A Son of Hagar Part 46

Greta bowed her head meekly, and Paul stood, while the parson spoke, with absent eyes fixed on the tablets on the wall before him, spelling out mechanically the words of the commandments.

In a few moments the signatures were taken, the bell in the little turret was ringing, and the company were trooping out of the church. It was a rude old structure, with great bulges in the walls, little square lead lights, and open timbers untrimmed and straight from the tree.

The crowd outside had gathered about the wheelless landau which the carpenter and blacksmith had converted into a sledge. On the box seat sat Tom o' Dint, his fiddle in his hand, and icicles hanging in the folds of his capacious coat. The bride and bridegroom were to return in this conveyance, which was to be drawn down the frozen river by a score of young dalesmen shod in steel. They took their seats, and had almost set off, when Greta called for the parson.

"Parson Christian, Parson Christian!" echoed twenty voices. The good parson was ringing the bell, being bell-ringer also. Presently the brazen tongue ceased wagging, and Parson Christian reappeared.

"Here's your seat, parson," said Paul, making s.p.a.ce.

"In half a crack," replied Parson Christian, pulling a great key out of his pocket and locking the church door. He was s.e.xton as well.

Then he got up into the sledge, word was called, the fiddle broke out, and away they went for the river-bank. A minute more and they were flying over the smooth ice with the morning sunlight chasing them, and the music of fifty l.u.s.ty voices in their ears.

They had the longer journey, but they reached the vicarage as early as the coaches that had returned by the road. Then came the breakfast--a solid repast, fit for appet.i.tes sharpened by the mountain air. Parson Christian presided in the parlor, and Brother Peter in the kitchen, the door between being thrown open. The former radiated smiles like April sunshine; the latter looked as sour as a plum beslimed by the earthworms, and "didn't know as he'd ever seen sec a pack of hungry hounds."

After the breakfast the toasts, and up leaped Mr. Bonnithorne. That gentleman had quite cast off the weight of his anxiety. He laughed and chaffed, made quips and cranks.

"Our lawyer is foreclosing," whispered a pert young damsel in Greta's ear. "He's getting drunk."

Mr. Bonnithorne would propose "Mr. and Mrs. Ritson." He began with a few h.o.a.ry and reverend quotations--"Men are April when they woo, December when they wed." This was capped by "Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives." Mr. Bonnithorne protested that both had been true, only with exceptions.

Paul thanked the company in a dozen manly and well-chosen phrases, and then stepped to the kitchen door and invited the guests over whom Brother Peter presided to spend the evening at the Ghyll.

The ladies had risen and carried off Greta to prepare for her journey, when Gubblum Oglethorpe got on his feet and insisted on proposing "the la.s.ses." What Gubblum had to say on the subject it is not given to us to record. By some strange twist of logic, he launched out on a very different topic. Perhaps he sat in the vicinity of Nancy Tantarum, for he began with the story of a funeral.

"It minds me," he said, "of the carriers at Adam Strang's funeral, at Gosforth, last back-end gone twelvemonth. There were two sets on 'em, and they'd a big bottle atween 'em--same as that one as auld Peter, the honey, keeps to hissel at yon end of the table. Well, they carried Adam shoulder high from the house to the grave-yard, first one set and then t'other, mile on mile apiece, and when one set got to the end of their mile they set down the coffin and went on for t'other set to pick it up. It were nine mile from Branthet Edge to Gosforth, so they had nine shifts atween 'em, and at every shift they swigged away at the big bottle--this way with it, Peter. Well, the mourners they crossed the fields for shortness, but the bearers, they had to keep the corpse road.

All went reet for eight mile, and then one set with Adam were far ahead of the other with the bottle. They set the coffin on a wall at the roadside and went on. Well, when the second set came up they didn't see it--they couldn't see owt, that's the fact--same as I expect I'll be afore the day's gone, but not with Peter's good-will, seemingly. Well, they went on, too. And when all of 'em coom't up to the church togither, there was the parson in his white smock and his bare poll and big book open to start. But, you see, there warn't no corpse. Where was it? Why, it was no' but resting quiet all by itsel' on the wall a mile away."

Gubblum was proceeding to a.s.sociate the grewsome story with the incidents of Paul's appearance at the fire while he was supposed to be in London; but Greta had returned to the parlor, m.u.f.fled in furs, Paul had thrown on a long frieze ulster, and every one had risen for the last leave-taking. In the midst of the company stood the good old Christian, his wrinkled face wet with silent tears. Greta threw herself into his arms and wept aloud. Then the parson began to cast seeming merry glances around him, and to be mighty jubilant all at once.

