The evening had closed in; the watery veil that goes between day and
night was hanging in the air; the wind had risen, and the trees were
troubled. When Hugh Ritson reached the cottage, all was dark about the
house save for the red glow from the peat fire which came out into the
open porch. The old Laird Fisher was sitting there, a blackthorn stick
at his feet, his elbows on his knees, his cheeks rested on his hands.
The drowsy glow fell on his drooping white head. As Hugh Ritson passed
into the kitchen, the old man lifted to his a countenance on which grief
and reproach were stamped together. Hugh Ritson's proud spirit was
rebuked by the speechless sorrow of that look. It was such a look as a
wounded hound lifts to the eyes of a brutal master.
A sheep-dog was stretched at full length before the slumbering fire. The
kitchen was empty, and silent too, except for the tick of the clock and
the colly's labored breathing. But at the sound of Hugh's uncertain step
on the hard earthen floor, the door of the bedroom opened, and Greta
motioned him to enter.
A candle burned near the bed. Before a fire, Mercy Fisher sat with
Parson Christian. Her head lay on a table that stood between, her face
buried in her encircled arms. One hand lay open beside the long loose
tresses of yellow hair, and the parson's hand rested upon it
caressingly. Parson Christian rose as Hugh Ritson entered, and bowing
coldly, he left the room; Greta had already gone out, and he rejoined
her in the kitchen.
Mercy lifted her head and looked up at Hugh. There was not a tear in her
weary, red, swollen eyes, and not a sigh came from her heaving breast.
She rose quietly, and taking Hugh's hand in her own, she drew him to the
bedside.
"See where he is," she said in a voice of piercing earnestness, and with
her other hand she lifted a handkerchief from the little white face.
Hugh Ritson shuddered. He saw his own features as if memory had brought
them in an instant from the long past.
Mercy disengaged her hand, and silently hid her face. But she did not
weep.
"My little Ralphie," she said, plaintively, "how quiet he is now! Oh,
but you should have seen him when he was like a glistening ray of
morning light. Why did you not come before?"
Hugh Ritson stood there looking down at the child's dead face, and made
no answer.
"It is better as it is," his heart whispered at that moment. The next
instant his whole frame quivered. What was the thought that had risen
unbidden within him? Better that his child should lie there cold and
lifeless than that it should fill this desolate house with joy and love?
Was he, then, so black a villain? God forbid! Yet it was better so.
"All is over now," said Mercy, and her hands fell from her face. She
turned her weary eyes full upon him, and added: "We have been punished
already."
"Punished?" said Hugh. "We?" There was silence for a moment; and then,
dropping his voice until it was scarcely audible, he said: "Your burden
is heavy to bear, my poor girl."
Her slight figure swayed a little.
"I could bear it no longer," she answered.
"Many a one has thought that before you," he said; "but God alone knows
what we can not bear until we are tried."
"Well, all is over now," she repeated listlessly.
She spoke of herself as if her days were already ended and past; as if
her orb of life had been rounded by the brief span of the little
existence that lay finished upon the bed. Hugh Ritson looked at her, and
the muscles of his face twitched. Her weary eyes were still dry; their
dim light seemed to come from far away.
"How I prayed that I might see my Ralphie," she said. "I thought surely
God had willed it that I should never see my child. Perhaps that was to
be my punishment for--all that had taken place. But I prayed still. Oh,
you would not think how much I pray! But it must have been a wicked
prayer."
She hid her face once more in her hands, and added, with unexpected
animation:
"God heard my prayer, and answered it--but see!" She pointed to the
child. "I saw him--yes, I saw him--die!"
Hugh Ritson was moved, but his heart was bitter. At that moment he
cursed the faith that held in bondage the soul of the woman at his side.
Would that he could trample it underfoot, and break forever the chains
by which it held the simple.
"Hugh," she said, and her voice softened, "we are about to part forever.
Our little Ralphie--yours and mine--he calls me. I could not live
without him. God would not make me do that. He has punished me already,
and He is merciful. Only think, our Ralphie is in heaven!"
She paused and bit her lip, and drew her breath audibly inward. Her face
took then a death-like hue, and all at once her voice overflowed with
anguish.
"Do you know, something whispered at that instant that God had not
punished us enough, that Ralphie was not in heaven, and that the sins of
the fathers--Oh, my darling, my darling!"
With a shrill cry she stopped, turned to the bed, threw her outspread
arms about the child, and kissed it fervently.
The tears came at length, and rained down on that little silent face.
Hugh Ritson could support the strain no longer.
"Mercy," he said, and his voice had a deep tremor--"Mercy, if there is
any sin, it is mine, and if there is to be any punishment hereafter,
that will be mine too. As for your little boy, be sure he is in heaven."
He had stepped to the door, and his thumb was on the wooden latch. "You
say rightly, we shall never meet again," he said in a muffled voice.
"Good-bye."
Mercy lifted her tearful face. "Give me your hand at parting," she said
in an imploring tone. He was on the opposite side of the bed from where
she stood, and she reached her hand across it. He took a step nearer,
and his hand closed in hers. Between them and beneath their clasped
hands lay the child. "Hugh, we could not love in this world--something
went astray with us; but we shall meet again, shall we not?"
He turned his eyes away.
"Perhaps," he answered.
"Promise me," she said--"promise me."
He drew his breath hard.
"If there is a God and a judgment, be sure we shall meet," he said.
His voice broke. He turned abruptly aside and hurried out of the house.
CHAPTER XI.
The night was now dark; there was no moon, and there were no stars; the
wind soughed mournfully through the trees. In the occasional lull the
rumble of the cataracts drifted heavily through the air.
Hugh Ritson walked in the darkness with drooping head. He was not making
for the pit-brow; he had taken the opposite direction. When he reached
the village, he stopped at the Flying Horse. Loud peals of laughter came
from the parlor, hidden by red blinds from the road.
He stood at the door that opened into the bar. The landlady, her face
turned from him, was talking with obvious animation to a daleswoman who
stood with a jug in her hand at the other side of the counter.
"What, woman, thoo's surely heard what happen't at the Ghyll this
morning?"
"Nay, Bessie, I's been thrang as Throp wife, cleaning and tittivating."
"Well, lass, they've telt me as it were shocking. Two brothers, and such
a fratch! It coom't to blows at last, and they do say 'at Master Hugh is
nigh amaist dead with a bash the girt fellow gave him."
Hugh Ritson rapped sharply at the door.
"Tell your husband I wish to see him," he said.
The landlady looked up, fumbled with a napkin, and answered nervously,
"Yes, sir." Then she hobbled to the door of the parlor and opened it. A
wave of mingled noise, vapor, and foul odors came through the aperture.
"Tommy!" she screamed above the babel.
The landlord appeared.
"Can you send me a dog-cart at half past four in the morning?" said
Hugh.
"Maybe--it's a gay canny hour, I reckon," said the landlord.
He pulled at a long pipe as he spoke, and his face, which was flushed,
wore an impudent smile.
"I have to catch the five-o'clock train," Hugh answered.
"To London?" One cheek was twisted into numerous wrinkles.
"I said the five train," said Hugh, sternly. "Can you do it?"
"I's niver said nay--it'll be three half-crowns."
Hugh put half a sovereign on the counter.
"Let it be sent at half past four promptly.
"To the Ghyll?"
The twist of the cheek was a shade less perceptible.
"To the pit-brow."
The parlor door opened again, and Natt stood on the threshold. The
stableman's sleepy eyes awakened to a knowing twinkle. Then his flat
face disappeared, and a thin titter mingled audibly with the clamor
within. In another moment the door was thrown wide open, and Drayton
came slouching out. His hair fell back over his forehead, from which his
hat was tipped back. A cigar was perched between his teeth; the tips of
his fingers were thrust into his waistcoat pockets.
"Come in; I've summat to show you," he said.
Hugh did not stir, but he lifted his head and looked into the room. Half
a score of the riff-raff of the dale were seated amid clouds of smoke.
On the wooden mantel-shelf above the wide ingle a large book stood
open, and the leaves fluttered with the wind that came through the door.
"I hain't forgotten what you said long ago about the parson's book,"
said Drayton, "so here it is, and a mighty valuable thing I call it. You
thought to frighten me with it, but bless yer soul, I like it, I do.
Listen."
Drayton stepped back into the room, turned the leaves, and began to read
in a lusty tone:
"1847.--November 18.--Thomas said Allan was fresh from Scotland,
being Scottish born, and that his wife was Irish, and that they had a
child called Paul, only a few months old, and not yet walking."
It was the parson's diary.
"That's good enough, ain't it, Master Hugh Ritson?" said Drayton, with
an ungainly bow, and a vast show of civility, followed instantly by a
sidelong leer at his cronies about him.
Hugh Ritson held himself stiffly, and merely said:
"Where did you get it?"
At this question there were sundry snorts and titters and muttered
responses from the men at the tables. Hugh's eyes passed over them with
a steely glance.
"Stolen it, I suppose," he said quietly.
"Ay," said Drayton, "and a neat job too. Natt 'ticed away the Methodee
man while I borrowed it."
Drayton seemed to be proud of his share in the transaction, and his
friends laughed loudly at the adroit turn he had given to the matter.
Natt's drowsy eyes were preternaturally bright at that great moment.
Hugh Ritson's forehead darkened with ire.
"This is your gratitude to the clergyman," he said.
Sundry further snorts and sniggers went round the tables.
"There's not a man of you who is not beholden to Parson Christian," said
Hugh, sternly. He twisted sharply round upon one graybeard whose laugh
still rumbled between his teeth. "Reuben Rae, who nursed your sick wife?
John Proudfoot," to the blacksmith, "what about your child down with the
fever?" His quick eye traversed the parlor, and more than one lusty
crony was fain to bury his face in his breast. "Yet you laugh, brave
fellows as you are, when the good man's house is broken into by a
thief."
Drayton took a swift stride toward him.
"Drop it, and quick!" he shouted.
Hugh Ritson governed himself with an effort.
"I'm not here to brawl," he said quietly.
"Pigeon-livered blatherskite!--that's what I call ye--d'ye hear?" said
Drayton.
Hugh's face flinched, but he turned on his heel, and was on the road at
the next instant.
Drayton followed him out, laughing boisterously. Hugh made one quick
step backward and shut the door; then he turned about on Drayton, whose
cruel face could be dimly seen in the hazy red light that came through
the blinds.
"You have tried to torture me," he said, "just as you would hang a dog
by its tail, or draw the teeth of a rat. You have threatened with worse
torture a good and loyal woman. You are a scoundrel, and you know it!
But even you would hesitate if you knew for certain who or what you are.
Let me tell you again, now, when we are alone, and while I have no
personal interest to serve: You are the man whose name I gave you--Paul
Lowther, son of Robert Lowther--and that lady, my brother's wife, whom
for reason of profit you would compel to live under the same roof with
you, is your own sister!"
Drayton's loud guffaw rang out above the wind's moan in the trees. His
cronies within heard it and listened.
"It's a rare old story, that is. Let me see; you've told it before, I
fancy."
"Then it was a lie; now it's God's truth!" said Hugh.
Drayton laughed again.
"And then it was believed, but now it's not. No, no, Master Hugh, it
won't pass."
"We will see."
Hugh Ritson had swung about and was gone.
Drayton went back to his friends.
"Hasn't the pluck of a pigeon when it comes to the push," he muttered.
"Ey, he wears a bonny white feather in his cap, for sure," said old
Reuben Rae.
"No fight in'im--no'but tongue lather," said John, the blacksmith.
* * * * *
Hugh Ritson walked through the darkness to the pit-brow. The glow of the
furnace lighted up the air to the south, and showed vaguely the brant
sides of the fell; the dull thud of the engine, the clank of the chain,
and the sharp crack of the refuse tumbling down the bank from the
banksman's barrow were the only sounds that rose above the wind's loud
whistle.
Gubblum was at the mouth of the shaft.
"Oglethorpe," said Hugh, "how many of the gangs are below to-night?"
"All but two--auld Reuben's and Jim South'et's."
"Then they have chosen to work on?"
"Ey, another fortnight--trusting to get their wage afore that, please
God."
"They shall not be disappointed."
Hugh Ritson turned away. Gubblum trundled his last wheelbarrow to the
edge of the bank, and then rested and said to himself, "He takes it cool
enough onyway."
But the outside tranquillity disappeared when Hugh Ritson reached his
own room on the pit-brow. He bathed his hot forehead again and again.
His fingers twitched nervously, and he plunged his perspiring hands into
cold water above the wrists, holding them there for several minutes. Not
for long did he sit in one seat. He tramped the room uneasily, his
infirm foot trailing heavily. Then he threw himself on the couch, tossed
from side to side, rose, and resumed his melancholy walk. Thus an hour
passed drearily.
His mind recalled one by one the events of the day. And one by one there
came crowding back upon him the events of the two years that had passed
since his father's death. A hurricane was upheaving every memory of his
mind. And every memory had its own particular sting, and came up as a
blight to fret his soul. He tried to guard himself from himself. What he
had first thought to do was but in defense of his strict legal rights,
and if he had gone further--if he had done more, without daring to think
of it until it was done--then it was love that had led him astray. Was
it so cruel a thing to be just? So foul a thing to love?
But above the shufflings of remorse, above the stiflings of regret,
above the plea of a maddening love, was the voice of revenge speaking
loudly in his soul. That man, his instrument, now his master, Paul
Lowther, must be brought down, and his time-serving sponsor with him.
