A Man of the Moors

by Halliwell Sutcliffe

"You have, but it doesn't matter. I daren't ever risk it again, though, now that I know people intrude. Good-bye. When are you coming to have a pipe with father?"

"As soon as I can, if you'll have me. Good-bye."

"They are hard in a way," mused Greta, when he had gone, "but they're grit somehow. Why on earth hasn't Gabriel a little of Mr. Lomax's easiness? It is so silly being in love with a man you have to give a helping hand to. And Gabriel isn't a bit sure yet whether I am a wile of the devil or merely an angel. Did I say I loved him? Well, I don't. He's stupid. I am going for a run on the moors instead of thinking about him."

Griff strolled gently homeward across the moor, with the tingle of cold water on his skin and the morning wind fresh in his face. What was left a man to desire, he wondered? He opened his shoulders, his mouth, his nostrils, to the wind and the peat-reek, and watched the sun-rays dance across the moor. Cobwebs were slung, like fairy hammocks, from heather-bough to heather-bough; the peat was springy to the tread; a lark was vowing that he'd never grow tired of singing, and a moor-emperor moth, a dandy gallant in gorgeous raiment, flitted across his path.

"What fools there are in the world!" said Griff to himself. "When I think of people living in the valleys—as I did myself for a goodly number of years—it makes me laugh."

But Gabriel Hirst, at that moment, felt no gratitude towards the sun, nor did he realize how good it was to be alive. Five minutes after Miss Rotherson had perched herself on the log, the preacher turned out of the Ling Crag high-road and walked quickly towards the mill. It was his wont nowadays to creep about the mill purlieus, in the hope of catching a glimpse of Greta—or a glimpse of her casement, if the greater boon were denied him. He could not live through the twenty-four hours without this pilgrimage of his; sometimes he came at noon, oftener at twilight, but he rarely had courage to step forward and claim a word with the girl; it never occurred to him that a passion so overmastering as his could meet with a like response, and he feared to blurt out the sum-total of his folly if he spoke with her overmuch. Greta, of course, knew a good deal about his stealthy approaches to the mill, as women will get to know these things; and she wondered how a man could be a man in all else, and yet be such a sorry fool in matters of love.

This morning Gabriel Hirst had awakened at four, and could not get to sleep again for thinking of Greta. He tried to drive the thought away; for one of his old frenzies had been coming to a head lately, and he was keenly alive to the wiles of the flesh. He ran over St. Peter's words on the subject of plaitings of the hair, and cringed at the thought that he had only yesterday feasted his eyes on the brown glory coiled above Greta's shapely little head. He told himself, as he turned into the wood-path through Hazel Dene, that this must be the last of his tributes to carnal desire, that he must never—— But down below him sat Greta on her pine-log, with Lomax jesting at her side. Like a man struck blind was the preacher; he stood quite still at the gap in the bushes that had first shown him the scene, but his eyes were too full of dancing lights to see more than the one quick glance had shown him. Away went doubts of the spiritual future in dread of the concrete present. This could be no chance meeting; the hour was too early, the Dene too far out of Griff's way. Were they laughing at himself, at his clumsy ways and honest love-fears? He pressed his hand tight above his heart, as if he had received a mortal hurt. Griff was false—that was the thought which shaped itself in his mind, after long struggling with the numbness. Vaguely he crept away from the spot—up the steep hillside, through the pastureland above, on into the moor. No lust for vengeance had yet crept in to goad his manhood; he followed the instinct of all sorely stricken creatures and tottered to some unknown hiding-place—anywhere, so long as he got out of reach of his fellows.

Slowly the need of vindication slid into his consciousness. He quickened his pace a little. Righteous anger followed stealthily, telling him that Griff had stooped to the meanest treachery that a man can play his friend. His feet went forward more bravely. Finally, he was all aglow with a rage that swept clean away every despairing thought of loss. He ran like a wild thing through the purpling heather, till Hazel Dene lay a good three miles behind him; he was out of breath by this time, and he sat down in a clump of cranberries to rest awhile. He had gone out that morning with a copy of "Baxter's Call to the Unconverted" under his arm—a book, much in vogue with an earlier generation, in which Gabriel was wont to find strong stuff of a quality he loved. He opened the book at random, hoping to chance upon some counsel fitted to the occasion; but he drew blank, and shut the stained old pages with a snap. One solitary quotation from the Scriptures assailed him with untiring pertinacity. "Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord," he muttered.

He got up from the cranberry-bushes and strode off again across the moor. It hurt him to feel that excuse for action rested, not with himself, but with a Higher Power. A sense of futility weighed him down.

The sun was dropping westward before hunger insisted on a hearing. He had been fasting lately, and his body was weakened; old stubbornness bade him fight the hunger, but he remembered that there was no longer a reason for self-castigation—no longer a reason, it seemed, for anything in earth or sky. The scepticism which, years before, had preceded his conversion came and went, alternating with the dulling consciousness that vengeance belonged to the Lord, not to himself. Gabriel Hirst was rudderless in the depths of a stormy sea.