Gwen Wynn Part 51

CHAPTER LII.

MATERNAL SOLICITUDE.

"The poor lad! His heart be sore sad; at times most nigh breakin'!

That's plain--spite o' all he try hide it."

It is the Widow Wingate who thus compa.s.sionately reflects--the subject, her son.

She is alone within her cottage, the waterman being away with his boat.

Captain Ryecroft has taken him down the river. It is on this nocturnal exploration, when the cliff at Llangorren is inspected by lamp-light.

But she knows neither the purpose nor the place, any more than did Jack himself at starting. A little before sunset, the Captain came to the house, afoot and unexpectedly; called her son out, spoke a few words to him, when they started away in the skiff. She saw they went down stream--that is all.

She was some little surprised, though--not at the direction taken, but the time of setting out. Had Llangorren been still in possession of the young lady, of whom her son has often spoken to her, she would have thought nothing strange of it. But in view of the late sad occurrence at the Court, with the change of proprietorship consequent--about all of which she has been made aware--she knows the Captain cannot be bound thither, and therefore wonders whither. Surely, not a pleasure excursion, at such an unreasonable hour--night just drawing down?

She would have asked, but had no opportunity. Her son, summoned out of the house, did not re-enter; his oars were in the boat, having just come off a job; and the Captain appeared to be in haste. Hence Jack's going off, without, as he usually does, telling his mother the why and the where.

It is not this that is now fidgeting her. She is far from being of an inquisitive turn--least of all with her son--and never seeks to pry into his secrets. She knows his sterling integrity, and can trust him.

Besides, she is aware that he is of a nature somewhat uncommunicative, especially upon matters that concern himself, and above all when he has a trouble on his mind--in short, one who keeps his sorrows locked up in his breast, as though preferring to suffer in silence.

And just this it is she is now bemoaning. She observes how he is suffering, and has been, ever since that hour when a farm labourer from Abergann brought him tidings of Mary Morgan's fatal mishap.

Of course she, his mother, expected him to grieve wildly and deeply, as he did; but not deeply so long. Many days have pa.s.sed since that dark one; but since, she has not seen him smile--not once! She begins to fear his sorrow may never know an end. She has heard of broken hearts--his may be one. Not strange her solicitude.

"What make it worse," she says, continuing her soliloquy, "he keep thinkin' that he hae been partways to blame for the poor girl's death, by makin' her come out to meet him!"--Jack has told his mother of the interview under the big elm, all about it, from beginning to end.--"That hadn't a thing to do wi' it. What happened wor ordained, long afore she left the house. When I dreamed that dream 'bout the corpse candle, I feeled most sure somethin' would come o't; but then seein' it go up the meadows, I wor' althegither convinced. When _it_ burn, no human creetur'

ha' lit it; an' none can put it out, till the doomed one be laid in the grave. Who could 'a carried it across the river--that night especial, wi' a flood lippin' full up to the banks? No mortal man, nor woman neyther!"

As a native of Pembrokeshire, in whose treeless valleys the _ignis fatuus_ is oft seen, and on its dangerous coast cliffs, in times past, too oft the lanthorn of the smuggler, with the "stalking horse" of the inhuman wrecker, Mrs. Wingate's dream of the _canwyll corph_ was natural enough--a legendary reflection from tales told her in childhood, and wild songs chanted over her cradle.

But her waking vision, of a light borne up the river bottom, was a phenomenon yet more natural; since in truth was it a real light, that of a lamp, carried in the hands of a man with a coracle on his back, which accounts for its pa.s.sing over the stream. And the man was Richard Dempsey, who below had ferried Father Rogier across on his way to the farm of Abergann, where the latter intended remaining all night. The priest in his peregrinations, often nocturnal, accustomed to take a lamp along, had it with him on that night, having lit it before entering the coracle; but, with the difficulty of balancing himself in the crank little craft, he had set it down under the thwart, and at landing forgotten all about it. Thence the poacher, detained beyond time in reference to an appointment he meant being present at, had taken the shortest cut up the river bottom to Rugg's Ferry. This carried him twice across the stream, where it bends by the waterman's cottage; his coracle, easily launched and lifted out, enabling him to pa.s.s straight over and on, in his haste not staying to extinguish the lamp, nor even thinking of it.

Not so much wonder, then, in Mrs. Wingate believing she saw the _canwyll corph_. No more that she believes it still, but less, in view of what has since come to pa.s.s; as she supposes, but the inexorable fiat of fate.

"Yes!" she exclaims, proceeding with her soliloquy; "I knowed it would come. Poor thing! I hadn't no great knowledge of her myself; but sure she wor a good girl, or my son couldn't had been so fond o' her. If she'd had badness in her, Jack wouldn't greet and grieve as he be doin'

now."