But how? There was but one way--by denouncing himself. Yes, that was the
sole outlet for his outraged and baffled spirit. He must go to the
proper quarter and say, "I have perjured myself, and sworn away my
brother's liberty. The man who was condemned as Paul Drayton is Paul
Ritson. I did it all."
That would bring this vulgar scoundrel to the dust, but at what a price!
The convict's dress now worn by his brother would soon be worn by him.
And what solace would it be then that the same suit would be worn by the
impostor also? Yet why prate of solace in a matter like this? What
alternative was left to him? In what quarter of the sky was the light
dawning for him? He was traveling toward the deepening night, and the
day of his life was done.
What if he allowed everything to take its course? Well, he was a
disgraced and ruined man, turned adrift from his father's house, and
doomed to see a stranger living there. Did he lack gall to make such a
climax bitter? Bitter, eh! and a thousand times the more bitter because
he himself had, for ends of his own, first placed the scoundrel where he
sat.
No, no, no; Paul Lowther must be brought down, and with him must fall
the poor ruins of a better man. Yes a better man, let the world say what
it would.
Could it occur that he would not be believed? that when he said "Take
me, I am a perjurer," they would answer, "No, your self-denunciation is
only a freak of revenge, a mad attempt to injure the relative who has
turned you out of his house?" Hugh Ritson laughed as the grim irony of
such a possible situation flashed upon him: a man self-condemned and
saved from punishment by the defense of his enemy!
There was a knock at his door. In his stupor he was not at first
conscious of what the knock meant. At length he recalled himself and
cried:
"Come in."
Gubblum Oglethorpe entered.
"The men on the twelve o'clock shift are just about ganging down, and
they want to tak' a few mair forks with them. They've telt me 'at the
timber is splitting like matchwood under the sandy vein."
Hugh Ritson made an effort to gather the purport of Gubblum's message.
"Tell them to take the forks," he said in a low tone.
Gubblum was backing out, and stopped.
"I reckon thoo's not heard the last frae auld Mattha's," he said in
another voice.
"What is it, Oglethorpe?" said Hugh, his head bent over the table.
"Robbie South'et's wife has been up to t' brow, and says that Mercy's
laal thing is gone."
Hugh did not lift his eyes.
"Is that the last?" he said.
"Nay, but warse. The lass herself tore the bandage frae her eyes, and
she's gone stone blind, and that's foriver."
Hugh's head bent closer over the table.
"Good-night, Oglethorpe," he said.
Gubblum backed out, muttering to himself as he returned to the shaft, "A
cool hand, how-an'-iver."
The moment the door closed, Hugh Ritson tramped the floor in restless
perambulations. What had he thought of doing? Delivering himself to
justice as a perjurer? Had he, then, no duty left in life that he must
needs gratify his revenge in a kind of death? What of the woman who had
suffered for him? What of the broken heart and the wretched home? Were
these as nothing against the humiliation of a proud spirit?
Never for an instant, never in his bitterest agony, did Hugh Ritson lie
to his own soul and say that the resolution he had formed was prompted
by remorse for what he had done to Paul Ritson; not revenge for what he
had suffered from Paul Drayton. To be a saint when sick; to find the
conscience active when defeat overwhelmed it--that was for the weak
dregs of humanity. But such paltering was not for him.
On the one hand revenge, on the other duty--which was he to follow? The
wretched man could come to no decision; and when the fingers of his
watch pointed to one o'clock he lay down on the couch to rest.
It was not sleep that he wanted; sleep had of late become too full of
terrors; but sleep overcame him, nevertheless. His face, when he slept,
was the face of a man in pain; and dreams came that were the distorted
reflections of his waking thoughts. He dreamed that he had died in
infancy. Calm, serene, very sweet, and peaceful, his little innocent
face of childhood looked up from the white pillow. He thought his mother
bent over him, and shed many tears; but he himself belonged to another
world of beings, and looked down on both.
"It is better so," he thought, "and the tears she weeps are blest."
At this he awoke, and rose to his feet. What soft nothings men had said
of sleep! "Oh, sleep, it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole!"
Gentle! More tyrannous than death. The melancholy perambulation ended,
and he lay down once more. He slept and dreamed again. This time he had
killed his own brother. A moment before they had stood face to
face--vigorous, wrathful, with eyes that flashed, and hands uplifted.
Now his brother lay quiet and awful at his feet, and the great silence
was broken by a voice from heaven crying, "A fugitive and a vagabond
shalt thou be on the earth!"
He started to his feet in terror. "Mercy, mercy!" he cried.
Then he drew his breath hard and looked about him. "A dream--only
another dream," he said to himself, and laughed between his close-set
teeth. The lamp still burned on the table. He rose, drew a key from his
pocket, opened a cupboard, and took out a small bottle. It contained an
opiate. "Since I must sleep, let my sleep at least be dreamless," he
said, and he measured a dose. He was lifting the glass to his lips,
when he caught sight of his face in the glass. "Pitiful! pitiful! A mere
dream unnerves me. Pitiful enough, forsooth! And so I must needs hide
myself from myself behind a bulwark like this!" He held the drug to the
light, and while his hand trembled he laughed. Then he drank it off, put
out the light, and sat on the couch.
The dawn had fretted the sky, and the first streaks of day crept in at
the window, when the lamp's yellow light was gone. Hugh Ritson sat in
the gray gloom, his knees drawn close under his chin, his arms folded
over his breast, his head bent heavily forward. He was crooning an old
song. Presently the voice grew thick, the eye became clouded, and then
the head fell back. He was asleep, and in his sleep he dreamed again. Or
was it a vision, and not a dream, that came to him now? He thought he
stood in a room which he had seen before. On the bed some white thing
lay. It was a child, and the little soul had fled. Beside it a woman
cowered, and moaned "Guilty, guilty!" Her eyes were fixed on the child,
yet she saw nothing; the sightless orbs were bleached. But with her
heart she saw the child; and she saw himself also as he entered. Then it
seemed that she turned her blind face toward him, and called on him by
name. The next instant she was gone. Her seat was vacant, the bed was
empty; only a gray-bearded man sat by a cold grate. With an overpowering
weight pressing him down, it seemed to Hugh that he threw up his head,
and again he heard his name.
He leaped to his feet. Big beads of cold sweat stood on his forehead.
"Mercy is dead," he whispered with awe. "She has gone to put in her plea
of guilty. She is in God's great hand!"
The next moment a voice shouted, "Mr. Ritson!"
He listened, and in the gray light his stony countenance smiled grimly.
"Mr. Ritson!" once more, followed by the rap of a whip-handle against
the door.
"Tommy the landlord," said Hugh, and he broke into a harsh laugh. "So
you were my angel, Tommy, eh?"
Another harsh laugh. The landlord, sitting in the dog-cart outside,
heard it, and thought to himself, "Some one with him."
Hugh Ritson plunged his head into the wash-basin, and rubbed himself
vigorously with a rough towel. "My last sleep is over," he said,
glancing aside with fearful eyes at the couch. "I'll do this thing that
I am bent upon; but no more sleep, and no more dreams!"
He opened the door, threw a rug up to the landlord, put on an ulster,
and leaped into the dog-cart. They started away at a quick trot. A chill
morning breeze swept down the vale. The sun was rising above Cat Bells,
but Hugh Ritson still felt as if he were traveling toward the deepening
night. He sat with folded arms, and head bent on his breast.
"Hasta heard what happened at auld Laird Fisher's this morning?" said
the landlord.
Hugh answered in a low voice:
"I've heard nothing."
"The lass has followed her barn rather sudden't. Ey, she's gone, for
sure. Died a matter of half an hour ago. I heard it frae the parson as I
coom't by."
Hugh Ritson bent yet lower his drooping head.
CHAPTER XII.
At 2 o'clock that day Hugh Ritson arrived at Euston. He got into a cab
and drove to Whitehall. At the Home Office he asked for the Secretary of
State. A hundred obstacles arose to prevent him from penetrating to the
head of the department. One official handed him over to another, the
second to a third, the third to a fourth.
Hugh Ritson was hardly the man to be balked by such impediments. His
business was with the Secretary of State, and none other. Parliament was
in session, and the Home Secretary was at the afternoon sitting of the
House. Hugh Ritson sought and found him there. He explained his purpose
in few words, and was listened to with a faint smile of incredulity.
The secretary was a stolid Yorkshireman, who affected whatever measure
of bluffness had not been natural to him from birth. He first looked at
his visitor with obvious doubts of his sanity; and when this suspicion
had been set at rest by Hugh's incisive explanation, with an equally
obvious desire to feel his bumps.
But the face of the Yorkshireman soon became complicated by other shades
of expression than such as come of distrust of a man's reason or
contempt of his sentimentality.
"Hadn't you better sleep on it, and come to see me at Whitehall in the
morning?" he said, with more respect than he had yet shown. "Then if you
are still of the same mind, I will send for the Public Prosecutor."
Hugh Ritson bowed his acquiescence.
"And can I have the order for Portland?" he said.
"Probably. It will be against the new regulation that none may visit a
convict prison except prison officials and persons interested in prison
discipline. But we'll see what can be done."
That night, Hugh Ritson called at the Convent of St. Margaret. It was
late when he entered, and when he came out again, half an hour
afterward, the lamps were lighted in the Abbey Gardens. The light fell
on the face of the lay sister who opened the door to him. She wore a
gray gown, but no veil or scapular, and beneath the linen band that
covered her hair her eyes were red and swollen.
Hugh Ritson hailed a hansom in the Broad Sanctuary, and drove to Hendon.
The bar of the Hawk and Heron was full of carriers, carters,
road-menders, and farm-laborers, all drinking, and all noisy. But,
despite this evidence of a thriving trade, the whole place had a
bankrupt appearance as of things going to wreck. Jabez served behind the
counter. He had developed a good deal of personal consequence, and held
up his head, and repeatedly felt the altitude of a top-knot that curled
there, and bore himself generally with the cockety air of the young
rooster after the neck of the old one has been screwed. Mrs. Drayton sat
knitting in the room where Mercy and the neighbor's children once played
together. When Hugh Ritson went in to her, the old body started.
"Lor's a mercy, me, sir, to think it's you! I'm that fearsome, that I
declare I shiver and quake at nothing. And good for nowt i' the world
neither, not since my own flesh and blood, as you might say, disowned
me."
"Do you mean at the trial?" asked Hugh Ritson.
"The trial, sir!" said the landlady, lifting bewildered eyes, while the
click of the needles ceased. "My Paul weren't there. Cummerland,
sir--and you heard him yourself what he said of me." A corner of her
house-wife's apron went up to her face. "Me as had brought him up that
tender! Well," recovering composure, "I've lost heart, and serve him
right. I just lets the house and things go, I do. I trusts to
Providence; and that Jabez, he's no better nor a babby in the public
line."
When Hugh Ritson left the inn, the old body's agitation increased. She
had set down the knitting, and was fidgeting, first with her cap and
then her apron.
"Listen to me," said Hugh. "To-day is Friday. On Monday you must go to
the convent where you saw the mother of Paul. Ask for Sister Grace. Will
you remember--Sister Grace? She will tell you all."
It was hard on eleven o'clock when Hugh Ritson returned to town. The
streets were thronged, and he walked for a long hour amid the crowds
that passed through the Strand. In all that multitudinous sea of faces,
there was not a countenance on which the mark of suffering was more
indelibly fixed than on his own.
His sensibilities were wrought up to an unwonted pitch. He was like a
waif adrift in unknown waters, a cloud without anchor in a tempestuous
sky; yet he felt that night as he had never felt before, that he had
suddenly become possessed of another and most painful sense. Not a face
in that sea of faces but he seemed to know its secret fear, its joy and
sorrow, the watchful dread that seared the hidden heart, the fluttering
hope that buoyed it up.
It was an awful thing to be turned adrift in a world of sin and
suffering with this agonizing sense. He could look, whether he would or
not, beneath the smiling and rubicund countenance of the
hail-fellow-well-met to that corrosive spot within where the trust of
the widow and fatherless had been betrayed; or see beyond the stolid and
heavy appearance proper to the ox the quivering features of the man who
had stood long years ago above the dead body of the woman who had thrown
her death at his door as sole reward for the life he had wrecked.
Nay, not only did the past write its manual there, but the future wrote
its sign. He knew that the young girl in pink ribbons who was hurrying
along with a smile on her lips, from the shop in the west to that
unknown home in the east where the child of her shame had laughed and
crowed and climbed up her bosom to her chin, was doomed to find that the
source of all her joy and half her sorrow lay cold and stiff in its
crib.
He grew fearful of himself; he shuddered as the unsuspected murderer
brushed his elbow; he shuddered yet more as a mirror flashed back the
reflection of his own hard face, and the idea came to him that perhaps
other eyes could see what his eyes saw.
He turned down Arundel Street and on to the Embankment. No! no! no! the
merciful God had not willed it that any man should look so deeply into
the heart of his fellow-man. That was indeed to know good and evil; and
the thought stole over him that perhaps it was in degree as a man had
eaten of the forbidden fruit of the tree of life that he was cursed with
this bitter knowledge.
Here, on the quiet pavement that echoed to his footsteps, the air was
free. He uncovered his head, and the light west wind played in his hair
and cooled his temples. Not a star shone overhead, and the river that
flowed in the bed below was dark. More dark to him was the sea of
humanity that flowed above.
