The Shadow of a Crime Part 18

During the encounter between the weaver and the clergyman the company had outwardly observed a rigid neutrality. Little Liza, it is true, had obviously thought it all the best of good fun, and had enjoyed it accordingly. She had grinned and giggled just as she had done on the preceding Sunday when a companion, the only surviving child of Baptist parents now dead, had had the water sprinkled on her face at her christening in the chapel on the Raise. But Luke c.o.c.krigg, Reuben Thwaite, and the rest had remained silent and somewhat appalled. The schoolmaster had felt himself called upon to partic.i.p.ate in the strife, but being in the anomalous position of owing his official obligations to the minister and his convictions to the side championed by the weaver, he had contented him with sundry grave shakes of his big head, which shakes, being subject to diverse interpretations, were the least compromising expressions of opinion which his genius could suggest to him. No sooner, however, had the door closed on the clergyman than a t.i.tter went round the table. Matthew was still at a white heat. Accustomed as he was to "tum'le" his neighbors at the Red Lion, he was now profoundly agitated. It was not frequently that he brought down such rare game in his sport.

"Mattha Branthet," said Reuben Thwaite, "what, man, thoo didst flyte the minister! What it is to hev the gift o' gob and gumption!"

"Shaf! It's kittle shootin' at crows and clergy," replied Matthew.

The breakfast being over, the benches were turned towards the big peat fire that glowed red on the hearth and warmed the large kitchen on this wintry day. The ale jars were refilled, pipes and tobacco were brought in, and the weaver relinquished his office of potman to his daughter.

"I'd be n.o.bbut a clot-heed," he said when abdicating, "and leave nane for mysel if I sarrad it oot."

Robbie Anderson now put on his great cloak, and took down a whip from a strap against the rafters.

"What's this?" said little Reuben to Robbie. "Are you going without a gla.s.s?"

Robbie signified his intention of doing just that and nothing else. At this there was a general laugh, after which Reuben, with numerous blinkings of his little eyes, bantered Robbie about the great drought not long before, when a universal fast had been proclaimed, and Robbie had asked why, if folks could not get water, they would not content themselves with ale.

"Liza, teem a short pint intil this lang Robbie," said Matthew.

Liza brought up a foaming pot, but the young man put it aside with a bashful smile at the girl, who laughed and blushed as she pressed it back upon him.

"Not yet, Liza; when we come back, perhaps."

"Will you not take it from me?" said the girl, turning her pretty head aside, and giving a sly dig of emphasis to the p.r.o.nouns.

"Not even from you, Liza, yet awhile."

The mischievous little minx was piqued at his refusal, and determined that he should drink it, or decline to do so at the peril of losing her smiles.

"Come, Robbie, you shall drink it off--you must."

"No, my girl, no."

"I think I know those that would do it if I asked them," said Liza, with an arch elevation of her dimpled chin and a shadow of a pout.

"Who wouldn't do it, save Robbie Anderson?" he said, laughing for the first time that morning as he walked out of the kitchen.

In a few minutes he returned, saying all was ready, and it was time to start away. Every man rose and went to the front of the house. The old mare Betsy was there, with the coffin strapped on her broad back. Her bruised knees had healed; the frost had disappeared, her shoes were sharpened, and she could not slip. When the mourners had a.s.sembled and ranged themselves around the horse, the Reverend Nicholas Stevens came out with the relatives, the weeping mother and son, with Rotha Stagg, and the "Old Hundredth" was sung.

Then the procession of men on foot and men on horseback set off, Robbie Anderson in front leading the mare that bore the coffin, and a boy riding a young horse by his side. Last of all rode w.i.l.l.y Ray, and as they pa.s.sed beneath the trees that overhung the lane, he turned in the saddle and waved his arm to the two women, who, through the blinding mist of tears, watched their departure from the porch.

CHAPTER XI. LIZA'S WILES.

The procession had just emerged from the lane, and had turned into the old road that hugged the margin of the mere, when two men walked slowly by in the opposite direction. Dark as it had been when w.i.l.l.y encountered these men before, he had not an instant's doubt as to their ident.i.ty.

The reports of Ralph's disappearance, which Matthew had so a.s.siduously promulgated in whispers, had reached the destination which Ralph had designed for them. The representatives of the Carlisle high constable were conscious that they had labored under serious disadvantages in their efforts to capture a dalesman in his own stronghold of the mountains. Moreover, their zeal was not so ardent as to make them eager to risk the dangers of an arrest that was likely to be full of peril. They were willing enough to accept the story of Ralph's flight, but they could not reasonably neglect this opportunity to a.s.sure themselves of its credibility. So they had beaten about the house during the morning under the pioneering of the villager whom they had injudiciously chosen as their guide, and now they scanned the faces of the mourners who set out on the long mountain journey.

Old Matthew's risibility was evidently much tickled by the sense of their thwarted purpose. Despite the mournful conditions under which he was at that moment abroad, he could not forbear to wish them, from his place in the procession, "a gay canny mornin'"; and failing to satisfy himself with the effect produced by this insinuating salutation, he could not resist the further temptation of reminding them that they had frightened and not caught their game.

"Fleyin' a bird's not the way to grip it," he cried, to the obvious horror of the clergyman, whose first impulse was to remonstrate with the weaver on his levity, but whose maturer reflections induced the more pa.s.sive protest of a lifted head and a suddenly elevated nose.

This form of contempt might have escaped the observation of the person for whom it was intended had not Reuben Thwaite, who walked beside Matthew, gently emphasized it with a jerk of the elbow and a motion of the thumb.

