KATE STRANGEWAYS ASSERTS HERSELF.
Griff, during the next few months, was greatly exercised in mind
touching his friend the preacher. Gabriel Hirst's moods were swinging
to wider extremes nowadays; the constant sight of Greta kept the inner
fires going, and whether they flamed or smouldered was a question
largely of the way she treated him. Not altogether, though: there
were times when he wrenched himself free of his fetters, and set his
thoughts on the Word instead of on Greta, and made his congregations
quake with his whirlwind eloquence. But he was what old Jose Binns
termed "wobbly-like"; his temper was uncertain, his attitude towards
his fellows harsh beyond all his old-time limits of justice. If for
an hour or so he could persuade himself into the belief that Greta
cared for him, then he spent the rest of the day in self-denunciation,
because his heart was fixed on carnal welfare: if the girl ran across
his path and chanced to mock him, as she frequently did, he forgot that
she was not the highest goal man could have, and railed at the destiny
which showed him a heaven with shut gates. On and off, he sickened with
hate of Lomax, thinking him an unacknowledged rival; and after the
stormy scenes, which generally followed hot-foot on the heels of such
humours, came abasement of himself before Lomax--an abasement that hurt
Griff far more than the passion which preceded it.
Gabriel Hirst suffered, during these months, as he had not known how to
suffer before that meeting with Greta Rotherson on the sunny Sabbath
morning. He grew more sensitive than ever to changes in the face of the
moor and sky. When the day was bright and the wind blew soft, there
seemed excuse for his gaining passion--even a hope sometimes; but when
the storm-skies opened, and the wind came ravening out of the north,
and the moor streams swelled themselves to rivers, Gabriel Hirst would
awake to the sins of the world and his own wrongdoing--would hark back
to his scanty fare, and his wrestlings with the Adversary. But the
Adversary, with that practical, vivid imaginativeness of his, showed
nowadays in the guise of a woman.
Greta, for her part, was growing out of all patience with the preacher.
He could not speak to her but the words tripped each other up as they
came from his mouth; he was awkward with his hands and feet directly he
found himself near her; he looked a hundred proposals out of his eyes,
but never approached the utterance of one. She cared for him--if he
would only let her--and she was angry with him, ashamed of, sorry for,
him; so that amongst it all the girl, like Gabriel himself, was like
to spoil her temper for good. What angered her most was that Gabriel
was always like this in _her_ company; she had seen him riding with
Griff, and had noticed how manly, and neat, and broad-shouldered he
looked. Why would he never come to her in decent clothes, or square his
shoulders when he stood before her? And why, in the name of goodness,
did she care _how_ he came to her?
It was a matter of surprise to the villagers that their preacher should
be so given to "fits and starts." One Sunday he would rain brimstone
from the pulpit, while the next would find him tender almost to the
verge of tears.
"Nay, nay, I doubt it's too mich for Gabriel; he should tak hisseln off
ivery other week an' rest a bit," commented a member of his following.
"That's so, lad, that's so," assented Jose Binns; "he's nobbut poorly
like, is th' pracher, or he'd niver gie us such pap sermons as that'n
we hed yester morn. Oh, ay, he'd better tak a rest, an' that's plain to
ony man 'at can see to th' end on his nose."
But Greta's comments on the preacher were of a different sort. "He's
such _a woman_, father," she said to Miller Rotherson one day. It was
her usual remark when Gabriel had particularly angered her.
"Don't be too sure, lass. I've no call to fight his battles, seeing how
often he's bothered and bothered me about my soul--but this I'll say
for Gabriel Hirst: he's no woman at the heart of him. Greta, I'd think
shame if I was you to set so much store by the outside."
"I don't like an apple with an ugly rind, however good it be inside,"
said Greta, crossly.
"And there you make your mistake, as women-folk mostly do. Give me the
ugliest-looking apple you can find, and I'll know it's worth eating."
"But Gabriel isn't ugly," flashed the girl, perversely.
The miller laid down his pipe, and looked quizzically at his daughter.
"Has he snared thy heart, lass, this preacher fellow?"
Greta tossed her head, got half-way through a denial, and ended with a
storm of sobs.
"There, there, Greta, don't cry," murmured Miller Rotherson, as she
came to his knee and buried her head out of sight. "Supposing he _is_
too blind, this Gabriel Hirst, to know a good thing when he sees
it--there are other men in the world."
She lifted up her head at that and pushed back the hair from her eyes.
"But not one that can come near him, father."
"Well, well; I never did understand the twists and the turns of you
women, and I never shall, as I told your poor mother most every day
of her life. He's such a woman, sings the lass one minute, and the
next----"
"So he is," quoth Greta, and ran from the room to tidy herself.
And all this, as has been said, bothered Griff Lomax no little. He
felt like a father to these two young people, and had set his heart
on their making a match of it. He was in and out of the mill a good
deal; old Rotherson took kindly to him, and Greta grew to regard him
in the light of a hail-fellow-well-met sort of comrade, who showed
no disposition to make love, and who was yet willing to serve as a
friendly basis of jealousy when the occasion demanded it.
