The Shadow of a Crime Part 11

The dame sighed audibly.

"And keep up a blithe heart, Mary. Remember, he that has gude crops may thole some thistles."

When the door had closed behind the weaver, w.i.l.l.y came back to the kitchen from his little room.

"Ralph not home yet?" he said, addressing Rotha.

"Not yet," the girl answered, trying vainly to conceal some uneasiness.

"I wonder what Robbie Anderson wanted with him? He was here twice, you know, in the morning. And the schoolmaster--what could little Monsey have to say that he looked so eager? It is not his way."

"Be sure it was nothing out of the common," said Rotha. "What happened last night makes us all so nervous."

"True; but there was a strange look about both of them--at least I thought so, though I didn't heed it then. They say misfortunes never come singly. I wish Ralph were home."

Mrs. Ray had risen from her seat at the fire, and was placing one of the candles upon a small table that stood before the neuk window.

With her back to the old dame, Rotha put her finger on her lip as a motion to w.i.l.l.y to say no more.

CHAPTER VII. SIM'S CAVE.

When Ralph retired to his own room on the night of his father's death there lay a heavier burden at his heart than even that dread occurrence could lodge there. To such a man as he was, death itself was not so terrible but that many pa.s.sions could conquer the fear of it. As for his father, he had not tasted death; he had not seen it; his death was but a word; and the grave was not deep. No, the grave was not deep. Ah, what sting lay in that thought!--what fresh sting lay there!

Ralph called up again the expression on the face of Simeon Stagg as he asked him in the inn that night (how long ago it seemed!) to give the name of the man who had murdered Wilson. "It's your duty in the sight of Heaven," he had said; "would you tarnish the child's name with the guilt laid on the father's?" Then there had come into Sim's eyes something that gave a meaning to his earlier words, "Ralph, you don't know what you ask." Ah, did he not know now but too well? Ralph walked across the room with a sense as of a great burden of guilt weighing him down. The grave was not deep--oh, would it were, would it were!

Would that the grave were the end of all! But no, it was as the old book said: when one dies, those who survive ask what he has left behind; the angel who bends above him asks what he has sent before.

And the father who had borne him in his arms--whom he had borne--what had he sent before?

Ralph tramped heavily to and fro. His dog slept on the mat outside his door, and, unused to such continued sounds within, began to sc.r.a.pe and growl.

After all, there was no certain evidence yet. To-morrow morning he would go up the fell and see Sim alone. He must know the truth. If it concerned him as closely as he divined, the occasion to conceal it was surely gone by with this night's event. Then Robbie Anderson,--what did he mean? Ralph recalled some dim memory of the young dalesman asking about his father. Robbie was kind to Sim, too, when the others shunned him. What did it all mean?

With a heavy heart Ralph began to undress. He had unbelted himself and thrown off his jerkin, when he thought of the paper that had fallen from his father's open breast as he lifted him on to the mare. What was it? Yes, there it was in his pocket, and with a feverish anxiety Ralph opened it.

Had he clung to any hope that the black cloud that appeared to be hanging over him would not, after all, envelop him? Alas! that last vestige of hope must leave him. The paper was a warrant for his own arrest on a charge of treason. It had been issued at the court of the high constable at Carlisle, and set forth that Ralph Ray had conspired to subvert the government of his sovereign while a captain in the trained bands of the rebel army of the "late usurper." It was signed and countersigned, and was marked for the service of James Wilson, King's agent. It was dated too; yes, two days before Wilson's death.

All was over now; this was the beginning of the end; the shadow had fallen. By that paradox of nature which makes disaster itself less hard to bear than the apprehension of disaster, Ralph felt relieved when he knew the worst. There was much of the mystery still unexplained, but the morrow would reveal it; and Ralph lay down to sleep, and rose at daybreak, not with a lighter, but with an easier heart.

When he took up his shepherd's staff that morning, he turned towards Fornside Fell. Rising out of the Vale of Wanthwaite, the fell half faced the purple heights of Blencathra. It was brant from side to side, and as rugged as steep. Ralph did not ascend the screes, out went up by Castle Rock, and walked northwards among the huge bowlders.

