Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 18
Liza had by this time rattled away, until by the combined exertion of arms and tongue she had brought herself to a pause for lack of breath. Resting one hand on the churn, she lifted the other to her head to push back the hair that had tumbled over her forehead. As she tossed up her head to facilitate the latter process, her eyes caught a glimpse of Rotha’s crimsoning face. “Well,” she said, “I must say this churn’s a funny one; it seems to make you as red as ‘Becca’s turkey, whether you’re working at it or lookin’ at some one else.”
“Do you think I could listen to all that praise of myself and not blush?” said Rotha, turning aside.
“I could — just try me and see,” responded Liza, with a laugh. “That’s nothing to what Nabob Johnny said to me once, and I gave him a slap over the lug for it, the strutting and smirking old peacock. Why, he’s all lace — lace at his neck and at his wrists, and on his—”
“You didn’t favor him much, Liza.”
“No, but Daddie did; and he said” (the wicked little witch imitated her father’s voice and manner), “‘Hark ye, lass, ye must hev him and then ye’ll be yan o’ his heirs!’ He wants one or two, I says, ‘for the old carle would be bald but for the three that are left on his crown.’”
“Well, but what about Robbie Anderson?” said Rotha, regaining her composure, with a laugh.
At this question Liza’s manner underwent a change. The perky chirpness that had a dash of wickedness, not to say of spite, in it, entirely disappeared. Dropping her head and her voice together, she answered, —
“I don’t know what’s come over the lad. He’s maunderin’ about all day long except when he’s at the Lion, and then, I reckon, he’s maunderin’ in another fashion.”
“Can’t you get him to bide by his work?”
“No; it’s first a day for John Jackson at Armboth, and then two days for Sammy Robson at the Lion, and what comes one way goes the other. When he’s sober — and that’s not often in these days — he’s as sour as Mother Garth’s plums, and when he’s tipsy his head’s as soft as poddish.”
“It was a sad day for Robbie when his old mother died,” said Rotha.
“And that was in one of his bouts” said Liza; “but I thought it had sobered him forever. He loved the old soul, did Robbie, though he didn’t always do well by her. And now he’s broken loose again.”
It was clearly as much as Liza could do to control her tears, and, being conscious of this, she forthwith made a determined effort to simulate the sternest anger.
“I hate to see a man behave as if his head were as soft as poddish. Not that I care,” she added, as if by an afterthought, and as though to conceal the extent to which she felt compromised; “it’s nothing to me, that I can see. Only Wythburn’s a hard-spoken place, and they’re sure to make a scandal of it.”
“It’s a pity about Robbie,” said Rotha sympathetically.
Liza could scarcely control her tears. After she had dashed a drop or two from her eyes, she said: “I cannot tell what it’s all about. He’s always in a ponder, ponder, with his mouth open — except when he’s grindin’ his teeth. I hate to see a man walking about like a haystack. And Robbie used to have so much fun once on a time.”
The tears were stealing up to Liza’s eyes again.
“He can’t forget what happened on the fell with the mare — that was a fearful thing, Liza.”
“Father says it’s ‘cause Robbie had the say over it all; but Joe Garth says it comes of Robbie sticking himself up alongside of Ralph Ray. What a genty one Robbie used to be!”
Liza’s face began to brighten at some amusing memories.
“Do you mind Reuben Thwaite’s merry night last winter at Aboon Beck?”
“I wasn’t there, Liza,” said Rotha.
“Robbie was actin’ like a play-actor, just the same as he’d seen at Carlisle. He was a captain, and he murdered a king, and then he was made king himself, and the ghost came and sat in his chair at a great feast he gave. Lord o’ me! but it was queer. First he came on when he was going to do the murder and let wit he saw a dagger floating before him. He started and jumped same as our big tom cat when Mouser comes round about him. You’d have died of laughing. Then he comes on for the bank’et, and stamps his foot and tells the ghost to be off; and then he trembles and dodders from head to foot like Mouser when he’s had his wash on Saturday nights. You’d have dropt, it was so queer.”
