Altogether, when Christmas Day came and the bells rang out their message, in the hearty country way, there was little responsive joy in the hearts of many of the dwellers by Marshcotes Moor. Mrs. Lomax, though every day seemed to bring Kate nearer to her, was as yet far from accepting the situation; she remembered other Christmases, when she had had Griff all to herself—further back, too, when her husband was alive, and they had framed great plans for the future of a certain toddling hopeful. Who was this strange woman, that she should upset a lifetime of hopes and fears, lightly as if they had been a card-house? And Kate felt her position keenly; she was soon to be branded in the eyes of all who knew her as a woman of bad repute, and it cut her pride to the quick. Then she would cease, for a whole day together, to care what any one thought of her, so long as she had Griff; but after that would come a bitter sense that he was far away from her, and a dread of what might happen in the interim. Like all superstitious people, she thought of Providence as an agent whose unalterable aim it was to defeat the plans of mortals when they were aiming for the highest happiness; it seemed inconceivable that nothing should step in to thwart them at the last. Griff was shooting—there was a whole crop of terrors to be gleaned from that knowledge alone; accidents were so easy, and the chance fall of a trigger was as simple an agent as Providence could well find. It was in vain that Mrs. Lomax, with her cheery common sense, strove to put such dreads away from her; and Griff's frequent letters—they came, if the truth must out, three times a week—did less to comfort Kate than one good, hearty hand-grip could have effected.
But there was more than theoretic dread abroad; there was real tragedy between Ling Crag Moor to the west and Cranshaw Moor to the east—as Roddick knew to his cost.
Roddick was shaving when the sound of the Marshcotes bells came through the frosty air on Christmas morn. He grinned savagely at his own reflection in the glass, and cut himself badly on the chin, under the delusion that he was uttering a biting sarcasm.
"Peace on earth," he muttered, as he sought for a cobweb on the well-lined walls of his bedroom. "Good-will towards men; I know the old tomfoolery by heart," he growled, applying the cobweb to his chin.
The old woman who came for a few hours each morning—his only servant—was planting a smoking coffee-pot on the table when he came downstairs.
"A merry Kirsmas, sir, to ye," she croaked.
"Thanks; the same to you," said Roddick, dryly. "Oh, by the way, isn't there some superstition about the season—something about coin of the realm, and other things that really touch people's hearts? Mrs. Whitaker, would you like a Christmas-box?"
He amused himself for a while, as his way was, in watching the old creature squirm from one embarrassment to another. First, she feared he would see how anxious she was in the matter, and then she feared he wouldn't; it was an unfair advantage, she felt, to take of a woman "that had allus had her own living to addle, but what war noan dependant on onybody's charity, for all that."
Roddick grew swiftly weary of her—weary, with one of his hot, insane frenzies. He tossed her a sovereign, as he would have thrown a bone to his dog, and turned to his eggs and bacon.