CHAPTER XXXI. THE MOOR MAN GOES OUT TO HIS OWN.
At the top of the rise that overlooked Wynyates, the chimney-stack of Bents Foot stood out, black and rigid as a funeral mute, against the grey-white of the sky. Griff plodded his way through the snow, till he stood at the cottage window. A figure was standing inside, its queer, distorted face pressed close against the glass. He motioned towards the door, and the figure fell back a little, so that he could no longer see anything more than a faint shadow moving up and down in the twilight of the room. He tried the door, and found it locked, as he had expected. But he felt no impatience; he only stood and looked out over the snow-sea, wondering at his calm and thinking it sanity.
After awhile he heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. Roddick's wife crept out, and came and peered into his face.
"What do you want? Have you come to take me to Leo?" she mumbled.
"No."
"Then you can go away. I must find him myself." She, too, looked across the waste of snow, and shivered. "It's only a little way off, but the road is hid. I might fall in the snow and die; and Leo, for all his rough ways, would break his heart if he lost me." She was in one of her cringeing moods; her words came ramblingly, and dropped with the helpless fall of a withered leaf. "He'd break his heart if he lost me," she wailed.
"So he would," said Griff, with equal gravity. "Wait till he comes for you. I'll stay with you, if you'll give me something to drink."
Her eyes brightened as she clutched at his arm.
"Drink? How can I give you drink, when he—he, and she, the woman in there—lock it all up out of reach?"
"We can soon alter that. What's the nurse doing?"
She rubbed her hands together and chuckled softly.
"Fast asleep. After Leo went, her eyes were too tired to keep open. It isn't often she goes to sleep."
Griff followed her into the room, through the window of which he had first seen her. The nurse was half-sitting, half-lying in a long cane-chair near the fireplace. The peats were smouldering dully in the grate. Roddick's wife pointed across at her, but would not go near; when her quieter fits were on, she dreaded the great, raw-boned woman in the chair, who helped Leo to keep the drink from her.
"It's all in here," she whispered, scratching at the door of a cupboard just above her head. "The key is in her pocket."
With the deftness of a pickpocket Griff felt for the key and took it out. He unlocked the cupboard, and crossed over to the window.
"Take what you want," he said.
The mad woman peered into the cupboard, uttering little screams of delight. She ran her hand caressingly along the bottles. The nurse moved in her sleep, then opened her eyes.
"It's all right," murmured Griff; "I am looking after her."
"Mind you do. It's death if she touches a drop to-day," said the nurse, drowsily, and closed her eyes again.
When Griff came out into the road again, the sun was sparkling on the frozen snow. The strain of his great endeavour was not past yet; his face showed strong, his mind was clear. He was thinking—not of what he had done, but of the happiness he had secured for two of his friends. It seemed almost better than if he had won happiness for himself. The glow of a fine altruism lit up his eyes.
He walked quickly down till he came opposite Wynyates Hall, and turned as if to go through the garden gate. But he thought better of it.
"Good news is better for the keeping; I will wait a while," he said to himself softly.
Then he fell to wondering what the old home looked like, and a yearning to see it again took hold of him. He went down the hill, and up the other side, and on until he gained Ling Crag. As he passed Gabriel Hirst's house, the preacher was standing in the doorway, kissing Greta good-bye before he went out. Griff smiled in a fatherly way, and called to Gabriel by name.
"What, you?" cried the preacher, hastening across the newly-swept flagstones to the gate.
Greta followed him, and they stood there, staring at Griff's dishevelled hair and happy face.
"You mean to make a honeymoon of your whole lives, you two?" said Griff.
The preacher's hand went out to him.
"I've lived a life of fear, Griff—constant fear. And now I'm free at last; free to look the sun in the face, and hob-nob with the wind, and feel that God's strength is His mercy, too. There is none like Greta."
"Except Gabriel," whispered the lass. But the laugh died on her lips, for she remembered the man's troubles. "What can any one say to help you?" she asked simply.
"Help? I don't need help. All's for the best in the long run. God bless you both! Good-bye."
"But, man——" began Gabriel.
His friend did not hear—or, hearing, disregarded it. He swung out along the road to Marshcotes.
Greta looked after him, and shook her head.
"He is not in his senses, Gabriel."
"Likely not, poor chap. He's had enough to turn any man's head. But I never dreamed it would take him like this—he might be off to his wedding. Greta, lass, you must never leave me as Griff's wife left him."
Instinctively his arms went round her—to protect her even against God; and old Jose Binns, coming round at that moment from the lathe, set his mouth to a cynical shape.
"Kissing an' cuddling," muttered Joe. "Nay, there's no mak o' gooid can come o' yon."
The hard weather had driven grouse and plover alike to tameness. They walked up and down the streets of Marshcotes, and perched on the window-sills in search of crumbs, and looked at passers-by in the light of old foes turned allies. A mirthless old cock grouse, and a drabbled hen, sat on the Manor wall as Griff came up, and made their plaints to him; but the cock-bird's call had none of that noisy self-assurance about it which had startled Griff many a time in the darkness of the moors. The same tenderness that had prompted his pity for Laverack's horse bade him go to the baker's at the corner and buy a quartern loaf. He took the bread with him into the Manor garden and crumbled it on the doorstep. It was an act his father would have applauded, he thought.
