CONFESSION.
Kate Strangeways, after her sudden collapse before Joe's accusation,
nerved herself to the fight once more. Joe attempted to take up the
same line on the next night, and was beaten; at heart he was afraid of
her, because he knew her to be stronger, finer in breed, than himself.
Then, gradually, he grew mortally sick of her, now that she showed so
uncompromising a determination to stand on her own level. He conceived
an idea, and soaked the idea in much strong ale until it mellowed.
"When a gentleman born," said he to his mug, "when a gentleman born
taks th' trouble to come aboon three miles i' search on a wench, he
allus hes one notion. Well, I'll let 'em bide, that I will, an' I
won't break th' bones i' his body, 'cos he's ower big for that kind
o' marlaking. They shall just go their own foul gate, an' we'll see
what'll come o' my fine lady's airs an' graces when this Lummax hes
dragged her in th' mire. She puts up her high-bred nose, does she, when
I get a bit on th' booze now and again? Well, it'll be six o' one an'
half a dozen o' t' other sooin."
So Kate, thanks to a resolve of which she guessed nothing, had a whole
month's respite from her husband. He went out every night directly
after tea, and rarely spoke to her during the few moments when they
were together. She took the respite gladly, and flattered herself that
the trouble with Griff was assuming no more alarming proportions as the
days went on. Yet she wondered, and ached, and cried at rare intervals,
just because he could maintain his friendly attitude so easily; freely
would she have forgiven him if he had faltered once or twice in
well-doing.
"Shall we go to Peewit to-morrow? I promised to take Kate some books,"
said Mrs. Lomax to Griff, one evening, as they sat in their favourite
nook by the parlour fire.
"You oughtn't to, with that cold of yours. Why will you never look
after yourself, mother?"
"Don't coddle me, Griff. My cold must be driven out by some good frosty
air; the walk will do me good."
But she was worse on the next morning, and Griff put his foot down in
a way that even his mother understood. He sat with her until three
o'clock, and then she insisted on his going for a run on the moors.
"I'll walk across to Peewit, if you like, and take the books with me,"
he said, turning at the door. "It will give me an object in going out."
"Very well, dear. You will find them in my room, on the table near the
window."
He stowed away the books in sundry capacious pockets, and set off
towards the moor at a swinging pace. It was near the end of March, but
the frost, repenting the easy winter it had given the Marshcotes folk,
had suddenly bestirred itself and gripped the moorside shrewdly. Just
as Griff left the churchyard, he met Greta Rotherson on her way to the
village.
"You're enjoying the frost, too?" he said, coming to rest against a
gate.
"No, I'm not," retorted Greta, crossly; "it's far too cold, and the end
of one's nose gets red."
"Not _your_ nose, at any rate; your cheeks have used up the supply.--I
saw Gabriel this morning for five minutes."
"Did you?" Disdainfully.
"Yes; he called at the mill last night, and came round to tell me how
disappointed he was to find you out."
"To find father out? He would be: we were with friends in the village."
"Look here, Miss Rotherson--why do you treat poor old Hirst as you do?"
queried Griff, bluntly.
"I don't know what you mean, Mr. Lomax. Why should I treat him
differently?"
"Because--well, being a woman, you know more than I can tell you. It
seems a pity, that's all; he worries about things."
Greta dropped her air of aloofness.
"Gabriel Hirst," she snapped, "will never get rid of his preaching. If
he was making love to a woman, he'd quote Scripture in the middle of
it--and a woman doesn't want that."
"Well, no, she doesn't. But women were made to put up with things.
Can't you get at the man in Gabriel, and let the preacher go hang?"
"I can do the last thing certainly. Good day, Mr. Lomax: you seem very
anxious to get your friend settled in life."
The sun was dying bloodily behind Peewit House as Griff climbed the
last stretch of rising ground. The clouds showed stormy. A dun mist
hugged the skirts of the moor.
"This is cheery after the cold look of things outside," he cried, as he
stretched his legs before the fire.
"It was kind of you to bother about the books: you will have a stormy
walk back, I'm afraid." The trouble of contact with him weighed heavily
on Kate for the first moment; she could scarcely find words in which to
answer him.
