I. After going a few paces in order to sustain the appearance of
continuing the journey on which she had set out, Liza waited until the
blacksmith was far enough away to admit of retracing her steps to the
bridge. There she climbed the wooden fence, and ran with all speed
across the fields to Shoulthwaite. She entered the house in a fever of
excitement, but was drawn back to the porch by Rotha, who experienced
serious difficulty in restraining her from a more public exposition of
the facts with which she was full to the throat than seemed well for
the tranquillity of the household. With quick-coming breath she
blurted out the main part of her revelations, and then paused, as much
from physical exhaustion as from an overwhelming sense of the
threatened calamity.
Rotha was quick to catch the significance of the message communicated
in Liza's disjointed words. Her pale face became paler, the sidelong
look that haunted her eyes came back to them at this moment, her
tremulous lips trembled visibly, and for a few minutes she stood
apparently powerless and irresolute.
Then the light of determination returned to the young girl's face.
Leaving Liza in the porch, she went into the house for her cloak and
hood. When she rejoined her companion her mind was made up to a daring
enterprise.
“The men of Wythburn, such of them as we can trust,” she said, “are in
the funeral train. We must go ourselves; at least I must go.”
“Do let me go, too,” said Liza; “but where are you going?”
“To cross the fell to Stye Head.”
“We can't go there, Rotha--two girls.”
“What of that? But you need not go. It's eight miles across, and I may
run most of the way. They've been gone nearly an hour; they are out of
sight. I must make the short cut through the heather.”
The prospect of the inevitable excitement of the adventure, amounting,
in Liza's mind, to a sensation equivalent to sport, prevailed over her
dread of the difficulties and dangers of a perilous mountain journey,
and she again begged to be permitted to go.
“Are you quite sure you wish it?” said Rotha, not without an
underlying reluctance to accept of her companionship. “It's a rugged
journey. We must walk under Glaramara.” She spoke as though she had
the right of maturity of years to warn her friend against a hazardous
project.
Liza protested that nothing would please her but to go. She accepted
without a twinge the implication of superiority of will and physique
which the young daleswoman arrogated. If social advantages had counted
for anything, they must have been all in Liza's favor; but they were
less than nothing in the person of this ruddy girl against the natural
strength of the pale-faced young woman, the days of whose years
scarcely numbered more than her own.
“We must set off at once,” said Rotha; “but first I must go to
Fornside.”
To go round by the tailor's desolate cottage did not sensibly impede
their progress. Rotha had paid hurried visits daily to her forlorn
little home since the terrible night of the death of the master of
Shoulthwaite. She had done what she could to make the cheerless house
less cheerless. She had built a fire on the hearth and spread out her
father's tools on the table before the window at which he worked.
Nothing had tempted him to return. Each morning she found everything
exactly as she had left it the morning before.
When the girls reached the cottage, Liza instinctively dropped back.
Rotha's susceptible spirit perceived the restraint, and suffered from
the sentiment of dread which it implied.
“Stay here, then,” she said, in reply to her companion's unspoken
reluctance to go farther. In less than a minute Rotha had returned.
Her eyes were wet.
“He is not here,” she said, without other explanation. “Could we not
go up the fell?”
The girls turned towards the Fornside Fell on an errand which both
understood and neither needed to explain.
“Do the words of a song ever torment you, Liza, rising up in your mind
again and again, and refusing to go away?”
“No--why?” said Liza, simply.
“Nothing--only I can't get a song out of my head today. It comes back
and back--
One lonely foot sounds on the keep,
And that's the warder's tread.”
The girls had not gone far when they saw the object of their search
leaning over a low wall, and holding his hands to his eyes as though
straining his sight to catch a view of some object in the distance.
Simeon Stagg was already acquiring the abandoned look of the man who
is outlawed from his fellows. His hair and beard were growing long,
shaggy, and unkempt. They were beginning to be frosted with gray. His
dress was loose; he wore no belt. The haggard expression, natural to
his thin face, had become more marked.
