THE RIFT GAPES WIDE.
January was here, and the frost had long ago set a sharp finger and
thumb on the world. The grouse were visibly tamer than they had been
a week ago; the peewits came nearer to farmsteads at the lowest point
of their wheeling flight; the smaller feathered fry looked more than
ever like desolate waifs and strays, as they fluttered from patch to
frozen patch, above the whitened heather. So keen was the air that at
Gorsthwaite could be heard the busy clatter of the quarry which hugged
the Ling Crag end of Marshcotes Moor.
At eleven of a Wednesday morning, Griff was being soundly rated by his
wife's nurse, a slim little energetic body who had seen to the bringing
of too many infants into the world to feel much reverence for useless
males.
"Mr. Lomax, I wish you'd go somewhere out-of-doors and stay there,
that I do. Here you be, upstairs and down; now listening at the door,
and popping out at me like a firebrand whenever I leave her room, to
ask if there's any change for the worse; now tramping about the floor
downstairs, till a body would think you'd fair set your mind on making
the most noise you could."
"I--I didn't know you could hear me," said Griff, meekly. "I took my
boots off, but the boards are all old and crazy. I must sit down, I
suppose."
"Sit down? Nay, that you never will! As well ask you to sit on a
hornet's nest as a chair, in your present feckless state. The only
chance for us is to bundle you out-of-doors. I'd do it myself if I was
a bit bigger. Dear, dear! it's a puzzle to me to know how the first
man could grow a rib decent enough to make a woman out of. Such poor,
shiftless mortals as you are--cannot sit still a minute--unless there
happens to be real work for you to do----"
"I'll put on my hat, I think," murmured Griff, swept towards the door
by the speed of the little woman's utterances.
When he got out-of-doors, and had time to collect his thoughts, he
remembered that Gabriel Hirst was to be married that morning. He
had been anxious to put in an appearance and give his friend a good
handshake at the chapel door, but Kate's illness had driven the matter
clean out of his mind. He set off now by the short cut to Ling Crag,
past Smithbank and the foot of Hazel Dene.
The village was all astir, and he found the little chapel full to the
doors when he reached it. They made way for him instinctively, partly
from sympathy with his recent trouble, partly through a feeling that
the preacher's best friend ought not to have to stand outside the
door while his marriage-service was being read. The ceremony was half
through when Griff finally squeezed himself into a corner at the back
of the chapel. A flood of confused thoughts came to him, dizzying his
brain--remembrance of the time when he had stood at the altar with
Kate--his mother's death--the ever-present anxiety about his wife.
It was over at last. Griff hurried forward, and took a hand of each as
they came out on to the prim little pavement of the chapel graveyard.
"Good luck to you both," he murmured.
"We owe it to you a good deal, I fancy," said Greta, with pretty
friendliness.
"That we do!" cried the preacher. "If it hadn't been for the quarrel,
Griff, I should never have found heart to ask Greta to marry me. And if
it hadn't been for the fight round the peat-stack, I should never have
known what it was to feel the use of my arms. Man, it was worth living
for, that fight!"
"That is not nice of you, Gabriel," laughed the girl, softly; "you have
something more important to live for now."
But it was clear that she was far from disapproving of this new phase
in her husband's character.
"We shall make a Pagan of you yet, old fellow. Good-bye, good-bye."
And Griff, with many final handshakes, was off across the moor to
Gorsthwaite, running hard in his anxiety to hear the latest news of
Kate.
The doctor was coming down the stairs as Griff opened the front door.
"Well?" he cried, forgetting altogether, in his eagerness, to regulate
his voice properly.
The old doctor had been present at such scenes often enough, but he had
never felt an equal desire to turn tail and give necessity the slip. He
took out his handkerchief and blew his nose; then he fidgeted with the
buttons of his rough tweed coat--thinking all the while that it would
have been a trifle easier in the telling if he had had the pluck to
give Griff a plainer hint months ago. Finally, he looked up with a kind
of desperation in his eyes.
"Your wife is dead," he answered, in a harsh, grating voice.
Griff put his hand to his forehead and stood there for a moment; the
blood rushed to his face, and ebbed away again, as quickly as if some
one had struck him.
"Wait a moment, doctor," he said, after a while; "do you know just what
that means? You ought to be very sure----"
"She is dead, Griff; I'm not going to lie to you."
Not a word said Griff, but set his feet on the stairs, and began to
mount them slowly. The doctor followed, put a hand on his shoulder, and
led him down again to the hall.
"Not just yet, lad. When people die in great pain, it is not good
to--can you understand me?--I want you to say good-bye to a calm face,
Griff."
"Yes, yes. She was very beautiful, doctor, wasn't she? Too beautiful, I
fancy; I should have reckoned on that."
His dull, passionless voice jarred on the old man terribly.
"See, lad, you must pull yourself together. The child is alive; keep up
heart for the bairn's sake."
"The child? What do I want with the child? It is Kate I want."
"A boy, too--you always wanted a boy, you know," went on the other, not
heeding Griff's fretful interruption.
The door stood open, and Griff, looking out across the moor, saw the
crimson sun sinking into a grey bank of haze.
"We shall have snow to-night," he said, and glanced at the doctor as if
prepared to meet dissent with argument.
"Yes, I fancy we shall--a heavy fall, too."
Griff straightened his shoulders presently, and held out his hand.
"You've done your best, doctor, and I thank you for it. I can't get
used to the idea just at once; perhaps--if you left me to think it out
a bit--I might get the hang of things better."
"God forgive me!" muttered the doctor, as he went out; "it is only
staving off utter hopelessness for the lad. The child is as good as
dead; it may live a day or two--a week, perhaps--it would have been
better if it had never lived at all. Lord, Lord, what a mess life makes
of itself!"
Without, Gorsthwaite showed itself in touch with the black weather. A
sullen frost had hold of the land, and the stained old walls answered
the sky with frown for frown. The plover wheeled ceaselessly about the
chimney-stacks, and the voice of the damned rang dryly through their
sable throats.
Within, the rooms were darkened, and the oaken panels creaked at the
burden of their own sad thoughts. The mistress had been taken to her
rest, and the master was battling for his reason, with a face that
aped the stones which shut him in. All that he had in him of dogged
resistance was pushing its way to the front: one blow had followed
another, and the end, perhaps, was not yet--but he would fight till his
own end came.
He got up from the bed where she had died, and moved stiffly up and
down the room. He thought of the child, and forced himself to recall,
one by one, the goodly plans he had framed for him. Yes, he should grow
up strong--a Lomax to the backbone--he should take his fill of life,
and help his father to live again in watching him. Steady! The boy
would have need of his father, as his father had of him: there must be
no knuckling under to circumstance now.
On a sudden the child began to cry most piteously, disturbing his
father's gaining resolution. Griff's thoughts wandered out again to
that ice-bound moorland graveyard, where Kate was lying in the cold. It
was surely a monstrous unfairness that she had died to give the boy his
taste of life--that she must evermore lie naked and friendless, while
he would some day eat and drink in the lusty fulness of his manhood.
But where did such thoughts carry him? Into the tangled places of
shade, where neither hope nor light could show themselves. He fought
them back, time after time, and slowly won his way to calm. By sheer
strength of will he set his baby on the heights where its mother had
had her dwelling, and fell down and worshipped the rising dawn now that
the older day had set.
And all the while, the child within sent up its piteous cries. And all
the while, the plovers, wheeling round the chimney-stacks, ceased not
to wail, and screech, and whimper. And night settled dumbly over the
silent heather places.