No sooner had Ralph discovered that the straggler from the North who
lay insensible in the yard of the inn at Kendal was Simeon Stagg than
he pushed through the crowd, and lifting the thin and wasted figure in
his arms, ordered a servant to show him to a room within.
There in a little while sensibility returned to Sim, who was suffering
from nothing more serious than exhaustion and the excitement by which
it had been in part occasioned.
When in the first moment of consciousness he opened his eyes and met
the eyes of Ralph, who was bending above him, he exhibited no sign of
surprise. With a gesture indicative of irritation he brushed his long
and bony hand over his face, as though trying to shut out a vision
that had more than once before haunted and tormented him. But when he
realized the reality of the presence of the man whom he had followed
over many weary miles, whose face had followed him in his
dreams,--when it was borne in upon his scattered sense that Ralph Ray
was actually here at his side, holding his hand and speaking to him in
the deep tones which he knew so well,--then the poor worn wayfarer
could no longer control the emotion that surged upwards from his
heart.
It was a wild, disjointed, inconsequential tale which Sim thereupon
told, which he had come all this way to tell, and which now revealed
its full import to the eager listener in spite of the narrator's
eagerness rather than by means of it. Amid spasms of feeling, however,
the story came at length to an end; and gathering up the threads of it
for himself, and arranging them in what seemed to him their natural
sequence, Ralph understood all that it was essential to understand of
his own position and the peril of those who were dear to him. That he
was to be outlawed, and that his estate was to be confiscated; that
his mother, who still lived, was, with his brother and Rotha, to be
turned into the road,--this injustice was only too imminent.
“In a fortnight--was it so?” he asked. “In a fortnight they were to be
back? A fortnight from what day?”
“Saturday,” said Sim; “that's to say, a week come Saturday next.”
“And this is Tuesday; ten full days between,” said Ralph, walking with
drooping head across the room; “I must leave immediately for the
North. Heigh!” opening a window, and hailing the ostler who at the
moment went past, “when does your next coach start for the North?”
“At nine o'clock, sir.”
“Nine to-night? So late? Have you nothing before--no wagon--nothing?”
“Nothing before, sir; 'cept--leastways--no, nothing before. Ye see, it
waits for the coach from Lancaster, and takes on its passengers.”
“John, John,” cried the landlady, who had overheard the conversation
from a neighboring window, “mayhap the gentleman would like to take a
pair of horses a stage or two an he's in a hurry.”
“Have you a horse that can cover thirty miles to-day?” said Ralph.
“That we have, yer honor, and mair ner ya horse.”
“Where will the coach be at six to-morrow?”
“At Penrith, I reckon,” said the ostler, lifting his cap, and
scratching his head with the air of one who was a good deal uncertain
alike of his arithmetic and his geography.
“How long do they reckon the whole journey?”
“Twelve hours, I've heeard--that's if nothing hinders; weather, nor
the like.”
“Get your horse ready at once, my lad, and then take me to your
landlady.”
“You'll not leave me behind, Ralph,” said Sim when Ralph had shut back
the casement.
“You're very weak, old friend; it will be best for you to sleep here
to-day, and take to-night's Carlisle coach as far back as Mardale. It
will be early morning when the coach gets there, and at daybreak you
can walk over the Stye Pass to Shoulthwaite.”
“I dare not, I dare not; no, no, don't leave me here.” Sim's
importunity was irresistible, and Ralph yielded more out of pity than
by persuasion. A second horse was ordered, and in less than half an
hour the travellers, fortified by a meal, were riding side by side on
the high road from Kendal to the North.
Sim was not yet so far recovered from his exhaustion but that the
exertion of riding--at any time a serious undertaking to him--was
quick in producing symptoms of collapse. But he held on to his purpose
of accompanying Ralph on his northward journey with a tenacity which
was unshaken either by his companion's glances of solicitude or yet by
the broad mouthed merriment of the rustics, who obviously found it
amusing to watch the contortions of an ill-graced, weak, and
spiritless rider, and to fire off at him as he passed the sallies of
an elephantine humor.
When the pair started away from Kendal, Sim had clearly no thought but
that their destination was to be Wythburn. It was therefore with some
surprise and no little concern that he observed that Ralph took the
road to the right which led to Penrith and the northeast, when they
arrived at that angle of the highway outside the town where two
turnpikes met, and one went off to Wythburn and the Northwest.
