CHAPTER XI. LIZA'S WILES.
The procession had just emerged from the lane, and had turned into the old road that hugged the margin of the mere, when two men walked slowly by in the opposite direction. Dark as it had been when Willy encountered these men before, he had not an instant's doubt as to their identity.
The reports of Ralph's disappearance, which Matthew had so assiduously promulgated in whispers, had reached the destination which Ralph had designed for them. The representatives of the Carlisle high constable were conscious that they had labored under serious disadvantages in their efforts to capture a dalesman in his own stronghold of the mountains. Moreover, their zeal was not so ardent as to make them eager to risk the dangers of an arrest that was likely to be full of peril. They were willing enough to accept the story of Ralph's flight, but they could not reasonably neglect this opportunity to assure themselves of its credibility. So they had beaten about the house during the morning under the pioneering of the villager whom they had injudiciously chosen as their guide, and now they scanned the faces of the mourners who set out on the long mountain journey.
Old Matthew's risibility was evidently much tickled by the sense of their thwarted purpose. Despite the mournful conditions under which he was at that moment abroad, he could not forbear to wish them, from his place in the procession, “a gay canny mornin'”; and failing to satisfy himself with the effect produced by this insinuating salutation, he could not resist the further temptation of reminding them that they had frightened and not caught their game.
“Fleyin' a bird's not the way to grip it,” he cried, to the obvious horror of the clergyman, whose first impulse was to remonstrate with the weaver on his levity, but whose maturer reflections induced the more passive protest of a lifted head and a suddenly elevated nose.
This form of contempt might have escaped the observation of the person for whom it was intended had not Reuben Thwaite, who walked beside Matthew, gently emphasized it with a jerk of the elbow and a motion of the thumb.
“He'll glower at the moon till he falls in the midden,” said Matthew with a grunt of amused interest.
The two strangers had now gone by, and Willy Ray breathed freely, as he thought that with this encounter the threatened danger had probably been averted.
Then the procession wound its way slowly along the breast of Bracken Water. When Robbie Anderson, in front, had reached a point at which a path went up from the pack-horse road to the top of the Armboth Fell, he paused for a moment, as though uncertain whether to pursue it.
“Keep to the auld corpse road,” cried Matthew; and then, in explanation of his advice, he explained the ancient Cumbrian land law, by which a path becomes public property if a dead body is carried over it.
Before long the procession had reached the mountain path across Cockrigg Bank, and this path it was intended to follow as far as Watendlath.
Here the Reverend Nicholas Stevens left the mourners. In accordance with an old custom, he might have required that they should pass through his chapel yard on the Raise before leaving the parish, but he had waived his right to this tribute to episcopacy. After offering a suitable blessing, he turned away, not without a withering glance at the weaver, who was muttering rather too audibly an adaptation of the rhyme,—
I'll set him up on yon crab-tree,
It's sour and dour, and so is he.
“I reckon,” continued Matthew to little Reuben Thwaite, by his side, as the procession started afresh,—“I reckon yon auld Nick,” with a lurch of his thumb over his shoulder, “likes Ash Wednesday better ner this Wednesday—better ner ony Wednesday—for that's the day he curses every yan all roond, and asks the folks to say Amen tul him.”
The schoolmaster had walked demurely enough thus far; nor did the departure of the clergyman effect a sensible elevation of his spirits. Of all the mourners, the “laal limber Frenchman” was the most mournful.
It was a cheerless winter morning when they set out from Shoulthwaite. The wind had never fallen since the terrible night of the death of Angus. As they ascended the fell, however, it was full noon. The sun had broken languidly through the mists that had rolled midway across the mountains, and were now being driven by the wind in a long white continent towards the south, there to gather between more sheltered headlands to the strength of rain. When they reached the top of the Armboth Fell the sky was clear, the sun shone brightly and bathed the gorse that stretched for miles around in varied shades of soft blue, brightening in some places to purple, and in other places deepening to black. The wind was stronger here than it had been in the valley, and blew in gusts of all but overpowering fierceness from High Seat towards Glaramara.
“This caps owte,” said Matthew, as he lurched to the wind. “Yan waddent hev a crowful of flesh on yan's bones an yan lived up here.”
When the procession reached the village of Watendlath a pause was made. From this point onward the journey through Borrowdale towards the foot of Stye Head Pass must necessarily be a hard and tiresome one, there being scarcely a traceable path through the huge bowlders. Here it was agreed that the mourners on foot should turn back, leaving the more arduous part of the journey to those only who were mounted on sure-footed ponies. Matthew Branthwaite, Monsey Laman, and Reuben Thwaite were among the dozen or more dalesmen who left the procession at this point.
