A Son of Hagar Part 100

"This is your grat.i.tude to the clergyman," he said.

Sundry further snorts and sn.i.g.g.e.rs went round the tables.

"There's not a man of you who is not beholden to Parson Christian," said Hugh, sternly. He twisted sharply round upon one graybeard whose laugh still rumbled between his teeth. "Reuben Rae, who nursed your sick wife?

John Proudfoot," to the blacksmith, "what about your child down with the fever?" His quick eye traversed the parlor, and more than one l.u.s.ty crony was fain to bury his face in his breast. "Yet you laugh, brave fellows as you are, when the good man's house is broken into by a thief."

Drayton took a swift stride toward him.

"Drop it, and quick!" he shouted.

Hugh Ritson governed himself with an effort.

"I'm not here to brawl," he said quietly.

"Pigeon-livered blatherskite!--that's what I call ye--d'ye hear?" said Drayton.

Hugh's face flinched, but he turned on his heel, and was on the road at the next instant.

Drayton followed him out, laughing boisterously. Hugh made one quick step backward and shut the door; then he turned about on Drayton, whose cruel face could be dimly seen in the hazy red light that came through the blinds.

"You have tried to torture me," he said, "just as you would hang a dog by its tail, or draw the teeth of a rat. You have threatened with worse torture a good and loyal woman. You are a scoundrel, and you know it!

But even you would hesitate if you knew for certain who or what you are.

Let me tell you again, now, when we are alone, and while I have no personal interest to serve: You are the man whose name I gave you--Paul Lowther, son of Robert Lowther--and that lady, my brother's wife, whom for reason of profit you would compel to live under the same roof with you, is your own sister!"

Drayton's loud guffaw rang out above the wind's moan in the trees. His cronies within heard it and listened.

"It's a rare old story, that is. Let me see; you've told it before, I fancy."

"Then it was a lie; now it's G.o.d's truth!" said Hugh.

Drayton laughed again.

"And then it was believed, but now it's not. No, no, Master Hugh, it won't pa.s.s."

"We will see."

Hugh Ritson had swung about and was gone.

Drayton went back to his friends.

"Hasn't the pluck of a pigeon when it comes to the push," he muttered.

"Ey, he wears a bonny white feather in his cap, for sure," said old Reuben Rae.

"No fight in'im--no'but tongue lather," said John, the blacksmith.

Hugh Ritson walked through the darkness to the pit-brow. The glow of the furnace lighted up the air to the south, and showed vaguely the brant sides of the fell; the dull thud of the engine, the clank of the chain, and the sharp crack of the refuse tumbling down the bank from the banksman's barrow were the only sounds that rose above the wind's loud whistle.

Gubblum was at the mouth of the shaft.

"Oglethorpe," said Hugh, "how many of the gangs are below to-night?"

"All but two--auld Reuben's and Jim South'et's."

"Then they have chosen to work on?"

"Ey, another fortnight--trusting to get their wage afore that, please G.o.d."

"They shall not be disappointed."

Hugh Ritson turned away. Gubblum trundled his last wheelbarrow to the edge of the bank, and then rested and said to himself, "He takes it cool enough onyway."

But the outside tranquillity disappeared when Hugh Ritson reached his own room on the pit-brow. He bathed his hot forehead again and again.

His fingers twitched nervously, and he plunged his perspiring hands into cold water above the wrists, holding them there for several minutes. Not for long did he sit in one seat. He tramped the room uneasily, his infirm foot trailing heavily. Then he threw himself on the couch, tossed from side to side, rose, and resumed his melancholy walk. Thus an hour pa.s.sed drearily.

His mind recalled one by one the events of the day. And one by one there came crowding back upon him the events of the two years that had pa.s.sed since his father's death. A hurricane was upheaving every memory of his mind. And every memory had its own particular sting, and came up as a blight to fret his soul. He tried to guard himself from himself. What he had first thought to do was but in defense of his strict legal rights, and if he had gone further--if he had done more, without daring to think of it until it was done--then it was love that had led him astray. Was it so cruel a thing to be just? So foul a thing to love?

But above the shufflings of remorse, above the stiflings of regret, above the plea of a maddening love, was the voice of revenge speaking loudly in his soul. That man, his instrument, now his master, Paul Lowther, must be brought down, and his time-serving sponsor with him.

But how? There was but one way--by denouncing himself. Yes, that was the sole outlet for his outraged and baffled spirit. He must go to the proper quarter and say, "I have perjured myself, and sworn away my brother's liberty. The man who was condemned as Paul Drayton is Paul Ritson. I did it all."

That would bring this vulgar scoundrel to the dust, but at what a price!

The convict's dress now worn by his brother would soon be worn by him.

And what solace would it be then that the same suit would be worn by the impostor also? Yet why prate of solace in a matter like this? What alternative was left to him? In what quarter of the sky was the light dawning for him? He was traveling toward the deepening night, and the day of his life was done.

What if he allowed everything to take its course? Well, he was a disgraced and ruined man, turned adrift from his father's house, and doomed to see a stranger living there. Did he lack gall to make such a climax bitter? Bitter, eh! and a thousand times the more bitter because he himself had, for ends of his own, first placed the scoundrel where he sat.

No, no, no; Paul Lowther must be brought down, and with him must fall the poor ruins of a better man. Yes a better man, let the world say what it would.

Could it occur that he would not be believed? that when he said "Take me, I am a perjurer," they would answer, "No, your self-denunciation is only a freak of revenge, a mad attempt to injure the relative who has turned you out of his house?" Hugh Ritson laughed as the grim irony of such a possible situation flashed upon him: a man self-condemned and saved from punishment by the defense of his enemy!

There was a knock at his door. In his stupor he was not at first conscious of what the knock meant. At length he recalled himself and cried:

"Come in."

Gubblum Oglethorpe entered.

"The men on the twelve o'clock shift are just about ganging down, and they want to tak' a few mair forks with them. They've telt me 'at the timber is splitting like matchwood under the sandy vein."

Hugh Ritson made an effort to gather the purport of Gubblum's message.

"Tell them to take the forks," he said in a low tone.

Gubblum was backing out, and stopped.

"I reckon thoo's not heard the last frae auld Mattha's," he said in another voice.

"What is it, Oglethorpe?" said Hugh, his head bent over the table.