“I should have reckoned that the nighest way home was through
Staveley,” Sim said with hesitation.
“We can turn to the left at Mardale,” said Ralph, and pushed on
without further explanation. “Do you say that mother has never once
spoken?” he asked, drawing up at one moment to give Sim a little
breathing space.
“Never once, Ralph--mute as the grave, she is--poor body.”
“And Rotha--Rotha--”
“Yes, the lass is with her, she is.”
“God bless her in this world and the next!”
Then the two pushed on again, with a silence between them that was
more touching than speech. They rode long and fast this spell, and
when they drew up once more, Ralph turned in his saddle and saw that
the ruins that stood at the top of the Kendal Scar were already far
behind them.
“It's a right good thing that you've given up your solitary life on
the fells, Sim. It wilt cheer me a deal, old friend, to think you'll
always live with the folks at Shoulthwaite.” Ralph spoke as if he
himself had never to return. Sim felt this before Ralph had realized
the implication of his words.
“It's hard for a hermit to be a good man,” continued Ralph; “he begins
with being miserable and ends with being selfish and superstitious,
and perhaps mad. Have you never marked it?”
“Maybe so, Ralph; maybe so. It's like it's because the world's bitter
cruel that so many are buryin' theirsels afore they're dead.”
“Then it's because they expect too much of the world,” said Ralph. “We
should take the world on easier terms. Fallible humanity must have its
weaknesses and poor human life its disasters, and where these are
mighty and inevitable, what folly is greater than to fly from them or
to truckle to them, to make terms with them? Our duty is simply to
endure them, to endure them--that's it, old friend.”
There was no answer that Sim could make to this. Ralph was speaking to
the companion who rode by his side; but in fact he seemed to be
addressing himself.
“And to see a man buy a reprieve from Death!” he continued. “Never do
that--never? Did you ever think of it, Sim, that what happens is
always the best?”
“It scarce looks like it, Ralph; that it don't.”
“Then it's because you don't look long enough. In the end, it is
_always_ the best that happens. Truth and the right are the last on
the field; it always has been so, and always will be; it only needs
that you should wait to the close of the battle to see _that_.”
There would have been a sublime solemnity in these rude words of a
rude man of action if Sim had divined that they were in fact the
meditations of one who believed himself to be already under the shadow
of his death.
* * * * *
The horses broke again into a canter, and it was long before the reins
of the riders brought them to another pause. The day was bitterly
cold, and, notwithstanding the exertion of riding, Sim's teeth
chattered sometimes as with ague, and his fingers were numb and stiff.
It was an hour before noon when the travellers left Kendal, and now
they had ridden for two hours. The brighter clouds of the morning had
disappeared, and a dull, leaden sky was overhead. Gradually the heavy
atmosphere seemed to close about them, yet a cutting wind blew smartly
from the east.
“A snowstorm is coming, Sim. Look yonder; how thick it hangs over the
Gray Crag sheer ahead! We must push on, or we'll be overtaken.”
“How long will it be coming?” asked Sim.
“Five hours full, perhaps longer,” said Ralph; “we may reach Penrith
before that time.”
“Penrith!”
Sim's tone was one of equal surprise and fear.
Ralph gave him a quick glance; then reaching over the neck of his
horse to stroke its long mane, he said, with the manner of one who
makes too palpable an effort to change the subject of conversation:
“Isn't this mare something like old Betsy? I couldn't but mark how
like she was to our old mare that is lost when the ostler brought her
into the yard this morning.”
Sim made no reply.
“Poor Betsy!” said Ralph, and dropped his head on to his breast.
Another long canter. When the riders drew up again it was to take a
steadier view of some objects in the distance which had simultaneously
awakened their curiosity.
“There seem to be many of them,” said Ralph; and, shielding his ear
from the wind, he added, “do you catch their voices?”
“Are they quarrelling?--is it a riot?” Sim asked.
“Quick, and let us see.”
In a few moments they had reached a little wayside village.
