CHAPTER VIII. ROBBIE'S REDEMPTION.
Sim accompanied Ralph half-way down the hill when he rose to go. Robbie Anderson could be seen hastening towards them. His mission must be with Ralph, so Sim went back.
“I've been to Shoulthwaite to look for you,” said Robbie. “They told me you'd taken the hills for it, so I followed on.”
“You look troubled, my lad,” said Ralph; “has anything happened to you?”
“No, Ralph, but something may happen to you if you don't heed me what I say.”
“Nothing that will trouble me much, Robbie—nothing of that kind can happen now.”
“Yon gommarel of a Joe Garth, the blacksmith, has never forgotten the thrashing you gave him years ago for killing your dog—Laddie's mother that was.”
“No, he'll never forgive me; but what of that? I've not looked for his forgiveness.”
“But, I'm afeared, Ralph, he means to pay you back more than four to the quarter. Do you know he has spies lodging with him? They've come down here to take you off. Joe has been at the Red Lion this morning—drunk, early as it is. He blurted it out about the spies, so I ran off to find you.”
“It isn't Joe that has done the mischief, my lad, though the spies, or whatever they are, may pay him to play underspy while it serves their turn.”
“Joe or not Joe, they mean to take you the first chance. Folks say everything has got upside down with the laws and the country now that the great man himself is dead. Hadn't you best get off somewhere?
“It was good of you, Robbie, to warn me; but I can't leave home yet; my father must be buried, you know.”
“Ah!” said Robbie in an altered tone, “poor Angus!”
Ralph looked closely at his companion, and thought of Robbie's question last night in the inn.
“Tell me,” he said, glancing searchingly into Robbie's eyes, “did you know anything about old Wilson's death?”
The young dalesman seemed abashed. He dropped his head, and appeared unable to look up.
“Tell me, Robbie; I know much already.”
“I took the money,” said the young man; “I took it, but I threw it into the beck the minute after.”
“How was it, lad? Let me know.”
Robbie was still standing, with his head down, pawing the ground as he said,—
“I'd been drinking hard—you know that. I was drunk yon night, and I hadn't a penny in my pouch. On my way home from the inn I lay down in the dike and fell asleep. I was awakened by the voices of two men quarrelling. You know who they were. Old Wilson was waving a paper over his head and laughing and sneering. Then the other snatched it away. At that Wilson swore a dreadful oath, and flung himself on—the other. It was all over in a moment. He'd given the little waistrel the cross-buttock, and felled him on his head. I saw the other ride off, and I saw Simeon Stagg. When all was still, I crept out and took Wilson's money—yes, I took it; but I flung it into the next beck. For the moment, when I touched him I thought he was alive. I've not been drinking hard since then, Ralph; no, nor never will again.”
“Ey, you'll do better than that, Robbie.”
Ralph said no more. There was a long silence between the two men, until Robbie, unable to support it any longer, broke in again with, “I took it, but I flung it into the next beck.”
The poor fellow seemed determined to dwell upon the latter fact as in some measure an extenuation of his offence. In his silent hours of remorse he had cherished it as one atoning circumstance. It had been the first fruits of a sudden resolution of reform. Sobered by the sense of what part he had played in crime, the money that had lain in his hand was a witness against him; and when he had flung it away he had only the haunting memory left of what he would have done in effect, but had, in fact, done only in name.
“Why did you not say this at the inquest?” asked Ralph. “You might have cleared Simeon Stagg. Was it because you must have accused my father?”
“I can't say it was that. I felt guilty myself. I felt as if half the crime had been mine.”
There was another pause.
“Robbie,” Ralph said at length, “would you, if I wished it, say no more about all this?”
“I've said nothing till now, and I need say nothing more.”
“Sim will be as silent—if I ask him. There is my poor mother, my lad; she can't live long, and why should she be stricken down? Her dear old head is bowed low enough already.”
“I promise you, Ralph,” said Robbie. He had turned half aside, and was speaking falteringly. He remembered one whose head had been bowed lower still—one whose heart had been sick for his own misdeeds, and now the grass was over her.
“Then that is agreed.”
“Ralph, there's something I should have said before, but I was afeared to say it. Who would have believed the word of a drunkard? That's what I was, God forgive me! Besides, it would have done no good to say it, that I can see, and most likely some harm.”
“What was it?”
“Didn't they say they found Wilson lying fifty yards below the river?”
“They did; fifty yards to the south of the bridge.”
“It was as far to the north that I left him. I'm sure of it. I was sobered by what happened. I could swear it in heaven, Ralph. It was full fifty yards on the down side of the bridge from the smithy.”
“Think again, my lad; it's a serious thing that you say.”
“I've thought of it too much. It has tormented me day and night. There's no use in trying to persuade myself I must be wrong. Fifty yards on the down side of the beck from the smithy—that was the place, Ralph.”
The dalesman looked grave. Then a light crossed his face as if a wave of hope had passed through him. Sim had said he was leaning against the bridge. All that Angus could have done must have been done to the north of it. Was it possible, after all, that Angus had not killed Wilson by that fall?
“You say that for the moment, when you touched him, you thought Wilson was not dead?”
“It's true, I thought so.”
Sim had thought the same.
“Did you see any one else that night?”
“No.”