Liza’s enjoyment of the tragedy had not been exhausted with the occasion, for now she laughed at the humors of her own narrative.
“But those days are gone,” she continued. “I met Robbie last night, and I says, says I, ‘Have you pawned your dancing shoes, Robbie, as you’re so glum?’ And that’s what he is, save when he’s tipsy, and then what do ye think the maizelt creature does?”
“What?” said Rotha.
“Why,” answered Liza, with a big tear near to toppling over the corner of her eye, “why, the crack’t ‘un goes and gathers up all the maimed dogs in Wythburn; ‘Becca Rudd’s ‘Dash,’ and that’s lame on a hind leg, and Nancy Grey’s ‘Meg,’ and you know she’s blind of one eye, and Grace M’Nippen’s ‘King Dick,’ and he’s been broken back’t this many a long year, and they all up and follow Robbie when he’s nigh almost drunk, and then he’s right — away he goes with his cap a’ one side, and all the folks laughin’ — the big poddish-head!”
There was a great sob for Liza in the heart of the humor of that situation; and trying no longer to conceal her sorrow at her lover’s relapse into drinking habits, she laid her head on Rotha’s breast and wept outright.
“We must go to Mrs. Ray; she’ll be lonely, poor old thing,” said Rotha, drying Liza’s eyes; “besides, she hasn’t had her supper, you know.”
The girls left the dairy, where the churning had made small progress as yet, and went through the kitchen towards the room where the Dame of Shoulthwaite lay in that long silence which had begun sooner with her than with others.
As they passed towards the invalid’s room, Mrs. Garth came in at the porch. It was that lady’s first visit for years, and her advent on this occasion seemed to the girls to forebode some ill. But her manner had undergone an extraordinary transformation. Her spiteful tone was gone, and the look of sourness, which had often suggested to Liza her affinity to the plums that grew in her own garden, had given place to what seemed to be a look of extreme benevolence.
“It’s slashy and cold, but I’ve come to see my old neighbor,” she said. “I’m sure I’ve suffered lang and sair ower her affliction, poor body.”
Without much show of welcome from Rotha, the three women went into Mrs. Ray’s room and sat down.
“Poor body, who wad have thought it?” said Mrs. Garth, putting her apron to her eye as she looked up at the vacant gaze in the eyes of the sufferer. “I care not now how soon my awn glass may run out. I’ve so fret myself ower this mischance that the wrinkles’ll soon come.”
“She needn’t wait much for them if she’s anxious to be off,” whispered Liza to Rotha.
“Yes,” continues Mrs. Garth, in her melancholy soliloquy, “I fret mysel’ the lee-lang day.”
“She’s a deal over slape and smooth,” whispered Liza again. “What’s it all about? There’s something in the wind, mind me.”
“The good dear old creatur; and there’s no knowin’ now if she’s provided for; there’s no knowin’ it, I say, is there?”
To this appeal neither of the girls showed any disposition to respond. Mrs. Garth thereupon applied the apron once more to her eye, and continued: “Who wad have thought she could have been brought down so low, she as held her head so high.”
“So she did, did she! Never heard on it,” Liza broke in.
Not noticing the interruption, Mrs. Garth continued: “And now, who knows but she may come down lower yet — who knows but she may?”
Still failing to gain a response to her gloomy prognostications, Mrs. Garth replied to her own inquiry.
“None on us knows, I reckon! And what a down-come it wad be for her, poor creatur!”
“She’s sticking to that subject like a cockelty burr,” said Liza, not troubling this time to speak beneath her breath. “What ever does she mean by it?”
Rotha was beginning to feel concerned on the same score, so she said: “Mrs. Ray, poor soul, is not likely to come to a worse pass while she has two sons to take care of her.”
“No good to her, nowther on ‘em — no good, I reckon; mair’s the pity,” murmured Mrs. Garth, calling her apron once more into active service.
“How so?” Rotha could not resist the temptation to probe these mysterious deliverances.
“Leastways, not ‘xcept the good dear man as is gone, Angus hissel’, made a will for her; and, as I say to my Joey, there’s no knowin’ as ever he did; and nowther is there.”
