THE FIGHT AT THE QUARRY EDGE.
Griff Lomax, waking at half-past five of a morning towards the end of
August, lay on his back for awhile, and thought how fine the moors
would be looking at this time of day. Then he pictured that wooded
cleft below Ling Crag, where the water came down sweet and cold from
the uplands. He had not had a dip there since he learned that the old
mill was occupied again; the aloofness of what he had once regarded
as his own private bathing-place seemed to be violated, and he had
not cared to risk a meeting, while under water, or during the process
of towelling himself, with either of the miller's women-folk. But he
argued, as he lay on his back this morning and watched the sun-chequers
on the ceiling, that no one would be abroad at this time of day, and
that if he made shift to slip into flannels forthwith, and run to the
stream, he could enjoy his bath in peace. So he jumped out of bed
without more ado, leaving Kate fast asleep, and crossed the moor at
a gentle trot. He made his way through the dew-weighted grass, and
reached the pool where Greta Rotherson had paddled on that long-ago
Sunday when the preacher came over the crest of the ridge above. The
rains had been heavy of late, and the water came dancing down at a
rattling pace, white with foam-flecks, and brown with moorland peat.
The pool, though neither deep nor wide enough for a swim, could give
a tolerable bath to one who knew it as Griff did. He slipped out of
his flannels, plunged in, grasped an outstanding branch of hazel that
leaned low to the water, and let the current carry the rest of him as
far as his six-feet-three would go; the stream broadened into shallows
an inch beyond his toes, and Griff had always flattered himself with
the belief that the pool had been made expressly for him. He shouted
with glee, and kicked up his heels, and buried his head among the
scattering minnows; and when he had had enough of it, he sought the
fallen pine-log on the bank. The log, too, was an old friend; time
and weather had stripped it of its bark, and the surface, smooth and
porous, was quick at catching the sun-rays and keeping them. Griff
filled a big pipe and lit it; then he lay along the log, and mutely
thanked Heaven for a good many things, and left all drying operations
to the sun and the log between them.
The sound of a door creaking on its hinges came to him round the bend
of the stream.
"By Jove, they get up early at the mill!" he cried. "I suppose I had
better tumble into my clothes."
He had slipped into his trousers and shirt, and was stooping for his
coat, when Greta Rotherson ran lightly down the path. She stopped on
seeing the intruder and half turned her head, as if meditating flight.
"Good morning, Miss Rotherson," laughed Griff. "I've been having a
bathe. May I put on my coat in your presence?"
"I think you had better, Mr. Lomax."
The girl came forward a few steps, smiling at the absurdity of his
question.
"I have no right to be here, I'm afraid; but I used to bathe in this
pool a good deal, and I could not resist the thought of it this
morning."
"How did you find it out? I thought no one bathed here but myself."
"How did I find it out? Do you know how long I have lived on Marshcotes
Moor?"
"I couldn't guess," said Miss Rotherson, demurely, seating herself on
one end of the log.
"Thirty odd years. Is it likely, now, that I should miss a stream as
good as this one is?"
"You are like the rest of them, Mr. Lomax. You're awfully proud of
having lived here all your life, and you--not exactly look down on,
but you--_pity_ us who come from the South."
"Do I?" smiled Griff. "How do you know that?"
"Oh, you do; you all do! I don't like your people up here; they're too
_hard_."
"Did you ever get to the heart of one of us? We're as soft as butter,
once you smash through the rind."
"But you never confess it when--when people want you to."
Greta Rotherson blushed, as she spoke, in a vexed kind of way, and
Griff knew, as well as could be, that she was thinking of the preacher.
But he daren't so much as hint that he knew the state of affairs,
though he was always jogging Gabriel's elbow, and striving to push the
silly fellow nearer to his goal.
"We are crossed in the grain, I fear. Don't be too hard on us, Miss
Rotherson," he laughed.
And so, what with one thing and another, they talked for half an hour,
these two, seated one on each end of the warm pine-log. They laughed,
and jested, and teased each other, from sheer vigour of youth and good
spirits, until Griff looked at the sun, which was a reliable watch to
him.
"It is getting late," he said, rising and stretching his long legs.
"Have I been keeping you from your bath all this time?"