"Ah, but that doesn't matter when you can see in the dark, as we moor
folk can." He was curiously insistent on that moor bond between them.
"Will you let me smoke just one pipe, and then I must be off; mother is
down with a cold, and I promised not to be away for long."
He lit his pipe, and Kate Strangeways went out in a little while, to
return with tea and buttered toast; they fell into some out-of-the-way
topics over the tea, and continued them until another pipe, and yet
another, had been smoked. Griff had forgotten all about the time, and
his companion, while she remembered it, remembered also that Sunday was
a day which her husband invariably spent at the Marshcotes inn, and
that he would not be back much before midnight at the earliest; she had
felt lonely before Griff came, and she wanted him to stay as long as
forgetfulness of the hour would let him.
But he rose at last and looked at his watch.
"I really must be off; do you know what time it is, Mrs. Strangeways?
The mother will think I have strayed into a bog, or something, if I
keep her waiting much longer. Good night. No, don't come to the door;
it is too cold for you."
"Too cold for you." There was a tenderness in the thought that soothed
the woman; there was an off-hand friendliness in the tone that hurt her
in some unexplained way.
He opened the heavy oak door, with its armour of nails and bolts and
its out-of-date lock. A solid wall of fog came up close to the steps in
front; snow showed white on the threshold, and drifting fog and snow
combined took traveller's leave of the ingress afforded by the open
door.
"You can't cross the moor until the fog lifts," said Kate, at his elbow.
"But I must. Mother will be sick with fear when she sees how bad the
night is."
Instinctively she laid a hand on his arm.
"Better that than death," she said quietly.
"I can find my way in a fog; it is only a little extra darkness, and I
know every inch of the way."
"Nonsense!" she said sharply. "No one can be sure of the road in a fog,
and there is snow as well. I tell you, it is madness to venture out."
Griff Lomax could not but admit as much, as he obeyed the pressure of
the hand on his arm.
"It will clear presently," he said, shutting the door, and following
the woman into the parlour.
"There's more nor one kind o' storm brewing, I fancy," muttered Hannah,
peering through a nick in the kitchen door.
The evening wore on. From time to time Lomax went to see if there were
any change in the weather, but the fog showed no sign of lifting, and
the snow crept earthward in bigger flakes than ever.
"You must spend the night here," said Kate. Her voice was peremptory,
but a hot blush came to her cheeks.
"I ought to make an attempt to reach Marshcotes," muttered the other,
doubtfully. Reason told him how foolhardy such an undertaking would be.
"With the snow covering every track? How can you, even if the fog
clears?"
He gave in at last, as he was bound to do; but, once the point was
settled, there was ample room for other disturbing thoughts. Hannah put
her head in at the door presently.
"Shall you be wanting owt more to-neet?" she demanded.
"No; you can go to bed. Good night, Hannah."
"Good neet, mum."
Hannah's tread on the upstairs journey was heavy; her downward steps,
some few minutes later, were correspondingly light.
There was a silence between the two who were seated on either side
of the great peat fire in the parlour. Lomax pulled at his pipe and
stared into the glowing peat-ash; the woman watched his face. He grew
conscious of her gaze, and turned his eyes suddenly to hers.
The months had been slow to teach him, but he learned their lesson now.
As the seasons had run their course, the man's great love had been
growing--growing so silently, so little at a time, that he had not once
pulled himself up to say, "This is love that has you by the throat;
thrust it off while you can." And now--now, all in the space of that
quick uplifting of his eyes to hers, he had come to understand. Nothing
he had felt, read of, dreamed about, was like this masterful reality;
it hurried him along blindfold, as the welter and swing of a gale from
the north had now and then driven him clean off the moor-track--into
the bogland, it might be.
He leaped from his chair, and crossed over to her, and put his arms
about her. She spoke no word, and he was silent; but her lips went out
to his.
The reaction followed. He set her free, and strode restlessly up and
down the room, with its black oak panels, its ridiculous china dogs on
the mantelshelf, its fiery eye of smouldering ash. She followed his
steps with her eyes, and cared not one whit save that he loved her.