When, on their return journey, they had regained the summit of the Armboth Fell, and were about to descend past Blea Tarn towards Wythburn, they stood for a moment at that highest point and took a last glimpse of the mournful little company, with the one riderless horse in front, that wended its way slowly beyond Rosthwaite, along the banks of the winding Derwent, which looked to them now like a thin streak of blue in the deep valley below.
Soon after the procession left the house on the Moss, arrangements were put in progress for the meal that had to be prepared for the mourners upon their return in the evening.
Some preliminary investigations into the quantity of food that would have to be cooked in the hours intervening disclosed the fact that the wheaten flour had run short, and that some one would need to go across to the mill at Legberthwaite at once if hot currant cake were to be among the luxuries provided for the evening table.
So Liza took down her cloak, tied the ribbons of her bonnet about her plump cheeks, and set out over the dale almost immediately the funeral party turned the end of the lonnin. The little creature tripped along jauntily enough, with a large sense of her personal consequence to the enterprises afoot, but without an absorbing sentiment of the gravity of the occurrences that gave rise to them. She had scarcely crossed the old bridge that led into the Legberthwaite highway when she saw the blacksmith coming hastily from the opposite direction.
Now, Liza was not insensible of her attractions in the eyes of that son of Vulcan, and at a proper moment she was not indisposed to accept the tribute of his admiration. Usually, however, she either felt or affected a measure of annoyance at the importunity with which he prosecuted his suit, and when she saw him coming towards her on this occasion her first feeling was a little touched with irritation. “Here's this great tiresome fellow again,” she thought; “he can never let a girl go by without speaking to her. I've a great mind to leap the fence and cross the fields to the mill.”
Liza did not carry into effect the scarcely feminine athletic exercise she had proposed to herself; and this change of intention on her part opens up a more curious problem in psychology than the little creature herself had any notion of. The fact is that just as Liza had resolved that she would let nothing in the world interfere with her fixed determination not to let the young blacksmith speak to her, she observed, to her amazement, that the gentleman in question had clearly no desire to do so, but was walking past her hurriedly, and with so preoccupied an air as actually seemed to suggest that he was not so much as conscious of her presence.
It was true that Liza did not want to speak to Mr. Joseph. It was also true that she had intended to ignore him. But that he should not want to speak to her, and that he should seem to ignore her, was much more than could be borne by her stubborn little bit of coquettish pride, distended at that moment, too, by the splendors of her best attire. In short, Liza was piqued into a desire to investigate the portentous business which had obviously shut her out of the consciousness of the blacksmith.
“Mr. Garth,” she said, stopping as he drew up to her.
“Liza, is that you?” he replied; “I'm in a hurry, lass—good morning.”
“Mr. Garth,” repeated Liza, “and maybe you'll tell me what's all your hurry about. Has some one's horse dropped a shoe, or is this your hooping day, or what, that you don't know a body now when you meet one in the road?”
“No, no, my lass—good morning, Liza, I must be off.”
“Very well, Mr. Garth, and if you must, you must. I'm not the one to keep any one 'at doesn't want to stop; not I, indeed,” said Liza, tossing up her head with an air as of supreme indifference, and turning half on her heel. “Next time you speak to me, you—you—you will speak to me—mind that.” And with an expression denoting the triumph of arms achieved by that little outburst of irony and sarcasm combined, Liza tossed the ribbons aside that were pattering her face in the wind, and seemed about to continue her journey.
Her parting shot had proved too much for Mr. Garth. That young man had stopped a few paces down the road, and between two purposes seemed for a moment uncertain which to adopt; but the impulse of what he thought his love triumphed over the impulse of what proved to be his hate. Retracing the few steps that lay between him and the girl, he said,—
“Don't take it cross, Liza, my lass; if I thought you really wanted to speak to me, I'd stop anywhere for nowt—that I would. I'd stop anywhere for nowt; but you always seemed to me over throng with yon Robbie, that you did; but if for certain you really did want me—that's to say, want to speak to me—I'd stop anywhere for nowt.”
The liberal nature of the blacksmith's offer did not so much impress the acute intelligence of the girl as the fact that Mr. Garth was probably at that moment abroad upon an errand which he had not undertaken from equally disinterested motives. Concerning the nature of this errand she felt no particular curiosity, but that it was unknown to her, and was being withheld from her, was of itself a sufficient provocation to investigation.