Sim had not seen the girls, and in the prevailing wind his quick ear
had not caught the sound of their footsteps until they were nearly
abreast of him. When he became fully conscious of their presence,
Rotha was standing by his side, with her hand on his arm. Liza was a
pace or two behind.
“Father,” said Rotha, “are you strong enough to make a long journey?”
Sim had turned his face full on his daughter's with an expression of
mingled shame, contrition, and pride. It was as though his heart
yearned for that love which he thought he had forfeited the right to
claim.
In a few words Rotha explained the turn of events. Sim's agitation
overpowered him. He walked to and fro in short, fitful steps, crying
that there was no help, no help.
“I thought I saw three men leading three horses up High Seat from
behind the smithy. It must have been those very taistrels, it must. I
was looking at them the minute you came up. See, there they are--there
beyond the ghyll on the mere side of yon big bowder. But they'll be at
the top in a crack, that they will--and the best man in Wythburn will
be taken--and there's no help, no help.”
The little man strode up and down, his long, nervous fingers twitching
at his beard.
“Yes, but there _is_ help,” said Rotha; “there _must_ be.”
“How? How? Tell me--you're like your mother, you are--that was the
very look she had.”
“Tell _me_, first, if Ralph intended to be on Stye Head or Wastdale
Head.”
“He did--Stye Head--he left me to go there at daybreak this morning.”
“Then he can be saved,” said the girl firmly. “The mourners must
follow the path. They have the body and they will go slowly. It will
take them an hour and a half more to reach the foot of the pass. In
that time Liza and I can cross the fell by Harrop Tarn and Glaramara
and reach the foot, or perhaps the head, of the pass. But this is not
enough. The constables will not follow the road taken by the funeral.
They know that if Ralph is at the top of Stye Head he will be on the
lookout for the procession, and must see them as well as it.”
“It's true, it is,” said Sim.
“They will, as the blacksmith said, go through Honister and Scarf Gap
and over the Black Sail to Wastdale. They will ride fast, and,
returning to Stye Head, hope to come upon Ralph from behind and
capture him unawares. Father,” continued Rotha,--and the girl spoke
with the determination of a strong man,--“if you go over High Seat,
cross the dale, walk past Dale Head, and keep on the far side of the
Great Gable, you will cut off half the journey and be there as soon as
the constables, and you may keep them in sight most of the way. Can
you do this? Have you the strength? You look worn and weak.”
“I can--I have--I'll go at once. It's life or death to the best man in
the world, that it is.”
“There's not a moment to be lost. Liza, we must not delay an instant
longer.”
II. Long before the funeral train had reached the top of the altitude.
Ralph had walked over the more rugged parts of the pass, and had
satisfied himself that there was no danger to be apprehended on this
score. The ghyll was swollen by the thaw. The waters fell heavily over
the great stones, and sent up clouds of spray, which were quickly
dissipated by the wind. Huge hillocks of yellow foam gathered in every
sheltered covelet. The roar of the cataract in the ravine silenced the
voice of the tempest that raged above it.
From the heights of the Great Gable the wind came in all but
overpowering gusts across the top of the pass. Ralph had been thrown
off his feet at one moment by the fierceness of a terrific blast. It
was the same terrible storm that began on the night of his father's
death. Ralph had at first been anxious for the safety of the
procession that was coming, but he had found a more sheltered pathway
under a deep line of furze bushes, and through this he meant to
pioneer the procession when it arrived. There was one gap in the furze
at the mouth of a tributary ghyll. The wind was strong in this gap,
which seemed like a natural channel to carry it southward; but the gap
was narrow, it would soon be crossed.
From the desultory labor of such investigations Ralph returned again
and again to the head of the great cleft and looked out into the
distance of hills and dales. The long coat he wore fell below his
knees, and was strapped tightly with a girdle. He wore a close-fitting
cap, from beneath which his thick hair fell in short wavelets that
were tossed by the wind. His dog, Laddie, was with him.
Ralph took up a position within the shelter of a bowlder, and waited
long, his eyes fixed on the fell six miles down the dale.
