to get to
Wythburn.”
“Teush!”
“Once here, it was not long before he had made his wife aware of his
coming. I had kept an eye on him, and I knew his movements. I saw that
he meant to ruin the Garths, mother and son, to strip them and leave
them destitute. I determined that he should not do it. I felt that
mine was the blame that he was here to molest them. 'Tamper with
them,' I said, 'show once more by word or look that you know anything
of them, and I'll hand you over as a traitor to the nearest sheriff.'”
“Why didn't you do it anyhow, why didn't you?” said Sim eagerly.
“That would have been unwise. He now hated me for defeating his
designs.
“You had saved his life.”
“He hated me none the less for that. There was only one way now to
serve either the Garths or myself, and that was to keep the man in
hand. I neither sent him away nor let him go.”
“You were more than a match for him to the last,” said Sim, “and you
saved me and my lass from him too. But what about Joe Garth and his
old mother? They don't look over-thankful to you, they don't.”
“They think that I brought Wilson back to torment them. No words of
mine would upset the notion. I'm sorry for that, but leave such
mistakes for time to set right. And when the truth comes in such a
case it comes to some purpose.”
“Aye, when it comes--_when_ it comes.”
Sim spoke in an undertone, and as though to himself.
“It's long in the coming sometimes, it is.”
“It seems long, truly.” The dalesman had caught Sim's drift, and with
his old trick of manner, more expressive than his words, he had put
his hand on Sim's arm.
“And now there is but one chance that has made it quite worth the
while that we should have talked frankly on the subject, you and I,
and that is the chance that others may come to do what Wilson tried to
do. The authorities who issued this warrant will hardly forget that
they issued it. There was a stranger here the day after the inquest. I
think I know what he was.”
Sim shuddered perceptibly.
“He went away then, but we'll see him once more, depend upon it.”
“Is it true, as Wilson said, that Oliver's men are like to be taken?”
“There's a spy in every village, so they say, and blank warrants, duly
signed, in every sheriff's court, ready to be filled in with any name
that malice may suggest. These men mean that Puritanism shall be
rooted out of England. We cannot be too well prepared.”
“I wish I could save you, Ralph; leastways, I wish it were myself
instead, I do.”
“You thought to save me, old friend, when you went out to meet Wilson
that night three months ago. My father, too, he thought to save me
when he did what he did. You were both rash, both wrong. You could not
have helped me at all in that way. Poor father! How little he has
helped me, Heaven knows--Heaven alone knows--yet.”
Ralph drew his hand across his eyes.