The frost lay on the loose fragments of rock, and made a firm but perilous causeway. The sun was shining feebly and glinting over the frost. It had sparkled among the icicles that hung in Styx Ghyll as he pa.s.sed, and the ravine had been hard to cross. The hardy black sheep of the mountains bleated in the cold from unseen places, and the wind carried their call away until it died off into a moan.

When Ralph got well within the shadow cast on to the fell from the protruding head of the Castle Rock, he paused and looked about him.

Yes, he was somewhat too high. He began to descend. The rock's head sheltered him from the wind now, and in the silence he could hear the thud of a pick or hammer, and then the indistinct murmur of a man's voice singing. It was Sim's voice; and here was Sim's cave. It was a cleft in the side of the mountain, high enough and broad enough for a man to pa.s.s in. Great bowlders stood above and about it.

The sun could never shine into it. A huge rock stood alone and apparently unsupported near its mouth, as though aeons long gone by an iceberg had perched it there. The dog would have bounded in upon Sim where he sat and sang at his work, but Ralph checked him with a look.

Inexpressibly eerie sounded the half-buried voice of the singer in that Solitary place. The weird ditty suited well with both.

She lean'd her head against a thorn, _The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa'_; And there she has her young babe born, _And the lyon shall be lord of a'_.

She's howket a grave by the light o' the moon, _The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa'_; And there she's buried her sweet babe in, _And the lyon shall be lord of a'_.

The singer stopped, as though conscious of the presence of a listener, and looking up from where he sat on a round block of timber, cutting up a similar block into firewood, he saw Ralph Ray leaning on his staff near the cave's mouth. He had already heard of the sorrow that had fallen on the household at Shoulthwaite. With an unspeakable look of sympathy in his wild, timid eyes, as though some impulse of affection urged him to throw his arms about Ralph and embrace him, while some sense of shame impelled him to kneel at his feet, Sim approached him, and appeared to make an effort to speak. But he could say nothing. Ralph understood his silence and was grateful for it.

They went into the cave, and sat down in the dusk.

"You can tell me all about it, now," Ralph said, without preamble of any sort, for each knew well what lay closest at the other's heart.

"He is gone now, and we are here together, with none but ourselves to hear."

"I knew you must know it one day," Sim said, "but I tried hard to hide it from you--I did, believe me, I tried hard--I tried, but it was not to be."

"It is best so," Ralph answered; "you must not bear the burden of guilt that is not your own."

"I'm no better than guilty myself," said Sim. "I don't reckon myself innocent; not I. No, I don't reckon myself innocent."

"I think I understand you, Sim; but you were not guilty of the deed?"

"No, but I might have been--I might but for an accident--the accident of a moment; but I've thought sometimes that the crime is not in the deed, but the intention. No, Ralph, I _am_ the guilty man, after all: your father had never thought of the crime, not he, but I had brooded over it."

"Did you go out that night intending to do it?" Ralph said.

"Yes; at least I think I did, but I don't feel sure; my mind was in a broil; I hardly knew what I meant to do. If Wilson had told me as I met him in the road--as I intended to meet him--that he had come back to do what he had threatened to do so often--then--yes, _then_, I must have done it--I _must_."

"What had he threatened?" Ralph asked, but there was no note of inquiry in his voice. "Whom did it concern?"

"It concerned yourself, Ralph," said Sim, turning his head aside. "But no matter about that," he added. "It's over now, it is."

Ralph drew out of his pocket the paper that had fallen from his father's breast.

"Is this what you mean?" he said, handing it to Sim.

Sim carried it to the light to read it. Returning to where Ralph sat, he cried in a shrill voice,--

"Then he _had_ come back to do it. O G.o.d, why should it be murder to kill a scoundrel?"

"Did you know nothing of this until now?"

"Nothing. Wilson threatened it, as I say; he told me he'd hang you on the nearest gibbet, he did--you who'd saved his life--leastways, so they say--the barren-hearted monster!"

"It's ill-luck to serve a bad man, Sim. Well?"

"I never quite thought he'd do it; no, I never did quite think it. Why is it not a good deed to kill a bad man?"

"How did it happen, Sim?" said Ralph.

"I hardly know--that's the truth. You mind well enough it was the day that Abraham Coward, my landlord, called for his rent. It was the day the poor woman and her two wee barns took shelter with me. You looked in on me that night, you remember. Well, when you left me--do you recollect _how_?"

"Yes, Sim."