The procession emerged at length. The chill and cheerless morning
seemed at once to break into a spring brightness--there at least, if
not here. Through the leaden wintry sky the sun broke down the hilltop
at that instant in a shaft of bright light. It fell like an oasis over
the solemn company walking there. Then the shaft widened and stretched
into the dale, and then the mists that rolled midway between him and
it passed away, and a blue sky was over all.
III. “Which way now?”
“Well, I reckon there be two roads; maybe you'd like--”
“Which way now? Quick, and no clatter!”
“Then gang your gate down between Dale Head and Grey Knotts as far as
Honister.”
“Let's hope you're a better guide than constable, young man, or, as
that old fellow said in the road this morning, we'll fley the bird and
not grip him. Your clattering tongue had served us a scurvy trick, my
man; let your head serve us in better stead, or mayhap you'll lose
both--who knows?”
The three men rode as fast as the uncertain pathway between the
mountains would allow. Mr. Garth mumbled something beneath his breath.
He was beginning to wish himself well out of an ungracious business.
Not even revenge sweetened by profit could sustain his spirits under
the battery of the combined ridicule and contempt of the men he had
undertaken to serve.
“A fine wild-goose chase this,” said one of the constables. He had not
spoken before, but had toiled along on his horse at the obvious
expenditure of much physical energy and more temper.
“Grumbling again, Jonathan; when will you be content?” The speaker was
a little man with keen eyes, a supercilious smile, a shrill sharp
voice, and peevish manners.
“Not while I'm in danger of breaking my neck every step, or being lost
on a moor nearly as trackless as an ocean, or swallowed up in mists
like the clouds of steam in a century of washing days, or drowned in
the soapsuds of ugly, gaping pits,--tarns you call them, I believe.
And all for nothing, too,--not so much as the glint of a bad guinea
will we get out of this fine job.”
“Don't be too sure of that,” said the little man. “If this blockhead
here,” with a lurch of the head backwards to where the blacksmith rode
behind, “hasn't blundered in his 'reckonings,' we'll bag the game
yet.”
“That you never will, mark my words. I've taken the measure of our man
before to-day. He's enough for fifty such as our precious guide. I
knew what I was doing when I went back last time and left him.”
“Ah, they rather laughed at you then, didn't they?--hinted you were a
bit afraid,” said the little man, with a cynical smile.
“They may laugh again, David, if they like; and the man that laughs
loudest, let him be the first to come in my place next bout; he'll be
welcome.”
“Well, I must say, this is strange language. I never talked like that,
never. It's in contempt of duty, nothing less,” said Constable David.
“Oh, you're the sort of man that sticks the thing you call duty above
everything else--above wife, life, and all the rest of it--and when
duty's done with you it generally sticks you below everything else.
I've been a fool in my time, David, but I was never a fool of that
sort. I've never been the dog to drop a good jawful of solids to snap
at its shadow. When I've been that dog I've quietly put my meat
down on the plank, and then--There's another break-neck
paving-stone--'bowders' you call them. No horse alive could keep
its feet in such country.”
The three men rode some distance in silence. Then the little man, who
kept a few yards in front, drew up and said,--
“You say the warrant was not on Wilson's body when you searched it. Is
it likely that some of these dalesmen removed it before you came
down?”
“Yes, one dalesman. But that job must have been done when another
bigger job was done. It wasn't done afterwards. I was down next
morning. I was sent after the old Scotchman.”
“Didn't it occur to you that the man to whose interest it was to have
that warrant had probably got hold of it?”
“Yes; and that he'd burnt it, too. A man doesn't from choice carry a
death-warrant next his heart. It would make a bad poultice.”
“What now,” cried the little man to the blacksmith, who had been
listening to the conversation, and in his amazement and confusion had
unconsciously pulled at the reins of his horse, and brought it to a
stand.
“What are you gaping at now? Come, go along in front. Is this your
Scarf Gap?”
IV. Simeon Stagg had followed the three men closely enough to keep them in
view, and yet had kept far enough away to escape identification.
