CHAPTER XXIX. WHAT THE SNOWFLAKES FELL UPON.
At four of the same afternoon, while the sun was setting redly into the snow-banks, Griff Lomax sat in the parlour of Gorsthwaite, with his child's dead body on his knees. The grate was fireless, and the failing twilight left all but the table and a chair near the window in darkness. The two maid-servants, and Simeon, the farm-man, moved uneasily about the kitchen, and asked one another in muffled tones how it was likely to fare with the master. Early that morning the child had followed its mother, and Griff, alone here in the parlour, was dumbly kicking against the pricks. One after another, all that he had in the world had gone into that shadowy Beyond of which he had neither fear nor hope. On his knees lay the refutation of all the dreams he had cherished, the plans he had framed, for the future of another Lomax who should carry down the name, who should add one more to the list of moor-men that had thriven under the old Manor roof. From time to time he stroked the little cold body with his own cold hands, and laughed softly to himself: it seemed a hideous jest that this scrap of tissue, which would soon be worse than the earth that covered it, should have caused such fantasies. It was to have grown to a lusty manhood, and fought and loved and hated—and now—and now—
Such utter vacuum, of mind and purpose, could not go on. No man, with strength at his command, can see life for long as an empty mirror of his own emptiness. Something must be done, was the thought that flashed into Griff's mind. He got up from his chair and laid the body on it; then walked slowly up and down the darkened room, striking against the furniture, and feeling vaguely glad of the smarts.
A cry broke from him. Round and round his brain, in a dizzy, never-ending circle, ran those words of the doctor's—
It is all owing to that brute Strangeways; he led her a dog's life for years.
The frightened servants, listening by the kitchen fire, heard the door of the parlour open with a clash. The master went heavily down the passage and out at the front door. There was work for him yet in the world.
"Poor lad!" murmured the cook, who was older than her master, and eager to mother him with her phrases. "Poor lad, it fair goes to a body's heart to see th' way he's taking on."
"He war bad enow when th' missus died; but it's nowt to what's ta'en him since," said the housemaid, with a tug at her apron-corner.
"We've getten to dee, all on us. He mun grin an' bear it, same as other fowk do." But there was a huskiness in Simeon's voice that belied his avowed philosophical outlook on the tragedy.
One thought only held Griff—that he must find his enemy and exact an eye for an eye, a death for a death. Not a hint of carrying out a moral law, of ensuring justice where the law was powerless to demand it, lay at the bottom of his mind. Such weak shifts for the excusing of his deed were foreign to all Griff's ways: the splendid vengefulness of the savage was on him now, unspotted by weakness or self-questioning.
Instinct drove him back to the stables after he had traversed half a mile of the moor: he might have far to go in search of his quarry, and a horse would serve him better. The roads were bad enough for riding, but Lassie was well-sharpened against the frost, and she was sure-footed. At any rate, his neck mattered little, so long as he could reach Joe Strangeways before it was broken.
Off they went, he and Lassie, through the thickening snow to Sorrowstones Spring, where Strangeways had come to live since the old witch's death. Griff leaped from the mare's back and ran to the door. It was locked, and no trace of light showed through the unshuttered window on the left. He kicked at the door till the bottom panels gave way; then crept through the opening. But the cottage was empty.
"Where shall we go next, old girl?" he cried, with a hoarse laugh, as Lassie turned her head at his approach.
But Lassie had no counsel to give, and his eyes went up to the line of sentinel stoups: the white under-part could not be seen, and each blackened tip seemed to hang, self-supported, in mid air. Vague echoes of a sorrow spent long ago came to Griff: the stoups seemed to speak to him in some sad, far-off way. Perhaps they pointed the road he should go—at least he might try a mile or two of it, and gallop an inspiration into his musty brain. A Marshcotes man, trudging lumpily down the hill, stopped in amazement as horse and rider clattered past him.
"Griff Lummax, I'll warrant, though it's ower dark to be sartin sure. What's agate wi' th' lad, ony way?" he muttered.
Griff turned as soon as he gained the top of the hill. What fool's errand was this—riding straight to Ludworth, when the man he sought was to be found either in Cranshaw or Marshcotes? He must go first to Cranshaw, straight down the highroad, and search the inns there; then to Marshcotes; and, if that failed, he would look in at Jack o' Ling Crag's hostelry.