Though right in the premises--for Mary Morgan was a good girl--Mrs.

Wingate is unfortunately wrong in her deductions. But, fortunately for her peace of mind, she is so. It is some consolation to her to think that she whom her son loved, and for whom he so sorrows, was worthy of his love as his sorrow.

It is wearing late, the sun having long since set; and still wondering why they went down the river, she steps outside to see if there be any sign of them returning. From the cottage but little can be seen of the stream, by reason of its tortuous course; only a short reach on either side, above and below.

Placing herself to command a view of the latter, she stands gazing down it. In addition to maternal solicitude, she feels anxiety of another and less emotional nature. Her tea-caddy is empty, the sugar all expended, and other household things deficient. Jack was just about starting off for the Ferry to replace them when the Captain came. Now it is a question whether he will be home in time to reach Rugg's before the shop closes. If not, there will be a scant supper for him, and he must grope his way lightless to bed; for among the spent commodities were candles, the last one having been burnt out. In the Widow Wingate's life candles seem to play an important part!

However, from all anxieties on this score she is at length and ere long relieved; her mind set at rest by a sound heard on the tranquil air of the night, the dip of a boat's oars, distant, but recognisable. Often before listening for the same, she instinctively knows them to be in the hands of her son; for Jack rows with a stroke no waterman on the Wye has but he--none equalling it in _timbre_ and regularity. His mother can tell it as a hen the chirp of her own chick, or a ewe the bleat of its lamb.

That it is his stroke she has soon other evidence than her ears. In a few seconds after hearing the oars she sees them, their wet blades glistening in the moonlight, the boat between.

And now she only waits for it to be pulled up and into the wash--its docking place--when Jack will tell her where they have been, and what for; perhaps, too, the Captain will come inside the cottage and speak a friendly word with her, as he has frequently done.

While thus pleasantly antic.i.p.ating, she has a disappointment. The skiff is pa.s.sing onward--proceeding up the river! But she is comforted by seeing a hat held aloft--the salute telling her she is herself seen, and that Jack has some good reason for the prolongation of the voyage. It will no doubt terminate at the ferry, where he will get the candles and comestibles, saving him a second journey thither, and so killing two birds with one stone.

Contenting herself with this construction of it, she returns inside the house, touches up the f.a.ggots on the fire, and by their cheerful blaze thinks no longer of candles, or any other light--forgetting even the _canwyll corph_.

CHAPTER LIII.

A SACRILEGIOUS HAND.

Between Wingate's cottage and Rugg's, Captain Ryecroft has but slight acquaintance with the river, knows it only by a glimpse had here and there from the road. Now, ascending by boat, he makes note of certain things appertaining to it--chiefly, the rate of its current, the windings of its channel, and the distance between the two places. He seems considering how long a boat might be in pa.s.sing from one to the other. And just this is he thinking of, his thoughts on that boat he saw starting downward.

Whatever his object in all this, he does not reveal it to his companion.

The time has not come for taking the waterman into full confidence. It will, but not to-night.

He has again relapsed into silence, which continues till he catches sight of an object on the left bank, conspicuous against the sky, beside the moon's disc, now low. It is a cross surmounting a structure of ecclesiastical character, which he knows to be the Roman Catholic chapel at Rugg's. Soon as abreast of it, he commands--

"Hold way, Jack! Keep her steady awhile!"

The waterman obeys without questioning why this new stoppage. He is himself interrogated the instant after, thus,--

"You see that shadowed spot under the bank--by the wall?"

"I do, Captain."

"Is there any landing-place there for a boat?"

"None, as I know of. Course a boat may put in anywhere, if the bank bean't eyther a cliff or a quagmire. The reg'lar landin'-place be above, where the ferry punt lays."

"But have you ever known of a boat being moored in there?"

The question has reference to the place first spoken of.

"I have, Captain; my own. That but once, an' the occasion not o' the pleasantest kind. 'Twar the night after my poor Mary wor buried, when I comed to say a prayer over her grave, an' plant a flower on it. I may say I stole there to do it, not wishin' to be obsarved by that sneak o'

a priest, nor any o' their Romish lot. Exceptin' my own, I never knew or heard o' another boat bein' laid long there."

"All right! Now on!"

And on the skiff is sculled up stream for another mile, with little further speech pa.s.sing between oarsman and steerer; it confined to subjects having no relation to what they have been all the evening occupied with.

For Ryecroft is once more in reverie, or rather silently thinking, his thoughts concentrated on the one theme--endeavouring to solve that problem, simple of itself, but with many complications and doubtful ambiguities--how Gwendoline Wynn came by her death.

He is still observed in a sea of conjectures, far as ever from its sh.o.r.e, when he feels the skiff at rest; as it ceases motion its oarsman asking--