When Constable David tried to rise after that fall, he discovered too
many reasons to believe that his leg had been broken. Constable
Jonathan had fared better as to wind and limb, but upon regaining his
feet he found the voice of duty silent within him as to the necessity
of any further action such as might expose him to more serious
disabilities. With the spirit of the professional combatant, he rather
admired the prowess of their adversary, and certainly bore him no
ill-will because he had vanquished them.
“The man's six foot high if he's an inch, and has the strength of an
ox,” he said, as he bent over his coadjutor and inquired into the
nature of his bruises.
Constable David seemed disposed to exhibit less of the resignation of
a brave humility that can find solace and even food for self-flattery
in defeat, than of the vexation of a cowardly pride that cannot
reconcile itself to a stumble and a fall.
“It all comes of that waistrel Mister Burn-the-wind,” he said, meaning
to indicate the blacksmith by this contemptuous allusion to that
gentleman's profession.
Constable Jonathan could not forbear a laugh at the name, and at the
idea it suggested.
“Ay, but if he'd burned the wind this time instead of blowing it,” he
said, “we might have raised it between us. Come, let me raise you into
this saddle instead. Hegh, hegh, though,” he continued, as the horse
lurched from him with every gust, “no need to raise the wind up here.
Easy--there--you're right now, I think. You'll need to ride on one
stirrup.”
It was perhaps natural that the constabulary view of the disaster
should be limited to the purely legal aspect of the loss of a
prisoner; but the subject of the constable's reproaches was not so far
dominated by official ardor as to be insensible to the terrible
accident of the flight of the horse with the corpse. Mr. Garth had
brought his own horse to a stand at some twenty paces from the spot
where Ralph Ray had thrown his companions from their saddles, and in
the combat ensuing he had not experienced any unconquerable impulse to
participate on the side of what stood to him for united revenge and
profit, if not for justice also. When, in the result, the mare fled
over the fells, he sat as one petrified until Robbie Anderson, who had
earlier recovered from his own feeling of stupefaction, and in the
first moment of returning consciousness had recognized the blacksmith
and guessed the sequel of the rencontre, brought him up to a very
lively sense of the situation by bringing him down to his full length
on the ground with the timely administration of a well-planted blow.
Mr. Garth was probably too much taken by surprise to repay the
obligation in kind, but he rapped out a volley of vigorous oaths that
fell about his adversary as fast as a hen could peck. Then he
remounted his horse, and, with such show of valorous reluctance as
could still be assumed after so unequivocal an overthrow, he made the
best of haste away.
He was not yet, however, entirely rewarded for his share in the day's
proceedings. He had almost reached Wythburn on his return home when he
had the singular ill-fortune to encounter Liza. That young damsel was
huddled, rather than seated, on the back of a horse, the property of
one of the mourners whom Rotha had succeeded in hailing to their
rescue. With Rhoda walking by her side, she was now plodding along
towards the city in a temper primed by the accidents of the day to a
condition of the highest irascibility. As a matter of fact, Liza, in
her secret heart, was chiefly angry with herself for the reckless leap
over a big stone that had given the sprained ankle, under the pains of
which she now groaned; but it was due to the illogical instincts of
her sex that she could not consciously take so Spartan a view of her
position as to blame herself for what had happened.
It was at this scarcely promising juncture of accident and temper that
she came upon the blacksmith, and at the first sight of him all the
bitterness of feeling that had been brewing and fermenting within her,
and in default of a proper object had been discharged on the horse, on
the saddle, on the roads, and even on Rotha, found a full and
magnificent outlet on the person of Mr. Joseph Garth.