Liza was a simple country wench, but it would be an error to suppose that because she had been bred up in a city more diminutive than anything that ever before gave itself the name, and because she had lived among hand-looms and milking-pails, and had never seen a ball or an opera, worn a mask or a domino, she was destitute of the instinct for intrigue which in the gayer and busier world seems to be the heritage of half her sex. Putting her head aside demurely, as with eyes cast, down she ran her fingers through one of her loose ribbons, she said softly,—
“And who says I'm so very partial to Robbie? I never said so, did I? Not that I say I'm partial to anybody else either—not that I ay so—Joseph!”
The sly emphasis which was put upon the word that expressed Liza's unwillingness to commit herself to a declaration of her affection for some mysterious entity unknown seemed to Mr. Garth to be proof beyond contempt of question that the girl before him implied an affection for an entity no more mysterious than himself. The blacksmith's face brightened, and his manner changed. What had before been almost a supplicating tone, gave place to a tone of secure triumph.
“Liza,” he said, “I'm going to bring that Robbie down a peg or two. He's been a perching himself up alongside of Ralph Ray this last back end, but I'm going to feckle him this turn.”
“No, Joseph; are you going to do that, though?” said Liza, with a brightening face that seemed to Mr. Garth to say, “Do it by all means.”
“Mayhap I am,” said the blacksmith, significantly shaking his head. He was snared as neatly by this simple face as ever was a swallow by a linnet hidden in a cage among the grass.
“And that Ralph, too, the great lounderan fellow, he treats me like dirt, that he does.”
“But you'll pay him out now, won't you, Joseph?” said Liza, as though glorying in the blacksmith's forthcoming glory.
“Liza, my lass, shall I tell you something?” Under the fire of a pair of coquettish little eyes, his head as well as his heart seemed to melt, and he became eagerly communicative. Dropping his voice, he said,—
“That Ralph's not gone away at all. He'll be at his father's berrying, that he will.”
“Nay!” cried Liza, without a prolonged accent of surprise; and, indeed, this fact had come upon her with so much unexpectedness that her curiosity was now actually as well as ostensibly aroused.
“Yes,” said Mr. Garth; “and there's those as knows where to lay hands on him this very day—that there is.”
“I shouldn't be surprised, now, if yon Robbie Anderson has been up to something with him,” said Liza, with a curl of the lip intended to convey an idea of overpowering disgust at the conduct of the absent Robbie.
“And maybe he has,” said Mr. Garth, with a ponderous shake of the head, denoting the extent of his reverse. Evidently “he could an' he would.”
“But you'll go to them, won't you, Joseph? That is them as wants them—leastways one of them—them as wants him will go and take him, won't they?”
“That they will,” said Joseph emphatically. “But I must be off, lass; for I've the horses to get ready, forby the shortness of the time.”
“So you're going on horseback, eh, Joey? Will it take you long?”
“A matter of two hours, for we must go by the Black Sail and come back to Wastdale Head, and that's round-about, thou knows.” “So you'll take them on Wastdale Head, then, eh?” said Liza, turning her head aside as though in the abundance of her maidenly modesty, but really glancing slyly under the corner of her bonnet in the direction taken by the mourners, and wondering if they could be overtaken.
Joseph was a little disturbed to find that he had unintentionally disclosed so much of the design. The potency of the bright blue eyes that looked up so admiringly into his face at the revelation of the subtlety with which he had seen through a mystery impenetrable to less powerful vision, had betrayed him into unexpected depths of confidence.
Having gone so far, however, Mr. Garth evidently concluded that the best course was to make a clean breast of it—an expedient which he conceived to be insusceptible of danger, for he could see that the funeral party were already on the brow of the hill. So, with one foot stretched forward as if in the preliminary stage of a hurried leave-taking, the blacksmith told Liza that he had met the schoolmaster that morning, and had gathered enough from a word the little man had dropped without thought to put him upon the trace of the old garrulous body with whom the schoolmaster lodged; that his mother, Mistress Garth, had undertaken the office of sounding this person, and had learned that Ralph had hinted that he would relieve Robbie Anderson of his duty at the top of the Stye Head Pass.
Having heard this, Liza had heard enough, and she was not unwilling that the blacksmith should make what speed he could out of her sight, so that she in turn might make what speed she could out of his sight, and, returning to the Moss without delay, communicate her fearful burden of intelligence to Rotha.