"You have, but it doesn't matter. I daren't ever risk it again, though,
now that I know people intrude. Good-bye. When are you coming to have a
pipe with father?"
"As soon as I can, if you'll have me. Good-bye."
"They are hard in a way," mused Greta, when he had gone, "but they're
_grit_ somehow. Why on earth hasn't Gabriel a little of Mr. Lomax's
easiness? It is so silly being in love with a man you have to give a
helping hand to. And Gabriel isn't a bit sure yet whether I am a wile
of the devil or merely an angel. Did I say I loved him? Well, I don't.
He's stupid. I am going for a run on the moors instead of thinking
about him."
Griff strolled gently homeward across the moor, with the tingle of
cold water on his skin and the morning wind fresh in his face. What was
left a man to desire, he wondered? He opened his shoulders, his mouth,
his nostrils, to the wind and the peat-reek, and watched the sun-rays
dance across the moor. Cobwebs were slung, like fairy hammocks, from
heather-bough to heather-bough; the peat was springy to the tread;
a lark was vowing that he'd never grow tired of singing, and a
moor-emperor moth, a dandy gallant in gorgeous raiment, flitted across
his path.
"What fools there are in the world!" said Griff to himself. "When I
think of people living in the valleys--as I did myself for a goodly
number of years--it makes me laugh."
But Gabriel Hirst, at that moment, felt no gratitude towards the sun,
nor did he realize how good it was to be alive. Five minutes after Miss
Rotherson had perched herself on the log, the preacher turned out of
the Ling Crag high-road and walked quickly towards the mill. It was his
wont nowadays to creep about the mill purlieus, in the hope of catching
a glimpse of Greta--or a glimpse of her casement, if the greater boon
were denied him. He could not live through the twenty-four hours
without this pilgrimage of his; sometimes he came at noon, oftener at
twilight, but he rarely had courage to step forward and claim a word
with the girl; it never occurred to him that a passion so overmastering
as his could meet with a like response, and he feared to blurt out the
sum-total of his folly if he spoke with her overmuch. Greta, of course,
knew a good deal about his stealthy approaches to the mill, as women
will get to know these things; and she wondered how a man could be a
man in all else, and yet be such a sorry fool in matters of love.
This morning Gabriel Hirst had awakened at four, and could not get
to sleep again for thinking of Greta. He tried to drive the thought
away; for one of his old frenzies had been coming to a head lately,
and he was keenly alive to the wiles of the flesh. He ran over St.
Peter's words on the subject of plaitings of the hair, and cringed at
the thought that he had only yesterday feasted his eyes on the brown
glory coiled above Greta's shapely little head. He told himself, as
he turned into the wood-path through Hazel Dene, that this must be the
last of his tributes to carnal desire, that he must never---- But down
below him sat Greta on her pine-log, with Lomax jesting at her side.
Like a man struck blind was the preacher; he stood quite still at the
gap in the bushes that had first shown him the scene, but his eyes
were too full of dancing lights to see more than the one quick glance
had shown him. Away went doubts of the spiritual future in dread of
the concrete present. This could be no chance meeting; the hour was
too early, the Dene too far out of Griff's way. Were they laughing at
himself, at his clumsy ways and honest love-fears? He pressed his hand
tight above his heart, as if he had received a mortal hurt. Griff was
false--that was the thought which shaped itself in his mind, after long
struggling with the numbness. Vaguely he crept away from the spot--up
the steep hillside, through the pastureland above, on into the moor. No
lust for vengeance had yet crept in to goad his manhood; he followed
the instinct of all sorely stricken creatures and tottered to some
unknown hiding-place--anywhere, so long as he got out of reach of his
fellows.
Slowly the need of vindication slid into his consciousness. He
quickened his pace a little. Righteous anger followed stealthily,
telling him that Griff had stooped to the meanest treachery that a
man can play his friend. His feet went forward more bravely. Finally,
he was all aglow with a rage that swept clean away every despairing
thought of loss. He ran like a wild thing through the purpling heather,
till Hazel Dene lay a good three miles behind him; he was out of
breath by this time, and he sat down in a clump of cranberries to rest
awhile. He had gone out that morning with a copy of "Baxter's Call to
the Unconverted" under his arm--a book, much in vogue with an earlier
generation, in which Gabriel was wont to find strong stuff of a quality
he loved. He opened the book at random, hoping to chance upon some
counsel fitted to the occasion; but he drew blank, and shut the stained
old pages with a snap. One solitary quotation from the Scriptures
assailed him with untiring pertinacity. "Vengeance is Mine, saith the
Lord," he muttered.
