The Day of Judgment

by Joseph Hocking

Meanwhile, Paul Stepaside was in a train that carried him northward. He was doing now what he had meant to have done long months before. He had constantly been making endeavours to discover the truth about the Douglas Graham of whom his mother had spoken, but he had done so without a plan, and in a kind of haphazard way, and this was not like Paul. He felt, too, as though he had a new motive in his life. Mary Bolitho had said nothing that seemingly accounted for this, and yet he knew that her words had determined his action. A feeling of pride which he had never known before possessed him. He wanted to go to this girl with a name as good as her own. Money, he knew he could get, yes, and position, too. During the last few months he had listened to several fairly prominent Members of Parliament. He had analysed their speeches and estimated their powers, and he was not afraid of them. He was as big a man as any of them; yes, bigger, stronger, and with more will power. No, he was not afraid that he could not win position, but with this black cloud hanging over him he felt as though he were paralysed. And so, when a local train left Carlisle towards the station nearest to his mother's old home, it was with a fixed determination that he would not leave Scotland until he had discovered all that could be known. Perhaps it might end in nothing, but he must find out.

It was with a curious feeling in his heart that he presently arrived at the little farmhouse where his mother was born and reared. In spite of the fact that he was a country lad, he had never realised the meaning of loneliness as he realised it now. No other house was near; the little farmhouse was the only building in sight. As far as the eye could reach, beyond the few acres of land which had been reclaimed from the moors, there seemed to him nothing but wild desolation. Hill rose upon hill, and while the scene was almost majestic, it made him understand how lonely his mother's life must have been. He stood for several minutes looking at the house before entering. He did not know whether his grandfather was living or not, and for the first time it struck him that he might have relatives living there, to whose existence he had previously been indifferent. The day was as still as death, and it seemed to him as though the place were uninhabited. Presently, however, he heard the sound of a human voice, and, turning, he saw a rough-looking lad driving some cattle before him. The lad eyed him strangely as he came up to the little farm buildings, and seemed to wonder why he should be there. The time was evening, an evening of late summer, and Paul remembered that it was in the late summer-time when Douglas Graham, his father, had first come into the district. He called to mind, too, that he had seen his mother as she was driving home the cattle from the moors. He watched the lad almost furtively, and he wondered why it was that he was afraid to speak. It seemed to him as though some mysterious power were brooding over this lonely dwelling and forbidding him to learn the secrets that lay within.

"Does Donald Lindsay live here?" he asked presently.

The lad looked at him for a few seconds before replying, and then, in his strong Scotch accent, replied, "Nay. He's dead."

"And Mrs. Lindsay, is she alive?"

"Ay," replied the lad. "She'll be inside. She's my mother."

Paul remembered his own mother's story about this hard Scotswoman's unkindness, and felt little disposed to go into the house; yet, for the sake of learning what he had come to learn, he determined to enter. The cottage, for it was little more than a cottage, was clean, but comfortless and bare of any adornment whatever. It might seem as though no woman entered this building, for there were no marks of a woman's handicraft, none of those little suggestions of the feminine presence.

"Mother!" shouted the youth. "There's someone wants you."

A minute later Paul heard a heavy step on the uncarpeted stairway, and a tall, angular, hard-featured woman, with cold blue eyes and scanty light hair, entered the room. She looked at him steadily, as if there was something in his face that she recognised.

"And what might ye be wantin'?" she asked presently. "Ye'll not be from these parts, I fancy."