“Nor hear other footsteps?”
“No, none but my own at last—none.”
It was no clew. Unconsciously Ralph put his hand to his breast and touched the paper that he had placed there. No, there was no hope. The shadow that had fallen had fallen forever.
“Perhaps the man recovered enough to walk a hundred yards, and then fell dead. Perhaps he had struggled to reach home?”
“He would be going the wrong way for that, Ralph.”
“True, true; it's very strange, very, if it is as you say. He was fifty yards beyond the smithy—north of it?”
“He was.”
The dalesmen walked on. They had got down into the road, when the little schoolmaster ran up against them almost before he had been seen.
“Oh, here you are, are you?” he gasped.
“Are they coming?” said Robbie Anderson, jumping on to the turf hedge to get a wider view.
“That they are.”
The little man had dropped down on to a stone, and was mopping his forehead. When he had recovered his breath, he said,—
“I say, Monsieur the Gladiator, why didn't you kill when you were about it? I say, why didn't you kill?” and Monsey held his thumbs down, as he looked in Ralph's face.
“Kill whom?” said Ralph. He could not help laughing at the schoolmaster's ludicrous figure and gesture.
“Why, that Garth—a bad garth—a kirk-garth—a kirk-warner's garth-a devil's garth—Joe Garth?”
“I can't see them,” said Robbie, and he jumped down again into the road.
“Oh, but you will, you will,” said Monsey; and stretching his arm out towards Ralph with a frantic gesture, he cried, “You fly, fly, fly, fly!”
“Allow me to point out to you,” observed Ralph, smiling, “that I do not at all fly, nor shall I know why I should not remain where I am until you tell me.”
“Then know that your life's not worth a pin's fee if you remain here to be taken. Oh, that Garth—that devil's garth—that—that—Joe Garth!”
There was clearly no epithet that suited better with Monsey's mood than the said monster's proper name.
“Friends,” said Ralph, more seriously, “it's clear I can't leave before I see my father buried, and it's just as clear I can't see him buried if I stay. With your help I may do both—that is, seem to do both.”
“How? how? unfold—I can interpret you no conundrums,” said Monsey. “To go, and yet not to go, that is the question.”
“Can I help you?” said Robbie with the simplicity of earnestness.
“Go back, schoolmaster, to the Lion.”
“I know it—I've been there before—well?”
“Say, if your conscience will let you—I know how tender it is—say you saw me go over Lauvellen in the direction of Fairfield. Say this quietly—say it to old Matthew in a whisper and as a secret; that will be enough.”
“I've shared with that patriarch some secrets before now, and they've been common property in an hour—common as the mushrooms on the common—common as his common saws—common—”
“Robbie, the burial will take place the day after to-morrow, at three in the afternoon, at the kirk-garth—”
“Oh, that Garth,—that devil's garth—that Joe—”
“At the kirk-garth at Gosforth,” continued Ralph. “Go round the city and the dale, and bid every master and mistress within the warning to Shoulthwaite Moss at nine o'clock in the morning. Be there yourself as the representative of the family, and see all our old customs observed. The kirk-garth is twenty miles away, across rugged mountain country, and you must follow the public pass.”
“Styehead Pass?”
Ralph nodded assent. “Start away at eleven o'clock; take the old mare to bear the body; let the boy ride the young horse, and chain him to the mare at the bottom of the big pass. These men, these spies, these constables, whatever they may be, will lie in wait for me about the house that morning. If they don't find me at my father's funeral they'll then believe that I must have gone. Do you hold the mare's head, Robbie—mind that. When you get to the top of the pass, perhaps some one will relieve you—perhaps so, perhaps not. You understand?”
“I do.”
“Let nothing interfere with this plan as I give it you. If you fail in any single particular, all may be lost.”
“I'll let nothing interfere. But what of Willy? What if he object?
“Tell him these are my wishes—he'll yield to that.”
There was a moment's silence.
“Robbie, that was a noble resolve you told me of; and you can keep it, can you not?”
“I can—God help me.”
“Keep it the day after to-morrow—you remember our customs, sometimes more honored, you know, in the breach than the observance—you can hold to your resolve that day; you must hold to it, for everything hangs on it. It is a terrible hazard.”
Robbie put his hand in Ralph's, and the two stalwart dalesmen looked steadily each into the other's face. There was a dauntless spirit of resolution in the eyes of the younger man. His resolve was irrevocable. His crime had saved him.
“That's enough,” said Ralph. He was satisfied.
“Why, you sleep—you sleep,” cried the little schoolmaster. During the preceding conversation he had been capering to and fro in the road, leaping on to the hedge, leaping back again, and putting his hands to the sides of his eyes to shut away the wind that came from behind him, while he looked out for the expected enemy.
“You sleep—you sleep—that Garth—that devil's garth—that worse than kirk-garth—that—that—!”
“And now we part,” said Ralph, “for the present. Good by, both!” And he turned to go back the way he came.
Monsey and Robbie had gone a few paces in the other direction, when the little schoolmaster stopped, and, turning round, cried in a loud voice, “O yes, I know it—the Lion. I've been there before. I'll whisper Father Matthew that you've gone—”
Robbie had put his arm on Monsey's shoulder and swung him round, and Ralph heard no more.