Joe Strangeways, meanwhile, was drinking in the bar of the Bull at Marshcotes. He had failed in his quarry-business since his wife left him, and he laid the blame of this on Griff. If, he reasoned, he had not been robbed of his one inducement to keep sober, he would have gone less on the drink; and if he had gone less on the drink, then he would have kept his quarries. He forgot how little influence of any kind Kate had had over him; he grew to believe that she had been the pole-star of his life, and he thought with lachrymose tenderness of the cosy hearth that had once tempted him away from the Bull. And now here he was, spending his last half-crown in the beer that had leagued with Griff Lomax to ruin him.
"Has tha heärd o' young Lummax's trouble?" some one dropped to his neighbour.
"Ay; an' they say th' bairn is nobbut weakly like, an' noan like to live. It's been a sorry winter for young Lummax, that it hes."
"A sorry winter?" flashed Joe from his corner. "It'll be a sorrier afore I've done wi' him."
"We've heärd a like tale afore now, Joe. Happen tha's getten to think there's summat in it, same as a cock makes fine sense out on his crowing when he's been at it a bit."
"Thee bide, lad, thee nobbut bide."
"We hev bided—a seet o' months; an' nowt has come on 't yet, as I can see on."
"Tha's getten thy chance, if tha wants it," chimed in another. "I war coming ower th' Ludworth road a while back, an' just by Sorrowstones Spring a horse comes racketting by me. It war main dark, save for a kind o' glint on th' snaw, but I knew who th' rider war: he war tearing along fair as if owd Nick hed hold on his coat-tails, an' there's none hereabouts, saving Griff Lummax, what flies about at that fooil's pace. He war off to Ludworth, likely, an' tha'll be i' nice time to meet him as he comes back."
Joe looked savagely from one to another.
"Ye think yourselns a fearful clever lot, doan't ye? I'll show ye—ay, th' whole damned lot on ye—whether I'm talking straight or no. Gie us a crowbar, i'stead o' sitting there like grinning gawks, an' let me be off about my business."
A shout of laughter went up as one of the company dived into his tool-bag, and, fetching out a neat little two-foot crowbar, handed the weapon to Joe with a face of great solemnity. Joe seized it and lurched out into the passage, muttering as he went.
"He'll be back afore long. A rare old wind-bag is Joe," laughed the owner of the crowbar.
And they all fell to at their mugs again, waiting for the fun that was in store, when Joe should return, shambling and shamefaced, for another pint of beer.
But Joe, in his own way, was as desperate as Griff. He was a beggar, and likely to remain so; his body was a worn-out machine, and work of any kind seemed little short of torture. And then he had nursed that feud of his till it had grown into a mania. The fight on the moor came to him to-night—the fight in which he had had his knife close at Griff's throat. There should be no mistake this time.
And so, while the snow fell ever thicker, these two, Lomax and Strangeways, went hither and thither across the moor, one in search of the other. Only the tallest heather-plants kept their heads above ground, and even they were bound to go under soon. Nothing stirred but the flakes, and these had a ghastly dumbness.
Joe came to Sorrowstones Spring at last, and cowered under the highroad wall, a field's-length off from his cottage.
"Hell alive, it's fit to rot a man's heart in his body, is wark on a neet like this!" he muttered. "If he'd nobbut come afore my fingers are stark an' stiff!"
He handled the crowbar lovingly, and began to talk to it. First he confided to it what he was set on doing, and then, as the waiting grew more tedious, he told it all that had gone before—dilating on Kate's beauty, their happiness before Griff came to spoil it, his lonely after-life, with only drink to sweeten it.
And to all this the slim, two-foot crowbar listened patiently; but it was cold in his grasp when he began, and cold when his story was done. It seemed callous to all claims of sympathy.
The cold and the beer between them sent Joe off into a fit of dizziness. He leaned hard against the wall to recover himself, and laughed thickly to the little iron bar.
"It's gooid hot blood we want, my beauty, thee an' me—thee to warm thy heart, an' me to warm my belly. Well, lass, we'll bide a bit longer; he can't be such a fearful while i' coming now.—What's that?"
Away up the road, far beyond the last of the stoups that could be seen from Sorrowstones, there sounded a faint pit-pat. On it came—pit-pat, pit-pat—the muffled beat of hoofs, striking through the snow to the frozen underground.
Joe moved from his sheltering wall. His sickness was forgotten, his crowbar passively awaited commands. Out of the whirling whiteness came a man and a horse, creeping warily down the steepest bit of the hill. The road ran between high banks of ling and bents, and on the right bank the quarrymaster waited. Nearer and nearer came the two figures; they moved from side to side of the road, to lessen the steepness of the descent, until at last they passed close to where Strangeways was cowering in the snow. Like a flash Joe sprang at his victim, and brought the crowbar down on his skull.