He stood for awhile, looking at the grey old walls with eyes that saw only the past. But the sharp stab of the present took him unawares, and blinded his eyes with tears. He turned, knowing himself for evermore an outcast.
The reaction came on apace, as he crossed the churchyard and struck into the moor. He had an old man's look, an old man's droop of the shoulders. He began to mutter as he walked, in a disjointed, senile way. The clear conception of duty, the needlessness of self-excuse, were fast disappearing; he had to explain to himself why his course had been the right one.
"No one can say I have wasted my life now. But for me, she might have lived for years; and Roddick and the girl would have grown old in misery. So easy, too: it wasn't as if I killed her; she did it herself. Strange—to watch her drink and drink—her head falling lower—how could any sane man have stopped her? Just a bit of filthy clay she was, standing between Roddick and his heart's desire. Roddick, old man, you are free of your love at last; may she stick to your side longer than—— God, how still the moor is! Why doesn't it blow and rain and hail, in the good moor way? Nothing but snow, and snow on the top of that, with mile on mile of that devilish, everlasting sun-shimmer."
He stopped and gazed fearfully across the waste. It seemed that even the moor-face, his friend, had hid itself in anger at his deed. He was homeless altogether. His hands clawed fitfully through the air.
"What's that whisper going abroad? Murder. No, no; merely a drinking bout, and a good riddance. I must be the first to tell Roddick. It seems further to Wynyates than it used to do."
He crossed at the head of Hazel Dene, and the drone of the mill-wheel sounded below him.
"They are grinding corn for bread down there," he said; then laughed at some odd side-shaft of incongruity that the thought suggested.
He hurried on till he gained Wynyates. One window of the parlour was open to the dry, sharp air, and he heard voices within. Cautiously he crept under the window and raised his head a few inches above the sill.
Roddick was standing with his back to the window. Facing him was Janet, her eyes red with weeping, her whole body shaken with sobs.
"Listen, child," Roddick was saying; "you must go back at once. I will walk home with you across the moor. Come quickly, for God's sake! I am arguing against myself all the while, and I cannot hold out much longer. Come!"
He dropped her hands, and turned to the chair over which her cloak was hanging. He took the cloak and tried to place it round her shoulders. She struggled, threw it aside, put both hands about his neck.
"Leo, Leo!" she sobbed; "I won't, I can't go back! I have eaten my heart out long enough. We have waited and waited, you and I, for that other woman to die, and we have done enough."
A feeble chuckle came from without, but they did not hear it.
"Wait a little longer, sweetheart," Roddick pleaded. His voice was strained and husky. "It cannot be for long. Think of the future; suppose we went away together to-night, and she died to-morrow—should we ever forgive ourselves?"
"Yes, we should. It may be years yet—and meanwhile it is killing us. Soon we shall be too old, too grey, too riven by the strain of it all. Leo, darling, come away while we can!"
She kissed him, wildly, beseechingly. For a moment he trembled, fell weak, all but gave in. But he was made of stubborn stuff; love was to conquer desire, so long as he had a trace of will-power left to him.
The man outside, with his pale face peering above the window-ledge, forgot everything in the excitement of this terrible drama. Mile on mile of desolate moor, and in the middle of it two people, a man and a woman, taking opposite sides in a conflict of honour; the man pleading for what he knew to be the woman's gain, and she pleading for a change of misery. Not a hope of interruption; the battle to be fought out just by these two. The impartial moor was willing to show them a path of flight, if they needed it—or a way to honour, if so the issue ran. Not a sound stirred; the wind and Griff spoke not a word.
"Wait!" gasped Roddick.
"I have waited too long, too long," she wailed, with childish repetition. "Leo, do you care for me so much, after all? You cannot, or you would not be hard like this."
He made as if to kiss her, then drew back. He dared not risk it.
"Oh, hush, Janet! You know I care for you. If I cared less, should I hesitate like this? You don't understand what you are asking me to do—you see only the first few steps."
"No, I have set it all before me—all. I will risk it, Leo."
The man outside, seeing the girl's full beauty, the tearfulness of her entreaty, scrabbled with his finger-nails up and down the stone of the window-sill.
"Roddick, you fool," he gasped, "why don't you take love in your two hands while you have the chance! Life is so damnably short—and liable to accident—yes, accidents—the girl mayn't live. Oh, you unutterable fool, why don't you take the bit between your teeth? Cut and run; you told me to do as much once."
But Roddick was answering Janet in the same tone of eager entreaty. And Griff, forgetting his own feelings again, lost himself in the progress of the drama.
"Such a life, Janet, would grind you into the dust. It is easy to say you will face it—now. But wherever we went, however we hid ourselves, some one would drive it home to us. They would shatter your peace of mind, Janet, and I should go mad for pity of what I had brought you to. Come, little girl," he finished, with quiet decision. "I know you will trust me to do what is best."