Rotha replied that it was not usual for a statesman to make a will. The law was clear enough as to inheritance. There could be no question of Mrs. Ray’s share of what had been left. Besides, if there were, it would not matter much in her case, where everything that was the property of her sons was hers, and everything that was hers was theirs.
Mrs. Garth pricked up her ears at this. She could not conceal her interest in what Rotha had said, and throwing aside her languor, she asked, in anything but a melancholy tone, “So he’s left all hugger-mugger, has he?”
“I know nothing of that,” replied Rotha; “but if he has not made a will it cannot concern us at all. It’s all very well for the lords of the manor and such sort of folk to make their wills, for, what with one thing and another, their property runs cross and cross, and there’s scarce any knowing what way it lies; but for a statesman owning maybe a hundred or two of acres and a thousand or two of sheep, forby a house and the like, it’s not needful at all. The willing is all done by the law.”
“So it is, so it is, lass,” said Mrs. Garth. The girls thought there was a cruel and sinister light in the old woman’s eyes as she spoke. “Ey, the willin’s all done by t’ law; but, as I says to my Joey, ‘It isn’t always done to our likin’, Joey’; and nowther is it.”
Liza could bear no longer Mrs. Garth’s insinuating manner. Coming forward with a defiant air, the little woman said: “Look you, don’t you snurl so; but if you’ve anything to say, just open your mouth and tell us what it’s about.”
The challenge was decidedly unequivocal.
“‘Od bliss the lass!” cried Mrs. Garth with an air of profound astonishment “What ails the bit thing?”
“Look here, you’ve got a deal too much talk to be jannic, you have,” cried Liza, with an emphasis intended to convey a sense of profound contempt of loquaciousness in general and of Mrs. Garth’s loquaciousness in particular.
Mrs. Garth’s first impulse was to shame her adversary out of her warlike attitude with a little biting banter. Curling her lip, she said not very relevantly to the topic in hand, “They’ve telt me yer a famous sweethearter, Liza.”
“That’s mair nor iver you could have been,” retorted the girl, who always dropt into the homespun of the country side in degree as she became excited.
“Yer gitten ower slape, a deal ower slippery,” said Mrs. Garth. “I always told my Joey as he’d have to throw ye up, and I’m fair pleased to see he’s taken me at my word.”
“Oh, he has, has he?” said Liza, rising near to boiling point at the imputation of being the abandoned sweetheart of the blacksmith. “I always said as ye could bang them all at leein. I would not have your Joey if his lips were droppin’ honey and his pockets droppin’ gold. Nothing would hire me to do it. Joey indeed!” added Liza, with a vision of the blacksmith’s sanguine head rising before her, “why, you might light a candle at his poll.”
Mrs. Garth’s banter was not calculated to outlast this kind of assault. Rising to her feet, she said: “Weel, thou’rt a rare yan, I will say. Yer ower fond o’ red ribbons, laal thing. It’s aff with her apron and on with her bonnet, iv’ry chance. I reckon ye’d like a silk gown, ye wad.”
“Never mind my clothes,” said Liza. Mrs. Garth gave her no time to say more, for, at the full pitch of indignation, she turned to Rotha, and added: “And ye’re a rare pauchtie damsel. Ye might have been bred at Court, you as can’t muck a byre.”
“Go home to bed, old Cuddy Garth,” said Liza, “and sup more poddish, and take some of the wrinkles out of your wizzent skin.”
“Setting yer cap at the Rays boys,” continued Mrs. Garth, “but it’ll be all of no use to ye, mark my word. Old Angus never made a will, and the law’ll do all the willin’, ye’ll see.”
“Don’t proddle up yon matter again, woman,” said Liza.
“And dunnet ye threep me down. I’ll serve ye all out, and soon too.”
Mrs. Garth had now reached the porch. She had by this time forgotten her visit of consolation and the poor invalid, who lay on the bed gazing vacantly at her angry countenance.
“Good evening, Sarah,” cried Liza, with an air of provoking familiarity. “May you live all the days o’ your life!”