He had heard that the death-roll of the Thames was one of every day for
the year, and he leaned over the granite wall and wondered if the old
river had claimed its toll for the day that was now almost done. His
hair seemed to rise from its roots as he thought that perhaps at that
very instant, in the black waters beneath him, the day's sacrifice was
washing past.
He walked on, and the dull buzz of the Strand fell on his ear. What,
after all, was the old god of the river to the Juggernaut of the city?
And it was now, when the fret of the day had worn down, that Hugh Ritson
thought of all that he had left behind him in the distant north. There
in the darkness and the silence, amid the mountains, by the waving trees
and the rumbling ghylls, lay half the ruins of his ruined life. The glow
of old London's many lights could not reach so far, but the shadow of
that dark spot was here.
CHAPTER XIII.
The clocks struck midnight, and he returned to the hotel at which he had
engaged a bed. He did not lie down to sleep, but walked to and fro the
night through.
Next morning at ten he was at the Home Office again. He saw the
secretary and some of the law officers of the Crown. When he came out he
carried in his pocket an order to visit a convict in Portland, and was
attended by a police-sergeant in plain clothes. They took train from
Waterloo at two in the afternoon, and reached Weymouth at six. When they
crossed the strip of sea, the best of the day was gone, and a fresh
breeze blew across the breakwater.
The Saxon walls of the castle at the foot of the Vern Hill reflected the
chill blue of the water; but far above, where the rocky coast dipped to
the beach, the yellow stone, with the bluish clay in its crevices, shone
in the glow of the sinking sun.
Hugh Ritson and his companion put up for the night at the Portland Arms
Inn. A ruddy, round-faced man in middle life, clean shaven and dressed
youthfully, was smoking in the parlor. He exchanged a salutation with
the cordiality of one who was nothing loath for a chat; then he picked
up the old Reeve staff, and explained the ancient method of computing
tithes. But Hugh Ritson was in no humor for conversation, and after
dinner he set out for a solitary walk. He took the road that turns from
the beach through the villages of Chiswell and Fortune's Well. When he
reached the top of the hill the sea lay around him; and beneath him, to
the right and left of the summit, were the quarries where the convicts
labored, with two branches of an inclined railway leading down to the
breakwater. On the summit itself, known as the Grove, was a long, high
granite wall, with a broad gate-way, and the lancet lights of a lodge at
one side of it. This was the convict prison, and the three or four
houses in front of it were the residences of governor, chaplain, and
chief warder. A cordon of cottages at a little distance were the homes
of the assistant warders. There were a few shops amid this little group
of cottages, and one public house, the Spotted Dog.
Hugh Ritson strolled into the tavern and sat down in a little
"snuggery," which was separated from a similar apartment by a wooden
partition that stood no higher than a tall man's height, and left a
space between the top stile and the ceiling. A company of men gossiped
at the other side of the partition.
"Talk of B 2001," said a guttural voice (Hugh Ritson started at the
sound), "I took the stiff'ning out of him first go off. When he'd done
he separates and come on from the moor; I saw he wasn't an old lag, so
says I to 'im, 'Green 'un,' I says, 'if you're leary, you'll fetch a
easy lagging, and if you're not, it'll be bellows to mend with you.'
'What d'ye mean?' he says. 'It's bloomin' 'ard work here,' I says, 'and
maybe you don't get shin-of-beef soup to do it on. Bread and water, for
a word,' I says. 'You're in my gang, quarrying, and I won't work you
'ard except I'm druv to it, but I want wide men in my gang,' I says,
'and no putting the stick on agen the screw.' 'Don't understand,' he
says. 'Then follow a straight tip,' I says; 'stand by your warder and
he'll stand by you.' Blest if that lag as I'd give that good advice to
didn't get me fined the very next day."
"Never!" said sundry incredulous voices.
"It was a hot afternoon, and I'd just whipped a quid in my mouth and
leaned atop of my musket for forty winks after dinner. The second-timers
was codding afront of me, and 2001 and the young chap as was dying of
the consumption was wheeling and filling ahead. Well, up comes the
governor right in front of 2001, and shouts, 'Warder,' he shouts,
'you're fined for inattention.' Then off he goes. All right, Mr. 2001, I
says, I'll not misremember."
"What did you do?"
"Do?" (a loud, hollow laugh). "That was when the barracks was building,
and one day a bit of a newspaper blowed over from the officers'
quarters, and 2001 came on it, and the botcher picked it up. He'd
chucked hisself quick. 'Right about face--march.' He got seven stretch,
a month's marks, and lost his bedding."
A hearty laugh followed this account of a "screw's" revenge on a "green"
convict. Hugh Ritson listened and shuddered.
"I ain't surprised at anything from that luny," said another voice. "He
was in my gang at the moor, and I know'd 'im. They put 'im in the
soap-suds gang first, but he got hisself shifted. Then they sent 'im
botching with the tailors, but he put out his broom for the governor,
and said a big lusty man same as 'im wasn't for sitting on a board all
day. The flat didn't want to fetch a easy lagging, that's the fact."
There was a loud guffaw.
"So they put 'im in my turf gang out on the moor, and one day a old
clergyman come in gaiters and a broad-brimmer, and a face as if the
master of the house were a-shaking at his hand, and the missis flopping
down-stairs to give him a smack of the lips. Well, 2001 saw him in
Principal Warder Rennell's office, and not afore the bars. So next day I
says, 'Got anybody outside as would like to send you summat by the
Underground?' 'The what?' he says, reg'lar black in the face. 'The
underground railway,' I says, tipping him a wink. 'Get away from me, you
bloodsucker!' he says. But I pinched 'im. The old lags were laughing at
one of the grave-digger's oyster-openers, when up comes Rennell. 'Who's
laughing?' he says. 'It's 2001,' I says; 'he's always idling and
malingering.'"
"Ha, ha, ha! what did he get?"
"Three days' bread and water, a week's marks, and loss of class
privileges. He didn't mind the grub and the time, but Jack-in-the-box,
who was warder on his landing, said he took it proper bad as he
couldn't write home to the missis."
"What's his dose?"
"Three. One of the old lags would do it on his head, and fetch it easy,
too. He's a scholar, and could get to be a wardsman in the infirmary, or
medicine factotum for the croaker, or maybe book-keeper for the
governor. But he's earned no remissions, and he'll fill his time afore
he slings his hook again."
Hugh Ritson could support the gossip no longer. He got up to leave the
house, but before doing so he pushed open the door that led to the
adjoining room, and stood a moment on the threshold, comprehending
everything and everybody in one quick glance. The air breathed fresh
outside. He walked in the gathering gloom of evening to the ruins of the
church by the cliff, and, passing through the lych-gate, he came on the
beaten track to the rocks. The rocks lay a hundred feet beneath, torn
from the mainland in craggy masses that seemed ready to slide from their
base to the deep chasm between. Could it be possible that men who were
the slaves of hinds like those in yonder tavern could cling to their
little lives while a deliverance like this beetling cliff stood near? A
cold smile played on Hugh Ritson's face as he thought that, come what
would, such slavery was not for him.
The sycamore by the ruined chancel pattered in the breeze, and the
wheatear's last notes came from its top-most bough. Far below the waves
were rocking lazily. There were other waves at Hugh Ritson's feet--the
graves of dead men. Some who were buried there long ago were buried in
their chains. Under the earth the fettered men--on the ruins of the
church the singing bird. Across the sea the light was every moment
fading. In another hour the day would be done, and then the moon would
look down peacefully on the fettered and the free.
Hugh Ritson returned to the Portland Arms Inn. He found the
police-sergeant in conversation with the ruddy-faced gentleman who had
wished to explain to him the mysteries of the Reeve staff.
"He is the doctor at the prison," whispered the sergeant aside.
Presently Hugh turned to the doctor and said:
"Do you happen to know the convict B 2001?"
"Yes--Drayton," said the doctor; "calls himself Ritson. Are you a
friend?"
Hugh Ritson's face quivered slightly.
"No," he answered, "I am not his friend." Then, after a pause, "But I
have an order to see him. Besides, I have just heard him discussed by a
company of wardens in a pot-house on the hill."
"Who were they? What were they like?"
"A tall man, one of them, fifty-five years of age, gray hair, grizzly
beard, dark, vindictive eyes, a gash on one cheek, and a voice like a
crow's."
"Humph! Jim-the-ladder--a discharged soldier."
"Another, a cadaverous fellow, with a plausible tongue."
"Horrocks--an old second-classer; served his time at Dartmoor and got
promotion--doubtful official discipline."
"They both deserve one more and much higher promotion," said Hugh
Ritson, with emphasis.
"You mean this." The doctor laughed, and put the forefinger of one hand,
held horizontally, to the tip of the other, held upright.
"Can it be possible that the law is unable to maintain a fair stand-up
fight with crime, and must needs call a gang of poltroons and
blackmailers to its assistance?"
"You heard a bad account of B 2001, I judge?"
"I heard of nothing that he had done which the Pope of Rome might have
feared to acknowledge."
"You are right--he's as good a man as there's on Portland Bill," said
the doctor, "and if he's not quite as immaculate as his holiness, he's
in the right of it this time."
Hugh Ritson glanced up.
"You've heard he's in the punishment cells," said the doctor. "By the
way, you'll not see him until Monday; he can't join his gang before, and
he hasn't a class privilege left, poor devil."
Hugh inquired the cause.
"Since he came here he's been yoked to a young fellow dying of
consumption. The lad didn't relish the infirmary--he lost his marks
toward remission there. He knew the days he had to serve, and used to
nick them off every night on his wooden spoon. It was a weary way from a
thousand back, back, back to one. And that Jim-the-ladder took delight
in keeping up the count by reports. The poor boy wanted to die in his
mother's arms. He had got his time down to a week, when the 'screw'
clapped as many marks on to him as added a month to his imprisonment.
Then he lost heart, and dropped down like a flounder, and when they
picked him up he was dead."
"Was B 2001 with him as usual?"
"He was; and he broke the strap, sprung on the warder, and tore his
rifle out of his hands. Jim-the-ladder has been a prize-fighter in his
day, and there was a tussle. He leaped back on B 2001 with a howl, and
the blows fell like rain-drops. There was a fearful clamor, the convicts
screaming like madmen."
"B 2001 is a powerful man," said Hugh Ritson.
The doctor nodded.
"He closed with the warder, gripped him by the waist, twisted him on his
loins, turned him heels overhead, and brought him down in a sweep that
would have battered the life out of any other man. Up came the civil
guard, and the convict was brought into the lodge covered with dust,
sweat and blood, his eyes flashing like balls of fire. They had the
lad's body on a stretcher beside him, the lips white, and the cheeks a
mask of blue. It was a tremendous spectacle, I can tell you."
Hugh Ritson's breast heaved, and somewhere deep down in his soul he
surprised a feeling of pride. That man was a hero and his own brother!
"And so the convict was punished?"
"Fourteen days' penal class diet, and marks enough for six months. He'll
be out on Monday, and then he'll wear the blue cap that denotes a
dangerous man."
Hugh Ritson shuddered.
"Is it impossible to see him to-morrow?" he asked.
"Come up before church in the morning and ask for me, and we'll speak to
the governor."
CHAPTER XIV.
Early next morning Hugh Ritson showed his order at the prison gates, and
was admitted to the doctor's quarters. Hugh and the doctor went in
search of the governor, but learned that he was away from home for the
day. The deputy-governor was abed with a raging tooth, and there was
nothing to do but to wait until morning in order to speak with the
convict.
"You can stay here until to-morrow," said the doctor; "I can give you a
shake-down. And now let us go off to church. But come this way first."
They walked in the direction of that portion of the parade-ground which
was marked, in great white letters, "34 gang," with the broad arrow
beneath. Near to this stood a building composed chiefly of wood and
iron, and marked in similar letters "E Hall." They entered a corridor
that led to an open landing in the shape of a many-sided polygon, each
side being a door. In the middle of the landing there was an iron
circular staircase that led to landings above and below. A warder
paraded the open space, which was lighted by gas-jets.
"Hush! Look," said the doctor, standing by the peep-hole in one of the
doors, and at the same time putting out the gas-jet that burned on the
door-jamb.
Hugh Ritson approached, and at first he could see nothing in the
darkness. But he heard a curious clanking noise from within. Then the
glimmer of a feeble candle came through the bars, and he saw a box-like
apartment, some seven feet long by four feet broad and eight feet high.
It was a punishment cell. There was a shelf at the opposite end, and a
tin wash-basin stood on it.
On the side of the door there must have been a similar shelf, on which
the candle burned. A broom, a can, and a bowl were on the brick floor.
There was no other furniture except a hammock swung from end to end,
and the convict was lying in it at this moment. It could be seen that a
heavy chain was fastened with riveted rings around each ankle, and
linked about the waist by a strap. At every movement this chain clanked;
night and day it was there; if the prisoner shifted in his sleep, its
grating sound broke on the silence of the cell, and banished the only
sunshine of his life, the sunshine of his dreams. His head was back to
the door so that the light of the candle burning on the shelf might fall
on a slate which rested on his breast. Though he occupied a punishment
cell he was writing, and Hugh Ritson's quick eyes could decipher the
words: "Oh, that it would please God to destroy me; that He would but
loose His hand and cut me off! Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?" He paused in his writing and
pecked like a bird at a hard piece of bread beside him.
Hugh Ritson fell back, and as his infirm foot grated along the floor,
the convict started and turned his face. It was a blank, pale face, full
of splendid resolution and the nobility of suffering, but without one
ray of hope.