He got up from the cranberry-bushes and strode off again across the
moor. It hurt him to feel that excuse for action rested, not with
himself, but with a Higher Power. A sense of futility weighed him down.
The sun was dropping westward before hunger insisted on a hearing. He
had been fasting lately, and his body was weakened; old stubbornness
bade him fight the hunger, but he remembered that there was no longer
a reason for self-castigation--no longer a reason, it seemed, for
anything in earth or sky. The scepticism which, years before, had
preceded his conversion came and went, alternating with the dulling
consciousness that vengeance belonged to the Lord, not to himself.
Gabriel Hirst was rudderless in the depths of a stormy sea.
Desire for food was the one straightforward agent. He looked across
the moor and saw a black-walled cottage standing up against the sky;
without conscious thought he took a bee-line, over bog-land and dry,
to the cottage. At another time he would have recognized Sorrowstones
Spring, but this afternoon the country showed only a blurred, unknown
waste. A surly admonition to enter greeted his knock, and he went in.
Old Mother Strangeways was taking down a canister of tea from her
cupboard; she turned and looked him up and down.
"Oh, it's thee, Gabriel Hirst?" she croaked. "What dost 'a want?"
"Food. I'm like to drop with hunger."
She laughed mirthlessly.
"Then drop, tha praching crow. I know thee well; tha'rt friends wi'
young Lummax, if I'm noan mista'en."
The preacher winced.
"I'm no friend of his, nor he of mine."
"Art'n't 'a? Sin' when?"
"Since the morning. He's played me false, and it's a pity that
vengeance belongs to the Lord."
Rachel dropped into her chair and motioned Gabriel to take the other.
"Tha looks too mich of a fooil to be a liar, Gabriel Hirst," she said
meditatively; "what's agate atween thee an' him?"
The preacher was tired and disposed to seek sympathy. The aptness
of Mother Strangeways' questions seemed to call for straightforward
answers. He told her what he had seen in Hazel Dene. The woman's face
ran into queer wrinkles as she listened; it seemed that her prayers had
brought to Sorrowstones Spring a man well fitted to compass what was
now her one aim in life.
"It's i' th' breed; it's a trick of his father's, yon. He'll hev his
way wi' th' lass, an' then he'll leave her i' th' mud, to fend for
herseln an' th' babby," she muttered eagerly.
The preacher rose, his face on fire.
"Woman!" he cried, "if you frame your unclean lips to such words again,
I'll----"
"Nay, nay, lad. It's noan me 'at wants to hurt thee. Tak a bit o'
that sperrit wi' thee when next tha wends to Griff Lummax.--Summat to
eat, sayst 'a? Ay, an' gladly, though I'd hev seen thee starve on th'
doorstun if tha'd been a friend o' Lummax's."
Gabriel's fire went out; there was no bodily fuel to keep it going. He
ate of the coarse stuff that was set before him, and drank of Mother
Strangeways' rum. She watched him from under her white eyelashes.
"Vengeance is th' Lord's, tha says?" she muttered. "Happen it is, if
tha taks th' thing far enow back. But this I tell thee, Gabriel Hirst,
th' Lord 'ull damn thee for a fooil if tha waits for Him to help thee.
Dost think summat is bahn to shooit out on th' sky an' strike this
Lummax deäd? I thowt that myseln, lad, for a while; but now I know 'at
just as mich as a man fends for hisseln, so mich will th' Lord fend for
him. It's share an' share alike wi' wark o' yon kind, an' tha cannot
look to get all an' do nowt."
Gabriel muttered incoherently to himself, and Rachel Strangeways
thought that a new intensity of purpose was gripping him.
"If tha's getten a doubt i' thy heäd still, tha can mind what Griff
Lummax did to my Joe's wife. He telled thee he war innocent as a
sucking lamb, likely. Well, a man that 'ull do one kind o' dirty wark
'ull do another. What's a two or three lies when a Lummax hes owt to
gain by telling 'em? An' now he's tired o' th' wench, an' off he goes
speering after thy sweetheart. It's th' talk o' th' moorside; tha mun
be daft to sit so long wi' thy hands i' thy lap."
