Truly, it was Betsy, the mare which they had lost on that fearful day
at the Stye Head Pass. Her dread burden, the coffin containing the
body of Angus Ray, was still strapped to her back. None had come nigh
to her, or this must have been removed. She looked worn and tired as
she rose now to her feet amid the snow. The old creature was docile
enough this morning, and when Ralph patted her head, she seemed to
know the hand that touched her.
She had crossed a range of mountains, and lived, no doubt, on the thin
grass of the fells. She must have famished quickly had the snow fallen
before.
Ralph was profoundly agitated. Never before had Sim seen him betray
such deep emotion. If the horse with its burden had been a
supernatural presence, the effect of its appearance on Ralph had not
been greater. At first clutching the bridle, he looked like a man who
was puzzled to decide whether, after all, this thing that had occurred
were not rather a spectre that had wandered out of his dreams than a
tangible reality, a blessed and gracious reality, a mercy for which he
ought there and then to fling himself in gratitude on the ground, even
though the snow drifted over him forever and made that act his last.
Then the tears that tenderer moments could not bring stood in his
enraptured eyes. Those breathless instants were as the mirror of what
seemed to be fifty years of fear and hope.
Ralph determined that no power on earth should remove his hand from
the bridle until his father had at length been buried. The parish of
Askham must have its church and churchyard, and Angus Ray should be
buried there. They had not yet passed by the church--it must be still
in front of them--and with the horse and its burden by their side the
friends walked on.
When Ralph found voice to speak, he said, “Wednesday--then it is three
weeks to-day since we lost her, and for three weeks my father has
waited sepulture!”
Presently they came within sight of a rude chapel that stood at the
meeting of two roads. A finger-post was at the angle, with arms
pointing in three directions. The chapel was a low whitewashed Gothic
building, with a little belfry in which there hung no bell. At its
rear was a house with broken gablets and round dormers stuck deep into
the thatch. A burial ground lay in front of both edifices, and looked
dreary and chilling now, with the snow covering its many mounds and
dripping from the warm wood of its rude old crosses.
“This will be the minister's house,” said Ralph.
They drew up in front and knocked at the door of a deep porch. An old
man opened it and looked closely at his visitors through sharp,
watchful eyes. He wore a close jerkin of thick blue homespun, and his
broad-topped boots were strapped round his short pantaloons.
“Does the priest live here?” said Ralph, from the road, where he held
the mare's head.
“No priest lives here,” said the old man, somewhat curtly.
“Does the minister?”
“No, nor a minister.”
The changes of ecclesiastical administration had been so frequent of
late that it was impossible to say what formula was now in the
ascendent. Ralph understood the old man's laconic answers to imply a
remonstrance, and he tried again.
“Do you preach in this church?”
“_I_ preach? No; I practise.”
It transpired after much wordy fencing, which was at least as
irritating as amusing to a man in Ralph's present temper, that there
was no minister now in possession of the benefice, and that the church
had for some months been closed, the spiritual welfare of the
parishioners being consequently in a state of temporary suspension.
The old man who replied to Ralph's interrogations proved to be the
parish clerk, and whether his duties were also suspended--whether the
parishioners did not die, and did not require to be buried--during the
period in which the parish was deprived of a parson, was a question of
more consequence to Ralph than the cause of the religious bankruptcy
which the old man described.
Ralph explained in a few words the occasion of his visit, and begged
the clerk to dig a grave at once.
“I fear it will scarce conform to the articles,” the clerk said with a
grave shake of his old head; “I'm sore afraid I'll suffer a penalty if
it's known.”
Ralph passed some coins into the old man's hand with as little
ostentation as possible; whereupon the clerk, much mollified,
continued,--
“But it's not for me to deny to any Christian a Christian burial--that
is to say, as much of it as stands in no need of the book. Sir, I'll
be with you in a crack. Go round, sir, to the gate.”
Ralph and his companion did as they were bidden, and in a few minutes
the old clerk came hurrying towards them from a door at the back of
his house that looked into the churchyard.
He had a spade over his shoulder and a great key in his hand.
Putting the key into a huge padlock, he turned back its rusty bolt,
and the gate swung stiff on its hinges, which were thick with moss.
Then Ralph, still holding the mare's head, walked into the churchyard
with Sim behind him.
“Here's a spot which has never been used,” said the old man, pointing
to a patch close at hand where long stalks of yarrow crept up through
the snow. “It's fresh mould, sir, and on the bright days the sun
shines on it.”
“Let it be here,” said Ralph.
The clerk immediately cleared away the snow, marked out his ground
with the edge of the spade, and began his work.
Ralph and Sim, with Betsy, stood a pace or two apart. It was still
early morning, and none came near the little company gathered there.
Now and again the old man paused in his work to catch his breath or to
wipe the perspiration from his brow. His communicativeness at such
moments of intermission would have been almost equal to his reticence
at an earlier stage, but Ralph was in no humor to encourage his
garrulity, and Sim stood speechless, with something like terror in his
eyes. “Yes, we've had no minister since Michaelmas; that, you know,
was when the new Act came In,” said the clerk.
