RALPH SPEAKS HIS MIND
It was toward the dawn when Ralph was roused out of a deep sleep by a
violent knocking at his bedroom door.
"Yes," he called, springing up in bed and staring into the
semi-darkness.
"Come quickly; your father is very ill!" It was his mother who spoke,
and her voice was vibrant and anxious.
He sprang out of bed at once, and hurriedly got into his clothes. In a
few moments he was by his father's bedside.
At first he thought that his mother had alarmed herself and him
unnecessarily. David lay on his side as if asleep.
"I cannot rouse him," she said in gasps. "I've tried every way, but he
doesn't move."
Ralph laid his hand on his father's shoulder and shook him, but there
was no response of any kind.
"He must be dead," his mother said.
"No, no. He breathes quite regularly," Ralph answered, and he took the
candle and held it where the light fell full on his father's eyelids.
For a moment there was a slight tremor, then his eyes slowly opened, and
a look of infinite appeal seemed to dart out of them.
"He has had a stroke," Ralph answered, starting back. "He is paralysed.
Call Ruth, and I will go for the doctor at once."
Twenty-four hours later David was sufficiently recovered to scrawl on a
piece of paper with a black lead pencil the words--
"I shall die at home. Praise the Lord!"
He watched intently the faces of his wife and children as they read the
words, and a smile played over his own. It seemed to be a smile of
triumph. He was not going to live in the cottage after all. He was going
to end his days where he had always hoped to do, and no one could cheat
him out of that victory.
Ralph sat down by the bedside and took his father's hand. The affection
between the two was very tender. They had been more than father and son,
they had been friends and comrades. Ruth and her mother ran out of the
room to hide their tears. They did not want to distress the dying man by
obtruding their grief.
For several minutes Ralph was unable to speak. David never took his eyes
from his face. He seemed waiting for some assurance that his message was
understood.
"We understand, father," Ralph said at length. "No one can turn you out
now."
David smiled again. Then the tears filled his eyes and rolled down his
cheeks.
"You always wanted to end your days here," Ralph went on, "and it looks
as if you were going to do it."
David raised the hand that was not paralysed and pointed upward.
"There are no leasehold systems there, at any rate," Ralph said, with a
gulp. "The earth is the landlord's, but heaven is God's."
David smiled again, and then closed his eyes. Three hours later a second
stroke supervened, and stilled his heart for ever.
Ralph walked slowly out of the room and into the open air. He felt
thankful for many reasons that his father was at rest. And yet, in his
heart the feeling grew that John Hamblyn had killed him, and there
surged up within him an intense and burning passion to make John Hamblyn
suffer something of what he himself was suffering. Why should he go scot
free? Why should he live unrebuked, and his conscience be left
undisturbed?
For a moment or two Ralph stood in the garden and looked up at the
clouds that were scudding swiftly across the sky. Then he flung open the
gate and struck out across the fields. The wind battered and buffeted
him and almost took his breath away, but it did not weaken his resolve
for a moment. He would go and tell John Hamblyn what he had done--tell
him to his face that he had killed his father; ay, and tell him that as
surely as there was justice in the world he would not go unpunished.
Over the brow of the hill he turned, and down into Dingley Bottom, and
then up the long slant toward Treliskey Plantation. He scarcely heeded
the wind that was blowing half a gale, and appeared to be increasing in
violence every minute.
The gate that Dorothy's horse had broken had been mended long since, and
the notice board repainted:
"Trespassers will be Prosecuted."
He gritted his teeth unconsciously as the white letters stared him in
the face. He had heard his father tell that from time immemorial here
had been a public thoroughfare, till Sir John took the law into his own
hands, and flung a gate across it and warned the public off with a
threat of prosecution.
But what cared he about the threat? John Hamblyn could prosecute him if
he liked. He was going to tell him what he thought of him, and he was
going the nearest way.
He vaulted lightly over the gate, and hurried along without a pause. In
the shadow of the trees he scarcely felt the violence of the wind, but
he heard it roaring in the branches above him, like the sound of an
incoming tide.
He reached the manor, and pulled violently at the door bell.
"Is your master at home?" he said to the boy in buttons who opened the
door.
"Yes----"
"Then tell him I want to see him at once," he went on hurriedly, and he
followed the boy into the hall.
A moment later he was standing before Sir John in his library.