"He'll glower at the moon till he falls in the midden," said Matthew with a grunt of amused interest.

The two strangers had now gone by, and w.i.l.l.y Ray breathed freely, as he thought that with this encounter the threatened danger had probably been averted.

Then the procession wound its way slowly along the breast of Bracken Water. When Robbie Anderson, in front, had reached a point at which a path went up from the pack-horse road to the top of the Armboth Fell, he paused for a moment, as though uncertain whether to pursue it.

"Keep to the auld corpse road," cried Matthew; and then, in explanation of his advice, he explained the ancient c.u.mbrian land law, by which a path becomes public property if a dead body is carried over it.

Before long the procession had reached the mountain path across c.o.c.krigg Bank, and this path it was intended to follow as far as Watendlath.

Here the Reverend Nicholas Stevens left the mourners. In accordance with an old custom, he might have required that they should pa.s.s through his chapel yard on the Raise before leaving the parish, but he had waived his right to this tribute to episcopacy. After offering a suitable blessing, he turned away, not without a withering glance at the weaver, who was muttering rather too audibly an adaptation of the rhyme,--

I'll set him up on yon crab-tree, It's sour and dour, and so is he.

"I reckon," continued Matthew to little Reuben Thwaite, by his side, as the procession started afresh,--"I reckon yon auld Nick," with a lurch of his thumb over his shoulder, "likes Ash Wednesday better ner this Wednesday--better ner ony Wednesday--for that's the day he curses every yan all roond, and asks the folks to say Amen tul him."

The schoolmaster had walked demurely enough thus far; nor did the departure of the clergyman effect a sensible elevation of his spirits.

Of all the mourners, the "laal limber Frenchman" was the most mournful.

It was a cheerless winter morning when they set out from Shoulthwaite.

The wind had never fallen since the terrible night of the death of Angus. As they ascended the fell, however, it was full noon. The sun had broken languidly through the mists that had rolled midway across the mountains, and were now being driven by the wind in a long white continent towards the south, there to gather between more sheltered headlands to the strength of rain. When they reached the top of the Armboth Fell the sky was clear, the sun shone brightly and bathed the gorse that stretched for miles around in varied shades of soft blue, brightening in some places to purple, and in other places deepening to black. The wind was stronger here than it had been in the valley, and blew in gusts of all but overpowering fierceness from High Seat towards Glaramara.

"This caps owte," said Matthew, as he lurched to the wind. "Yan waddent hev a crowful of flesh on yan's bones an yan lived up here."

When the procession reached the village of Watendlath a pause was made. From this point onward the journey through Borrowdale towards the foot of Stye Head Pa.s.s must necessarily be a hard and tiresome one, there being scarcely a traceable path through the huge bowlders.

Here it was agreed that the mourners on foot should turn back, leaving the more arduous part of the journey to those only who were mounted on sure-footed ponies. Matthew Branthwaite, Monsey Laman, and Reuben Thwaite were among the dozen or more dalesmen who left the procession at this point.

When, on their return journey, they had regained the summit of the Armboth Fell, and were about to descend past Blea Tarn towards Wythburn, they stood for a moment at that highest point and took a last glimpse of the mournful little company, with the one riderless horse in front, that wended its way slowly beyond Rosthwaite, along the banks of the winding Derwent, which looked to them now like a thin streak of blue in the deep valley below.

Soon after the procession left the house on the Moss, arrangements were put in progress for the meal that had to be prepared for the mourners upon their return in the evening.

Some preliminary investigations into the quant.i.ty of food that would have to be cooked in the hours intervening disclosed the fact that the wheaten flour had run short, and that some one would need to go across to the mill at Legberthwaite at once if hot currant cake were to be among the luxuries provided for the evening table.

So Liza took down her cloak, tied the ribbons of her bonnet about her plump cheeks, and set out over the dale almost immediately the funeral party turned the end of the lonnin. The little creature tripped along jauntily enough, with a large sense of her personal consequence to the enterprises afoot, but without an absorbing sentiment of the gravity of the occurrences that gave rise to them. She had scarcely crossed the old bridge that led into the Legberthwaite highway when she saw the blacksmith coming hastily from the opposite direction.

Now, Liza was not insensible of her attractions in the eyes of that son of Vulcan, and at a proper moment she was not indisposed to accept the tribute of his admiration. Usually, however, she either felt or affected a measure of annoyance at the importunity with which he prosecuted his suit, and when she saw him coming towards her on this occasion her first feeling was a little touched with irritation.

"Here's this great tiresome fellow again," she thought; "he can never let a girl go by without speaking to her. I've a great mind to leap the fence and cross the fields to the mill."

Liza did not carry into effect the scarcely feminine athletic exercise she had proposed to herself; and this change of intention on her part opens up a more curious problem in psychology than the little creature herself had any notion of. The fact is that just as Liza had resolved that she would let nothing in the world interfere with her fixed determination not to let the young blacksmith speak to her, she observed, to her amazement, that the gentleman in question had clearly no desire to do so, but was walking past her hurriedly, and with so preoccupied an air as actually seemed to suggest that he was not so much as conscious of her presence.

It was true that Liza did not want to speak to Mr. Joseph. It was also true that she had intended to ignore him. But that _he_ should not want to speak to _her_, and that _he_ should seem to ignore _her_, was much more than could be borne by her stubborn little bit of coquettish pride, distended at that moment, too, by the splendors of her best attire. In short, Liza was piqued into a desire to investigate the portentous business which had obviously shut her out of the consciousness of the blacksmith.

"Mr. Garth," she said, stopping as he drew up to her.