Gabriel Hirst, in the simplicity of his nature, was always apt to fall
into the delusion that, if any one prefaced a statement by a generous
exposure of some other person's falsity, then the statement in question
became at least doubled in value. It was easy just now to attribute
dishonesty to Griff, and Griff's accuser shone by the contrast in the
light of a rigid truth-teller. He pushed his empty plate from him and
leaned his head on his arms.
"Well, tha's etten enow, seemingly," croaked the witch; "put thy mouth
to th' bottle again, an' off tha wends to Griff Lummax, to settle thy
scores like a man."
The preacher would have taken well-nigh any counsel in his present
shiftlessness of mind. The withered hag, glowering across the
peat-smoke at him, seemed to be preaching a new, an inspired, gospel.
Her words smacked more of the Old Testament, which he loved, than of
the New, which in his wilder moods he only tolerated. Slowly he got up
from the table and went to the door.
"Lad, I've summat to ask of thee afore tha goes," said Mother
Strangeways, shifting her voice to a whine.
Gabriel turned and glared at her, but said no word.
"Tha knows how th' owd clock goes a-wobbling, wobbling, wobbling, hour
in an' hour out? Well, it's getten past all; it dithers fit to drive
a body dizzy-crazy, an' my lad Joe, th' gaumless wastrel, willun't
bring me a two or three screw-nails--nobbut a two or three screw-nails;
that's all I'm fashed for, an' he willun't bring 'em--an' me that hes
reared him fro' being a babby. Tha'll happen along wi' th' screw-nails,
willun't tha, lad, sooin as tha's done wi' Griff Lummax?"
But Gabriel, before she had finished her appeal, was out of the door
and off across the heather towards Gorsthwaite Hall. Now that he had a
purpose, he could see the moor as he had known it from boyhood; he knew
his way.
Kate was going in at the door of Gorsthwaite as he came up. She turned
and smiled a welcome on him.
"It's long since you've been here, Mr. Hirst," she said. "Will you come
in and wait for Griff? He has gone to the Manor for the afternoon."
The preacher stood dumbfounded. He had had the one simple plan in his
head, and this deviation from the settled order of things left him
witless. Kate decided that he had been wrestling with the devil on an
empty stomach, and pitied him.
"I--I'll not come in," he stammered at last. "I'll--walk back--to
Marshcotes. I may meet him on the way."
"I can't promise that you will. Sometimes he stays late--but you'll
find him at the Manor, if you are anxious to see him."
"Yes, I'm anxious--anxious; that is just it," he muttered.
The preacher turned and set off towards the village. He passed a
wide-lipped tarn that lay in the valley between Gorsthwaite and
Marshcotes Moor, and stared at its sulky waters; he hesitated awhile,
then passed on. Another mile brought him to a disused shaft--Whins
Quarry, it was called--and a look that was almost of joy came into his
face as he peered over the fifty feet of rock-face, down to the pool
that swallowed up the old cart-track on the far side.
"I can't face other folk--his mother, say. I'll just wait here till he
comes," muttered Gabriel.
The sun crept lower, and still Gabriel lay among the heather. The sun
went to bed, and the long summer twilight drew to its close; still the
preacher waited. A four days' moon showed in the paling sky--a mere
wisp of yellowish light, that served, for all that, to make some sort
of atonement for the vanished day. A light-hearted song came drifting
across the quiet moor. Gabriel Hirst leaped to his feet. A quick
thought seized him; he raised his head proudly, as if he were looking
God straight between the eyes.
"Vengeance is Thine, O Lord!" he cried. "But Thou knowest I am the
fulfiller of Thy desire."
The song came clearer. Gabriel could hear the words now.
"The fulfiller--O Lord of Heaven, give me strength!" he prayed.
A figure swung into view and neared the quarry with easy strides. The
preacher went to meet him.
"Griff Lomax!" he called.
"At your service; but who the deuce are you?"
"Gabriel Hirst."
"Of course you are. I ought to have known your voice anywhere. Have you
come from Gorsthwaite?"
"I've come to tell you that you are false--a liar and a thief."
