The Shadow of a Crime Part 17

CHAPTER X. MATTHA BRANTH'ET "FLYTES" THE PARSON.

The household on the Moss were early astir on the morning appointed for the funeral of Angus Ray. Matthew Branthwaite's wife and daughter were bustling about the kitchen of the old house soon after daybreak.

Mrs. Branthwaite was a fragile little body, long past her best, with the crow's feet deeply indented about her eyes, which had the timid look of those of a rabbit, and were peculiarly appropriate to a good old creature who seemed to be constantly laboring against the idea that everything she did was done wrongly. Her daughter Liza was a neat little thing of eighteen, with the bluest of blue eyes, the plumpest of plump cheeks, and the merriest of merry voices. They had walked from their home in the gray dawn in order to a.s.sist at the preliminaries to the breakfast which had to be eaten by a large company of the dalesmen before certain of them set out on the long journey across the fells.

The previous day had been the day of the "winding," a name that pointed to the last offices of Abraham Strong, the Wythburn carpenter.

In the afternoon of the winding day the mistresses of the houses within the "warning" had met to offer liberal doses of solace and to take equally liberal doses of sweet broth, a soup sweetened with raisins and sugar, which was reserved for such melancholy occasions.

According to ancient custom, the "maister men" of the dale were to a.s.semble at nine o'clock on the morning following the winding, and it was to meet their needs that old Mrs. Branthwaite and her daughter had walked over to a.s.sist Rotha. The long oak table had to be removed from the wall before the window, and made to stand down the middle of the floor. Robbie Anderson had arrived early at the Moss in order to effect this removal. After his muscles had exercised themselves upon the ponderous article of furniture, and had placed the benches called skemmels down each side and chairs at each end, he went into the stable to dress down the mare and sharpen her shoes preparatory to her long journey.

The preliminaries in the kitchen occupied a couple of hours, and during this time Mrs. Ray and w.i.l.l.y sat together in a room above. The reason of Ralph's absence had been explained to his mother by Rotha, who had received her information from Robbie Anderson. The old dame had accepted the necessity with characteristic resignation. What Ralph thought well to do she knew would be best. She did not foresee evil consequences.

w.i.l.l.y had exhibited more perturbation. Going into his brother's room on the morning after their conversation, he saw clearly enough that the bed had not been slept upon. The two friends of Joe Garth's, of whom Ralph had spoken with so much apparent unconcern, had obviously driven him away from home in the depth of the night. Then came Rotha's explanation.

His worst fears were verified. Was it conceivable that Ralph could escape the machinations of those who had lain a web that had already entangled the lord of Wythburn himself? Every one who had served in the trained bands of the Parliament was at the mercy of any man, who, for the gratification of personal spite, chose to become informer against him.

The two strangers had been seen in the city during the preceding day.

It was obviously their purpose to remain until time itself verified the rumor that Ralph had left these parts to escape them. The blacksmith had bragged in his cups at the Red Lion that Wilfrey Lawson of the constable's court at Carlisle would have Ralph Ray in less than a week. Robbie Anderson had overheard this, and had reported it at the Moss. Robbie professed to know better, and to be able to laugh at such pretensions. w.i.l.l.y was more doubtful. He thought his better education, and consequently more intimate acquaintance with the history of such conflicts with the ruling powers, justified him in his apprehensions.

He sat with his mother while the business was going on downstairs, apparently struggling with an idea that it was his duty to comfort her, but offering such curious comfort that the old dame looked up again and again with wide eyes, which showed that her son was suggesting to her slower intellect a hundred dangers and a hundred moods of sorrow that she could neither discover for herself nor cope with.

Towards nine the "maister men" of Wythburn began to arrive at Shoulthwaite. Such of them as intended to accompany the remains of their fellow-dalesman to their resting place at Gosforth came on mountain ponies, which they dismounted in the court and led into a spare barn. Many came on foot, and of these by much the larger part meant to accompany the _cortege_ only to the top of the Armboth Fell, and, having "sett" it so far, to face no more of the more than twenty miles of rough country that lay between the valley and the churchyard on the plains by the sea.

Matthew Branthwaite was among the first to arrive. The old weaver was resplendent in the apparel usually reserved for "Cheppel Sunday." The external elevation of his appearance from the worn and sober brown of his daily "top-sark" seemed to produce a corresponding elevation of the weaver's spirit. Despite the solemnity of the occasion, he seemed tempted to let fall a sapient proverb of anything but a funereal tone.