While that gentleman had been jogging along homewards he had been
fostering uncomfortable sentiments of spite respecting the “laal
hussy” who had betrayed him. He had been mentally rehearsing the
withering reproaches and yet more withering glances which he meant to
launch forth upon her when next it should be her misfortune to cross
his path. Such disloyalty, such an underhand way of playing double,
seemed to Mr. Garth deserving of any punishment short of that physical
one which it would be most enjoyable to inflict, but which it might
not, with that Robbie in the way, be quite so pleasant to stand
responsible for. Perhaps it was due to an illogical instinct of the
blacksmith's sex that his conscience did not trouble him when he was
concocting these pains and penalties for duplicity. Certainly, when
the two persons in question came face to face at the turning of the
pack-horse road towards the city, logic played an infinitesimal part
in their animated intercourse.
Mr. Garth meant to direct a scorching sneer as silent preamble to his
discourse; but owing to the fact that Robbie's blow had fallen about
the blacksmith's eyes, and that those organs had since become sensibly
eclipsed by a prodigious and discolored swelling, what was meant for a
withering glance looked more like a meaningless grin. At this apparent
levity under her many distresses, Liza's wrath rose to boiling point,
and she burst out upon Mr. Joseph with more of the home-spun of the
country-side than ever fell from her lips in calmer moments.
“Thoo dummel-head, thoo,” she said, “thoo'rt as daft as a besom. Thoo
_hes_ made a botch on't, thoo blatherskite. Stick that in thy gizzern,
and don't thoo go bumman aboot like a bee in a bottle--thoo Judas,
thoo.”
Mr. Garth was undoubtedly taken by surprise this time. To be attacked
in such a way by the very person he meant to attack, to be accounted
the injurer by the very person who, he thought, had injured him,
sufficed to stagger the blacksmith's dull brains.
“Nay, nay,” he said, when he had recovered his breath; “who's the
Judas?--that's a 'batable point, I reckon.”
“Giss!” cried Liza, without waiting to comprehend the significance of
the insinuation, and--like a true woman--not dreaming that a charge of
disloyalty could be advanced against her,--“giss! giss!”--the call to
swine--“thoo'rt thy mother's awn son--the witch.”
Utterly deprived of speech by this maidenly outburst of vituperation,
Mr. Garth lost all that self-control which his quieter judgment had
recognized as probably necessary to the safety of his own person.
White with anger, he raised his hand to strike Liza, who thereupon
drew up, and, giving him a vigorous slap on each cheek, said, “Keep
thy neb oot of that, thoo bummeller, and go fratch with Robbie
Anderson--I hear he dinged thee ower, thoo sow-faced 'un.”
The mention of this name served as a timely reminder to Mr. Garth, who
dropped his arm and rode away, muttering savagely under his breath.
“Don't come hankerin' after me again,” cried Liza (rather
unnecessarily) after his vanishing figure.
This outburst was at least serviceable in discharging all the
ill-nature from the girl's breast; and when she had watched the
blacksmith until he had disappeared, she replied to Rotha's
remonstrances as so much scarcely girl-like abuse by a burst of the
heartiest girlish laughter.
* * * * *
There was much commotion at the Red Lion that night. The “maister men”
who had left the funeral procession at Watendlath made their way first
to the village inn, intending to spend there the hours that must
intervene before the return of the mourners to Shoulthwaite. They had
not been long seated over their pots when the premature arrival of
John Jackson and some of the other dalesmen who had been “sett” on the
way to Gosforth led to an explanation of the disaster that had
occurred on the pass. The consternation of the frequenters of the Red
Lion, as of the citizens of Wythburn generally, was as great as their
surprise. Nothing so terrible had happened within their experience.
They had the old Cumbrian horror of an accident to the dead. No
prospect was dearer to their hope than that of a happy death, and no
reflection was more comforting than that one day they would have a
suitable burial. Neither of these had Angus had. A violent end, and no
grave at all; nothing but this wild ride across the fells that might
last for days or months. There was surely something of Fate in it.
The dalesmen gathered about the fire at the Red Lion with the silence
that comes of awe.
“A sad hap, this,” said Reuben Thwaite, lifting both hands.
“I reckon we must all turn out at the edge of the dawn to-morrow, and
see what we can do to find old Betsy,” said Mr. Jackson.