Griff took the preacher by the arm, but he shook it off.
"Gabriel, you're out of your mind. What ails you, man?"
"You thought it was safe to meet in Hazel Dene, before folk were out of
their beds. You laughed to yourself often, I'll warrant, when I told
you what store I set by Greta--and all the while you were----"
His friend broke in with a hearty laugh.
"Is that all? I knew you were a tolerable ass, old fellow; but I didn't
credit you with going quite so far as this. The last time you turned
jealous, you were very drunk; are you sober now? Why, the girl has eyes
for none but you, and I've done all I can to plead your cause. This
very morning I was telling her that we are soft at the core up here,
though hard in the rind; and she said, with a pout in her voice, 'But
you never confess it when people want you to.'"
"She said that?" cried the preacher, hoarsely.
"She did. You should know best what she meant, Gabriel."
Again Griff laughed, and Hirst fancied the laugh was one of mockery.
He had his settled view of that meeting by the stream, and Griff was
assuredly taunting him with Greta's own avowed preference for his rival.
"You're a liar, and I'll fight to prove it," he yelled, and leaped on
his adversary.
Despite ill-treatment of his body, the preacher was tough; but Lomax
was the better man in a tussle. They were locked close together now,
swaying this way and that. Griff, though, was not heated as Hirst was;
he was conscious of the mistaken cause of fight and felt loth to do his
mad friend a hurt; and Gabriel, consequently, had the better of it at
the first. Then Griff roused himself; he hoisted the other well into
the air and let him drop with a thud.
"It's soft falling, Gabriel; lie there awhile till you're cool enough
to listen to reason."
But the preacher was up again. He knew little of wrestling in the
theory, yet by force of blind instinct he compassed a good imitation
of the trick known to Cornishmen as the "Flying Mare." One hand he
planted in the pit of Griff's stomach; with the other he seized him by
the right arm, and lifted him clean over his head. The force of his own
throw sent Gabriel staggering back; he was conscious of coming to rest
against some hard body, while down below he heard the splash, splash,
splash, of loosened stones and rubble--that, and the deeper sound of
some heavy mass plunging into the water that filled the pit-shaft.
The preacher began to understand matters, as he recovered from the
struggle, from the surprise consequent on the miraculous fashion in
which he had lifted Griff. There had been death in his mind when he
chose the quarry as the meeting-place--a hazy, theoretic notion that
one of them had better go over the edge. But he had lost all that in
the stress of the fight; he had been bent only on throwing his enemy;
he had never stopped to think how close they might be to the low
wall that guarded the quarry from the moor. Yet here was he, leaning
against the wall--it had saved him from falling--and peering down at
the stagnant pool which lay, fifty feet below, at the bottom of Whins
Quarry. That dull splash echoed and re-echoed in his ears; the faint
light showed him no more than a few feet of the rock-face, but memory
brought that surly pool before his eyes as plainly as if it had been
broad day--and in fancy he saw there the body of his friend lying face
upward to the stars.
With a start the preacher came to himself. He did not pause to call
himself a murderer; he only knew that, if Lomax were dead, he had cut
one half of himself clean away for ever. The man's great love for his
friend--never quite realized till now--made the thought of Griff's
death such unbearable agony that perforce he must do something. Yes,
he must act. He had but one thought now--he might save old Griff, if
that clear drop of fifty feet had not broken his neck. Perhaps he was
now struggling in the water, too weak to save himself from drowning.
He raced along the path of sliding shale that flanked the left of the
quarry-edge, caught his foot against a rock less yielding than the
rest, and fell headlong down the hill, at the foot of which he lay for
awhile, stunned, among the rubble.
When he next opened his eyes, the moon had set. Still half dazed, he
groped his way to the cart-track that led to the quarry; the starlight,
faint above, was quenched altogether by the surly face of rock that
towered above the pool. A night-jar, away up on the moor, railed at
the silence; only the lurid fires of God's vengeance lit the darkness,
and these were powerless to break the physical gloom. He shook off his
stupor. There was a wild humour in his striking a lucifer-match to show
him what God's fires had failed to render clear--but he saw not the
humour. The light shone fitfully across the pool, and was swallowed up
by the glooming quarry-face. There was nothing floating on the surface,
save the rotting carcase of a dog.