"Bravo, Roddick! A plucky fight you're making!" cried the man without, breathlessly. The intensity of his excitement hurt him. He wanted the scene to close now.
Roddick had taken the girl in his arms with his last words; he was whispering tender incoherencies to her, as one does to a frightened child. Then he wrapped her, unresisting this time, in her cloak. The tears had dried in long stains down her white face, and she was gazing at him apprehensively.
"Leo."
"Yes, sweetheart?"
"You are right, quite right, and I am wrong. It was wicked of me to come here and tempt you. Only, you don't know how hard the home life is. Others come and make love to me, Leo, and it seems such an insult—to both of us. Yet I can say nothing, do nothing. But I oughtn't to have tempted you. Can you forgive me?"
"Forgive you? Come along, little woman, and we won't talk about forgiveness till we have struck home across the moor; and then——"
"And then, dear?" she asked wistfully. It seemed so cold, this homeward journey.
"Then I shall plead for your forgiveness. You must have thought me a brute, Janet."
The man outside the window breathed again. The play, to all intents and purposes, was finished. Roddick had won, and there was only that twitching of the mouth to show how much it had cost him.
Griff Lomax awoke to a sense of his own importance in the drama. He remembered that a certain disreputable waif-and-stray, with a shipwrecked heart and a partially deranged understanding, held the key of the situation. He went to the door, opened it without ceremony, and stepped into the room.
Roddick turned quickly on the intruder. Janet cowered back against the window.
"What do you want?" demanded Roddick. The room was low and gloomy, and he failed to recognize Griff at a first glance.
"Don't you know me? I'm Lomax," laughed the new-comer.
Roddick stood staring at him for awhile; then went up to him.
"God in Heaven, man! what have you been doing? Last night you looked wild enough in all conscience, but now——"
"Doing?" interrupted Griff. "Something you will approve of, you two. I've tramped across the moor—and a pretty cold moor it is, by the way—to tell you that your wife is dead."
They noticed nothing out of the way in his voice or manner of giving the information. The tidings were too great to allow room for any thought of the bearer's looks.
"Dead?" cried Roddick.
"Yes, dead. I saw her not long ago."
Roddick fell back against the mantelpiece. A giddiness came over him. He could move neither hand nor foot, he could not speak, though he realized vaguely that he ought to shake his friend by the hand and give him hearty thanks.
But Janet made ample atonement for his remissness. She fell at Griff's feet, and kissed his hands, and named him the dearest man in the world. She was beside herself with joy; she scarcely knew what she was doing.
Griff raised the girl and gravely put her away from him.
"I killed her," he said, quietly.
Roddick stared at him from his place against the mantel-shelf. He had had a stiff fight with conscience not long ago, and the pace of these new developments was altogether too fast for him.
Janet shuddered, and put the width of the room between herself and the man whom she had lately named a saviour.
"You—killed—her?" she whispered.
"Yes. Don't look at me like that. It is a mere nothing." His manner was growing wild. He laughed causelessly at intervals, and seemed to think his story rather humorous than otherwise. "I came last night, you remember, to see if old Roddick here could help me. I was going mad for want of a purpose. I felt like a derelict ship that has been tossing about aimlessly, day after day, week after week. I was willing to give anything to the man who would fit me out with sails and a rudder. Well, I found you, instead of Roddick, and you stood me a true friend—told me there was a woman to be killed—fitted a purpose to my hand at once. God bless you both!"
He ceased. Down the side of Roddick's nose a ridiculous tear was creeping, but Griff smiled, with a sort of paternal tenderness, on the two people for whom he had lately performed a trifling service.
"Old man!" cried Roddick. His voice was a woman's, inaudible almost in its desperate pity.
"Don't trouble about that," put in the other briskly, as if in answer to unspoken words of gratitude. "The least said, the soonest mended. You want to thank me, I know, and talk nonsense generally. I won't have it. Why, man, it's the easiest thing I ever did in my life!" On the sudden his face fell. He gibbered dumbly, like some voiceless ghost. "The moor, the moor," he whispered at last. "How still and white it is. It's not the moor I have known—not the moor I have loved my life through—it seems to shudder."
Still Roddick watched him. He could not break through the miserable, obstinate silence that hid his sympathy. Reason came back to Griff's face, and firmness to his voice.
"There are two pictures in my studio at Gorsthwaite. I seem to care so little for that sort of thing now, but I know they are good. Will you look after them, Roddick, old man? Send them out into the world; they are the best work I ever did—and Kate lives in one of them."
Janet had forgotten Griff while teaching herself to realize the glad news he had brought them. In the utter selfishness of her love, in the sudden lifting of a burden she had borne too long, she surrendered herself wholly to delight. Her joy grew intolerable; she had to cry aloud.
"Leo, Leo, you are mine, mine altogether!" she said, in a voice between laughter and tears.
But Roddick, thinking of his true friend in need, was silent. He turned his back on them, and leaned his forehead on the mantelshelf, and wondered what would be the end of it for Lomax.
And Griff, meanwhile, passed quietly out into the stillness of the moor.
THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.