Ascending the Bleaberry Fell, he had descended into Watendlath, and
crossed under the “Bowder” stone as the men passed the village of
Rosthwaite. He had lost sight of them for a while as they went up
towards Honister, but when he had gained the breast of Grey Knotts he
could clearly descry them two miles away ascending the Scarf Gap. If
he could but pass Brandreth before they reached the foot of the Black
Sail he would have no fear of being seen, and, what was of more
consequence, he would have no doubt of being at Stye Head before them.
He could then get in between the Kirk Fell and the Great Gable long
before they could round the Wastdale Head and return to the pass.
But how weak he felt! How jaded these few miles had made him! Sim
remembered that he had eaten little for three days. Would his strength
outlast the task before him? It should; it must do so. Injured by
tyranny, the affections of this worn-out outcast among men had, like
wind-tossed trees, wound their roots about a rock from which no
tempest could tear them.
Sim's step sometimes quickened to a run and sometimes dropped to a
labored slouch. The deep declivities, the precipitous ascents, the
broad chasm-like basins, the running streams, the soft turf, had tried
sorely the little strength that remained to him. Sometimes he would
sit for a minute with his long thin hand pressed hard upon his heart;
then he would start away afresh, but rather by the impulse of
apprehension than by that of renewed strength.
Yes, he was now at the foot of Brandreth, and the horses and their
riders had not emerged above the Scarf. How hot and thirsty he felt!
Here stood a shepherd's cottage, the first human habitation he had
passed since he left Watendlath. Should he ask for some milk? It would
refresh and sustain him. As Sim stood near the gate of the cottage,
doubtful whether to go in or go on, the shepherd's wife came out.
Would she give him a drink of milk? Yes, and welcome. The woman looked
closely at him, and Sim shrank under her steady gaze. He was too far
from Wythburn to be dogged by the suspicion of crime, yet his
conscience tormented him. Did all the world, then, know that Simeon
Stagg would have been a murderer if he could--that in fact he had
committed murder in his heart? Could he never escape from the unspoken
reproach? No; not even on the heights of these solitary hills!
The woman turned about and went into the house for the milk. While she
was gone, Sim stood at the gate. In an instant the thought of his own
necessities, his own distresses, gave place to the thought of Ralph
Ray's. At that instant he turned his eyes again to the Scarf Gap. The
three men had covered the top, and were on the more level side of the
hill, riding hard down towards Ennerdale. They would be upon him in
ten minutes more.
The woman was coming from her house with a cup of milk in her hand;
but, without waiting to accept of it, Sim started away and ran at his
utmost speed over the fell. The woman stood with the cup in her hand,
watching the thin figure vanishing in the distance, and wondering if
it had been an apparition.
V. “You can't understand why Mr. Wilfrey Lawson is so keen to lay hands
on this man Ray?” said Constable David.
“That I cannot,” said Constable Jonathan.
“Why, isn't it enough that he was in the trained bands of the
Parliament?”
“Enough for the King--and this new law of Puritan extermination--yes;
for Master Wilfrey--no. Besides, the people can't stand this hanging
of the old Puritan soldiers much longer. The country had been worried
and flurried by the Parliament, and cried out like a wearied man for
rest--any sort of rest--and it has got it--got it with a vengeance.
But there's no rest more restless than that of an active man except
that of an active country, and England won't put up with this
butchering of men to-day for doing what was their duty yesterday--yes,
their duty, for that's what you call it.”
“So you think Master Wilfrey means to set a double trap for Ray?”
“I don't know what he means; but he doesn't hunt down a common
Roundhead out of thousands with nothing but 'duty' in his head; that's
not Master Wilfrey Lawson's way.”
“But this man was a captain of the trained bands latterly,” said the
little constable. “Fellow,” he cried to Mr. Garth, who rode along
moodily enough in front of them, “did this Ray ever brag to you of
what he did as captain in the army?”
“What was he? Capt'n? I never heard on't,” growled the blacksmith.