"Do you know him?" asked the doctor.
But Hugh Ritson's eyes were on the ground, and he made no answer.
They went to church. The civil guard was drawn up under the gallery with
loaded rifles. Eight hundred convicts attended service; some of them
were penitent; most of them were trying to make a high profession of
contrition as a bid for the good graces of the chaplain. The obtrusive
reverence of one sinister gray-head near at hand attracted Hugh Ritson's
especial attention. He knelt with his face to the gallery in which the
choir sat. Beside him was a youth fresh from Millbank. The hoary sinner
was evidently initiating the green hand into the mysteries of his new
home. He was loud in his responses, but his voice had a trick of
dropping suddenly to a whispered conference.
"Who's the fat 'un in the choir? A chap as is doing his ten. His missis
chared to keep the kids, and one morning early he popped the old girl's
shoes."
The voice of the chaplain interrupted further explanation; but after
another loud response the old rascal's mouth was twisted awry with the
words:
"He's a wide 'un, he is--seat in the choir got comfortable cushions.
Besides, he gets off Saturday morning's work for practicing--got no more
voice nor a corn-crake."
Evidently it was no disadvantage here to be the greatest of vagabonds.
When a cadaverous old Jew came hobbling up the aisle with his gang, the
gray-head whispered, with awe:
"It's old Mo; he's in the stocking gang; but I did business with him
when he could ha' sent old Rothschild home for a pauper."
At one moment the attention of the green hand was arrested by a tall man
in the black and gray that indicated a convict who had attempted to
escape.
"Says he's in for twenty thousand, but it's a lie," whispered the old
man; "he only knocked a living out of the religious fake."
The last of the conference that Hugh Ritson overheard was a piece of
touching advice.
"Them as 'as any pluck in 'em turns savage, same as B 2001; them as
'asn't, knocks under, same as me; and I says to you, knock under."
After service the sacrament was celebrated. There must have been many
hundreds of communicants, all humble in their piety. It could be noticed
that the chaplain had sometimes to keep a tight grip of the goblet
containing the wine.
That night Hugh Ritson lodged at the doctor's quarters. He did not lie,
but, as on the night before, he walked the long hours through,
steadfastly resisting every temptation to sleep. At five in the morning
he heard the great bell at the gate ring for two minutes, and, shortly
afterward, the tramp, tramp, tramp of many feet under his window. The
convicts, to the number of fifteen hundred, were drawn up on the
parade-ground. They looked chill in the cold light of early morning;
their gray jackets lay loose on their spare shoulders; their hands hung
inertly at their sides, and they walked with the oscillating motion of
men whose feet were sore in their heavy boots. The civil guard was drawn
up, the chief warder whistled, and then the men fell out into gangs of
twenty-five each, attended by an assistant warder.
"Rear rank, take two paces to the right--march."
Then the tramp, tramp again. As the outside gangs passed through the
gate, each officer in charge received his rifle, bayonet, belt, and
cartridge-box from the armorer at the lodge. The stone-dressing gang
passed close under the window, and Hugh Ritson reeled back as one of the
men--a stalwart fellow in a blue cap, who was walking abreast of a
misshapen creature with a face full of ferocity--lifted his eyes upward
from the file.
At eight o'clock the governor appeared at his receiving-office. He was a
slight man with the face and figure of a greyhound. His military
frock-coat was embossed with Crimean medals, and he was redolent of the
odor of Whitehall. He received Hugh Ritson's papers with a curious
mixture of easy courtesy and cold dignity--a sort of combination of the
different manners in which he was wont to bow to a secretary of state
and condemn a convict to the chain and bread and water.
"The men are back to breakfast at nine," he said. "Watkins," to the
chief warder, "have B 2001 brought round to the office immediately 34
gang returns."
Hugh Ritson had left the receiving-office and was crossing the
parade-ground when a loud hubbub arose near the lodge.
"The boat!" shouted twenty voices, and a covey of convicts ran in the
direction of a shed where an eight-oar boat was kept on the chocks. "A
man has mizzled--run a wagon into the sea and is drifting down the
race."
How the demons laughed, how they cursed in jest, how they worked, how
luminous were their eyes and haggard faces at the prospect of
recapturing one of their fellow-prisoners who had tried to make his
escape! Every convict who helped to catch a fugitive was entitled to a
remission of six days. The doctor took Hugh Ritson up on to the lead
flat that covered his quarters. From that altitude they could see over
the prison wall to the rocky coast beyond. Near the ruins of the old
church a gang of convicts were running to and fro, waving their hands,
and shouting in wild excitement.
"It's gang 34," said the doctor, "Jim-the-ladder's gang."
The sun had risen, the sea was glistening in its million facets, and
into many a rolling wave a sea-bird dipped its corded throat. In the
silvery water-way there was something floating that looked as if it
might have been a tub. It was the wagon that the convict had driven into
the water for a boat.
"It will sink--it's shod with thick hoops of iron," said the doctor.
The convict could be seen standing in it. He had thrown off his coat and
cap, and his sleeveless arms were bare to the armpits. The civil guard
ran to the cliff and fired. One shot hit. The man could be seen to tear
the coarse linen shirt from his breast and bind it above the wrist.
"Why does he not crouch down?" said Hugh Ritson: he did not know who
this convict was, but in his heart there was a feverish desire that the
prisoner should escape.
"He's a doomed man--he's in the race--it's flowing hard, and he'll drift
back to the island," said the doctor.
Half an hour later a posse of the civil guard, with two assistant
warders, brought the recaptured fugitive into the governor's
receiving-office. The stalwart fellow strode between the warders with a
firm step and head erect. He wore no jacket or cap, and on one bare arm
a strip of linen was roughly tied. His breast was naked, his eyes were
aflame, and save for a black streak of blood across the cheek, his face
was ashy pale. But that man was not crushed by his misfortunes; he
seemed to crush them.
"Take that man's number," said the governor.
"Ay, take it, and see you take it rightly," said the convict.
"It's B 2001," said the chief warder.
The governor consulted a paper that lay on his table.
"Send for the gentleman," he said to an attendant. "It's well for you
that you are wanted by the law officers of the Crown," he added, turning
to the prisoner.
The convict made no answer; he was neither humble nor sullen; his manner
was frank but fierce, and made almost brutal by a sense of wrong.
The next moment Hugh Ritson stepped into the office. His eyes dropped,
and his infirm foot trailed heavily along the floor. He twitched at his
coat with nervous fingers; his nostrils quivered; his whole body
trembled perceptibly.
"This is the man," said the chief warder, with a deferential bow.
Hugh Ritson tried to raise his eyes, but they fell suddenly. He opened
his lips to speak, but the words would not come. And meantime the wet,
soiled, naked, close-cropped, blood-stained convict, flanked by armed
warders, stood before him with head erect and eyes that searched his
soul. The convict rested one hand on his hip and pointed with the other
at Hugh Ritson's abject figure.
"What does this man want with me?" he said, and his voice was deep.
At that Hugh Ritson broke in impetuously:
"Paul, I will not outrage your sufferings by offering you my pity."
The officers looked into each other's faces.
"I want none of your pity!" said the convict, bitterly.
"No; it is I who need yours," said Hugh Ritson, in a low tone.
The convict laughed a hard laugh, and turned to the warders.
"Here, take me away--I've had enough of this."
"Listen. I have something to say to you--something to do for you, too."
The convict broke afresh into a laugh.
"Take me away, will you?"
"What if I say I am sorry for the past?" said Hugh.
"Then you are a hypocrite!" the convict answered.
Hugh Ritson drew himself up, and took his breath audibly. In one swift
instant his face became discolored and his features pinched and rigid.
There was silence, and then in a low, broken tone, he said:
"Paul, you know well what sort of a man I am; don't drive me too hard. I
have come here to do you a service. Remember your sufferings--"
Once again the convict broke into a cold laugh.
"Remember that others--one other--may be suffering with you."
The convict's haughty look fled like a flash of light.
"Here, take me out of this," he muttered in a low, hoarse voice. He took
a step back, but the guard closed around him. "I won't stand to listen
to this man. Do you hear? I won't listen," he said hotly; "he has come
to torture me--that's all!"
"I have come to undo what I have done," said Hugh. "Paul, let me undo
it. Don't rouse the bad part of me at this crisis of your life and
mine."
The convict paused, and said more quietly:
"Then it's your policy to undo it."
Hugh Ritson flinched. The words had gone to his heart like a spear. If
he had dared to mask his motive, that thrust would have left it naked.
"I will not wrong the truth by saying I am a changed man," he answered
meekly. "My motive is my own; but my act shall be all in all to you."
The convict's face lightened.
"You have used me for your vengeance," he said; "you shall not use me
for your contrition also. Guards, let me out--let me out, I tell you!"
The governor interposed:
"When you leave this room you go direct to the cells."
"Ay, take me to your cells, and let me lie there and die and rot," said
the convict.
"Take him away," said the governor.
"Paul, I beseech you to hear me!" cried Hugh, amid the clanking of the
arms of the guard.
"Take him away!" the governor shouted again.
An hour after, B 2001 was recalled to the receiving-office. He was quiet
enough now.
"We have an order respecting you from the Secretary of State," said the
governor. "You are required to give evidence at a trial. At two o'clock
you leave Portland for Cumberland, and your guard goes with you."
The convict bent his head and went out in silence.
CHAPTER XV.
Paul Ritson--let him be known by his official number no more--was not
taken to the punishment cells. He was set to work with the
stone-dressing gang stationed near the gate of the prison. The news of
his attempt to escape had not spread more rapidly than rumors of his
approaching departure.
"I say," shouted a hoary convict, "take a crooked message out?"
"What's your message?"
"On'y a word to the old girl telling her where she'll find a bunch of
keys as she wants partic'lar."
"Write her yourself, my man."
"What, and the governor read it, and me get a bashing, and the crushers
pinch the old moll? Well, I am surprised at ye; but I forgot, you're a
straight man, you are."
A mocking laugh followed this explanatory speech.
A young fellow with a pale, meek face and the startled eyes of a hare
crept close up to where Paul Ritson worked, and took a letter out of one
of his boots.
"This is the last I had from home," he said, quietly, and put the letter
into Paul's hands.
It was a soiled and crumpled paper, so greasy from frequent handlings
and so much worn by many foldings that the writing could scarcely be
deciphered. Home? It was dated from the Union of Liverpool, and had come
from his invalid wife and his children, all living there.
The poor fellow could not read, but he had somehow learned the letter
by heart, and was able to point out each bit of family history in the
exact place where it was recorded.
He had lost his class privileges, and was not allowed to reply; and now
he wanted to know if Paul Ritson could get down to Liverpool and see his
wife and little ones, and tell them how well he was, and how lusty he
looked, and what fine times he had of it--"just to keep up their
spirits, you know."
"I say, you sir," bawled a sinister gray-head--the same whose
conversation was overheard in church--"I hear as you're a employer of
labor when yer not lagged. Any chance? I wants to leave my sitivation.
Long hours, and grub reg'lar onsatisfactory. Besides, my present
employer insists on me wearing a collar with a number--same as a wild
beast or a bobby. It's gettin' ridic'lus. So I've give notice, and I
flit in September. Maybe ye see as I'm growing my wings to fly." The
hoary sinner pointed upward to his grizzly hair, which was longer than
the hair of his comrades. "On'y it's coming out another tint o' awrburn
nor what it was ten years ago, and the old woman won't have the same
pride in my pussonal appearance."
At two o'clock the assistant warder known as Jim-the-ladder marched Paul
Ritson to the chief warder's office. There the convict was handcuffed
and the warder armed. Then they set out.
On the steamboat that plied between the Portland Ferry and Weymouth the
convict dress attracted much attention. The day was some sort of chapel
festival, and great numbers of chapel people in holiday costume crowded
the decks and climbed the paddle-boxes; the weather was brilliant; the
sun danced on the waters like countless fairies on a floor of glass; a
brass band played on the bridge.
Again at the Weymouth railway station the people gathered in little
groups, and looked askance at the convict. During the few minutes which
elapsed before the train left the platform, a knot of spectators stood
before the carriage and peered in at the window.
Paul Ritson paid little heed to these attentions, but they were often
unwelcome enough. "Keep clear of him--see the blue cap?" "What an
ill-looking fellow--to be sure, his looks are enough to hang him."
Paul laughed bitterly. His heart felt cold within him at that moment. If
he had worn broadcloth and a smile, how different the popular verdict
might have been. Who then would have said that he was a villain?
Certainly not yonder sleek minister of Christ who was humming a psalm
tune a moment ago, and paused to whisper, "Be sure your sin will find
you out." The black-coated Pharisee was handing a lady into a
first-class carriage.
The train started. Paul threw himself back in his seat, and thought of
all that had occurred since he made this journey before. He was
traveling in the other direction then, and what an agony was that first
experience of convict life! He had never thought of it from that day to
this.
Other and more poignant memories had day after day obliterated the
recollection of that experience. But it came back now as freshly as if
it had all occurred yesterday. He was one of a gang of twenty who were
traveling from Millbank to Dartmoor. The journey to Waterloo in the
prison van had been a terrible ordeal. He had thought in the cells that
it would be nothing to him if people in the streets recognized him. The
shameful punishment of an innocent man was not his, but the law's
disgrace.
Yet, when he was marched out into the prison grounds abreast of a
cadaverous wretch with shrunken brows and the eyes of a hawk, an old
thief in front of him, and a murderer convicted of manslaughter treading
on his heels, the cold sweat burst in great beads from his forehead.