On stepping into the kitchen and seeing the provision that had been made for a repast, he did indeed intimate his intention of a.s.sisting at the ceremony in the language of the time-honored wren who cried "I helps" as she let a drop of water fall into the sea. At this moment the clergyman from the chapel-of-ease on the Raise arrived at the Moss, and Matthew prepared to put his precept into practice.

The priest, Nicholas Stevens by name, was not a c.u.mbrian. He had kept his office through three administrations, and to their several forms of legislation he had proved equally tractable. His spirit of accommodation had not been quite so conspicuous in his dealings with those whom he conceived to be beneath him. But in truth he had left his paris.h.i.+oners very largely to their own devices. When he was moved to come among them, it was with the preoccupied air not so much of the student or visionary as of a man who was isolated from those about him by combined authority, influence, and perhaps superior blood. He now took his seat at the head of the table with the bearing of one to whom it had never occurred to take a lower place. He said little at first, and when addressed he turned his face slowly round to him who spoke with an air of mingled abstraction and self-satisfaction, through which a feeble smile of condescension struggled and seemed to say in a mild voice, "Did you speak?"

Matthew sat at the foot of the table, and down each side were seated the dalesmen, to the number of twenty-four. There were Thomas Fell and Adam Rutledge, Job Leathes and Luke c.o.c.krigg, John Jackson of Armboth, and little Reuben Thwaite.

His reverence cut up the ham into slices as formal as his creed, while old Matthew poured out the contents of two huge black jacks. Robbie Anderson carried the plates to and fro; Mrs. Branthwaite and Liza served out the barley and oaten bread.

The breakfast was hardly more than begun when the kitchen door was partially opened, and the big head of a little man became visible on the inner side of it, the body and legs of the new-comer not having yet arrived in the apartment.

"Am I late?" the head said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper from its place low down on the door-jamb. It was Monsey Laman, red and puffing after a sharp run.

"It's the laal Frenchman. Come thy ways in," said Matthew. Rotha, who was coming and going from the kitchen to the larder, found a chair for the schoolmaster, and he slid into it with the air of one who was persuading himself that his late advent was un.o.bserved.

"I met that Garth--that--Joe Garth on the road, and he kept me,"

whispered Monsey apologetically to Matthew across the table. The presence of Death somewhere in the vicinity had banished the schoolmaster's spirit of fun.

While this was going on at one end of the table, Rotha had made her way to the other end, with the ostensible purpose of cutting up the cheese, but with the actual purpose of listening to a conversation in which his reverence Nicholas Stevens was beginning to bear an unusually animated part. Some one had made allusion to the sudden and, as was alleged, the unseemly departure of Ralph Ray on the eve of his father's funeral. Some one else had deplored the necessity for that departure, and had spoken of it as a cruel outrage on the liberties of a good man. From this generous if somewhat disloyal sentiment his reverence was expressing dissent. He thought it nothing but just that the law should take its course.

This might involve the mortification of our private feelings; it would certainly be a grief to him, loving, as he did, the souls committed to his care; but individual affections must be sacrificed to the general weal. The young man, Ralph Ray, had outraged the laws of his country in fighting and conspiring against his anointed King. It was hard, but it was right, that he should be punished for his treason.

His reverence was speaking in cold metallic tones, that fell like the clank of chains on Rotha's ears.

"Moreover, we should all do our best for the King," said the clergyman, "to bring such delinquents to justice."

"Shaf!" cried Matthew Branthwaite from the other end of the table. The little knots of talkers had suddenly become silent.

"Shaf!" repeated Matthew; "what did ye do yersel for the King in Oliver's days? Wilt thoo mak me tell thee? Didst thoo not tak what thoo called the oath of abjuration agen the King five years agone?

Didst thoo not? Ey? And didst thoo not come round and ask ivery man on us to do the same?"

The clergyman looked confounded. He dropped his knife and, unable to make a rejoinder, turned to those about him and said, in a tone of amazement, "Did you ever hear the like?"

"Nay," cried Matthew, following up his advantage, "ye may hear it agen, an ye will."