The baronet looked at him with a scowl. He disliked him intensely, and
had never forgiven him for being the cause--as he believed--of his
daughter's accident. Moreover, he had no proper respect for his betters,
and withal possessed a biting tongue.
"Well, young man, what brought you here?" he said scornfully.
"I came on foot," was the reply, and Ralph threw as much scorn into his
voice as the squire had done.
"Oh, no doubt--no doubt!" the squire said, bridling. "But I have no time
to waste in listening to impertinences. What is your business?"
"I came to tell you that my father is dead."
"Dead!" Sir John gasped. "No, surely? I never heard he was ill!"
"He was taken with a stroke early yesterday morning, and he died an hour
ago."
"Only an hour ago? Dear me!"
"I came straight away from his deathbed to let you know that you had
killed him."
"That I had killed him!" Sir John exclaimed, with a gasp.
"You might have seen it in his face, when you told him that you had let
the farm over his head, and that he was to be turned out of the little
home he had built with his own hands."
"I gave him fair notice, more than he could legally claim," Sir John
said, looking very white and distressed.
"I am not talking about the law," Ralph said hurriedly. "If you had
behaved like a Christian, my father would have been alive to-day. But
the blow you struck him killed him. He never smiled again till this
morning, when he knew he was dying. I am glad he is gone. But as surely
as you punished us, God will punish you."
"What, threatening, young man?" Sir John replied, stepping back and
clenching his fists.
"No, I am not threatening," Ralph said quietly. "But as surely as you
stand there, and I stand here, some day we shall be quits," and he
turned on his heel and walked out of the room.
Outside the wind was roaring like an angry lion and snapping tree
branches like matchwood. A little distance from the house he met a
gardener, who told him there was no road through the plantation. But
Ralph only smiled at him and walked on.
He was feeling considerably calmer since his interview with Sir John. It
had been a relief to him to fling off what was on his mind. He was
conscious that his heart was less bitter and revengeful. He only thought
once of Dorothy, and he quickly dismissed her from his mind. He wished
that he could dismiss her so effectually that the thought of her would
never come back. It was something of a humiliation that constantly, and
in the most unexpected ways, her face came up before him, and her sweet,
winning eyes looked pleadingly and sometimes reproachfully into his.
But he was master of himself to-day. At any rate he was so far master of
himself that no thought of the squire's "little maid" could soften his
heart toward the squire. He hurried back home at the same swinging pace
as he came. It was a house of mourning to which he journeyed, but his
mother and Ruth would need him. He was the only one now upon whom they
could lean, and he would have to play the man, and make the burden for
them as light as possible.
He scarcely heeded the wind. His thoughts were too full of other things.
In the heart of the plantation the branches were still snapping as the
trees bent before the fury of the gale. He rather liked the sound.
Nature was in an angry mood, and it accorded well with his own temper.
It would have been out of place if the wind had slept on the day his
father died.
He was hardly able to realise yet that his father was dead. It seemed
too big and too overwhelming a fact to be comprehended all at once. It
seemed impossible that that gentle presence had gone from him for ever.
He wondered why he did not weep. Surely no son ever loved a father more
than he did, and yet no tear had dimmed his eyes as yet, no sob had
gathered in his throat.
Over his head the branch of a tree flew past that had been ripped by the
gale from its moorings.
"Hallo," he said, with a smile. "This is getting serious," and he turned
into the middle of the road and hurried on again.
A moment or two later a sudden blow on the head struck him to the earth.
For several seconds he lay perfectly still just where he fell. Then a
sharp spasm of pain caused him to sit up and stare about him with a
bewildered expression in his eyes. What had happened he did not know. He
raised his right hand to his head almost mechanically--for the seat of
the pain was there--then drew it slowly away and looked at it. It was
dyed red and dripping wet.
He struggled to his feet after a few moments, and tried to walk. It was
largely an unconscious effort, for he did not know where he was, or
where he wanted to go to; and when he fell again and struck the hard
ground with his face, he was scarcely aware that he had fallen.
In a few minutes he was on his feet again, but the world was dark by
this time. Something had come up before his eyes and shut out
everything. A noise was in his ears, but it was not the roaring of the
wind in the trees; he reeled and stumbled heavily with his head against
a bank of heather. Then the noise grew still, and the pain vanished, and
there was a sound in his ears like the ringing of St. Goram bells, which
grew fainter till oblivion wrapped him in its folds.