CHAPTER XXXII. WHAT THE SNOW GAVE UP.
The agitation of the landlord of the inn at Askham, who was an old Parliamentarian, on discovering the captain under whom he had served in the person of Ralph Ray, threatened of itself to betray him. With infinite perturbation he came and went, and set before Ralph and Sim such plain fare as his house could furnish after the more luxurious appetites of the Royalist visitors had been satisfied.
The room into which the travellers had been smuggled was a wing of the old house, open to the whitewashed rafters, and with the customary broad hearth. Armor hung about the walls—a sword here, a cutlass there, and over the rannel-tree a coat of chain steel. It was clearly the living-room of the landlord's family, and was jealously guarded from the more public part of the inn. But when the door was open into the passage that communicated with the rest of the house, the loud voices of the Royalists could be heard in laughter or dispute.
When the family vacated this room for the convenience of Ralph and Sim, they left behind at the fireside, sitting on a stool, a little boy of three or four, who was clearly the son of the landlord. Ralph sat down, and took the little fellow between his knees. The child had big blue eyes and thin curls of yellow hair. The baby lips answered to his smile, and the baby tongue prattled in his ear with the easy familiarity which children extend only to those natures that hold the talisman of child-love.
“And what is your name, my little man?” said Ralph.
“Darling,” answered the child, looking up frankly into Ralph's face.
“Good. And anything else?”
“Ees, Villie.”
“Do they not say you are like your mother, Willie?” said Ralph, brushing the fair curls from the boy's forehead. “Me mammy's darling,” said the little one, with innocent eyes and a pretty curve of the little mouth.
“Surely. And what will you be when you grow up, my sunny boy?”
“A man.”
“Ah! and a wit, eh? But what will you be at your work—a farmer?”
“Me be a soldier.” The little face grew bright at the prospect.
“Not that, sweetheart. If you have luck like most of us, perhaps you'll have enough fighting in your life without making it your trade to fight. But you don't understand me yet, Willie, darling?”
The little one's father entered the room at this moment, and the opening of the door brought the sound of jumbled voices from a distant apartment. The noisy party of Royalists apparently belonged to the number of those who hold that a man's manners in an inn may properly be the reverse of what they are expected to be at home. The louder such roysterers talk, the more they rap out oaths, the oftener they bellow for the waiters and slap them on the back, the better they think they are welcome in a house of public entertainment.
Amidst the tumult that came from a remote part of the inn a door was heard to open, and a voice was distinguishable above the rest calling lustily for the landlord.
“I must go off to them,” said that worthy. “They expect me to stand host as well as landlord, and sit with them at their drinking.”
When the door closed again, Sim lifted the boy on to his knee, and looked at him with eyes full of tenderness. The little fellow returned his gaze with a bewildered expression that seemed to ask a hundred silent questions of poor Sim's wrinkled cheeks and long, gray, straggling hair.
“I mind me when my own lass was no bigger nor this,” said Sim.
Ralph did not answer, but turned his head aside and listened.
“She was her mammy's darling, too, she was.”
Sim's voice was thick in his throat.
“And mine as well,” he added. “We used to say to her, laughing and teasing like, 'Who will ye marry, Rotie?'—we called her Rotie then,—'who will ye marry, Rotie, when ye grow up to be a big, big woman?' 'My father,' she would say, and throw her little arms about my neck and kiss me.”
Sim raised his hard fingers to his forehead to cover his eyes.
Ralph still sat silent, his head aside, looking into the fire.
“That's many and many a year agone; leastways, so it seems. My wife was living then. We were married in Gaskarth, but work was bad, and we packed up and went to live for a while in a great city, leagues and leagues to the south. And there my poor girl, Josephine—I called her Josie for short, and because it was more kind and close like—there my poor girl fell ill and died. Her face got paler day by day, but she kept a brave heart—she was just such like as Rotha that way—and she tended the house till the last, she did.”
A louder burst of merriment than usual came from the distant room. The fellows were singing a snatch together.
