The Shadow of a Crime Part 30

The next day or two pa.s.sed by with Rotha like a dream. Her manners had become even gentler and her voice even softer than before, and the light of self-consciousness had stolen into her eyes. Towards the evening of the following day Liza Branthwaite ran up to the Moss to visit her. Rotha was in the dairy at the churn, and when Liza pushed open the door and came unexpectedly upon her she experienced a momentary sense of confusion which was both painful and unaccountable.

The little lady was herself flushed with a sharp walk, and m.u.f.fled up to the throat from a cutting wind.

"Why, Rotha, my girl, what ever may be the matter with you?" said Liza, coming to a pause in the middle of the floor, and, without removing the hands that had been stuffed up her sleeves from the cold, looking fixedly in her face.

"I don't know, Liza; I wish you could tell me, la.s.s," said Rotha, recovering enough self-possession to simulate a subterfuge.

"Here I've been churning and churning since morning, and don't seem much nigher the b.u.t.ter yet."

"It's more than the b.u.t.ter that pests you," said Liza, with a wise shake of the head.

"Yes; it must be the churn. I can make nothing of it."

"Shaf on the churn, girl! You just look like Bessie MacNab when they said Jamie o' the Glen had coddled her at the durdum yon night at Robin Forbes's."

"Hush, Liza," said Rotha, stooping unnecessarily low to investigate the progress of her labors, and then adding, from the depths of the churn, "why, and how did Bessie look?"

"Look? look?" cried Liza, with a tip of the chin upwards, as though the word itself ought to have been sufficiently explicit,--"look, you say? Why," continued Liza, condescending at length to be more definite as to the aforesaid young lady's appearance after a kiss at a country dance, "why, she looked just for the world like you, Rotha."

Then throwing off her thick outer garment without waiting for any kind of formal invitation, Liza proceeded to make herself at home in a very practical way.

"Come, let me have a turn at the churn," she said, "and let us see if it is the churn that ails you--giving you two great eyes staring wide as if you were sickening for a fever, and two cheeks as red as the jowls of 'Becca Rudd's turkey."

In another moment Liza was rolling up the sleeves of her gown, preparatory to the experimental exercise she had proposed to herself; but this was not a task that had the disadvantage of interrupting the flow of her gossip.

"But I say, la.s.s," she rattled on, "have you heard what that great gammerstang of a Mother Garth has been telling 'Becca Rudd about _you_? 'Becca told me herself, and I says to 'Becca, says I, 'Don't you believe it; it's all a lie, for that old wizzent ninny bangs them all at lying; and that's saying a deal, you know. Besides,' I says, 'what does it matter to her or to you, 'Becca, or to me, if so be that it _is_ true, which I'm not for believing that it is, not I,' I says."

"But what was it, Liza? You've not told me what it was, la.s.s, that Mrs. Garth had said about me."

Rotha had stopped churning, and was standing, with the color rising even closer round her eyes. Luckily, Liza had no time to observe the minor manifestations of her friend's uneasiness; she had taken hold of the "plunger," and was squaring herself to her work.

"Say!" she cried; "why the old carlin will say aught in the world but her prayers--she says that you're settin' your cap at one of these Rays boys; that's about what she says the old witchwife, for she's no better. But it's as I said to 'Becca Rudd, says I, 'If it _is_ true what traffic is it of anybody's; but it isn't true,' I says, 'and if it _is_, where's the girl that has more right? It can't be Ralph that she's settin' her cap at, 'Becca,' I says, 'for Ralph's gone, and mayhap never to come to these parts again the longest day he lives.'"

"Don't say that, Liza," interrupted Rotha in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

"Why not? Those redcoats are after him from Carlisle, arn't they?"

"Don't say he'll not come back. We scarce know what may happen."

"Well, that's what father says, anyway. But, back or not back, it can't be Ralph, I says to 'Becca."

"There's not a girl worthy of him, Liza; not a girl on the country side. But we'll not repeat their old wife's gossip, eh, la.s.s?"

"Not if you're minded not to, Rotha. But as to there being no girl worthy of Ralph," said Liza, pausing in her work and lifting herself into an erect position with an air of as much dignity as a lady of her stature could a.s.sume, "I'm none so sure of that, you know. He has a fine genty air, I will say; and someways you don't feel the same to him when he comes by you as you do to other men, and he certainly is a great traveller; but to say that there isn't a girl worthy of him, that's like Nabob Johnny tellin' Tibby Fowler that he never met the girl that wasn't partial to him."

