A Son of Hagar Part 111

It would have been a strange spectacle to strange eyes. The old man--young still, though seventy-nine, dear to troops of dear ones, encircled in his age by love and honor, living in poverty that was abundance, with faith that was itself the substance of things hoped for, his simple face ruddier and mellower than before--rocking his head and singing in the singleness of his heart. The other man--barely thirty, yet already old, having missed his youth, his thin cheeks pallid as linen, his eyes burning with a somber light--alone in the world, desolate, apart--walking with an uncertain step and a tremor of the whole frame, which seemed to lurch for poise and balance, yet swinging his arms with the sweep of the melody, and smiling a forced smile through his hard and whitened lips.

When the singing ceased, Hugh Ritson paused suddenly and turned to the old banksman.

"Luke," he said, abruptly, "I suppose there will be many to follow you when your time comes?"

"Ey, please G.o.d," answered the banksman, dashing away a furtive drop that had rolled on to his cheek; "there'll be my childer, and my childer's childer, and their childer, forby. Maybe the barns will lay me behind the mother; poor auld body!"

Hugh Ritson's face darkened, and he resumed his walk.

"Tut! what matter?" he asked himself; "the night winds are enough to moan over a man's grave." And he laughed a little.

Next morning--Sat.u.r.day morning--he wrote a letter, and sent Luke to the village to post it. Then he attended to some business relating to the pit. After that, he shut the door and bolted it. When the old man brought the midday meal he knocked in vain, and had to go away.

Night closed in, and still there came no answer to the old man's knock.

When the sun had set the wind had risen. It threatened to be a tempestuous night.

Toward ten o'clock Parson Christian arrived. He had wrestled long with his own heart as to what course it was his duty to take. He had come at last in answer to the banksman's summons, and now he knocked at the door. There was no answer. The wind was loud in the trees overhead, but he could hear the restless footfall within. He knocked again, and yet again.

Then the bolt was drawn, and a voice at once strange and familiar cried, "Come in, Parson Christian."

He had not called or spoken.

The parson entered. When his eyes fell on Hugh Ritson's face he shuddered as he had never shuddered before. Many a time he had seen death in a living face, but never anything like this. The livid cheeks were stony, the white lips were drawn hard, the somber eyes burned like a deep, slow fire, the yellow hands were gaunt and restless. There was despair on the contracted brow, but no repentance. And the enfeebled limbs trembled, but still shuffled on--on, on, on, through their longer journey than from Gabbatha to Golgotha. The very atmosphere of the room breathed of death.

"Let me pray with you," said the parson, softly, and without any other words, he went down on his knees.

"Ay, pray for me--pray for me; but you lose your labor; nothing can save me."

"Let us call on G.o.d," said the parson.

A bitter laugh broke from Hugh Ritson's lips.

"What! and take to him the dregs and rinsings of my life? No!"

"The blood of Christ has ransomed the world. It can save the worst sinner of us all, and turn away the heavy wrath of G.o.d."

Hugh Ritson broke again into a bitter laugh.

"The end has come of sin, as of trouble. No matter." Then, with an awful solemnity, he added: "My soul is barren. It is already given over to the undying worm. I shall die to-morrow at sunrise."

"No man knows the day nor the hour--"

Hugh Ritson repeated, with a fearful emphasis, "I shall die as the sun rises on Sunday morning."

Parson Christian remained with him the weary night through. The wind moaned and howled outside. It licked the walls as with the tongues of serpents. The parson prayed fervently, but Hugh Ritson's voice never once rose with his. To and fro, to and fro, the dying man continued his direful walk. At one moment he paused and said with a ghastly smile, "This dying is an old story. It has been going on every day for six thousand years, and yet we find it as terrible as ever."

Toward three in the morning he threw open the shutters. The windows were still dark; it seemed as if the dawn were far away. "It is coming," he said calmly. "I knew it must come soon. Let us go out to meet it."

With infinite effort he pulled his ulster over his shoulders, put on his hat, and opened the door.

"Where are you going?" said the parson, and his voice broke.

"To the top of the fell."

"Why there?"

Hugh Ritson turned his heavy eyes upon him. "To see the new day dawn,"

he said, with an awful pathos.

He had already stepped out into the gloom. Parson Christian followed him. They took the path that led through the moor end to the foot of Cat Bells. The old man offered his arm, but Hugh Ritson shook his head and walked one pace ahead. It was a terrible journey. The wind had dropped.

In the air the night and day commingled. The dying man struggled along with the firm soul of a stricken lion. Step by step and with painful labor they ascended the bare side of the fell in the gray light of morning. They reached the top at last.

Below them the moorland lay dark and mute. The mist was around them.

They seemed to stand on an islet of the clouds. In front the day-break was bursting the confines of the bleak racks of cloud. Then the day came in its wondrous radiance, and flooded the world in a vast ocean of light.

On the mountain brow Hugh Ritson resumed his melancholy walk. The old parson muttered, as if to himself, "Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro? Wilt thou pursue the dry stubble?" Hugh Ritson overheard the words, and all his manner changed. The stubborn lips softened, the somber eye melted, the contracted brow relaxed, and for the first time in all this length of years, he cried like a little child.

At the same instant the sun swept up, and he fell. Parson Christian bent over him. The crimson of the east twas reflected on his white face. The new day had dawned.

On the Tuesday following two mourners stood by an open grave in the church-yard of Newlands. One of them was white-headed; the other wore the jacket and cap, the badge and broad arrow of a convict. The s.e.xton and his man had lowered the coffin to its last home, and then stepped aside. A tall man leaned on the lych-gate, and a group of men and women stood in silence by the porch of the church. The afternoon sun was low, and the shadows of the tombstones stretched far on the gra.s.s.

The convict went down on his knees, and looked long into the grave. When he arose, the company that had gathered about the porch had gone, and voices singing a hymn came from within the old church. It was the village choir practicing. The world's work had begun again.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Two days later the fell behind the Ghyll was a scene of unusual animation. It was the day of the shearing. The sheep, visibly whiter and more fleecy for a washing of some days before, had been gathered into stone folds. Clippers were seated on creels ranged about a turf fire, over which a pot of tar hung from a triangle of boughs. Boy "catchers"

brought up the sheep, one by one, and girl "helpers" carried away the fleeces, hot and odorous, and hung them over the open barn doors. As the sheep were stripped, they were tugged to the fire and branded from the bubbling tar with the smet mark of the Ritsons. The metallic click of the shears was in the air, and over all was the blue sky and the brilliant sunshine.

In a white overall, stained with patches of tar and some streaks of blood, smudged with soap and sc.r.a.ps of the clinging wool, Parson Christian moved among the shearers, applying plentiful doses of salve from a huge can to the snips made in the skin of the sheep by the accidents of the shears.

"We might have waited for the maister afore shearing--eh?" said Reuben, from one of the creels.

"He'll be here before we finish, please the Lord," answered the parson.

"Is it to-day you're to gang for him?"

"Yes, this afternoon."

"A daub on this leg, parson, where she kicked--deuced take her!... It's like you'll bring him home in a car?"

"Ay; Randal Alston has loaned me his mare."

"Why, man, what a upshot we'll have, for sure--bacon pie and veal and haggis, and top stannin pie and puddings, I reckon.... Just a hand to her leg, parson, while I strip the coat and waistcoat off this black-faced herdwick.... Is the mistress to come home, too?"