And all the while Griff never once guessed that he was himself
walking--nay, running--into deep waters. The mother and he went very
often across the three miles of moor that lay between Marshcotes and
Peewit House. Almost as often Kate Strangeways walked to the Manor;
sometimes she sat by the parlour fireside, with her hands in her
lap, enjoying the sensation of being thoroughly idle; sometimes she
played the model in the snug little studio upstairs, and watched
Griff as he plied his brushes. True, he had asked permission simply
to paint her portrait; but he wanted more than that--and, wanting it,
contrived in his usual headstrong way to obtain it. There was no trace
of self-deception in his enthusiasm for Kate's strong, lithe type of
beauty. It was with an artist's zeal that he seized this and that new
pose, or altered expression; and if he was gentler with her after the
fatigue of posing, more solicitous that she should not tire herself
unduly, than was altogether necessary--well, how could he help it, when
he had, in very fact, been searching after this treasure-trove of his
ever since he took to painting?
Mrs. Lomax buzzed in and out of the studio while they were at work,
and was disposed to blame Griff for what she called his callousness in
the matter of his model's welfare; at times she even went so far as to
be indignant that the boy could be so blinded by his art as to lose
sight of the good red gold that lay beneath the surface of Kate's quiet
manners. But she never stopped to picture what must happen should Griff
once dig down to the gold and set his heart on wealth that belonged to
his neighbour.
Only Roddick guessed which way the wind was blowing, and he kept his
opinions to himself. Griff would ride over to Wynyates two or three
times a week, and he rarely left without a word or two about the woman
who lived across the moor.
"Across the moor she lives, do you say?" Roddick had asked, with a
start, the first time Griff had mentioned her.
"Yes; what of that? You look as if there were some one hereabouts in
whom you are interested. Is that the reason----"
"Pish, romantic boy! I'm interested in grouse, trout, and rabbits;
don't saddle me with your women." But he recurred to the topic for all
that, as Griff was mounting Lassie at the gate. "Does she live on the
Marshcotes moor?" he asked suddenly.
"No, the Cranshaw side," said Lomax, with deliberate intent to take
Roddick unawares.
"By God!" muttered Roddick, under his breath.
Griff saw the contraction of his brows and laughed.
"So that is the trend of your secret, is it? Put your mind at rest, old
fellow; she lives on the Marshcotes moor right enough, and she is the
wife of a master-quarryman."
"You're a fool," said Roddick, gruffly, and shut the door with a
bang.--"Why the devil won't Lomax let my secret alone?" he muttered,
stirring up the fire in his parlour. "Jove, though, I fancied for the
moment that Frender's Folly was his destination; Janet might care for a
man of Lomax's build--the Lord knows why she picked _me_ out from the
crowd--and that's just the rub of it all. Oh, my God, if only I were
free!"
After that evening Roddick learnt a good deal about Kate
Strangeways--or, at any rate, about Griff's conception of her. He was
an astute man where other people's follies were concerned, and he could
have told Lomax that the adventure was bound to end in one of two ways.
"He wouldn't believe me, so where is the use of telling him?" Roddick
argued. "For a clever man, old Lomax is pretty blind--yes, a confounded
ass whenever a woman is toward. This is biting deeper than he'll like,
though, when he comes to open his eyes; it's not the trashy stuff he
called love while the Ogilvie woman had him in tow. Well, I'll wait;
there'll be a cheerful blow-up one of these days."
But neither Griff nor the old lady of the Manor thought of coming
evil. They walked far and wide by day, and at night they chatted of
old times, of new endeavours, by the parlour fire. The itch for work,
too, was taking a surer hold of Griff, and he was well satisfied with
the progress of his picture. Autumn had long ago failed to winter,
and the moors were looking their best; the heather had lost its gaudy
raiment of purple, and stretched away in patches of rusty brown, of
sober red, that fitted better with its savage dignity. Overhead, on
the fine days, were wonderful shifting tints of sapphire and clear-cut
green, with sunsets that stretched, purple and crimson, along half the
horizon edge; then, again, the wind would shift to rain, and the sullen
banks of yellow would come crowding across the sky from over Ling Crag,
and the tremor and stress of storm would sweep into the man's heart.
And all the while the woman across the moor grew dearer to him; she
was part and parcel of the heath he loved, the sunsets that fired him
to endeavour, the wind that made him drunker than wine could ever do.
If he failed to look at the situation squarely, it was because Kate
was always there, to be seen whenever the wish moved him; had a rival
stepped in, or had she left Marshcotes for a space, Griff would better
have understood it all.
Kate Strangeways, too, began to find heart again, began to feel the old
use of her limbs and the old relish for a gale; she wondered, now and
then, what had wrought this change in her, but it was long ere she was
brought to confess that she counted the days between visit and visit
of a man who had troubled himself to bring fresh interest into her
dull round of care. Her manner towards her husband changed; she found
courage to fight him, and she conquered; she furbished up a little
bedroom facing south, and maintained her rights of property therein,
and did not stop to inquire what instinct prompted her to privacy.