Matthew Branthwaite's sagest saws had failed him. Such a contingency
as this had never been foreseen by that dispenser of proverbs. It had
lifted him out of himself. Matthew's sturdy individualism might have
taken the form of liberalism, or perhaps materialism, if it had
appeared two centuries later; but in the period in which his years
were cast, the art of keeping close to the ground had not been fully
learned. Matthew was filled with a sentiment which he neither knew nor
attempted to define. At least he was sure that the mare was not to be
caught. It was to be a dispensation somehow and someway that the horse
should gallop over the hills with its dead burden to its back from
year's end to year's end. When Mr. Jackson suggested that they should
start out in search of it, Matthew said,--
“Nay, John, nowt of the sort. Ye may gang ower the fell, but ye'll git
na Betsy. It's as I telt thee; it's a Fate. It'll be a tale for iv'ry
mother to flyte childer with.”
“The wind did come with a great bouze,” said John. “It must have been
the helm-wind, for sure; yet I cannot mind that I saw the helm-bar.
Never in my born days did I see a horse go off with such a burr.”
“And you could not catch hold on it, any of you, ey?” asked one of the
company with a shadow of a sneer.
“Shaf! dost thoo think yon fell's like a blind lonnin?” said Matthew.
“Nay, but it's a bent place,” continued Mr. Jackson. “How it dizzied
and dozzled, too! And what a fratch yon was! My word! but Ralph did
ding them over, both of them!”
“He favors his father, does Ralph,” said Matthew.
“Ey! he's his father's awn git,” chimed Reuben. “But that Joe Garth is
a merry-begot, I'll swear.”
“Shaf! he hesn't a bit of nater intil him, nowther back nor end. He's
now't but riffraff,” said Matthew. Ralph Ray's peril and escape were
incidents too unimportant to break the spell of the accident to the
body of his father.
Robbie Anderson turned in late in the evening.
“Here's a sorry home coming,” he said as he entered.
It was easy to see that Robbie was profoundly agitated. His eyes were
aflame; he rose and sat, walked a pace or two and stood, passed his
fingers repeatedly through his short curly beard, slapped his knee,
and called again and again for ale. When he spoke of the accident on
the fell, he laughed with a wild effort at a forced and unnatural
gayety.
“It's all along of my being dintless, so it is,” he muttered, after
little Reuben Thwaite had repeated for some fresh batch of inquirers
the story, so often told, of how the mare took to flight, and of how
Ralph leaped on to the young horse in pursuit of it.
“All along of you, Robbie; how's that, man?”
“If I'd chained the young horse at the bottom of the hill there would
have been no mare to run away, none.”
“It's like that were thy orders, then, Robbie?”
“It were that, damn me, it were--the schoolmaster there, he knows it.”
“Ralph told him to do it; I heard him myself,” said Monsey, from his
place in the chimney-nook, where he sat bereft of his sportive spirit,
yet quite oblivious of the important part which his own loquacity had
unwittingly played in the direful tragedy.
“But never bother now. Bring me more ale, mistress: quick now, my
lass.”
Robbie had risen once more, and was tramping across the floor in his
excitement. “What's come over Robbie?” whispered Reuben to Matthew.
“What fettle's he in--doldrums, I reckon.”
“Tak na note on him. Robbie's going off agen I'm afeart. He's broken
loose. This awesome thing is like to turn the lad's heed, for he'd the
say ower it all.”
“Come, lass, quick with the ale.”
“Ye've had eneuf, Robbie,” said the hostess. “Go thy ways home. Thou
findst the beer very heady, lad. Thou shalt have more in the morning.”
“To-night, lass; I must have some to-night, that I must.”
“Robbie _is_ going off agen, surely,” whispered Reuben. “It's a sorry
sight when yon lad takes to the drink. He'll be deed drunk soon.”
“Say nowt to him,” answered Matthew. “He's fair daft to-neet.”
The evening was far advanced when the dalesmen rose to go.
“Our work's cut out for us in the morning, men.” said John Jackson.
“Let's off to our beds.”