Mrs. Garth was gone by this time.
Rotha stood perplexed, and looked after her as she disappeared down the lonnin. Liza burst into a prolonged fit of uproarious laughter.
“Hush, Liza; I’m afraid she means mischief.”
“The old witch-wife!” cried Liza. “If tempers were up at the Lion for sale, what a fortune yon woman’s would fetch!”
CHAPTER XXII. THE THREATENED OUTLAWRY.
Rotha’s apprehension of mischief, either as a result of Mrs. Garth’s menace or as having occasioned it, was speedily to find realization.
A day or two after the rencontre, three strangers arrived at Shoulthwaite, who, without much ceremony, entered the house, and took seats on the long settle in the kitchen.
Rotha and Willy were there at the moment, the one baking oaten cake, and the other tying a piece of cord about a whip which was falling to pieces. The men wore plain attire, but a glance was enough to satisfy Willy that one of them was the taller of the two constables who had tried to capture Ralph on Stye Head.
“What do you want?” he asked abruptly.
“A little courtesy,” answered the stalwart constable, who apparently constituted himself spokesman to his party.
“From whom do you come?”
“From whom and for whom! — you shall know both, young man. We come from the High Sheriff of Carlisle, and we come for — so please you — Ralph Ray.”
“He’s not here.”
“So we thought.” The constables exchanged glances and broad smiles.
“He’s not here, I tell you,” said Willy, obviously losing his self-command as he became excited.
“Then go and fetch him.”
“I would not if I could; I could not if I would. So be off.”
“We might ask you for the welcome that is due to the commissioners of a sheriff.”
“You take it. But you’ll be better welcome to take yourselves after it.”
“Listen, young master, and let it be to your profit. We want Ralph Ray, sometime captain in the rebel army of the late usurper in possession. We hold a warrant for his arrest. Here it is.” And the man tapped with his fingers a paper which he drew from his belt.
“I tell you once more he is not here,” said Willy.
“And we tell you again, Go and fetch him, and God send you may find him! It will be better for all of you,” added the constable, glancing about the room.
Willy was now almost beyond speech with excitement. He walked nervously across the kitchen, while the constable, with the utmost calmness of voice and manner, opened his warrant and read: —
“These are to will and require you forthwith to receive into your charge the body of Ralph Ray, and him detain under secure imprisonment—”
“You’ve had the warrant a long while to no purpose, I believe,” Willy broke in. “You may keep it still longer.”
The constable took no further note of the interruption than to pause in his reading, and begin again in the same measured tones: —
“We do therefore command, publish, and declare that the said Ralph Ray, having hitherto withheld himself from judgment, shall within fourteen days next after personally deliver himself to the High Sheriff of Carlisle, under pain of being excepted from any pardon or indemnity both for his life and estate.”
Then the constable calmly folded up his paper, and returned it to its place in his belt. Willy now stood as one transfixed.
“So you see, young man, it will be best for you all to go and fetch him.”
“And what if I cannot?” asked Willy. “What then will happen?”
“Outlawry; and God send that that be all!”
“And what then?”
“The confiscation to the Crown of these goods and chattels.”
“How so?” said Rotha, coming forward. “Mrs. Ray is still alive, and this is a brother.”
“They must go elsewhere, young mistress.”
“You don’t mean that you can turn the poor dame into the road?” said Rotha eagerly.
The man shrugged his shoulders. His companions grinned, and shifted in their seats.
“You can’t do it; you cannot do it,” said Willy emphatically, stamping his foot on the floor.
“And why not?” The constable was unmoved. “Angus Ray is dead. Ralph Ray is his eldest son.”
“It’s against the law, I tell you,” said Willy.
“You seem learned in the law, young farmer; enlighten us, pray.”
“My mother, as relict of my father, has her dower, as well as her own goods and chattels, which came from her own father, and revert to her now on her husband’s death.”
“True; a learned doctor of the law, indeed!” said the constable, turning to his fellows.
“I have also my share,” continued Willy, “of all except the freehold. These apportionments the law cannot touch, however it may confiscate the property of my brother.”