“What Act?” Ralph asked.
“Why, sir, you never mean that you don't know about the Act of
Uniformity?”
“That's what I do mean, my friend,” said Ralph.
“Don't know the Act of Uniformity! Have you heard of the Five Mile
Bill?”
“No.”
“Nor the Test Bill that the Bishop wants to get afoot?”
“No.”
“Deary me, deary me,” said the clerk, with undisguised horror at
Ralph's ignorance of the projected ecclesiastical enactments of his
King and country. Then, with a twinkle in the corner of his upward eye
as he held his head aside, the old man said,--
“Perhaps your honor has been away in foreign parts?”
Ralph had to decline this respectable cover for his want of
familiarity with matters which were obviously vital concerns, and
perhaps the subjects of daily conversation, with his interlocutor.
The clerk had resumed his labors. When he paused again it was in order
to enlighten Ralph's ignorance on these solemn topics.
“You see, sir, the old 'piscopacy is back again, and the John
Presbyters that joined it are snug in their churches, but the
Presbyters that would not join it are turned out of their livings.
There--that's the Act of Uniformity.”
“The Act of Non-Conformity, I should say,” replied Ralph.
“Well, the Jack Presbyters are not to be allowed within five miles of
a market town--that's the new Five Mile Bill. And they are not to be
made schoolmasters or tutors, or to hold public offices, unless they
take the sacrament of the Church--and that's what the Bishop calls his
Test Act; but he'll scarce get it this many a long year, say I--no,
not he.”
The clerk had offered his lucid exposition with the air of one who
could afford to be modestly sensible of the superiority of his
knowledge.
“And when he does get it he'll want an Act more, so far as I can see,”
said Ralph, “and that's a Burial Act--an Act to bury the Presbyters
alive. They'd be full as well buried, I think.”.
A shrewd glance from the old man's quick eyes showed that at that
moment he had arrived at one of three conclusions--that Ralph himself
was a Presbyter or a Roundhead, or both.
“Our minister was a Presbyter,” he observed aloud, “and when the Act
came in he left his benefice.”
But Ralph was not minded to pursue the subject.
The grave was now ready; it had required to be long and wide, but not
deep.
The snow was beginning to fall again.
“Hard work on a morning like this,” said the clerk, coughing as he
threw aside his spade. “This is the sort of early morning that makes
an old man like me catch his breath. And I haven't always been parish
clerk and dug graves. I was schoolmaster till Michaelmas.”
It was time to commit to the grave the burden which had passed three
long weeks on the back of the mare. Not until this moment did Ralph's
hand once relax its firm grip of Betsy's bridle. Loosing it now, he
applied himself to the straps and ropes that bound the coffin. When
all was made clear, he prepared to lift the body to the ground. It was
large and heavy, and required the hands of Sim and the clerk as well.
By their united efforts the coffin was raised off the horse's back and
lowered. The three men were in the act of doing this, when Betsy,
suddenly freed from the burden which she had carried, pranced aside,
looked startled, plunged through the gate, and made off down the road.
“Let her go,” said Ralph, and turned his attention once more to what
now lay on the ground.
Then Angus Ray was lowered into his last home, and the flakes of snow
fell over him like a white and silent pall.
Ralph stood aside while the old man threw back the earth. It fell from
the spade in hollow thuds.
Sim crouched beside a stone, and looked on with frightened eyes.
The sods were replaced; there was a mound the more in the little
churchyard of Askham, and that was the end. The clerk shouldered his
spade and prepared to lock the gate.
It was then they were aware that there came from over their heads a
sound like the murmuring of a brook under the leaves of June; like the
breaking of deep waters at a weir; like the rolling of foam-capped
wavelets against an echoing rock. Look up! Every leafless bough of
yonder lofty elder-tree is thick with birds. Listen! A moment, and
their song has ceased; they have risen on the wing; they are gone like
a cloud Of black rain through the white feathery air. Then silence
everywhere.
Was it God's sign and symbol--God's message to the soul of this
stricken man? God's truce?
Who shall say it was not!
“A load is lifted off my heart,” said Ralph. He was thinking of the
terrible night he had spent on the fells. And indeed there was the
light of another look in his face. His father had sepulture. God had
shown him this mercy as a sign that what he purposed to do ought to be
done. Such was Ralph's reading of the accidental finding of the horse.
They bade good morning to the old man and left him. Then they walked
to the angle of the roads where the guidepost stood. The arms were
covered with the snow, and Ralph climbed on to the stone wall behind
and brushed their letters clear.
“To Kendal.” That pointed in the direction from whence they came.
“To Gaskarth.”
“That's our road,” said Sim.
“No,” said Ralph; “_this_ is it--'To Penrith and Carlisle.'”
What chance remained now to Robbie?