He had meant to hold up his head, and if people looked into his face to
look frankly back into their faces. But when his turn came he leaped
into the van, and his chin buried itself in his breast.
Then the crowds drawn up on the pavement outside as the gates rolled
back and the van passed through; the crush in a busy thoroughfare when
the van stopped to let a line of crowded omnibuses go by; the horrible
scene at the station when the convicts were marched down the platform,
and every ear was arrested by the tramp, tramp of twenty fettered men!
Above all, the jests and the laughter of the older hands who had served
their time before, and were superior to all small considerations of
public shame! "I say, you with the gig-lamps, toss a poor devil a bit o'
'bacco." "Seen us afore? In coorse you have. You in the white choker,
look hard while yer at it, and you'll know us again." "Oh, Mother
Shipton, and is that yourself? and how pleased we is to see ye, and just
tip us yer welwet purse, and we'll give it yer back when we're this way
again." And not all the rigor of the attendant warders was enough to
suppress such jesting.
Paul Ritson could not forbear to laugh aloud when he remembered with
what an agony of sweat he had that day crept back into his seat.
Times had changed since then. He had spent a year and a half in a
government school, and had been educated out of all torturing delicacy.
The warder attempted to draw him into conversation. Jim-the-ladder
repeatedly protested that he bore no malice. "I'm a good fellow at
bottom," he said more than once, and Paul Ritson showed no malice. But
he laughed bitterly at a grim and an obvious thought that the warder's
dubious words suggested. Failing in his efforts at conciliation, the
warder charged his pipe and relapsed into a long silence.
They had a compartment to themselves. At a station where the train
stopped a man opened the door and had already put one foot into the
carriage when he recognized the caste of his traveling companions. He
disappeared in a twinkling. Paul Ritson did his best to restrain the
anger that well-nigh choked him. He merely sent a ringing laugh after
the retreating figure. At another station a police inspector, dressed in
a little brief authority, caught sight of the blue cap and gray jacket,
and bustled up to examine the warder's papers. Then, with a lofty look,
he strode through the group of spectators whom his presence had
attracted.
Arrived at Waterloo, the warder hailed a cab, and they drove to Scotland
Yard to report themselves. There they supped on cocoa and brown bread,
with the addition of a rasher of bacon and a pipe for the warder. Thence
they were driven to Euston to catch the nine-o'clock train to Penrith.
The journey north was uneventful. At Rugby, Stafford, and elsewhere, the
train stopped, and little groups of people looked in at the convict, and
made apposite comments on his appearance, crime, and condition. Paul
Ritson often shut his eyes and said nothing. Sometimes a sneer curled
his lip, sometimes he burst into a bitter laugh. He was thinking that
this was a fitting close to the degradation of his prison life. If one
feeling of delicacy, one tender sentiment, one impulse of humanity
remained to him when the gates of Portland closed behind him; it only
required this cruel torture to crush it forever.
In spite of the risk of dismissal and the more immediate danger at the
hands of Paul Ritson, the warder coiled himself up and fell asleep. It
was after midnight when they reached Crewe, and from that point of the
journey the worst of the torment ceased. Their merciful fellow-men were
mostly in bed, dreaming of heroic deeds that they were doing. But the
silence of night had its own torture. As the train rumbled on through
the darkness, now rattling in a long tunnel, now sliding into open air
like a boat into still water, Paul Ritson's mind went back to the day
which seemed now to be so far away that it might have belonged to
another existence, when he traveled this road with the dear soul who had
trusted her young and cloudless life to his keeping. Where was she now?
Peace be with her, wheresoever she was! He recalled her tenderest
glance, he seemed to hear her softest tone; the light pressure of her
delicate fingers was now on his hands--the hard hands that wore the
irons. And even at that moment, when all his soul went out to the pure
young wife who had shared his sufferings, and he felt as if time and
space were nothing, as if he had drawn her to him by the power of his
yearning love, it seemed to him that all at once there rang in his ears
the shrill, sharp voices of the convicts rapping out their foul and
frightful oaths.
He leaped to his feet, with a muttered oath on his own lips, and when
the imagined agony with which he surprised himself had given way to a
new sense of his actual sufferings, his heart grew yet more cold and
bitter. He thought of what he had been and of what he was. There could
be no disguising the truth--he was a worse man. Yes; whatsoever had once
been pure in him, whatsoever had once been generous, whatsoever had once
been of noble aspiration, was now impure, and ungenerous, and ignoble.
Above all else, he had lost that tenderness which is the top and crown
of a strong man. He felt as if the world had lifted its hand against
him, and as if he were ready and eager to strike back.
They reached Penrith toward four in the morning, and then the carriage
in which they traveled was shunted on to the branch line to await the
first train toward Cockermouth. The day was breaking. From the window
Paul Ritson could see vaguely the few ruins of the castle. That familiar
object touched him strangely. He hardly knew why, but he felt that a
hard lump at his heart melted away. By and by the brakeman shouted to
the signalman in the gray silence of the morning. The words were
indifferent--only some casual message--but they were spoken in the broad
Cumbrian that for a year and a half had never once fallen on Paul
Ritson's ear. Then the lump that had melted as his heart seemed to rise
to his throat.
The gray light become intermingled with red, and soon the sky to the
east was aflame. Paul let down the carriage window, and long waves of
sweet mountain air, laden with the smell of peat, flowed in upon him.
His lips parted and his breast expanded. At five o'clock the engine was
attached. A few carriages were added at the platform, and these
contained a number of pitmen, in their red-stained fustian, going down
for the morning shift. When the train moved westward, the sun had
risen, and all the air was musical with the songs of the birds. Very
soon the train ran in among the mountains, and then at last the
bitterness of Paul Ritson's heart seemed to fall away from him like a
garment. That quick thrill of soul which comes when the mountains are
first seen after a long absence is a rapture known to the mountaineer
alone. Paul saw his native hills towering up to the sky, the white mists
flying off their bald crown, the torrents leaping down their brant
sides, and the tears filled his eyes and blotted it all out. The
sedge-warbler was singing with the wheatear, and, though he could not
see them now, he knew where they were: the sedge-warbler was flitting
among the rushes of the low-land mere; the wheatear was perched on the
crevice of gray rock in which it had laid its pale-blue eggs; the sheep
were bleating on the fells, and he knew their haunts by the lea of the
bowlders and along the rocky ledges where grew the freshest grasses.
Down the corries of Blencathra, long drifts of sheep were coming before
the dogs, and he knew that the shepherds had been out on the fells
during the short summer night, numbering the sheep for the washing in
the beck below.
Everything came back upon him like a memory of yesterday. He stood up
and thrust out his head, and did not think of his gray jacket and blue
cap until a carter who watered his horses at a pool near the railway
lines started and stared as if he had seen a "boggle" at noonday.
Then Paul Ritson remembered that he was still a convict, that his hands
wore irons, that the man who lay sleeping on the seat of the carriage
was his warder, and that the steely thing that peeped from the belt of
the sleeping man was a revolver, to be promptly used if he attempted to
escape.
But not even these reflections sufficed to dissipate the emotion that
had taken hold of him. He began at length to think of Hugh Ritson, and
to wonder why he had been brought back home. Home!--home? It was a
melancholy home-coming, but it was coming home, nevertheless.
CHAPTER XVI.
Two days later the gray old town-hall that stands in the market-place of
Keswick was surrounded by a busy throng. The Civil Court of the County
Assize was sitting in this little place for the nonce to try a curious
case of local interest. It was an action for ejectment brought by Greta,
Mrs. Paul Ritson, against a defendant whose name was entered on the
sheet as Paul Drayton, alias Paul Ritson, now of the Ghyll, in the
Parish of Newlands.
The court-room was crowded. It was a large, bare room, with a long table
and two rows of chairs crossing the end, the one row occupied by the
judge and a special jury, the other by the lawyers for the prosecution
and defense. The rest of the chamber was not provided with seats, and
there the dalespeople huddled together.
A seat had been found for Greta at one end of the table. Her cheek
rested on her hand. She dropped her eyes as the spectators craned their
necks to catch a glimpse of her. Behind her, and with one hand on her
chair-back, stood the old parson, his Jovian white head more white than
of old, the tenderer lines in his mellow face drawn down to a look of
pain. Immediately facing Greta, at the opposite end of the table, Hugh
Ritson sat. One leg was thrown over the other knee, and the long,
nervous fingers of the right hand played with the shoelace. His head was
inclined forward, and the thin, pallid, clean-cut face with the great
calm eyes and the full, dilated nostrils was more than ever the face of
a high-bred horse. None would have guessed the purpose with which Hugh
Ritson sat there. One would have said that indifference was in those
eyes and on that brow--indifference or despair.
Near where the rustle was loudest and most frequent among the
spectators, Drayton sat by the side of Mr. Bonnithorne. He was dressed
in his favorite suit of broad plaid, and had a gigantic orange-lily
stuck jauntily in his buttonhole. His face was flushed and his eyes
sparkled. Now and again he leaned back to whisper something to the
blacksmith, the miller, and the landlord of the Flying Horse, who were
grouped behind him. His remarks must have been wondrously facetious, for
they were promptly followed by a low gurgle, which was as promptly
suppressed.
The counsel for the plaintiff opened his case. The plaintiff sued as the
owner in succession to her husband, who was at present dead to the law.
She contended that the man who now stood seized of the Ghyll was not her
husband, Paul Ritson, but Paul Drayton, an innkeeper of Hendon, who bore
him a strange personal resemblance, and personated him. The evidence of
identity which should presently be adduced was full and complete in the
essential particular of proving that the defendant was not Paul Ritson,
by whose title alone the defense would maintain the right of present
possession. Unhappily, the complementary evidence as to the actual
identity of the defendant with Paul Drayton, the publican, had been
seriously curtailed by the blindness, followed by the death, of an
important witness. Still, if he, the counsel for the plaintiff, could
prove to the satisfaction of the jury that the defendant was not the man
he represented himself to be, they would have no course but to grant the
ejectment for which the plaintiff asked. To this end he would call two
witnesses whose evidence must outweigh that of all others--the wife of
Paul Ritson, and the clergyman who solemnized the marriage.
Greta's name was called, and she rose at the end of the table. Her bosom
heaved under the small lace shawl that covered her shoulders, and was
knotted like a sailor's scarf, on her breast. She stood erect, her eyes
raised slightly and her drooping hands clasped in front. After the
customary formalities, she was examined.
"You are the only child of the late Robert Lowther?"
"I am the daughter of Robert Lowther."
Drayton threw back his head, and laughed a little.
"You were married to Paul Ritson in 1875 at the parish church of
Newlands, the minister being the Reverend Mr. Christian?"
"I was."
"On the day of your marriage you accompanied your husband to London, and
the same night he left you at the Convent of St. Margaret, Westminster?"
"That is quite true."
There was a buzz of conversation in the court, accompanied by a
whispered conference on the bench. Counsel paused to say that it was not
a part of his purpose to trouble the court with an explanation of facts
which were so extraordinary that they could only be credited on the oath
of a person who, though present, would not be called. At this reference
Hugh Ritson raised his languid eyes, and the examination proceeded.
"Three days afterward you received a message from your husband,
requesting you to meet him at St. Pancras Station, and return with him
to Cumberland by the midnight train?"
"I did."
"Who took you the message?"
"Mrs. Drayton, the old person at the inn at Hendon."
"You went to the station?"
"Oh, yes."
"Tell the court what occurred there."
"Just on the stroke of twelve, when the train was about to leave, a man
whom at first sight I mistook for my husband came hurrying up the
platform, and I stepped into the carriage with him."
"Do you see that man in court?"
"Yes; he sits two seats to your right."
Drayton rose, smiled broadly, bowed to the witness, and resumed his
seat.
"Were you alone in the compartment?"
"At first we were; but just as the train was moving away who should join
us but Parson Christian."
There was another buzz of conversation, and counsel paused again to say
that he should not trouble the court with an explanation of the
extraordinary circumstances by which Parson Christian came to be in
London at that critical moment. These facts formed in themselves a
chain of evidence which must yet come before a criminal court, involving
as it did the story of a conspiracy more painful and unnatural perhaps
than could be found in the annals of jurisprudence.
"Tell the court what passed in the train."
"I perceived at once that the man was not my husband, though strangely
like him in face and figure, and when he addressed me as his wife I
repulsed him."
"Did Parson Christian also realize the mistake?"
"Oh, yes, but not quite so quickly."
"What did you do?"
"We left the train at the first station at which it stopped."
"Did the defendant offer any resistance?"
"No; he looked abashed, and merely observed that perhaps a recent
illness had altered him."
Counsel for the defense, at whose left Mr. Bonnithorne sat as attorney
for the defendant, cross-examined the witness.
"You say that on the night following the morning of your marriage your
husband left you at a convent?"
"I do."
Mr. Bonnithorne dropped his twinkling eyes, and muttered something that
was inaudible to the witness. There was a titter among the people who
stood behind him.
"And you say that Mrs. Drayton took you the message of which you have
spoken. Did she tell you that your husband had been ill?"
"She did."
"We are to infer that you visited the house of the Draytons at Hendon?"
"A railway accident drove us there."
"Did any one accompany the defendant to St. Pancras that night?"
"My husband's brother, Mr. Hugh Ritson, was with him."
"Tell the jury where your husband now is, if he is not at this moment in
court."
No answer. Amid a profound silence the plaintiff's lawyer was understood
to object to the question.
