The Squire's Daughter Part 36

"How?" she asked.

"I don't know yet. But think of it, if she should die in the workhouse."

"She has lived in it," Ruth answered.

"Yes, yes; but the disgrace of it if she should end her days there."

"If there is any disgrace in poverty, we have suffered it to the full,"

Ruth answered. "Nothing that can happen now can add to it."

For a moment he stood silent. Then he kissed her and walked away.

He found William Menire waiting for him at the street corner, a few yards from the Star and Garter.

"I haven't harnessed up yet," he said. "I thought perhaps you might like a cup of tea or a chop before we returned. Your sister, I presume, has gone back to her--to her place?"

"Yes, I saw her home before I came on here."

William sighed and waited for instructions. He was willing to be servant to Ralph for Ruth's sake.

"I should like a cup of tea, if you don't mind," Ralph said at length, and he coloured painfully as he spoke. He was living on charity, and the sting of it made all his nerves tingle.

"There's a confectioner's round the corner where they make capital tea,"

William said cheerfully. And he led the way with long strides.

The moon was up when they started on their homeward journey, and the air was keen and frosty. Neither of them talked much. To Ralph the day seemed like a long and more or less incoherent dream. He had dressed that morning in the dim light of a prison cell--it seemed like a week ago. He felt at times as though he had dreamed all the rest.

William was dreaming of Ruth, and so did not disturb his companion. The horse needed no whip, he seemed the most eager of the three to get home.

The fields lay white and silent in the moonlight. The bare trees flung ghostly shadows across the road. The stars twinkled faintly in the far-off depths of s.p.a.ce, now and then a dove cooed drowsily in a neighbouring wood.

At length the tower of St. Goram Church loomed ma.s.sively over the brow of the hill, and a little later William pulled up with a jerk at his own shop door.

Mrs. Menire had provided supper for them. Ralph ate sparingly, and with many pauses. This was not home. He was a stranger in a stranger's house, living on charity. That thought stung him constantly and spoiled his appet.i.te.

He tried to sleep when he got to bed, but the angel was long in coming.

His thoughts were too full of other things. The fate of his mother worried him most. How to get her out of the workhouse and find an asylum for her somewhere else was a problem he could not solve. He had been promised work at St. Ivel Mine before his arrest, and he had no doubt that he would still be able to obtain employment there. But no wages would be paid him till the end of the month, and even then it would all be mortgaged for food and clothes.

He slept late next morning, for William had given orders that he was not to be disturbed. He came downstairs feeling a little ashamed of himself.

If this was his new start in life, it was anything but an energetic beginning.

William was on the look-out for him, and fetched the bacon and eggs from the kitchen himself.

"We've had our breakfast," he explained. "You won't mind, I hope. We knew you'd be very tired, so we kept the house quiet. I hope you've had a good night, and are feeling all the better. Now I must leave you.

We're busy getting out the country orders. You can help yourself, I know." And he disappeared through the frosted gla.s.s door into the shop.

He came back half an hour later, just as Ralph was finis.h.i.+ng his breakfast, with a telegram in his hand.

"I hope there ain't no bad news," he said, handing Ralph the brick-coloured envelope.

Ralph tore it open in a moment, and his face grew ashen.

He did not speak for several seconds, but continued to stare with unblinking eyes at the pencilled words.

"Is it bad news?" William questioned at length, unable to restrain his curiosity and his anxiety any longer.

Ralph raised his eyes and looked at him.

"Mother's dead," he answered, in a whisper; and then the telegram slipped from his fingers and fluttered to the floor.

William picked it up and read it.

"Your mother found dead in bed. Send instructions _re_ disposal of remains."

"They might have worded the message a little less brutally," William said at length.

"Officialism is nothing if not brutal," Ralph said bitterly.

Then the two men looked at each other in silence. William had little difficulty in guessing what was pa.s.sing through Ralph's mind.

"If I were in his place," he reflected, "what should I be thinking?

Should I like my mother to be put into a parish coffin and buried in a pauper's grave?"

William spoke at length.

"You'd like your mother and father to sleep together?" he questioned.

Ralph's lips trembled, but he did not speak.

"The world's been terribly rough on you," William went on, "but you'll come into your own maybe by and by."

"I shall never get father and mother back again," Ralph answered chokingly.

"We oughtn't to want them back again," William said; "they're better off."

"I wish I was better off in the same way," Ralph answered, with a rush of tears to his eyes.

"She held on, you see, till you came back to her," William said, after a long pause; "then, when she got her heart's desire, she let go."

"Dear old mother!"

"And now that she's asleep, you'll want her to rest with your father."

"But I've no money."

"I'll be your banker as long as you like. Charge you interest on the money, if you'll feel easier in your mind. Only don't let the money question trouble you just now."

Ralph grasped William's hand in silence. Of all the people he had known in St. Goram, this comparative stranger was his truest friend and neighbour.