Rotha did not quite realize the parallel that had commended itself to Liza's quick perception, but she raised no objection to the sentiment, and would have shifted the subject.

"What about Robbie, my la.s.s?" she said.

"'And as to w.i.l.l.y Ray,' says I to 'Becca," continued the loquacious churner, without noticing the question, "' it isn't true as Rotha would put herself in his way; but she's full his match, and you can't show me one that is nigher his equal.'"

Rotha's confusion was increasing every minute.

"'What if her father can't leave her much gear, she has a head that's worth all the gold in w.i.l.l.y's pocket, and more.' Then says 'Becca, 'What about Kitty Jackson?' 'Shaf,' says I, 'she's always curlin' her hair before her bit of a looking-gla.s.s.' 'And what about Maggie of Armboth?' says 'Becca. 'She hasn't got such a head as Rotha,' says I, 'forby that she's spending a fortune on starch, what with her caps, and her capes, and her frills, and what not.'"

Liza had by this time rattled away, until by the combined exertion of arms and tongue she had brought herself to a pause for lack of breath.

Resting one hand on the churn, she lifted the other to her head to push back the hair that had tumbled over her forehead. As she tossed up her head to facilitate the latter process, her eyes caught a glimpse of Rotha's crimsoning face. "Well," she said, "I must say this churn's a funny one; it seems to make you as red as 'Becca's turkey, whether you're working at it or lookin' at some one else."

"Do you think I could listen to all that praise of myself and not blush?" said Rotha, turning aside.

"I could--just try me and see," responded Liza, with a laugh. "That's nothing to what Nabob Johnny said to me once, and I gave him a slap over the lug for it, the strutting and smirking old peac.o.c.k. Why, he's all lace--lace at his neck and at his wrists, and on his--"

"You didn't favor _him_ much, Liza."

"No, but Daddie did; and he said" (the wicked little witch imitated her father's voice and manner), "'Hark ye, la.s.s, ye must hev him and then ye'll be yan o' his heirs!' He wants one or two, I says, 'for the old carle would be bald but for the three that are left on his crown.'"

"Well, but what about Robbie Anderson?" said Rotha, regaining her composure, with a laugh.

At this question Liza's manner underwent a change. The perky chirpness that had a dash of wickedness, not to say of spite, in it, entirely disappeared. Dropping her head and her voice together, she answered,--

"I don't know what's come over the lad. He's maunderin' about all day long except when he's at the Lion, and then, I reckon, he's maunderin'

in another fashion."

"Can't you get him to bide by his work?"

"No; it's first a day for John Jackson at Armboth, and then two days for Sammy Robson at the Lion, and what comes one way goes the other.

When he's sober--and that's not often in these days--he's as sour as Mother Garth's plums, and when he's tipsy his head's as soft as poddish."

"It was a sad day for Robbie when his old mother died," said Rotha.

"And that was in one of his bouts" said Liza; "but I thought it had sobered him forever. He loved the old soul, did Robbie, though he didn't always do well by her. And now he's broken loose again."

It was clearly as much as Liza could do to control her tears, and, being conscious of this, she forthwith made a determined effort to simulate the sternest anger.

"I hate to see a man behave as if his head were as soft as poddish.

Not that _I_ care," she added, as if by an afterthought, and as though to conceal the extent to which she felt compromised; "it's nothing to _me_, that I can see. Only Wythburn's a hard-spoken place, and they're sure to make a scandal of it."

"It's a pity about Robbie," said Rotha sympathetically.

Liza could scarcely control her tears. After she had dashed a drop or two from her eyes, she said: "I cannot tell what it's all about. He's always in a ponder, ponder, with his mouth open--except when he's grindin' his teeth. I hate to see a man walking about like a haystack.

And Robbie used to have so much fun once on a time."

The tears were stealing up to Liza's eyes again.

"He can't forget what happened on the fell with the mare--that was a fearful thing, Liza."

"Father says it's 'cause Robbie had the say over it all; but Joe Garth says it comes of Robbie sticking himself up alongside of Ralph Ray.

What a genty one Robbie used to be!"