"Well, we can afford to waive it," said counsel, with a superior smile.
"One further question, Mrs. Ritson. Had you any misunderstanding with
your husband?"
"None whatever."
"Will you swear that your voices were not raised in angry dispute while
you were at the inn at Hendon?"
Greta lifted her head and her eyes flashed. "Yes, I will swear it," she
said in a soft voice but with impressive emphasis.
Mr. Bonnithorne reached up to the ear of counsel and was understood to
say that perhaps the point was too delicate to be pressed.
Parson Christian was next examined. The defendant in the present action
was not the man whom he married to the plaintiff. He had since seen Paul
Ritson. Where? In the convict prison of Dartmoor. In cross-examination
he was asked by what name the convict was known to the directors of
Dartmoor. Paul Drayton.
"Then tell the court how you came to identify the defendant as Drayton."
"There were many facts pointing that way."
"Give us one."
"On the morning of the marriage I found a letter lying open before the
fire in my vestry. It was from Mr. Hugh Ritson to Mr. Bonnithorne, and
it mentioned the name of Drayton in a connection which, by the light of
later revelations, provoked many inferences."
Mr. Bonnithorne was unprepared for this answer. Counsel looked at him
inquiringly, but the attorney glanced down and colored deeply.
"Can you show us the letter?"
"No; I left it where I found it."
"Then it can hardly be received as evidence."
The attorney smiled, and the tension of Drayton's face relaxed. There
was a slight shuffle among the people; the witness had stepped back.
Counsel for the defense opened his case. They were asked to believe that
the defendant in the present action was Paul Drayton, in the teeth of
the fact that Paul Drayton was at that moment a convict in a convict
prison. The incredible statement was made that a newly married husband
had placed his young wife in a convent on the night of their marriage,
and that when they should have rejoined each other an interchange had
been made, the husband going to prison in another man's name, the other
man coming to Cumberland to claim the place of the woman's husband.
Moreover, they were asked to believe that the husband's brother, Mr.
Hugh Ritson, had either been fooled by the impostor or made a party to
the imposture. Happily it was easy to establish identity by two
unquestionable chains of evidence--resemblance and memory. It would be
shown that the defendant could be none other than Paul Ritson, first,
because he resembled him exactly in person; second, because he knew all
that Paul Ritson ought to know; third, because he knew nothing that Paul
Ritson might not know. No two men's lives had ever been the same from
the beginning of the world, and as it would be seen that the defendant's
life had been the same as Paul Ritson's, it followed that Paul Ritson
and the defendant were one and the same man.
Dick o' the Syke was the first witness examined for the defense. He
swore that Paul Ritson was active in extinguishing a fire that broke out
in the mill two years ago; that he had climbed to the cross-trees with a
hatchet; and that within the past month the defendant had described to
him the precise locality and shape of the gap made in the roof by the
fire. No one could have known so much except himself and the man who
stood on the cross-trees. That man was Paul Ritson, and he was there and
then recognized by many spectators, among whom was Parson Christian.
The next witness was Mistress Calvert, of the Pack Horse. Paul Ritson
had slept at their house one night two years ago, and a few days since
the present defendant had pointed out the bedroom he occupied, and
recalled the few words of conversation which passed between them.
Natt, the stableman, was called. His sleepy eyes blinked knowingly as he
explained that one winter's night, when the snow fell heavily, Mrs.
Ritson, then Miss Greta, was startled by what she mistook for the ghost
of Paul Ritson. The witness had not been so easily deceived, and the
defendant had since described to him the exact scene and circumstances
of what the lady had thought to be the ghostly appearance.
Then followed John Proudfoot, the blacksmith; Tom o' Dint, the postman;
Giles Raisley, the pitman; Job Sheepshanks, the mason; and Tommy
Lowthwaite, the landlord of the Flying Horse--all swearing to points of
identity.
One recalled the fact that Paul Ritson had a scar on his head that was
caused by the kick of a horse when he was a boy. The defendant had just
such a scar.
Another remembered that Paul Ritson had a mark on the sole of his right
foot which had been made by treading on a sharp piece of rock on
Hindscarth. The defendant had exactly such a mark.
A third had wrestled with Paul Ritson, and knew that he had a mole
beneath the left shoulder-blade on the back. The defendant had a mole in
that unusual place.
Counsel for the defense smiled blandly at the special jury, the special
jury smiled blandly at counsel for the defense. Was it really necessary
that the defendant should be called? Surely it was a pity to occupy the
time of the court. The whole case was in a nutshell--the lady had
quarreled with her husband. State of affairs would be promptly gauged
when it was explained that this action had been raised to anticipate a
forthcoming suit in the divorce court for restitution of connubial
rights.
The counsel for the plaintiff smiled also, and his was a weak smile of
conscious defeat. He stammered a desire to withdraw--said he had been
promised more conclusive evidence when he undertook the case, and sat
down with an apologetic air.
There was a shuffle of feet in the court. Drayton had risen to receive
the congratulations of his friends behind him and the cordial nods of
some of the superior people who had been favored with seats at the right
hand and left of the judge. He was answering in a loud tone, when there
was a sudden lull of the buzz of gossip, and all eyes were directed
toward one end of the table.
Hugh Ritson had risen from his seat, and with a face that was very pale,
but as firm as a rock, he was engaged in a whispered conference with the
plaintiff's counsel. That gentleman's eager face betrayed the keenest
possible interest in what he heard. Presently he lifted his arm with an
impatient gesture, and said:
"My lord, I have unexpectedly come into possession of new and most
important evidence."
"Of what nature?" asked the judge.
"If it is conceivable," said counsel, "that in any question of personal
identity the court will accept the evidence of all the tinkers and
tailors, the riff-raff, the raggabash of the country-side, and reject
that of the wife of the man whose estate is in question, perhaps it will
be allowed that there are three persons who are essential to this
examination--the brother of Paul Ritson, the defendant who claims to be
Paul Ritson, and the convict who is suffering penal servitude in the
name of Paul Drayton. I might name one other whose evidence might be yet
more conclusive than that of any of these alone--the mother of Paul
Ritson; but she is unhappily dead to the world."
Drayton was still on his feet, riveted to the spot where he stood.
Obtuse as he was, he saw at a glance what had occurred. In all his
calculations this chance had never suggested itself--that Hugh Ritson
would risk the personal danger to bring him down.
"Can you put these persons into the witness-box?"
"My lord, it is, I presume, within the liberties of the defendant to
keep carefully out of that box, but the court will not refuse to hear
the evidence of the two persons of whom I speak--the brother of Paul
Ritson and the convict known as Paul Drayton."
At this there was high commotion. Greta had leaned back in her chair,
her bosom heaving, her face shadowed by lines of pain. Parson Christian
stood behind her with a blank expression of bewilderment. Drayton's
brows were tightened and his lips were drawn hard.
"None of their criss-crossin' for me," he muttered.
"You can ask for a new trial," said the judge.
"My lord, another case is pending, and on the issue in this case the
other case must largely depend."
"How far has the present one proceeded?"
"The defendant's case is not yet completed."
During this scene Hugh Ritson had stood quietly by the table. He
remained there with complete self-possession while counsel proceeded to
explain that four days ago, in anticipation of this action and of
another that had been threatened, a statutory declaration had been made
in the presence of the Home Secretary and the law officers of the Crown.
The first result of that statement was that the convict Drayton was now
present in the court-house ready to appear at this trial.
The judge signified his desire that the convict might be brought in and
heard.
Hugh Ritson motioned to a tall man who stood near, and immediately
afterward a door was thrown open and another man stepped into the
court-room.
Every eye was fixed upon him. He wore a convict's gray jacket, with the
round badge marked "3. B 2001. P S," and the broad arrow beneath. His
face was pale and rigid; his large eyes glittered; he was in his full
manhood, but his close-cropped hair was slightly tinged with gray. He
pushed his way through the people, who fell back to let him pass. When
he reached the table he tapped it impatiently with one of his hands,
which were fettered, and threw up his head with a glance of defiance.
His whole bearing was that of a strong man who believed that every man's
hand was against him, and who intended to let it be seen that his own
hand was against every man's.
Counsel rose again, and asked that the defendant's witnesses might be
recalled. This was done.
"John Proudfoot, Job Sheepshanks, Thomas Lowthwaite, Giles Raisley,
look this way. Who is this man?"
There was a dead hush. Then, one by one, the men who had been named
shook their heads. They did not know the convict. Indeed, he was
terribly altered. The ordeal of the past two years had plowed strange
lines in his face. At that moment he was less like himself than was the
impostor who came there to personate him.
Hugh Ritson's manner did not change. Only a slight curl of the lip
betrayed his feelings.
Counsel continued, "Is there any one in court who recognizes him?"
Not a voice responded. All was silence.
"Will the defendant stand side by side with him?"
Drayton leaped up with a boisterous laugh, and swaggered his way to the
opposite side of the table. As he approached, the convict looked at him
keenly.
"Will Mrs. Ritson come forward again?"
Greta had already risen, and was holding Parson Christian's hand with a
nervous grip. She stepped apart, and going behind the two men, she came
to a stand between them. On the one side stood Drayton, with a smirking
face half turned toward the spectators; on the other stood the convict,
his hands bound before him, his defiant glance softened to a look of
tenderness, and his lips parted with the unuttered cry that was ready to
burst from them.
"Greta," said Hugh Ritson, in a low tone of indescribable pathos, "which
of these men is your husband?"
Counsel repeated the question in form.
Greta had slowly raised her eyes from the ground until they reached the
convict's face. Then in an instant, in a flash of light, with the quick
cry of a startled bird, she flung herself on his neck. Her fair head
dropped on the frieze of the convict's jacket, and her sobs were all
that broke the silence.
Hugh Ritson's emotion surged in his throat, but he stood quietly at the
table. Only his slight figure swayed a little and his face quivered. His
work was not yet done.
"This is the answer of nature," he said quietly.
Hugh Ritson was put into the witness-box, and in a voice that was full
and strong, and that penetrated every corner of the court, he identified
the convict as his brother, Paul Ritson.
Counsel for the defense had seemed to be stunned. Recovering himself, he
tried to smile, and said:
"After this melodramatic interlude, perhaps I may be allowed to ask our
new witness a few questions. Did you, at the Central Criminal Court,
held at the Old Bailey in 1875, swear that the person who stands here in
the dress of a convict was not Paul Ritson?"
"I did."
"Now for my second question. Did you also swear that the defendant was
your brother, and therefore not Paul Drayton."
"I did."
"Then you were guilty of perjury at that time, or you are guilty of
perjury now?"
"I was guilty of perjury then."
The judge interposed and asked if the witness was awakened to the
enormity of the crime to which he confessed. Hugh Ritson bent his head.
"Are you conscious that you are rendering yourself liable to penal
servitude?"
"I have signed a declaration of my guilt."
The answers were given in perfect calmness, but a vein of pathos ran
through every word.
"Do you know that a few years back many a poor wretch whose crime was
trifling compared with yours has gone from the dock to the gallows?"
"My guilt is unmitigated guilt. I make a voluntary statement. I am not
here to appeal for mercy."
There was the hush of awe in the court.
The face of the convict wore an expression of amazement.
Counsel smiled again.
"I presume you know that the effect of the law officers of the Crown,
believing the story that you tell us now is that, if they do so, the man
whom you call your brother will be put into possession of the estate of
which your late father died seized?"
"He is entitled to it."
Counsel turned to the jury with a smile.
"It is always necessary to find some standard by which to judge of human
actions. The witness quarreled with the defendant four days ago, and
this is his revenge. But I appeal to the court. Is this story credible?
Is it not a palpable imposture?"
The judge again interposed.
"Men do not risk so much for a lie. The witness knows that when the
court rises the sheriff may take him into custody."
At this counsel rose again and asked the bench not to play into the
hands of the witness by apprehending him.
"Let the convict be examined," said the judge.
Paul Ritson raised his head; Greta sunk into a chair beneath him. He was
not sworn.
The warder in charge put in an entry from the books of the prison. It
ran: "Paul Drayton, five feet eleven inches, brown hair and eyes, aged
thirty, licensed victualer, born in London, convicted of robbery at the
scene of a railway accident."
"Does that entry properly describe you?" asked the judge.
The convict's eyes wandered.
"What's going on?" he said, in a tone of bewilderment.
"Attend, my man. Are you Paul Ritson, the eldest son of the late Allan
Ritson?"
"Why do you want to know?" said the convict.
"It befits a witness who is permitted to come from the scene of a
degrading punishment to give a prompt and decisive answer. What is your
name, sir?"
"Find it out."
"My man," said the judge, more suavely, "we sit here in the name of the
law, and the law could wish to stand your friend." (The convict laughed
bitterly.) "Pray help us to a decision in the present perplexing case
by a few frank answers. If you are Paul Drayton, you go back to Portland
to complete the term of your imprisonment. If it can be proved that you
are Paul Ritson, your case will be laid before the home officials, with
the result that you will be liberated and re-established in your estate.
First of all, which is your name--Paul Drayton or Paul Ritson?"
The convict did not answer at first. Then he said in a low tone:
"No law can re-establish me."
The judge added:
"Bethink you, if you are Paul Ritson, and an innocent man, the law can
restore you to your young wife."
Visibly moved by this reference, the convict's eyes wandered to where
Greta sat beside him, and the tension of his gaze relaxed.
The judge began again:
"You have been recognized by two witnesses--one claiming to be your
brother, the other to be your wife--as Paul Ritson. Are you that
person?"