There they found children screaming and women wringing their hands. In
the high road lay articles of furniture, huddled together, thrown in
heaps one on another, and broken into fragments in the fall. A
sergeant and company of musketeers were even then in the midst of this
pitiful work of devastation, turning the people out of their little
thatched cottages and flinging their poor sticks of property out after
them. Everywhere were tumult and ruin. Old people were lying on the
cold earth by the wayside. They had been born in these houses; they
had looked to die in these homes; but houses and homes were to be
theirs no more. Amidst the wreck strode the gaunt figure of a factor,
directing and encouraging, and firing off meantime a volley of
revolting oaths.
“What's the name of this place?” asked Ralph of a man who stood, with
fury in his eyes, watching the destruction of his home.
“Hollowbank,” answered the man between his teeth.
Ralph remembered that here had lived a well-known Royalist, whom the
Parliament had dispossessed of his estates. The people of this valley
had been ardent Parliamentarians during the long campaign. Could it be
that his lordship had been repossessed of his property, and was taking
this means of revenging himself upon his tenantry for resisting the
cause he had fought for?
An old man lay by the hedge looking down to the ground with eyes that
told only of despair. A little fair-haired boy, with fear in his
innocent face, was clinging to his grandfather's cloak and crying
piteously.
“Get off with you and begone!” cried the factor, rapping out another
volley.
“Is it Hollowbank you call this place?” said Ralph, looking the fellow
in the face. “Hellbank would be a fitter name.”
The man answered nothing, but his eyes glared angrily as Ralph put
spur to his horse and rode on.
“God in heaven!” cried Ralph when Sim had come up by his side, “to
think that work like this goes on in God's sight!”
“Yet you say the best happens,” said Sim.
“It does; it does; God knows it does, for all that,” insisted Ralph.
“But to think of these poor souls thrown out into the road like
cattle. Cattle? To cattle they would be merciful!--thrown out into the
road to lie and die and rot!”
“Have they been outlawed--these men?” said Sim.
“Damnation!” cried Ralph, as though at Sim's ignorant word a new and
terrible thought had flashed upon his mind and wounded him like a
dagger.
Then they rode long in silence.
Away they went, mile after mile, without rest and without pause,
through dales and over uplands, past meres and across rivers, and
still with the gathering blackness overhead.
What force of doom was spurring them on in this race against Life? It
was the depth of a Cumbrian winter, and the days were short. Clearly
they would never reach Penrith to-night. The delay at Hollowbank and
the shortened twilight before a coming snowstorm must curtail their
journey. They agreed to put up for the night at the inn at Askham.
As they approached that house of entertainment they observed that the
coach which had left Carlisle that morning was in the act of drawing
up at the door. It waited only while three or four passengers
alighted, and then drove on and passed them in its journey south.
Five hours hence it would pass the northward coach from Kendal.
When Ralph and Sim dismounted at the Fox and Hounds, at Askham, the
landlord came hastily to the door. He was a brawny dalesman, of
perhaps thirty. He was approaching the travellers with the customary
salutations of a host, when, checking himself, and coming to Ralph, he
said in a low tone, “I ask pardon, sir, but is your name
Ray?--Captain--hush!” he whispered; and then, becoming suddenly mute,
without waiting for a reply to his questions, he handed the horses to
a man who came up at the moment, and beckoned Ralph and Sim to follow
him, not through the front of the house, but towards the yard that led
to the back.
“Don't you know me?” he said as soon as he had conveyed them, as if by
stealth, into a little room detached from the rest of the house.
“Surely it's Brown? And how are you, my lad?”
“Gayly; and you seem gayly yourself, and not much altered since the
great days at Dunbar--only a bit lustier, mayhap, and with something
more of beard. I'll never forget the days I served under you!”
“That's well, Brown; but why did you bring us round here?” said Ralph.
“Hush!” whispered the landlord. “I've a pack of the worst bloodhounds
from Carlisle just come. They're this minute down by the coach. I know
the waistrels. They've been here before to-day. They'd know you to a
certainty, and woe's me if once the gommarels come abreast of you.
It's like I'd never forgive myself if my old captain came by any ill
luck in my house.”
“How long will they stay?” “Until morning, it's like.”
“How far is it to the next inn?”
“Three miles to Clifton.”
“We shall sleep till daybreak to-morrow, Brown, on the settles you
have here. And now, my lad, bloodhounds or none on our trail, bring us
something to eat.”