The Shadow of a Crime Part 51

He begrudged the time that he had given to rest and sleep.

Well, well, it was all over now; and out of Carlisle, through the Botcher-gate, and down the road up which he came, Robbie turned with weary feet. The snow was thawing fast, and the meadows on every side lay green in the sunshine. How full of grace they were! How cruel in her very gladness Nature still seemed to be!

Never for an instant did Robbie lose the sense of a great calamity hanging above him, but a sort of stupefaction was creeping over him nevertheless. He busied himself with reflections on every minor feature of the road. Had he marked this beech before, or that oak? Had he seen this gate on his way into Carlisle, or pa.s.sed through that bar? A boy on the road was driving a herd of sheep before him. One drift of the sheep was marked with a red cross, and the other drift with a black patch. Robbie counted the two drifts of sheep one by one, and wondered whose they were and where they were going.

Then he sat down to rest, and let his forehead drop on to the gra.s.s to cool it. When he rose again the road seemed to swim around him. A farm servant in a smock was leading two horses, and as he pa.s.sed he bade the wayfarer, "Good afternoon." Robbie went on without seeming to hear, but when the man had got beyond the sound of his voice he turned as if by sudden impulse, and, waving his hand with a gesture of cordiality, he returned the salutation.

Then he sat down once more and held his head between his hands. It was beating furiously, and his body, too, from head to foot, was changing rapidly from hot to cold. At length the consciousness took possession of him that he was ill. "I doubt I'm badly," he thought, and tried to realize his position. Presently he attempted to rise and call back the countryman with the horses. Lifting himself on one trembling knee, he waved a feeble arm spasmodically in the air, and called and called again. The voice startled him; it seemed not to be his own. His strength was spent. He sank back and remembered no more.

The man in the smock was gone, but another countryman was coming down the road at that moment from the direction of Carlisle. This was no other than little blink-eyed Reuben Thwaite. He was sitting m.u.f.fled up in his farm wagon and singing merry s.n.a.t.c.hes to keep the cold out of his lungs. Reuben had been at Carlisle over night with sundry hanks of thread, which he had sold to the linen weavers. He had found a good market by coming so far, and he was returning to Wythburn in high f.e.c.kle. When he came (as he would have said) "ebbn fornenst" Robbie lying at the roadside, he jumped down from his seat. "What poor lad's this? Why, what! What say! What!" holding himself back to grasp the situation, "Robbie Anderson!"

Then a knowing smile overspread Reuben's wrinkled features as he stooped to pat and push the prostrate man, in an effort to arouse him to consciousness.

"Tut, Robbie, lad; Robbie, ma lad! This wark will nivver do, Robbie!

Brocken loose agen, aye! Come, Robbie, up, lad!"

Robbie lay insensible to all Reuben's appeals, whether of the nature of banter or half-serious menace.

"Weel, weel, the lad _has_ had a fair cargo intil him this voyage, anyway."

There was obviously no likelihood of awakening Robbie, so with a world of difficulty, with infinite puffing and fuming and perspiring, and the help of a pa.s.sing laborer, Reuben contrived to get the young fellow lifted bodily into his cart. Lying there at full length, a number of the empty thread sacks were thrown over the insensible man, and then Reuben mounted to his seat and drove off.

"Poor old Martha Anderson!" muttered Reuben to himself. "It's weel she's gone, poor body! It wad nigh have brocken her heart--and it's my belief 'at it did."

They had not gone far before Reuben himself, with the inconsistency of more pretentious moralists, felt an impulse to indulge in that benign beverage of which he had just deplored the effects. Drawing up with this object at a public house that stood on the road, he called for a gla.s.s of hot spirits. He was in the act of taking it from the hands of the landlord, when a stage-coach drove up, and the coachman and two of the outside pa.s.sengers ordered gla.s.ses of brandy.

"From Carlisle, eh?" said one of the latter, eyeing Reuben from where he sat and speaking with an accent which the little dalesman knew to be "foreign to these parts."

Reuben a.s.sented with a satisfied nod and a s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up of one cheek into a wrinkle about the eyes. He was thinking of the good luck of his visit.

"What's the news there?" asked the other pa.s.senger, with an accent which the little dalesman was equally certain was not foreign to these parts.

"Threed's up a gay penny!" said Reuben.

"Any news at the Castle the day?"

"The Castle? No--that's to say, yes. I did hear 'at a man had given hissel' up, but I know nowt aboot it."

"Do you know his name?"

"No."

"Be quick in front, my gude man; let's be off; we've lost time enough with the snow already."

The coachman had mounted to his box, and was wrapping a sheepskin about his knees.

"What's that you have there?" he said to Reuben.

"Him? Why, that's Robbie Anderson, poor fellow. One o' them lads, thoo knows, that have no mair nor one enemy in all the world, and that's theirselves."

"Out for a spoag, eh?"

"Come, get along, man, and let's have no more botherment," cried one of the impatient pa.s.sengers.

Two or three miles farther down the road Reuben was holding in his horse, in order to cross a river, when he thought that, in the comparative silence of his springless wagon, he heard Robbie speaking behind him.

"It's donky weather, this," Robbie was saying.

"Ey, wet and sladderish," said Reuben, in an insinuating tone, "baith inside and out, baith under foot and ower head."

"It was north of the bridge," Robbie whispered.

"What were--Carlisle?" asked Reuben in his most facetious vein.

"It blows a bit on the Stye Head to-day, Ralph. The way's ower narrow.

I can never chain the young horse. Steady, Betsy; steady, la.s.s; steady--"

"Why, the lad's ram'lin'," said Reuben to himself.

"It was fifty strides north of the bridge," Robbie whispered again; and then lifting his voice he cried, "She's gone; she's gone."

"He's ram'lin' for sure."

The truth now dawned on Reuben that on the present occasion at least Robbie was not drunk, but sick. With the illogical perversity of some healthy people, he thought to rally the ailing man out of his ailment, whatever it might be; so he expended all the facetiousness of which he was master on Robbie's unconscious figure.

Reuben's well-meant efforts were of no avail. Robbie alternately whispered, "It was north of the bridge," and chuckled, "Ah, ah!

there's Garth, Garth--but I downed him, the dummel head!"

The little dalesman relinquished as hopeless all further attempt at rational converse, and gave himself the solemn a.s.surance, conveyed to his acute intelligence by many grave shakes of the head, that "summat _was_ ailin' the lad, after all."

Then they drove for hours in silence. It was dark when they pa.s.sed through Threlkeld, and turned into the Vale of Wanthwaite on their near approach to Wythburn.

"I scarce know rightly where Robbie bides, now old Martha's dead,"

thought Reuben; "I'll just slip up the lonnin to Shoulth'et and ask."

CHAPTER x.x.xVI. ROTHA'S CONFESSION.

And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.

Coleridge.

When Reuben Thwaite formed this resolution he was less than a mile from Shoulthwaite. In the house on the Moss, Rotha was then sitting alone, save for the silent presence of the unconscious Mrs. Ray. The day's work was done. It had been market day, and w.i.l.l.y Ray had not returned from Gaskarth. The old house was quiet within, and not a breath of wind was stirring without. There was no sound except the crackling of the dry boughs on the fire and the hollow drip of the melting snow.

By the chair from which Mrs. Ray gazed vacantly and steadily Rotha sat with a book in her hand. She tried to read, but the words lost their meaning. Involuntarily her eyes wandered from the open page. At length the old volume, with its leathern covers clasped together with their great bra.s.s clasp, dropped quietly into the girl's lap.

At that moment there was a sound of footsteps in the courtyard.