The convict's face showed the agony he suffered. In a vague, uncertain,
puzzled way he was thinking of the consequences of his answer. If he
said he was Paul Ritson, it seemed to him that it must leak out that he
was not the eldest legitimate son of his father. Then all the fabric of
his mother's honor would there and then tumble to the ground. He
recalled his oath; could he pronounce six words and not violate it? No,
not six syllables. How those mouthing gossips would glory to see a good
name trailed in the dust!
"Are you Paul Ritson, the eldest son and heir of Allan Ritson?"
The convict looked again at Greta. She rose to her feet beside him. All
her soul was in her face, and cried:
"Answer, answer!"
"I can not answer," said the convict, in a loud, piercing voice.
At that terrible moment his strength seemed to leave him. He sunk
backward into the chair from which Greta had risen.
She stood over him and put her hand tenderly on his head.
"Tell them it is true," she pleaded, "tell them you are my husband; tell
them so; oh, tell them, tell them!" she cried in a tone of piteous
supplication.
He raised to hers his weary eyes with a dumb cry for mercy from the
appeal of love.
Only Hugh Ritson, of all who were there present, understood what was in
the convict's heart.
"Paul Ritson is the rightful heir of his father and his mother's
legitimate son," he muttered audibly.
The convict turned to where his brother sat, and looked at him with a
face that seemed to grapple for the missing links of a chain of facts.
Counsel for the defense arose.
"It will be seen that the unhappy convict witness will not be used as an
instrument of deception," he said. "He is Paul Drayton, and can not be
made to pretend that he is Paul Ritson."
The hush of awe in the court was broken by the opening of a door behind
the bench. Two women stood on the threshold. One of them was small,
wrinkled, and old. She was Mrs. Drayton. The other was a nun in hood and
cape. She was Sister Grace.
Hugh Ritson leaned toward counsel for the plaintiff, who promptly rose
and said:
"The witness I spoke of as dead to the world is now present in the
court."
Amid a buzz of conversation the nun was handed to the table. She raised
her long veil and showed a calm, pale face. After the usual formalities,
counsel addressed her.
"Mrs. Ritson," he said, "tell us which of the two men who sit opposite
is your son."
Sister Grace answered in a clear, soft voice:
"Both are my sons. The convict is Paul Ritson, my son by Allan Ritson;
the other is Paul Lowther, my son by an unhappy alliance with Robert
Lowther."
Drayton jumped to his feet.
"There, that's enough of this!" he shouted, excitedly. "Damme, if I can
stand any more of it!"
Bonnithorne reached over and whispered:
"Mad man, what are you doing? Hold your tongue!"
"It's all up. There's the old woman, too, come to give me away. Here, I
say, I'm Paul Drayton; that's what I am, if you want to know."
"Let the sheriff take that man before a justice of the peace," said the
judge.
"It was you that led me into this mess!" shouted Drayton at Bonnithorne.
"Only for you I would have been in Australia by this time."
"Let the sheriff apprehend Mr. Bonnithorne also," said the judge. "As
for you, sir," he continued, turning to Hugh Ritson, "I will report your
evidence to the Public Prosecutor--who must be in possession of your
statutory declaration--and leave the law officers to take their own
course with regard to you."
The action for ejectment was adjourned.
Drayton and Bonnithorne did not trouble the world much longer. Within a
month they were tried and condemned together--the one for personation;
both for conspiracy.
Paul Ritson was removed in charge of his warder, to be confined in the
town jail pending the arrival of instructions from the Secretary of
State. Hugh Ritson walked out of the court-room a free man.
CHAPTER XVII.
Hugh Ritson returned to his room on the pit-brow. On his way there he
passed a group of people congregated on the bridge at the town end. They
fell apart as he walked through, but not an eye was raised to his, and
not one glance of recognition came from his stony face. Toward the
middle of the afternoon a solicitor came from Carlisle and executed a
bill of sale on the machinery and general plant. The same evening, as
the men on the day shift came up the shaft, and those on the night shift
were about to go below, the wages were paid down to the last weights
taken at the pit-mouth. Then Hugh Ritson closed his doors and began
afresh his melancholy perambulation of the room.
That night--it was Wednesday night--as darkness fell on the mountain and
moorland, there was a great outcry in the Vale. It started at the
pit-mouth, and was taken up on every side. In less than a quarter of an
hour a hundred people--men, women, and children--were gathered about the
head of the shaft. There had been a run of sand in the pit, and some of
the hands were imprisoned in the blocked-up workings. Cries, moans, and
many sounds of weeping arose on the air in one dismal chorus. "I knew it
would come;" "I telt the master lang ago;" "Where's my man?" "And mine?"
"And my poor barn--no'but fifteen." "Anybody seen my Willie?" "Is that
thee, Robbie, ma lad?--No." As every cageful of men and boys came to the
surface, there was a rush of mothers, wives, and fathers to recognize
their own.
Hugh Ritson went out and pushed his way through the people.
"Where is the sand running?" he asked of a pitman just landed.
"In the sandy vein, 2, 3, 1," answered the man.
"Then the shaft is clear?"
"Ay, but the water's blocked in the main working, and it's not safe to
go down."
Hugh Ritson had taken the man's candle out of his hand, and was fixing
it with the putty in the front of his own hat.
"Are you ready?" he shouted to the engine-man, above the babel of
voices.
In another moment he had stepped into the cage and looped down the iron
rail in front of it. There was a moment's silence among the
panic-stricken people as the cage began to move downward.
At the bottom of the shaft a group of men waited to ascend. Their faces
were lurid in the dim light. Before the cage grounded Hugh Ritson could
hear their breathing. "How many of you are left?" he asked.
"No'but two now--Giles Raisley and auld Reuben," answered one of the
men. The others, without heeding the master's question, had scrambled
into the cage, and were already knocking the signal for the ascent.
Hugh Ritson turned toward the working known among the men as the sandy
vein. The cage was now rising, and the pitman who had spoken found
himself left on the pit bottom; the single moment that he had given to
the master had lost him his chance of a place. He cast one stern glance
upward, and a muttered oath was on his lips. At the next instant he had
taken the direction followed by Hugh Ritson, and was walking one pace
behind him.
In the silence the dull thud of their footsteps on the rock beneath
mingled with the drip, drip of the water overhead. When they had gone a
hundred yards down the narrow working there came another and far more
terrible sound. It was such a sound as the sea might have made if it had
rushed through a thousand crevices in the rock. It was the sound of the
thousands of tons of sand as they forced their way from the dense mass
above. And over the hiss as of the sea was the harsh crack of great
timbers splitting like matchwood.
Toward the awful scene of this tumult Hugh Ritson quickened his steps.
The man followed close at his heels. Presently their passage was blocked
with sand like a wall. Then over their heads the cross-trees cracked,
and the upright forks split and bent at the right and left of them. In
another moment the ground beneath them shook under the new weight that
lay on it. They stepped quickly back, and in an instant, with a groan
such as the sea makes when it is sucked by the ebbing tide from a cave
in a rock, the floor, with all its freight, went down a score of feet.
It had fallen to an old working that lay below.
Then the bent forks hung from the roof in empty air. Silence followed
this shock, and through the silence there came a feeble cry for help.
Hugh Ritson stepped out, plucked his candle from his hat, and held it
before his feet.
"Where are you?" he called, and his voice came back through the echoing
depths beyond. Presently a man could be dimly seen clinging to a
cross-piece in an alcove made for an air-shaft from the main working. To
get to him the treacherous ground must be crossed, with its cracking
roof, through which the sand slid even yet, and under the split timbers
that still creaked.
Hugh Ritson did not hesitate; he turned to leap down, saying, "Follow
me." But the man clung to him from behind.
"For God's sake, dunnot!" he cried. "I can not go there. It's mair nor
my life is worth!"
Hugh Ritson twisted about, and looked him steadily in the face.
"What is your name, my man?"
"Davey Braithwaite."
"Then you are the young fellow whose wife died last week?"
"Ey," with a drooping head.
"Your child died before her, did it not?"
"Ey, he did, poor laal thing!"
"Your father and mother are gone, too?"
"They're gone, for sure!"
"And you have neither kith nor kin left in all the world?"
"Nay, no'but mysel' left."
Hugh Ritson said no more; a hard smile played on his white face, and at
the next instant he had leaped down on to the bed of sand below.
The man recoiled a pace or two and wrung his hands. Before he was aware
of what had happened, Giles Raisley and the master were standing beside
him.
"Where were old Reuben and his gang stationed?" said Hugh Ritson.
"In the main working; but the water is dammed up; we can never pass."
They returned to the shaft bottom, and walked thence down the cutting
that ran from it at right angles. A light burned far away in the dim
vista of that long dark burrowing.
It was a candle stuck to the rock. The men who worked by it had left it
there when they rushed off for their lives. Through the bottom of this
working there ran a deep trough, but it was now dry.
This was the channel by which the whole pit was drained. Beyond the
light the three men encountered another wall of sand, and from behind it
and through it there came to them the dull thud and the plash of heavy
water.
"If auld Reuben's theer, he's a dead man," said Giles Raisley, and he
turned to go.
Hugh Ritson had struggled to the top of the heap, and was plowing the
sand away from the roof with his hands. In a little while he had forced
an opening, and could see into the dark space beyond. The water had
risen to a reservoir of several feet deep. But it was still four or five
feet from the roof, and over the black, surging, bubbling waves the
imprisoned miner could be seen clinging to a ledge of rock. Half his
body was already immersed. When the candle shot its streak of light
through the aperture of sand, the poor creature uttered a feeble cry.
In another moment the master had wormed his body through the hole and
dropped slowly into the water. Wading breast deep, he reached the
pitman, gave him his hand, and brought him safely through the closing
seam.
When the cage rose to the surface again, bringing back to life and the
world the last of the imprisoned miners, a great cheer broke from many a
lusty throat. Women who had never thought to bless the master, blessed
him now with fervent tongues. Men who had thought little of the courage
that could rest in that slight figure, fell aside at the sense of their
own cowardice. Under the red glow that came from the engine fire many a
hard face melted.
Hugh Ritson saw little of this, and heeded it not at all. He plucked the
candle, still burning, from his hat, and threw it aside. Then he walked
through the people toward his room, and when he got there he shut the
door, almost slamming it in the faces of those who followed. He pulled
down the window-blinds, and began afresh his perambulation to and fro.
He had grown paler and thinner. There was a somber light in his eyes,
and his lips were whitening. His step, once quick and sure, despite his
infirmity, was now less certain. He had not slept since the night of
Mercy's death. Determined never to encounter again the pains and terrors
of sleep, he had walked through the long hours of the four succeeding
nights. He knew what the result must be, and did not shrink from it.
Once only he had thought of a quicker way to the sure goal that was
before him. Then he had opened a cupboard, and looked long and intently
at a bottle that he took from its shelf. But he had put the bottle back.
Why should he play the fool, and leap the life to come? Thus, night
after night, he had walked and walked, never resting, never pausing,
though the enfeebled limbs shook beneath him, and the four walls of the
room reeled in his dazed eyes.
Before returning to their homes, the people gathered in the darkness
about the office on the pit-brow and gave one last cheer.
The master heard them, and his lip curled.
"Simpletons!--they don't understand," he muttered, beneath his breath,
and continued his melancholy walk.
Next morning, a banksman, who acted as personal attendant on Hugh
Ritson, brought him his breakfast. It was not early.
The sun had risen, but the blinds of the office were still drawn, and a
candle burned on the table. The man would have put out the candle and
let in the sunlight, but the master forbid him. He was a Methodist, and
hummed psalm tunes as he went about his work. This morning he was more
than usually fresh and happy when he entered with his tray; but at the
sight of Hugh Ritson's pallid face his own face saddened.
"You are a young man yet, Luke," said the master. "Let me see, how old
are you?"
"Seventy-nine, sir. I was born in ninety-eight. That was when auld
Bonnypart was agate of us and Nelson bashed him up."
"I dare say you have grandchildren by this time?"
"Bless you, ey, and great-grandchilder, and ten of them, too; and all
well and hearty, thank the Lord!"
The sound of a bell, slowly tolling, came from across the dale. Hugh
Ritson's face contracted, and his eyes fell.
"What bell is that?" he asked, in an altered tone.
"It's like to be the church bell. They're burying poor auld Matha's lass
and her wee barn this morning."
Hugh Ritson did not touch his breakfast.
"Luke, close the shutters," he said, "and bring more candles."
He did not go out that day, but continued to walk to and fro in the
darkened room. Toward nightfall he grew feverish, and rang frequently
the bell that summoned the banksman. He had only some casual order, some
message, some unimportant explanation.
At length the old man understood his purpose, and settled himself there
for the night. They talked much during the early hours, and often the
master laughed and jested. But the atmosphere that is breathed by a
sleepless man is always heavy with sleep, and in spite of his efforts to
keep awake, Luke dozed away in his chair. Then for hours there was a
gloomy silence, broken only by the monotonous footfall within and the
throb of the engine without.
The next day, Friday, the sun shone brilliantly, but the shutters of the
little house on the pit-brow remained closed, and the candle still
burned on the table. Hugh Ritson had grown perceptibly feebler, yet he
continued his dreary walk. The old banksman was forbidden to send for a
doctor, but he contrived to dispatch a messenger for Parson Christian.