“Do you know, Rotha called her mother, Josie, too. I checked her, I did; but my poor girl she said, said she, 'Never mind; the little one has been hearkening to yourself.' You'd have cried, I think, if you'd been with us the day she died. I was sitting at work, and she called out that she felt faint; so I jumped up and held her in my arms and sent our little Rotha for a neighbor. But it was too late. My poor darling was gone in a minute, and when the wee thing came running back to us, with red cheeks, she looked frightened, and cried, 'Josie! Josie!' 'My poor Rotie, my poor little lost Rotie,' I said, 'our dear Josie, she is in heaven!' Then the little one cried, 'No, no, no'; and wept, and wept till—till—I wept with her.”
The door of the distant apartment must have been again thrown open, for a robustious fellow could be heard to sing a stave of a drinking song. The words came clearly in the silence that preceded a general outburst of chorus:—
“Then to the Duke fill,
Fill up the glass;
The son of our martyr, beloved of the King.”
“We buried her there,” continued Sim; “ay, we buried her in the town; and, with the crowds and the noise above her, there sleeps my brave Josie, and I shall see her face no more.”
Ralph rose up, and walked to the door by which he and Sim had entered from the yard of the inn. He opened it and stood for a moment on the threshold. The snow was falling in thick flakes. Already it covered the ground and lay heavy on the roofs of the outhouses and on the boughs of the leafless trees. A great calm was on the earth and in the air.
Robbie speed on! Lose not an hour now, for an hour lost may be a life's loss.
Ralph was turning back into the room, and bolting the outer door, when the landlord entered hurriedly from the passage. He was excited.
“Is it not—captain, tell me—is it not Wy'bern—your father's home—Wy'bern, on Bracken Mere?”
“It was my father's home—why?”
“Then the bloodhounds are on your trail!”
The perspiration was standing in beads on Brown's forehead.
“They talk of nothing to each other but of a game that's coming on at Wy'bern, and what they'll do for some one that they never name. If they'd but let wit who he is I'd—I'd know them.”
“Landlord, landlord!” cried a man whose uncertain footsteps could be heard in the passage,—“landlord, bring your two guests to us—bring them for a glass.”
The fellow was making his way to the room into which Ralph and Sim had been hustled. The landlord slid out of it through the smallest aperture between the door and its frame that could discharge a man of his sturdy physique. When the door closed behind him he could be heard to protest against any intention of disturbing his visitors. The two gentlemen had made a long journey, travelling two nights and two days at a stretch; so they'd gone off to bed and were snoring hard by this time; the landlord could stake his solemn honor upon it.
The tipsy Royalist seemed content with the apology for non-appearance, and returned to his companions bellowing,—
“Let Tories guard the King;
Let Whigs in halters swing.”
Ralph walked uneasily across the room. Could it be that these men were already on their way to Wythburn to carry out the processes of the law with respect to himself and his family?
In another minute the landlord returned.
“It's as certain as the Lord's above us,” he whispered. “They wanted to get to you to have you drink the King's health with them, and when I swore you were asleep they ax't if you had no horses with you. I said you had one horse. 'One horse among two,' they said, with a great goasteren laugh; 'why, then, they're Jock and his mither.' 'One horse,' I said, 'or maybe two.' 'We must have 'em,' they said; 'we take possession on 'em in the King's service. We've got to cross the fells to Wy'bern in the morning.'”
“What are they, Brown?”
“Musketeers, three of 'em, and ya sour fellow that limps of a leg; they call him Constable David.”
“Let them have the horses. It will save trouble to you.”
Then turning to Sim, Ralph added, “We must be stirring betimes to-morrow, old friend; the daybreak must see us on the road. The snow will be thick in the morning, and perhaps the horses would have hindered us. Everything is for the best.”
The landlord lifted his curly-headed son (now fast asleep) from Sim's knee, and left the room.
Sim's excitement was plainly visible, and even Ralph could not conceal his own agitation. Was he to be too late to do what it had been in his mind to do?
“Did you say Saturday week next? It is Tuesday to-day,” said Ralph.
“A week come Saturday—that was what Rotha told me.”
“It's strange—very strange!”