The preacher stood motionless, almost calm. He was predestined to
damnation, and the striving was over, once for all; there could be no
return to the old life of fruitless prayer, of wasted fight. A loosened
stone dropped into the water, and that fall, too, was predestined.
All, all was foreknown: the good works of the just, the evil living
of the sinful, were alike predestined; there was neither virtue in
holiness, nor blame in wrong-doing, since both alike had been fixed
from the beginning. All responsibility was shifted from the preacher's
shoulders, and he felt happier than he had yet done through the long
years of strife.
Gabriel Hirst grew almost curious, with a dumb, passionless curiosity.
He wondered what form his punishment would take; whether retribution
would be swift and final, or tortuous and long drawn out. Perhaps--nay,
certainly--a touch of pride lay, all unguessed, at the bottom of his
heart; it was, in a sense, a fine thing to be the very focus of an
Avenging Universe.
He went out by the cart-road, and moved faster as he gained the
heather. The motion warmed his blood and quickened his pulses; he
remembered Greta--Greta, who shared his heart with the dead. He fell
weak at that, and must have comfort. There was none on earth to give
him comfort, save Greta. As a dumb brute eats the healing herb, not
knowing the reason that underlies its instinct, so the preacher went
straight to Hazel Dene and knocked at the miller's door. The kitchen
clock struck ten as he waited under the porch.
"Who's there?" came Greta's voice, a little tremulous.
"Gabriel Hirst. For God's sake, open!"
The bolts flew back and Greta stood on the threshold.
"You frightened me, Mr. Hirst. Father is away for the night, and Nancy
is in bed. I thought you might be----"
"A murderer," finished the preacher, with horrible calm. "You were
right. I have killed my friend."
She looked at his face, and sickened. But there was strength under
that maiden timidity of hers, and she loved this man. She put her arm
through his and led him into the parlour; then she went to lock the
door again--it gave her a moment's respite--and crept back to the
preacher's side, and did not care now if her secret showed plain in her
eyes.
"Gabriel, what is it? I have a right to know," she said.
He saw it all now. It was very plain to be read, even by Gabriel Hirst,
who had ever been slow to learn these womanish matters. The swift
knowledge that she loved him seemed to give him nerve to go forward
with his tale.
"I came up Hazel Dene this morning," he began, without any beating
about the bush. "I saw you and Griff Lomax--the woman I loved, and the
friend I trusted--sitting beside the stream. You were laughing and
jesting--at me and my blundering love-ways, I told myself--I thought
you had met there often. I waited for Griff on the moor, and we fought.
It was close to the edge of Whins Quarry, though it had gone clean out
of my head how near we were. The devil entered fairly into me at last,
and I closed with Griff a second time and flung him over my shoulder.
He dropped clean into the quarry, and I heard him splash into the water
at the bottom."
She loosened her hold of him and fell back with a moan. There could be
no doubting his story.
Soon she began to frame excuses for him, with a woman's nimble wit. She
spoke after a long while.
"Gabriel, it was a fair fight. You did not know of the quarry; you----
Gabriel, did you do it for my sake?"
"Not for your sake," he muttered huskily. "Don't think, child, that
_the sin_ was for your sake; that couldn't be. I was mad with jealousy."
"But the jealousy was mine?" Strange how she had already set aside the
catastrophe, as being a matter of lighter moment.
"I loved you too well, Greta, and the Lord grudged it," said the
preacher simply.
The girl got up from her chair and stood eye to eye with him.
"Love!" she cried, with a little sobbing catch in her voice. "What do
you mean by love, Gabriel Hirst?"
A quiver ran through the preacher. His eyes dilated. His hands went out
and gripped invisible shapes.
"Love is a thing that makes you run mad and grovel like a beast--that
makes you run sane and soar like an angel. Love is more than the Law
and the Prophets, and a lifetime of fighting with the devil.--Nay,
Greta, forgive me. Lass, I yearn for you so--and--I--forget that I am a
murderer."
"You love like that?" said Greta, slowly. "Then, dear, you can take me
and do what you will with me."
The preacher felt two arms about his neck, and a warm mouth against his
own. Murder, and sin, and vengeance of the Lord, they were all blotted
out for one full moment. He knew himself a man.