“Brag--pshaw! He's hardly the man for that,” said Constable Jonathan.
“I mind they crack't of his saving the life of old Wilson,” said Mr.
Garth, growling again.
“And if he took it afterwards, what matter?” said Constable Jonathan,
with an expression of contempt. “Push on, there. Here we're at the
top. Is it down now? What's that below? A house, truly--a house at
last. Who's that running from it? We must be near our trysting place.
Is that our man? Come, if we are to do this thing, let us do it.”
“It's the fellow Ray, to a certainty,” said the little man, pricking
his horse into a canter as soon as he reached the first fields of
Ennerdale.
In a few minutes the three men had drawn up at the cottage on the
breast of Brandreth where Sim had asked for a drink.
“Mistress! Hegh! hegh! Who was the man that left you just now?”
“I dunnet know wha't war--some feckless body, I'm afeart. He was a'
wizzent and savvorless. He begged ma a drink o' milk, but lang ere a
cud cum tul him he was gane his gate like yan dazt-like.”
“Who could this be? It's not our man clearly. Who could it be,
blacksmith?”
The gentleman addressed had turned alternately white and red at the
woman's description. There had flashed upon his brain the idea that
little Lizzie Branthwaite had betrayed him.
“I reckon it must have been that hang-gallows of a tailor--that Sim,”
he said, perspiring from head to foot.
“And he's here to carry tidings of our coming. Push on--follow the
man--heed this blockhead no longer.”
VI. The procession of mourners, with Robbie Anderson and the mare at its
head, had walked slowly down Borrowdale after the men on foot had
turned back towards Withburn. Following the course of the winding
Derwent, they had passed the villages of Stonethwaite and Seathwaite,
and in two hours from the time they set out from Shoulthwaite they had
reached the foot of Stye Head Pass. The brightness of noon had now
given place to the chill leaden atmosphere of a Cumbrian December.
In the bed of the dale they were sheltered from the wind, but they saw
the mists torn into long streaks overhead, and knew that the storm had
not abated. When they came within easy range of the top of the great
gap between the mountains over which they were to pass, they saw for a
moment a man's figure clearly outlined against the sky.
“He's yonder,” thought Robbie, and urged on the mare with her burden.
He remembered that Ralph had said, “Chain the young horse to the mare
at the bottom of the pass,” and he did so. Before going far, however,
he found this new arrangement impeded rather than accelerated their
progress.
“The pass has too many ins and outs for this,” he thought, and he
unchained the horses. Then they went up the ravine with the loud ghyll
boiling into foam at one side of them.
VII. “I cannot go farther, Rotha. I must sit down. My foot is swelling. The
bandage is bursting it.”
“Try, my girl; only try a little longer: only hold out five minutes
more; only five short minutes, and we may be there.”
“It's of no use trying,” said Liza with a whimper; “I've tried and
tried; I must sit down or I shall faint.” The girl dropped down on to
the grass and began to untie a linen bandage that was about her ankle.
“O dear! O dear! There they are, more than half-way up the pass.
They'll be at the top in ten minutes! And there's Ralph; yes, I can
see him and the dog. What shall we do? What _can_ we do?”
“Go and leave me and come back--no, no, not that either; don't leave
me in this place,” said Liza, crying piteously and moaning with the
pain of a sprained foot.
“Impossible,” said Rotha. “I might never find you again on this
pathless fell.”
“Oh, that unlucky stone!” whimpered Liza, “I'm bewitched, surely. It's
that Mother Garth--”
“Ah, he sees us,” said Rotha. She was standing on a piece of rock and
waving a scarf in the wind. “Yes, he sees us and answers. But what
will he understand by that? O dear! O dear! Would that I could make
Willy see, or Robbie--perhaps _they_ would know. Where can father be?
O where?”
A terrible sense of powerlessness came upon Rotha as she stood beside
her prostrate companion within sight of the goal she had labored to
gain, and the strong-hearted girl burst into a flood of tears.