That night he watched with the master again. When the conversation
failed, he sung. First, a psalm of David, "The fool hath said in his
heart, There is no God;" then a revival hymn of Charles Wesley about
ransom by Christ's blood.
It would have been a strange spectacle to strange eyes. The old
man--young still, though seventy-nine, dear to troops of dear ones,
encircled in his age by love and honor, living in poverty that was
abundance, with faith that was itself the substance of things hoped for,
his simple face ruddier and mellower than before--rocking his head and
singing in the singleness of his heart. The other man--barely thirty,
yet already old, having missed his youth, his thin cheeks pallid as
linen, his eyes burning with a somber light--alone in the world,
desolate, apart--walking with an uncertain step and a tremor of the
whole frame, which seemed to lurch for poise and balance, yet swinging
his arms with the sweep of the melody, and smiling a forced smile
through his hard and whitened lips.
When the singing ceased, Hugh Ritson paused suddenly and turned to the
old banksman.
"Luke," he said, abruptly, "I suppose there will be many to follow you
when your time comes?"
"Ey, please God," answered the banksman, dashing away a furtive drop
that had rolled on to his cheek; "there'll be my childer, and my
childer's childer, and their childer, forby. Maybe the barns will lay me
behind the mother; poor auld body!"
Hugh Ritson's face darkened, and he resumed his walk.
"Tut! what matter?" he asked himself; "the night winds are enough to
moan over a man's grave." And he laughed a little.
Next morning--Saturday morning--he wrote a letter, and sent Luke to the
village to post it. Then he attended to some business relating to the
pit. After that, he shut the door and bolted it. When the old man
brought the midday meal he knocked in vain, and had to go away.
Night closed in, and still there came no answer to the old man's knock.
When the sun had set the wind had risen. It threatened to be a
tempestuous night.
Toward ten o'clock Parson Christian arrived. He had wrestled long with
his own heart as to what course it was his duty to take. He had come at
last in answer to the banksman's summons, and now he knocked at the
door. There was no answer. The wind was loud in the trees overhead, but
he could hear the restless footfall within. He knocked again, and yet
again.
Then the bolt was drawn, and a voice at once strange and familiar cried,
"Come in, Parson Christian."
He had not called or spoken.
The parson entered. When his eyes fell on Hugh Ritson's face he
shuddered as he had never shuddered before. Many a time he had seen
death in a living face, but never anything like this. The livid cheeks
were stony, the white lips were drawn hard, the somber eyes burned like
a deep, slow fire, the yellow hands were gaunt and restless. There was
despair on the contracted brow, but no repentance. And the enfeebled
limbs trembled, but still shuffled on--on, on, on, through their longer
journey than from Gabbatha to Golgotha. The very atmosphere of the room
breathed of death.
"Let me pray with you," said the parson, softly, and without any other
words, he went down on his knees.
"Ay, pray for me--pray for me; but you lose your labor; nothing can save
me."
"Let us call on God," said the parson.
A bitter laugh broke from Hugh Ritson's lips.
"What! and take to him the dregs and rinsings of my life? No!"
"The blood of Christ has ransomed the world. It can save the worst
sinner of us all, and turn away the heavy wrath of God."
Hugh Ritson broke again into a bitter laugh.
"The end has come of sin, as of trouble. No matter." Then, with an awful
solemnity, he added: "My soul is barren. It is already given over to the
undying worm. I shall die to-morrow at sunrise."
"No man knows the day nor the hour--"
Hugh Ritson repeated, with a fearful emphasis, "I shall die as the sun
rises on Sunday morning."
Parson Christian remained with him the weary night through. The wind
moaned and howled outside. It licked the walls as with the tongues of
serpents. The parson prayed fervently, but Hugh Ritson's voice never
once rose with his. To and fro, to and fro, the dying man continued his
direful walk. At one moment he paused and said with a ghastly smile,
"This dying is an old story. It has been going on every day for six
thousand years, and yet we find it as terrible as ever."
Toward three in the morning he threw open the shutters. The windows were
still dark; it seemed as if the dawn were far away. "It is coming," he
said calmly. "I knew it must come soon. Let us go out to meet it."
With infinite effort he pulled his ulster over his shoulders, put on his
hat, and opened the door.
"Where are you going?" said the parson, and his voice broke.
"To the top of the fell."
"Why there?"
Hugh Ritson turned his heavy eyes upon him. "To see the new day dawn,"
he said, with an awful pathos.
He had already stepped out into the gloom. Parson Christian followed
him. They took the path that led through the moor end to the foot of Cat
Bells. The old man offered his arm, but Hugh Ritson shook his head and
walked one pace ahead. It was a terrible journey. The wind had dropped.
In the air the night and day commingled. The dying man struggled along
with the firm soul of a stricken lion. Step by step and with painful
labor they ascended the bare side of the fell in the gray light of
morning. They reached the top at last.
Below them the moorland lay dark and mute. The mist was around them.
They seemed to stand on an islet of the clouds. In front the day-break
was bursting the confines of the bleak racks of cloud. Then the day came
in its wondrous radiance, and flooded the world in a vast ocean of
light.
On the mountain brow Hugh Ritson resumed his melancholy walk. The old
parson muttered, as if to himself, "Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and
fro? Wilt thou pursue the dry stubble?" Hugh Ritson overheard the words,
and all his manner changed. The stubborn lips softened, the somber eye
melted, the contracted brow relaxed, and for the first time in all this
length of years, he cried like a little child.
At the same instant the sun swept up, and he fell. Parson Christian bent
over him. The crimson of the east twas reflected on his white face. The
new day had dawned.
On the Tuesday following two mourners stood by an open grave in the
church-yard of Newlands. One of them was white-headed; the other wore
the jacket and cap, the badge and broad arrow of a convict. The sexton
and his man had lowered the coffin to its last home, and then stepped
aside. A tall man leaned on the lych-gate, and a group of men and women
stood in silence by the porch of the church. The afternoon sun was low,
and the shadows of the tombstones stretched far on the grass.
The convict went down on his knees, and looked long into the grave. When
he arose, the company that had gathered about the porch had gone, and
voices singing a hymn came from within the old church. It was the
village choir practicing. The world's work had begun again.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Two days later the fell behind the Ghyll was a scene of unusual
animation. It was the day of the shearing. The sheep, visibly whiter and
more fleecy for a washing of some days before, had been gathered into
stone folds. Clippers were seated on creels ranged about a turf fire,
over which a pot of tar hung from a triangle of boughs. Boy "catchers"
brought up the sheep, one by one, and girl "helpers" carried away the
fleeces, hot and odorous, and hung them over the open barn doors. As the
sheep were stripped, they were tugged to the fire and branded from the
bubbling tar with the smet mark of the Ritsons. The metallic click of
the shears was in the air, and over all was the blue sky and the
brilliant sunshine.
In a white overall, stained with patches of tar and some streaks of
blood, smudged with soap and scraps of the clinging wool, Parson
Christian moved among the shearers, applying plentiful doses of salve
from a huge can to the snips made in the skin of the sheep by the
accidents of the shears.
"We might have waited for the maister afore shearing--eh?" said Reuben,
from one of the creels.
"He'll be here before we finish, please the Lord," answered the parson.
"Is it to-day you're to gang for him?"
"Yes, this afternoon."
"A daub on this leg, parson, where she kicked--deuced take her!... It's
like you'll bring him home in a car?"
"Ay; Randal Alston has loaned me his mare."
"Why, man, what a upshot we'll have, for sure--bacon pie and veal and
haggis, and top stannin pie and puddings, I reckon.... Just a hand to
her leg, parson, while I strip the coat and waistcoat off this
black-faced herdwick.... Is the mistress to come home, too?"
"Nay, Reuben, Mrs. Ritson has gone back to where she came from."
"Weel, it's no'but naturable, after all that's happent.... Easy now ...
be quiet, wilta ... dusta want another snip, eh?... And young Mistress
Greta--it's like she'll be mistress now?"
"It's very likely she'll come to the Ghyll with her husband, Reuben."
"God bless her! And there's been no luck on the land since he left
it--and everything a fault, too.... There, she's stripped. Away with
her, Natt, man, and de'il tak' her."
In the afternoon a vast crowd of men, women and children had gathered
once more about the old town-hall at Keswick. They laughed and bantered
and sung. Presently the door of the hall was thrown open, and two men
came out. One was Paul Ritson, no longer clad as a convict; the other
was Parson Christian. The people hailed them with a mighty shout, lifted
them into a gig that was drawn up in the market-place, took out the
horses and crowded into the shafts. Then they set off with a great cheer
through the town and the country road, the dust rising in clouds behind
them.
They took the road to the west of the valley, and as they passed under
the wood, an old man, much bent, was easing a smoking fire in the
charcoal pit. He paused and raised himself, his iron rod in his hand,
and lifted his heavy eyes toward the clamorous company. The gig flew
past with its shouts, its cheers, and its noisy laughter, and the old
man turned silently back to his work.
When they came near to the vicarage, Paul leaped from the carriage over
the heads of the men who pulled it, vaulted the gate, and bounded into
the house. There was one who waited for him there, and in an instant she
was locked close in his arms. "At last!" he whispered. Her heart
overflowed; she dropped her fair young head on his heaving breast, and
wept sweet tears.
Parson Christian came rolling up the path surrounded by a tumultuous
throng. Foremost and lustiest were the blacksmith and the miller, and
close behind came the landlord and the postman. All were shouting as if
their brassy throats might crack.
There was high revel at the Ghyll that evening. First came the feasting
in the old kitchen: huge rounds of beef, quarters of lamb, pease, and
sweet puddings and pies. Then came the dancing in the barn, lighted by
candles in cloven sticks, and lanterns of turnips that were scooped out
hollow.
But at the vicarage Paul and Greta sat alone in silence and with clasped
hands. Parson Christian came in and out at intervals, gossiping cheerily
of the odds and ends of daily life, as if its even tenor had never been
disturbed. They supped together, and sat on till midnight; and then the
old Christian took down his green tome and wrote:
"June 30.--So Paul being to return home after his long absence, I
spent the forenoon on the fell shearing, and earned a stone of wool
and a windle of rye. In the afternoon I set forward toward Keswick,
wherefor Randal Alston had loaned me his mare and gig. At the Flying
Horse I lighted not, but stood while I drank a pot of ale with John
Proudfoot and Richard Parkinson and a neighbor that comes to-morrow
to thatch the low barn for me. Then direct to Keswick, where there
was a great concourse, and a hearty welcome, and much rejoicings
that warmed me and came nigh to break me withal. Got son Paul at
last, and would have driven direct home, but the good folk were not
minded that it should be so, and naught would do but that they must
loose the mare and run in the shafts. So we reached home about six,
and found all well, and my love Greta, after long waiting in her
closet, very busy with Paul, who had run in ahead of me. So I went
out again and foddered and watered the mare, for Peter is sometimes a
sad fatch and will not always give a horse what is worth its trouble
in the eating. And being thrang this evening a-mending the heels of
my old clock boots with lath nails, whereof I bought a pennyworth at
Thomas Seed's shop in the market-place, I saw little of Paul, but
left him to Greta. Then supped, and read a psalm and prayed in my
family, and sat till full midnight. So I retire to my lodging-room,
at peace with all the world, and commend my all to God. The Lord
forgive the sins of me and mine that we have committed in these our
days of trial. Blessed be God who has wrought our victory, and
overcome our enemies and brought us out more than conquerors.
Amen."
Parson Christian had put down the pen, and was sprinkling the writing
with sand from a pepper-castor, when Brother Peter came in with candles
in his hand and a letter under his abridged arm. "Laal Tom o' Dint gave
me this for thee," he said to Paul, and dropped the letter on to his
knees. "I was sa thrang with all their bodderments, that I don't know as
I didna forget it."
Parson Christian returned the green-clad book to its shelf, took up his
candle, bid good-night, and went to bed.
Brother Peter shambled out, and then Paul and Greta were left alone.
Paul opened the letter. It was inclosed in a sheet of paper that bore
the stamp of the Convent of St. Margaret, and these words only, "Sent on
by Sister Grace." Paul began to read the letter aloud, Greta looking
over his shoulder. But as he proceeded his voice faltered, and then he
stopped. Then, in silence, the eyes of both traversed the written words.
They ran:
"Mother, I have wronged you deeply, and yours is a wrong that may
never be repaired. The past does not return, and what is done is done
with. It is not allowed to us to raze out the sins and the sufferings
of the days that are gone; they stand and will endure. I am not so
bad a man as perhaps I seem; but of what avail is it to defend myself
now? and who would believe me? My life has been one long error, and
the threads of my fate have been tangled. Have I not passed before
our little world for a stern and callous man? Yet the blight of my
soul has been passion. Yearning for love where love could never be
returned, I am the ruins of what I might have been. If I did wrong
knowingly, it was not until passion mastered me; if I saw things as
they did not exist, it was because passion made me blind. Mother, if
there is One above to watch and judge our little lives, surely He
sees this, and reckons the circumstances with the deed.
"Tell her that I wish her peace. If I were a man used to pray,
perhaps I would ask Heaven to bless her. But my heart is barren of
prayer. And what, after all, boots my praying? I have given her back
at last to the love of a noble man. And now my wasted life is done,
and this is the end--a sorry end!
"Mother, I shall not live to suffer the earthly punishment of my
crime. Never fear--my hand shall not be lifted against myself. Be
sure of that, whatever else may seem doubtful. But very soon this
passionate and rebellious soul will stand for judgment before its
awaiting God.
"Farewell, my mother, farewell!"