"See, Kate," he said, coming close to her again, "you are the wife I
should have had, but you are not free to hear me tell you so. We must
go apart, you and I, lest--my darling, my darling, how I want you!"
Conscience, stilled for awhile, raised its voice. The woman warded off
that second caress with which the man was minded to point his logic.
"Let me alone, Griff! Let me go. You know it is not right."
He stood irresolute. The worst and the best in him fell to blows, and
fought the quarrel out to the bitter end. Then he put his lips to her
hand, and raised her very gently.
"Show me to my room, Kate. It is time you were asleep; you look tired,"
he said, as nearly in the tones of the friend of yesterday as he could
contrive.
She lit two candles, gave him one, and preceded him up the creaking
wooden stairs. She let her hand rest in his for a space at the door of
his room, then left him.
At eleven of the same morning, the godly folk of Marshcotes, clothed
in their Sunday best, were singing lustily within the bleak walls of
the Primitive Methodist Chapel; other godly villagers were singing
with slightly less vigour in the Parish Church across the way. Joe
Strangeways' mind, however, was set on other things, as he shambled
across the ill-paved square that fronts the churchyard. He glanced at
the church clock, and leered at large upon the village.
"Eleven of a Sunday morn, an' me noan drunk yet," he observed. "Dang
me, but that beäts all."
By way of repairing this slight omission, Strangeways entered the
Bull. The fog was thick in his brain, and thick on the landscape, when
he emerged. A friend in need guided him to the verge of the moor,
but it was clear that there was to be no getting home that night; so
the friend guided him back to the Bull, and it was seven of the next
morning when he set off for Peewit, to change into his working clothes
before going to the quarries.
Hannah clattered to meet him as he entered.
"I telled thee how it 'ud be," she said, with a toss of the head.
"Griff Lummax war up yester afternooin an' stayed his tea."
"Stayed his tea, did he? Can't he get decent pickings at home?"
muttered Joe, whose head and temper were alike impaired by his carouse.
"An' after that he stayed th' neet. They reckoned it war too wild for
him to cross th' moor. Too wild! I'd hev crossed myseln, it war that
bright."
"Nay, lass, tha'rt wrang there. It war thick, main thick, or I'd hev
been home long sin'."
"Drink maks a man see thick," observed Hannah, dispassionately. And Joe
took to himself a shamefaced look.
"Did tha see owt?" he asked presently.
"See? Ay, a bonny sight too mich. I saw 'em kissing by th' parlour
fire. An' at after that--well, th' missus knaws best what happened at
after. See yonder, he's coming dahn th' stair now, fair as if he owned
th' place."
Joe's face grew black with rage. He never doubted Hannah's story, to
its uttermost detail. This, then, was what he had worked and hoped
for--the wife who had scorned him was on his own level at last. Yet
he was not pleased, when it came home to him how well his plan had
succeeded; his jealousy was roused; he felt the need of Kate more than
he had yet done in his six years of courtship and marriage. He stood
with his hands behind him and watched Griff come down step by step.
"Tha'rt i' th' wrang house, seemingly," he growled.
"Through no fault of mine. Why didn't you return last night?" retorted
Lomax, quickly. He had not given thought enough to Kate's danger; but
he realized now that he must carry the thing through with a high hand,
if the ugly brute at the stair-foot were to be silenced.
"'Cos I war drunk," retorted Joe, succinctly.
"Well, if you had been sober enough to take a square look at the
weather, you'd have seen the snow and fog. I preferred a roof over my
head last night, and your wife offered me one. I'm obliged to you both,
Strangeways."
"Oh, th' wife offered it, did she? Then th' wife shall pay for it,"
muttered Joe.
Griff went up to Strangeways, and took him roughly by the coat-collar.
"And you shall pay double if you lay a finger on her. You surly brute!
To threaten your wife because she kept a man from starving on the moor.
Strangeways, I've a mind to give you one thrashing on account--another
to follow if you don't behave yourself."
He took a square look at Joe's eyes, saw that the man feared him beyond
all promptings of rage, and swung out of the house. But he was sorely
troubled about Kate as he went across the glittering frost-flakes to
Marshcotes Manor.