As for Joe, he got drunk oftener nowadays; his will held altogether
too much parley with the shadowy places, and, as a consequence, he
blustered more and was less capable than ever of backing up his
bluster. Just once he tried to trespass on Kate's private domain; it
was a night of late November, and he had sat up chatting with Hannah,
the maid-of-all-work, after his wife had gone to bed. Hannah was even a
little sourer than her wont, and she gave Strangeways a lengthy account
of young Lomax's comings and goings.
"I'd be shamed, if I war a man, to put up wi' my wife's hoity-toity
ways, same as tha does," she snarled, with a freedom born of the sense
that she was talking to one of her own class. "She mun sleep i' her own
bedroom, mun she? Happen there's more i' that nor there seems, if tha'd
getten a couple of een i' thy heäd."
"What dost 'a meän? Come, out wi' it; I cannot abide thy ins an' thy
outs, an' thy shammocky ways o' talk. There's no mouse-holes about me,
an' I look to find other fowk talking fair an' square. What dost 'a
meän, woman?"
"Nay, if tha cannot guess, it's noan for a honest woman to tell thee.
Didn't I say 'at young Lummax comes an' goes for all th' world as if he
war th' maister? If that isn't enow, I'd like to know what is?"
Joe brought the bowl of his pipe down hard on the grate and smashed it.
"She shall shift her quarters to-neet, or I'll shift mine," he muttered.
"Fine talking," sneered Hannah.
"Hod thy whisht, wench! I tell thee I'll teach the wife to come it
ower me; ay, that I will," said Joe, doggedly. He kicked off his boots
and went shambling up the stairs; tried the handle of Kate's door, and
found it locked; swore at her and commanded her to open. She did open
at last, and stood on the threshold. She had taken off the bodice of
her dress, and her bust and beautiful bare arms showed faintly by light
of the candle behind her. Joe, despite his sodden state, felt something
of the old desire as his eyes took in the contour of her figure.
"What do you want?" she demanded.
"It's lonely wark, Kate, living wi' a wife that's no wife, an' I
willun't stand it."
"When you had me, Joe," said she bitterly, "you were never so free with
kindness. A woman gets tired of being kicked out of bed, and I'm not
going to risk it again."
"When fowks is wed, they're wed. Me an' thee's teed fast as parson
could tee us, an' I've a right to thee--ay, that I hev--a right o' law,
an' a right o' parson."
A swift smile came to Kate's lips, as she straightened herself and
sought his eye in the semi-darkness.
"Then, Joe Strangeways, you can go for the parson and bring him to help
you; for you'll never touch me again, if I have to fight the lot of
you."
"I'm a honest man," Joe declared, after a disconcerted pause.
"It's a queer country that would call you honest, Joe." The wife was
feeling almost flippant for the moment, as the stronger sort of women
do in moments of strain.
A long silence followed, broken only by the shuffling of Joe's feet,
and the ticking of the clock in the kitchen down below, and the rattle
of mice behind the wainscoting.
"I'm a honest man," reiterated Joe at last; "an' dang me if I'll see my
wife go wrang wi' th' first fine gent what taks a fancy to her."
"Go wrong!" she cried, with a sudden blaze of fury. "You dare to come
to me and----"
Joe felt vaguely that he was getting the advantage now that he had made
her angry.
"Ay, go wrang; that's what it's leading to," he responded doggedly.
All the fight went out of Kate. He had brought home to her at last what
she had hidden from herself all these months: she was face to face with
the truth, and she saw in a flash the dreary stretch of years that
spread before her--after she had proved true to her conscience--after
she had said good-bye to Griff, and they had each gone their ways.
Without a word she turned; before Joe had divined her purpose, she had
locked the door in his face and left him on the cold landing to marvel
at the queer ways of women. She threw herself on the bed and cried
her heart out, while her husband growled his way to his own room. She
wanted never, never to see Griff again.
But Griff himself chanced to ride over the very next morning, and
he altered her outlook on things. The clear, friendly look in his
eyes--the easy talk on this or that topic of interest which they shared
in common--his kindly insistence that she was far from well, and that
he meant to tell his mother when he got home how little care she took
of herself--all helped her to view the last night's misery in a quieter
light. With a quick feminine subterfuge she told herself that his
regard for her did not go very deep; if her own went deeper, need she
make herself foolish in his eyes by bidding him never come near her
again?
After he had gone--with a faint wonder in his mind at her changed
manner--Kate went over all that she had suffered at her husband's
hands; and across her honesty of purpose struck a swift desire to take
life while she had it and enjoy it to the full. She put the desire away
from her; but it returned day by day, and she grew less eager to cast
it out. Gradually she let the old life go its way; Griff came and went,
and she was glad to see him; she would not look behind.
But Roddick, in amongst his own perplexities, found time now and then
for a sardonic grin, and a wonder as to how soon the climax would be
reached.
And the climax came sooner than he expected.