The rider's shoulders dropped forward, his head lying heavy between them. The horse, not counting on this sudden slackening of the reins, lost his footing, and came heavily to ground, his fore-feet doubled under him. His master flew out of the saddle, and lay, a shapeless heap, in the middle of the road.
The horse had broken both knees, and was crying piteously; but Strangeways never so much as heard it. He went to the dead man's body, and sat on his upturned breast. Into his brain stole the words of a grim jest that a comrade had passed with him not many days before.
"Thy next suit will be thy coffin; thy next suit will be thy coffin, Griff! Griff, lad, I've getten thee at last; bide still an' wait for thy shroud." He paused to chuckle at the flavour of his little phrase, then repeated it again and again. "Thy next suit will be thy coffin."
After a while he found his seat a hard one, and knelt in the snow to see what it was that inconvenienced him. He felt in the man's breast-pocket, and brought out a large brandy-flask, three-parts full.
"Strong, by God! It'll be a merry neet an' a warm now," he laughed, as he reseated himself on the corpse, after an experimental pull at the flask. "Shut thy din, wilt 'a!" he cried to the horse, a moment later, as the poor brute shrieked in agony.
Then he turned to the brandy again, and drank it slowly, rocking himself to and fro on the body and setting to a kind of guttural chant his two-line hymn—"Thy next suit—next suit—next suit—thy next suit will surely be thy coffin and a shroud—coffin and—coffin and—coffin and a shroud."
Gradually his eyelids fell upon his cheeks, tried to lift themselves, and failed. He rolled off into the snow, and clasped his victim tight in his arms, snoring with drunken noisiness. But the horse cried and whimpered, whimpered and cried, till the hurrying snowflakes seemed to be running this way and that in search of aid.
Up the highroad from Cranshaw, Griff and Lassie were toiling heavily. They had had a hard cross-country night of it, and both were fagged out.
"All right, Lassie, all right, girl; just to Sorrowstones Spring, to see if he's back yet, and then home," murmured Griff.
He had stopped at every inn in Marshcotes and Cranshaw and Ling Crag, and only at the Bull had he found news of Strangeways. Surely he must be home by this time.
But Lassie had her head low down and her ears set back; she was shivering from head to foot, for that cry of one of her own race had reached her long before Griff was aware of it. Every forward step made her more restive, till at last they reached the two black splashes on the snow. Griff slid from the saddle, and stooped to examine the first splash. He found his father's foe, Laverack, locked tight in the arms of the enemy he sought. Into the gloom ahead, between the sentinel stoups, pointed a little, deep ravine, where the blood had melted the snow.
He stood up and cursed the Providence that had robbed him of his right of action. He turned Joe's body over with his foot. The snoring, that had grown fainter and fainter, ceased altogether; a dull kind of grunt was Joe's only acknowledgment of the attention.
"You hog! Why aren't you fit to stand on your legs and fight me?" cried Griff.
He halted awhile, his hands going nervously to and fro above the body.
"No, I can't do it," he muttered dully, and went to that other patch of black.
In a trice his sympathies were awake, though they had seemed stone dead a moment ago. He knelt beside the quivering beast, and his tears dropped hot on the sweating coat.
"They needn't have mixed you up with our quarrels," he said softly.
He felt the broken limbs, and saw that there was only one thing to be done.
But how to do it? He looked at the crowbar lying in the snow at his feet; that was useless. Then he bethought him of the cottage, and ran hot-foot to see if Strangeways had left a gun about. He crept through the broken panels again, felt round the room till his hands fell on a tinder-box, and lit a rushlight that stood on the chimney-piece. A cumbersome muzzle-loader lay in one corner—the same corner in which Mother Strangeways' bed had stood that night when she called him in out of the storm. He took up the gun, found it loaded and primed, and went back to the highroad.
"There will be a row soon, old lady. I'd better fasten you up," he said quietly, as he hitched Lassie's reins to the gate-post.
He put the gun-muzzle close to the ear of the horse lying on the ground, and pulled the trigger.
"God forgive me!" he muttered. "I had it in mind to kill a man just now—but a horse——"
He went to the two men lying a little further down the hill. Laverack's heart made no response to the hand that was laid on it, and the snow lay unmelted on Joe's set lips.
"Come, Lassie; it's home now," said Griff, as he untethered the mare.