BY WAY OF WYNYATES.
By the time that Lassie had been put up in the stable, groomed, and
fed, the snow had ceased, though the frost bit harder than ever. Griff
fastened the stable-door, and moved irresolutely towards the house.
Then he remembered what was inside, on the seat in the parlour where he
had laid it. The bairn, indeed, was lying on a bed upstairs, washed and
laid out by the women-folk; but to Griff's fancy it was still in the
chair, and he shrank from the thought of entering.
Out there in the cold he stood and tried to feel, and wondered at
the hideous blank that stretched on, on before him, characterless as
the even plain of snow to north and south and east and west of this
mid-moor house. He cried aloud in his desolation, and hard on the heels
of the need to voice his trouble came the need for fellowship. He must
have touch of human sympathy; that was the one thing needful, the one
thing vital. Then, slowly, he began to think of the preacher, of Greta,
of Leo Roddick. And Roddick seemed the strongest of them all, the
fittest to give him help.
Yes; he would hurry across to Wynyates. Old Roddick was never the man
to mind being knocked up in the middle of the night, if there were need
for it. And God knew there _was_ need for it now; he must save his
reason, since all else had gone by the board.
The snow was crisping under the frost fingers, and the stars shone
clear. He tried not to let the quick motion, the keen air, bring back
his scattered impressions of all that had happened during the past few
days. When a memory cut at his heart, he walked faster, thinking to
drive it out; when the memory returned, he quickened to a run, as if
to dodge it by flight. He reached Wynyates at last, and pounded at the
door with his fists. From within sounded a low cry, in a woman's voice,
and the patter of feet across the hall.
"Is that you, Leo?" said the voice. "Dear, I have waited so long for
you."
The door was opened, and on the threshold stood Janet Laverack, never
doubting but that it was Roddick who waited on the other side. She was
dressed as she had been for dinner that night at the Folly; but she had
taken off her sodden shoes and stockings, and her little white feet
peeped out from a pair of Roddick's old slippers, absurdly too large
for her. The bottom of her skirt, too, was grievously bedrabbled.
Griff stepped into the light.
"I am Roddick's friend," he said vaguely.
The girl looked and looked at him. He would have been an alarming
object enough in broad daylight, and with help to be had for the
asking; but to-night he showed ghastly, dishevelled as he was, his
clothes steaming like a moor fog now that he had come into the warmth.
Janet, however, knowing that she must face the danger by aid of her
wits alone, neither screamed nor gave way.
"Who are you?" she asked in a low voice.
"Griff Lomax. I--I came to ask Roddick's help. Isn't he at home?"
A curious half-smile played about the girl's lips.
"_I_ came to ask his help, too; so we are friends so far. I know you
well by name. You have had trouble lately?"
Griff went light-headed for a moment. The oak panelling of the hall
circled round him; he lifted his eyes to the girl's to steady himself.
"Trouble?" he repeated, with an empty laugh. "Oh, nothing to speak
of--wife and child left me for good, that is all--died, you know----"
"Come and sit down here; you are not yourself," said the girl,
peremptorily.
The last of her fear had vanished at sight of his helplessness, and she
was feeling that same need for action which had weighed so heavily on
Griff a while ago.
He dropped obediently into the armchair.
"When did you last have food?" went on Janet.
"I--I forget. Some time this morning, I believe--just before the child
died."
She went off to the pantry without another word, and brought out cold
beef and bread. A bottle of whisky was standing on the sideboard, and
she poured him out a liberal allowance.
"Now, eat and drink. It was high time you sought some one who could
look after you."
Griff shook his head.
"I can't," he muttered obstinately.
"You shall," she answered quietly, putting a plate on his knee, and the
tumbler on the hob beside him.
Again he succumbed to the stronger will, and did as he was bid. His
appetite grew with each mouthful, and he passed his plate for more when
he had finished. And after that he mechanically pulled out his pipe,
filled and lit it.
"There!" said Janet, approvingly. "Smoke away, and tell me all about
it."
Griff almost smiled at her quaint, elderly air. It seemed very much
like a dream, all this; and easily as in a dream he found himself
telling Janet all that had happened. She was quiet for a little after
he had finished; then--
"We were talking about you, Leo and I, not long ago. He told me of your
wife's death, and I was, oh, so sorry for you, though I had never even
seen you. Only, I can guess what the feeling must be. If Leo were to
die, I think I should just stop living and have done with it." She was
craftily drawing him away from his own trouble, and into hers. "You
won't think it odd of me to be talking to you like this? Because, you
see, Leo tells me you know all our story."
"How do you come to be here?" said Griff, abruptly.
"I couldn't bear it any longer, so I came; that's why. And Leo
was--was _a brute_ to me. That is why I hadn't the heart to be afraid
of you when you came."
"A brute? How do you mean?"
"He talked of my sacrificing myself, and he lectured me, just as if I
had been a silly school-girl, following the first romantic notion she
had got into her head. If Leo _could_ have killed my love, he would
have done it long ago: he shocks and hurts me when he is angry. Poor
old boy!" she broke off suddenly. "He is doing more for that--that
woman, than I would ever do. And here am I blaming him for being a
brute."
"Which woman?" asked Griff, who was still struggling with his faculties.
"The woman who calls herself his wife. The nurse sent across, soon
after I came, to say that she was unmanageable, and Leo went with her.
I expect him home every minute. I want him back, too, though I know he
will be angrier than ever with me; he always is after these struggles.
It costs him so much not to let her die at these times."
"Did Roddick allow you to stay here?"
This was another of Griff's childishly direct questions. He had got a
little away from his own worries, and was growing responsive to the
interest in his friend's situation. Somewhere, too deep down to be
brought to the surface as yet, was a feeling that a certain plan, if he
could once hit on it, would give all three of them relief.