VIII. Yes, from the head of the pass Ralph Ray saw the scarf that was waved
by Rotha, but he was too far away to recognize the girls.
“Two women, and one of them lying,” he thought; “there has been an
accident.”
Where he stood the leaden sky had broken into a drizzling rain, which
was being driven before the wind in clouds like mist. It was soaking
the soft turf, and lying heavy on the thick moss that coated every
sheltered stone.
“Slipt a foot, no doubt,” thought Ralph. “I must ride over to them
when the horses come up and have crossed the pass; I cannot go
before.”
The funeral train was now in sight. In a few minutes more it would be
at his side. Yes, there was Robbie Anderson leading the mare. He had
not chained the young horse, but that could be done at this point. It
should have been done at the bottom, however. How had Robbie forgotten
it?
Ralph's grave face became yet more grave as he looked down at the
solemn company approaching him. Willy had recognized him. See, his
head drooped as he sat in the saddle. At this instant Ralph thought no
longer of the terrible incidents and the more terrible revelations of
the past few days. He thought not at all of the untoward fortune that
had placed him where he stood. He saw only the white burden that was
strapped to the mare, and thought only of him with whom his earliest
memories were entwined.
Raising his head, and dashing the gathering tears from his eyes, he
saw one of the women on the hill opposite running towards him and
crying loudly, as if in fear; but the wind carried away her voice, and
he could not catch her words.
From her gestures, however, he gathered that something had occurred
behind him. No harm to the funeral train could come of their following
on a few paces, and Ralph turned about and walked rapidly upwards.
Then the woman's voice seemed louder and shriller than ever, and
appeared to cry in an agony of distress.
Ralph turned again and stood. Had he mistaken the gesture? Had
something happened to the mourners? No, the mare walked calmly up the
pass. What could it mean? Still the shrill cry came to him, and still
the words of it were borne away by the wind. Something was
wrong--something serious. He must go farther and see.
Then in an instant he became conscious that Simeon Stagg was running
towards him with a look of terror. Close behind him were two men,
mounted, and a third man rode behind them. Sim was being pursued. His
frantic manner denoted it. Ralph did not ask himself why. He ran
towards Sim. Quicker than speech, and before Sim had recovered breath,
Ralph had swung himself about, caught the bridles of both horses, and
by the violent lurch had thrown both riders from their seats. But
neither seemed hurt. Leaping to their feet together, they bounded down
upon Ralph, and laying firm hold upon him tried to manacle him.
Then, with the first moment of reflection, the truth flashed upon him.
It was he who had been pursued, and he had thrown himself into the
arms of his pursuers.
They were standing by the gap in the furze bushes. The mourners were
at the top of the pass, and they saw what had happened. Robbie
Anderson was coming along faster with the mare. The two men saw that
help for their prisoner was at hand. They dropped the manacles, and
tried to throw Ralph on to the back of one of their horses. Sim was
dragging their horse away. The dog was barking furiously and tearing
at their legs. But they were succeeding: they were overpowering him;
they had him on the ground.
Now, they were all in the gap of the furze bushes, struggling in the
shallow stream. Robbie dropped the reins of the mare, and ran to
Ralph's aid. At that moment a mighty gust of wind came down from the
fell, and swept through the channel. It caught the mare, and startled
by the loud cries of the men and the barking of the dog, and
affrighted by the tempest, she started away at a terrific gallop over
the mountains, with the coffin on her back.
“The mare, the mare!” cried Ralph, who had seen the accident as Robbie
dropped the reins; “for God's sake, after her!”
The strength of ten men came into his limbs at this. He rose from
where the men held him down, and threw them from him as if they had
been green withes that he snapped asunder. They fell on either side,
and lay where they fell. Then he ran to where the young horse stood a
few paces away, and lifting the boy from the saddle leapt into it
himself. In a moment he was galloping after the mare.
But she had already gone far. She was flying before the wind towards
the great dark pikes in the distance. Already the mists were obscuring
her. Ralph followed on and on, until the company that stood as though
paralyzed on the pass could see him no mere.