The improvised sledge was at the door, laden with many boxes.

"Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!"

A little cheer, a little attempt at laughter, a suppressed sigh, then a downright honest cry, and away they were gone. The last thing seen by Greta's hazy eyes was a drooping white head amid many bright girl faces.

How they flew along. The glow of sunset was now in their faces. It crimsoned the west, and sparkled like gold on the eastern crags. Between them and the light were the skaters drawing the sledge, sailing along like a flight of great rooks, their voices echoing in unseen caverns of the fells.

Mr. Bonnithorne sat with Paul and Greta.

"Where did you say you would stay in London?" he asked.

"At Morley's Hotel," said Paul.

With this answer the lawyer looked unreasonably happy.

The station was reached in twenty minutes. The train steamed in. Paul and Greta got into the last carriage, all before it being full. A moment more, and they were gone.

Then Mr. Bonnithorne walked direct to the telegraph office. But the liquor he had taken played him false. He had got it into his stupefied head that he must have blundered about Morley's Hotel. That was not Paul's, but Hugh's address. So he sent this telegram:

"Left by train at one. Address, Hawk and Heron."

Then he went home happy.

That night there was high revel at the Ghyll. First, a feast in the hall: beef, veal, mutton, ham, haggis, and hot bacon pie. Then an adjournment to a barn, where tallow candles were stuck into cloven sticks, and hollowed potatoes served for lamps. Strong ale and trays of tobacco went round, and while the gla.s.ses jingled and the smoke wreathed upward, a song was sung:

"A man may spend And G.o.d will send, If his wife be good to owt; But a man may spare And still be bare, If his wife be good to nowt."

Then blindman's buff. "Antony Blindman kens ta me, sen I bought b.u.t.ter and cheese o' thee? I ga' tha my pot, I ga' tha my pan, I ga' all I had but a rap ho' penny I gave a poor auld man."

Last of all, the creels were ranged round the hay-mows, and the floor was cleared of everything except a beer-barrel. This was run into the corner, and Tom o' Dint and fiddle were seated on top of it. Dancing was interrupted only by drinking, until Tom's music began to be irregular, whereupon Gubblum remonstrated; and then Tom, with the indignation of an artist, broke the bridge of his fiddle on Gubblum's head, and Gubblum broke the bridge of Tom's nose with his fist, and both rolled on to the floor and lay there, until Gubblum extricated himself with difficulty, shook his lachrymose noddle, and said:

"The laal man is as drunk as a fiddler."

The vicarage was quiet that night. All the guests save one were gone.

Parson Christian sat before the smoldering fire. Old Laird Fisher sat with him. Neither spoke. They pa.s.sed a long hour in silence.

_BOOK III._

THE DECLIVITY OF CRIME.

CHAPTER I.

A way-side hostelry, six miles from London, bearing its swinging sign of the silver hawk and golden heron. It was a little, low-roofed place, with a drinking-bar in front as you entered, and rooms opening from it on either hand.

The door of the room to the left was shut. One could hear the voices of children within, and sometimes a peal of their merry laughter. The room to the right stood open to the bar. It was a smoky place, with a few chairs, a long deal table, a bench with a back, a form against the wall, pipes that hung on nails, and a rough beam across the low ceiling.

A big fire burned in an open grate on a hearth without a fender. In front of it, coiled up in a huge chair like a canoe, that had a look of having been hewn straight from the tree, sat the only occupant of the room. The man wore a tweed suit of the indefinite pattern known as pepper and salt. His hat was drawn heavily over his face to protect his eyes from the glare of the fire-light. He gave satisfactory evidence that he slept.

Under any light but that of the fire, the place must have looked cheerless to desolation, but the comfortless room was alive with the fire's palpitating heart. The rosy flames danced over the sleeper's tawny hair, over the sanded floor, over the walls adorned with gaudy prints. They threw shadows and then caught them back again; flashed a ruddy face out of the little cracked window, and then lay still while the blue night looked in.

An old woman, with a yellow face deeply wrinkled, served behind the bar.

Two or three carriers and hawkers sat on a bench before it. One of these worthies screwed up the right side of his face with an expression of cutting irony.

"Burn my body, though, but what an inwalable thing to have a son wot never need do no work!"

The old woman lifted her eyes.

"There, enough of that," she said, and then jerked her head toward the room from whence came measured snores. "He'll be working at throwing you out, some of you, same as he did young Bobby on Sunday sennight."

"Like enough. He don't know which side his bread is b.u.t.tered, he don't."