Ralph satisfied himself at length that the men in the adjoining, room were but going off to Wythburn nine days in advance in order to be ready to carry into effect the intended confiscation immediately their instructions should reach them. The real evils by which Ralph was surrounded were too numerous to allow of his wasting much apprehension on possible ones.
The din of the drinkers subsided at length, and toper after toper was helped to his bed.
Then blankets were brought into Ralph and Sim, and rough shakedowns were made for them on the broad settles. Sim lay down and fell asleep. Ralph walked to and fro for hours.
The quiet night was far worn towards morning when Brown, the landlord, tapped at the door and entered.
“Not a wink will come to me,” he said, and sat down before the smouldering fire.
Ralph continued his perambulation to and fro, to and fro. He thought again of what had occurred, and of what must soon occur to him and his—of Wilson's death—his father's death—the flight of the horse on the fells—all, all, centring somehow in himself. There must be sin involved, though he knew not how—sin and its penalty. It was more and more clear that God's hand was on him—on him. Every act of his own hand turned to evil, and those whom he would bless were cursed. And this cruel scheme of evil—this fate—could it not be broken? Was there no propitiation? Yes, there was; there must be. That thing which he was minded to do would be expiation in the sight of Heaven. God would accept it for an atonement—yes; and there was soft balm like a river of morning air in the thought.
Sim slept on, and Brown crouched over the fire, with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees. There was not a motion within the house or without; the world lay still and white like death.
Yes, it must be so; it must be that his life was to be the ransom.
And it should be paid! Then the clouds would rise and the sun appear.
“Fate that impedes, make way, make way! Mother, Rotha, Willy, wait, wait! I come, I come.”
Ralph's face brightened with the ecstasy of reflection. Was it frenzy in which his morbid idea had ended? If so, it was the frenzy of a self-sacrifice that was sublimity itself.
At one moment Brown stirred in his seat and held his head aside, as though listening for some sound in the far distance.
“Did you hear it?” he asked, in a whisper that had an accent of fear.
“Hear what?” asked Ralph.
“The neigh of the horse,” said Brown. “I heard nothing” replied Ralph, and walked to the window, and listened. “What horse?” he asked, turning about.
“Nay, none of us knows rightly. It's a horse that flies ower the fell o' nights, and whinnies and whinnies.”
“One of the superstitions of your dale,—an old wife's tale, I suppose. Has it been heard for years?”
“No, nor for weeks neither.”
Brown resumed his position in front of the fire, and the hours rolled on.
When the first glimmer of gray appeared in the east, Sim was awakened, and Ralph and he, after eating a hurried breakfast, started away on foot.
Where is Robbie now? A life hangs on the fortunes of this very hour!
“Tell them the horses came from the Woodman at Kendal,” said Ralph as he parted from his old comrade. “You've done better than save our lives, Brown, God bless you!”
“That's a deal more nor my wages, captain,” said the honest fellow.
The snow that had fallen during the night lay several inches deep on the roads, and the hills were white as far up as the eye could trace them. The dawn came slowly. The gray bars were long in stretching over the sky, and longer in making way for the first glint of mingled yellow and pink. But the sunrise came at length. The rosy glaives floated upwards over a lake of light, and the broad continents of cloud fell apart. Another day had breathed through another night.
Ralph and Sim walked long in silence. The snow was glistening like a million diamonds over the breast of a mountain, and the upright crags, on which it could not rest, were glittering like shields of steel.
“How beautiful the world is!” said Ralph.
“Ey, but it is that, after all,” said Sim.
“After all,” repeated Ralph.
They had risen to the summit of a little hill, and they could see as they began to descend on the other side that the snow lay in a deep drift at the bottom.
At the same moment they caught sight of some curious object lying in the distance.
“What thing is that, half covered with the snow?” asked Sim.
“I cannot say. We'll soon see.”
Ralph spoke with panting breath.
“Why, it's a horse!” said Sim.
“Left out on such a night, too,” said Ralph.
His face quivered with emotion. When he spoke again his voice was husky and his face livid.
“Sim, what is that on its back?”
“Surely it's a pack, the black thing across it,” said Sim.
Ralph caught his breath and stopped. Then he ran forward.
“Great God!” he cried, “Betsy! It is Betsy, with the coffin.”