"He had to. There could be no question of my returning across the
moors, so he was going to sit up here all night, leaving his room to
me. He had packed me off to bed a moment before the nurse came, but I
listened at the head of the stairs and slipped down when he had gone,
to see that everything was nice and warm for him on his return."
"Just as Kate used to do, just as Kate used to do for me," muttered
Griff.
"But it will all have to be fought out again to-morrow," the girl went
on. "And father will guess where I am and fetch me, when they find out
in the morning that I have run away; and that will be the end of it,
if Leo won't let me be strong, instead of just good in a worldly way."
She felt, somehow, that this shaggy, unkempt man was rather on the
plane of the animals, to whom we talk freely of the things that lie
nearest our hearts. She was already losing sight of the bitter personal
grief that had brought him here.
Griff remembered that her father could never in this world come to
fetch her; but that seemed a matter of lighter moment, and he waited to
hear more from her. That fugitive idea was taking more definite shape
in his brain.
"Do you think we ought to wait, year after year, till my hair is grey,
and my face wrinkled, and I'm too unspeakably hideous to give him a
moment's pleasure?" demanded the girl, after a reflective pause. She
leaned forward eagerly for his answer.
"No, I don't," said Griff, with sudden energy. "Take your chance while
you have it, and thank the Lord for every scrap of happiness you snatch
out of the fire."
"Ah, I thought you would be on my side. Will you tell Leo that? Will
you help me to show him that waiting is the only real sacrifice? It is
only me he thinks of, you know, all through, and that makes it all the
harder to bear when I know how blind he is to my needs."
That nascent idea leaped in Griff's brain.
"I can help you to more than that, if once I see my way clear," he said.
She looked doubtfully at him, fearing a return of his first distraught
condition. But his mouth was firm, his eyes bright.
"I don't understand you," she murmured.
"I don't understand myself yet. Give me time.--There's Roddick. Shall I
let him in?" he broke off, as a strong hand was laid on the outer door.
She flushed a little.
"No, I can't let you do that. It is my privilege."
Griff, sitting quietly by the fire, knew that she was lying in
Roddick's arms out there, and for a moment he grudged them their
partial happiness. Then he smiled gravely, and tried to understand how
he might help these two. If only he could find a deed of real charity
to do, he might yet win peace for himself.
In the midst of his pondering, Roddick stamped across the hall and into
the parlour.
"So you're here," he began, with more than his usual gruffness. But he
stopped at sight of his friend's face. "Old man, what has happened to
you? You look like a corpse, and your clothes are dripping wet!"
"I came to talk things over with you, and found Miss Laverack here
instead. She has done me a world of good," said Griff, simply.
"She ought never to have been out of bed at this time. Janet, off you
go. Lomax and I will make an all-night sitting of it, and thrash our
troubles out together."
She came and gave Griff her hand, smiling at him with royal
friendliness.
"Good night," she whispered. "Try to make the best of it." Then,
turning before she had got half across the room, "Leo, can't you give
your friend a change? I ought to have thought of it sooner. He will
catch his death of cold."
"I won't bother. I'm used to getting wet through."
"Yes, you will bother," put in Roddick. "Upstairs you come, and put dry
things on at once. Janet, can you wait down here a little? We shan't be
long."
When at last they were alone together, Roddick drew Griff on to talk
of his troubles, and afterwards--just as Janet had done, but with less
of self in his motive--he tried to beguile him with details of his own
sufferings.
"This place goes by the name of Wynyates--'Gates of the Wind,' it
means, they tell me; and, God, I can well believe it! They couldn't
have hit on a better name. Half a mile north lives a woman I go out of
my way to take care of, lest she should give me my liberty; five miles
to the other side Janet lives. A cold blast and a warm wind screech
and whimper, day and night, round Wynyates. They seem to blow clean
through me, Lomax; but I daren't evade them. It gets on the nerves in
time," he finished, tranquilly.
Griff sat up in his chair and glared across the hearth. "You're an
immaculate fool, Roddick. Every time you save your wife, conscience or
no conscience, you stab the woman you are in love with.--Was she bad
to-night?"
"Worse than I've seen her yet. The poor devil of a nurse is half-killed
with the work. She said I could leave her for the rest of the night;
but I shouldn't have done if Janet had not been here. I expect to have
the nurse on my hands next. Then there's Janet; how am I going to steer
her through the pretty mess she has got herself into?"
Griff had got hold of the right end of his idea now. "Tell me more
about your wife," he said eagerly. "Where does she live?"
"At a cottage called Bents Foot, half a mile further up the hill. You
seem interested in the woman; are you thinking of dropping a piece of
paste-board on her?" snapped Roddick, with bitter levity.
"You're sure you can't get a divorce?" went on Griff, with the same
eager persistence.
"No, I tell you!"
The other gave vent to a sigh that was oddly suggestive of relief. "She
can live any length of time, can't she?"
"Heaven only knows. Years ago she ought to have died; years ahead she
may be living. And meanwhile my little darling is killing herself by
inches."
Again that quick, sharp sigh from Griff.
"Killing herself by inches?" he repeated.
"Yes, damn you! why play the parrot to a beggarly statement of fact?"
Griff threw a couple of peats on a fire that needed no replenishing.
"Well," he said, settling back into his seat, "let us put away our
worries, old man; we're getting morbid. Perhaps a talk about old times
will do us good."
Roddick failed to notice a something that lay very near to the surface
of the other's apparent carelessness; after chatting of this and that,
he began to nod, then to doze; until finally he was sleeping as soundly
as if there were no perplexities to be faced on the morrow.
But Griff had no inclination to sleep. He sat there, watching now the
live peats, now his friend's face. As the dawn crept white over the
white snow, he went quickly from the house towards a cottage called
Bents Foot.