Poor Mrs. Branthwaite seemed sorely distressed. Standing by her husband's chair, she appeared to be struggling between impulse and fear in an attempt to put her hand on the mouth of her loquacious husband, in order to avert the uncertain catastrophe which she was sure must ensue from this unexpected and uncompromising defiance of the representative in Wythburn of the powers that be.

Rotha gave Matthew a look of unmistakable grat.i.tude, which, however, was wasted on that infuriated iconoclast. Fixing his eyes steadily on the priest, the weaver forthwith gave his reverence more than one opportunity of hearing the unwelcome outburst again, telling him by only too palpable hints that the depth of his loyalty was his stipend of 300 a year, and the secret of his willingness to see Ralph in the hands of the constable of Carlisle was the fact that the young man had made no secret of his unwillingness to put off his hat to a priest who had thrice put off his own hat to a money-bag.

"Gang yer gate back to yer steeple-house, Nicholas Stevens," said Matthew, "and mortify yer fatherly bosom for the good of the only soul the Almighty has gean to yer charge, and mind the auld saying, 'Nivver use the taws when a gloom will do the turn.'"

"You deserve the taws about your back, sirrah, to forget my sacred office so far as to speak so," said the minister.

"And ye hev forgat yer sacred office to call me nicknames," answered Matthew, nothing abashed.

"I see you are no better than those blaspheming Quakers whom Justice Rawlinson has wisely committed to the common gaol--poor famished seducers that deserve the stocks!"

"Rich folk hev rowth of friends," rejoined Matthew, "an' olas will hev while the mak of thyself are aboot."

His reverence was not slow to perceive that the pulpit had been no match for the Red Lion as a place of preparation for an encounter like the present. Gathering up with what grace he could the tattered and besmeared skirts of his priestly dignity, he affected contempt for the weaver by ignoring his remarks; and, turning to those immediately around him, he proceeded with quite unusual warmth to deliver a homily on duty. Reverting to the subject of Ralph Ray's flight from Wythburn, he said that it was well that the young man had withdrawn himself, for had he remained longer in these parts, and had the high sheriff at Carlisle not proceeded against him, he himself, though much against his inclination, might have felt it his duty as a servant of G.o.d and the King to put the oath of allegiance to him.

"I do not say positively that I should have done so," he said, in a confidential parenthesis, "but I fear I could not have resisted that duty."

"Dree out the inch when ye've tholed the span," cried Matthew; "I'd nivver strain lang at sic a wee gnat as that."

Without condescending to notice the interruption, his reverence proceeded to say he had recently learned that it had been the intention of the judges on the circuit to recommend Angus Ray, the lamented departed, as a justice for the district. This step had been in contemplation since the direful tragedy which had recently been perpetrated in their midst, and of which the facts remained still unexplained, though circ.u.mstantial evidence pointed to a solution of the mystery.

When saying this the speaker turned, as though with an involuntary and unconscious gaze, towards the spot where Rotha stood. He had pushed past the girl on coming through the porch without acknowledging her salutation.

"And if Angus Ray had lived to become a justice," continued the Reverend Nicholas, "it very likely must have been his duty before G.o.d and the King to apprehend his son Ralph on a charge of treason."

Robbie Anderson, who was standing by, felt at that moment that it would very likely be _his_ duty before long to take the priest by certain appendages of his priestly apparel, and carry him less than tenderly to a bed more soft than odorous.

"It must have been his duty, I repeat," said his reverence, speaking with measured emphasis, "before G.o.d and the King."

"Leave G.o.d oot on't," shouted Matthew. "Ye may put that in when ye get intil yer pulpit, and then ye'll deceive none but them that lippen till ye. Don't gud yersel wi' G.o.d's name."

"It is written," said his reverence, "'It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness; for the throne is established by righteousness.'"

"Dus'ta think to knock me doon wi' the Bible?" said Matthew with a touch of irreverence. "I reckon ony c.o.c.k may crouse on his own middenheed. Ye mind me of the clerk at Tickell, who could argify none at all agen the greet Geordie Fox, so he up and broke his nose wi' a bash of his family Bible."

This final rejoinder proved too much for the minister, who rose, the repast being over, and stalked past Rotha into the adjoining chamber, where the widow and w.i.l.l.y sat in their sorrow. The dalesmen looked after his retreating figure, and as the door of the inner room closed, they heard his metallic voice ask if the deceased had judiciously arranged his temporal affairs.