Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 67
This reminded Greta of the paper the parson had asked her to deliver. “I ought to have given you this before,” she said. “Mr. Christian sent it.”
He took it without much apparent interest, put it on the table unread, and went to the door with Greta.
The trap was standing in the court-yard, with Natt in the driver’s seat, and Brother Peter in the seat behind. The snow had ceased to fall, but it lay several inches deep on the ground. There was the snow’s dumb silence on the earth and in the air.
Hugh helped Greta to her place, and then lifted the lamp from the trap, and looked on the ground a few yards ahead of the horse. “There are no footprints in the snow,” he said, with a poor pretence at a smile— “none, at least, that go from the house.”
Greta herself had begun to doubt. She lacked presence of mind to ask if there were any footprints at all except Peter’s. The thing was done and gone. It all happened three hours ago, and it was easy to suspect the evidence of the senses.
Hugh returned the lamp to its loop. “Did you scream,” he asked, “when you saw — when you saw — it?”
Greta was beginning to feel ashamed. “I might have done. I can not positively say—”
“Ah, that explains everything. No doubt mother heard you and was frightened. I see it all now. Natt, drive on — cold journey — good-night.”
Greta felt her face burn in the darkness. Before she had time or impulse to reply, they were rolling away toward home.
At intervals her ear caught the sound of suppressed titters from the driver’s seat. Natt was chuckling to himself with great apparent satisfaction. Since the fire at the mill he had been putting two and two together, and he was now perfectly confident as to the accuracy of his computation. When folks said that Paul had been at the fire he laughed derisively, because he knew that an hour before he had left him at the station. But an idea works in a brain like Natt’s pretty much as the hop ferments. When it goes to the bottom it leaves froth and bubbles at the top. Natt knew that there was some grave quarrel between the brothers. He also knew that there were two ways to the station and two ways back to Newlands — one through the town, the other under Latrigg. Mr. Paul might have his own reasons for pretending to go to London, and also his own reasons for not going. Natt had left him stepping into the station at the town entrance. But what was to prevent him from going out again at the entrance from Latrigg? Of course that was what he had done. And he had never been out of the county. Deary me, how blind folks were, to be sure! Thus Natt’s wise head chuckled and clucked.
At one moment Natt twisted his sapient and facetious noddle over his shoulder to where Brother Peter sat huddled into a hump and in gloomy silence. “Mercy me, Peter!” he cried, in an affrighted whisper, and with a mighty tragical start, “and is that thee? Dusta know I thowt it were thy ghost?”
“Don’t know as it’s not — dragging a body frae bed a cold neet like this,” mumbled Peter, numbed up to his tongue, but still warm enough there.
CHAPTER IX.
Hugh Ritson was content that Greta should think she had been the victim of a delusion. He was not unwilling that she should be tortured by suggestions of the supernatural. If she concluded that Paul had deceived her as to his departure from Newlands, he would not be unlikely to foster the delusion. The one thing of all others which Hugh Ritson was anxious to prevent was that Greta should be led to draw the purely matter-of-fact inference that when she thought she saw Paul she had really seen another man.
But that was his own conviction. He was now sure beyond the hope of doubt that there was a man alive who resembled Paul Ritson so closely that he had thrice before, and now once again, been mistaken for him by unsuspecting persons. That other man was to be the living power in his own life, in his brother’s life, in his mother’s life, in Greta’s life. Who was he?
Left alone in the court-yard when the trap drove away, Hugh Ritson shuddered and looked round. He had laughed with the easy grace of a man no longer puzzled as he bid Greta good-night, but suspense was gnawing at his heart. He returned hastily to his room, sat down at the table, picked up the paper which Parson Christian had sent him, and read it with eager eyes.
He read it and reread it; he seemed to devour it line by line, word by word. When he would have set it down his fingers so trembled that he let it fall, and he rose from his chair with rigid limbs.
What he had dreaded he now knew for certainty. He had stumbled into an empty grave. He opened a drawer and took out three copies of certificates that Mr. Bonnithorne had brought him. Selecting the earliest of these in order of date, he set it side by side with the copy of the extract from Parson Christian’s diary.
By the one — Paul, the son of Grace Ormerod, by her husband Robert Lowther, was born August 14, 1845.
By the other — Paul, the reputed son of Grace Ormerod by her husband, Allan Ritson, was an infant still in arms on November 19, 1847.
Paul Ritson could not be Paul Lowther.
Paul Ritson could not be the half-brother of Greta Lowther.
Hugh Ritson fell back as one who had been dealt a blow. For months he had been idly hatching an addled villainy. The revenge that he had promised himself for spurned and outraged love — the revenge that he had named retribution — was but an impotent mockery.
For an hour he strode up and down the room with flushed face and limbs that shook beneath him. Natt came home from the vicarage, put in his horse, and turned into the kitchen — now long deserted for the night. He heard the restless footstep backward and forward, and began to wonder if anything further had gone wrong. At last he ventured upstairs, opened noiselessly the door, and found his master with a face aflame and a look of frenzy. But the curious young rascal with the sleepy eyes had not time to proffer his disinterested services before he was hunted out with an oath. He returned to the kitchen with a settled conviction that somewhere in that mysterious chamber his master kept a capacious cupboard for strong drink.
Like master, like man: Natt brewed himself an ample pint of hot ale, pulled off his great boots, and drew up to warm himself before the remains of a huge fire.
Hugh Ritson’s bedroom opened off his sitting-room. He went to bed; he tried to sleep, but no sleep came near him; he tossed about for an hour, rose, walked the room again, then went to bed once more.
He was feeling the first pangs of honest remorse. A worse man would have accommodated himself more speedily to the altered conditions when he found that he had pursued a phantasm. To do this erring man justice, he writhed under it. A better man would have fled from it. If, at the outset, if when the first step in the descent had been taken, he had seen clearly that villainy lay that way, he would not have gone further. But now he had gone too far. To go on were as easy as to go back; and go on he must.
While he honestly believed that Greta was half-sister to the man known to the world as Paul Ritson and his brother, he could have stood aside and witnessed without flinching the ceremony that was to hold them forever together and apart. Then without remorse he could have come down and separated them, and seen that woman die of heart’s hunger who had starved to death the great love he bore her. There would have been a stern retribution in that, and the voice of nature would have whispered him that he did well.
But when it was no longer possible to believe that Greta and Paul were anything to each other, the power of sophistry collapsed, and retribution sunk to revenge.
He might go on, but there could be no self-deception. The blind earthworms of malice might delude themselves if they liked, but he could see, and he must face the truth. If ever he did what he had proposed to do, then he was a scoundrel, and a conscious scoundrel!
Hugh Ritson leaped out of his bed. The perspiration rolled in big beads from his forehead. His tongue grew thick and stiff in his mouth. The great veins in his neck swelled.
Without knowing whither he went, he walked out of his own into his mother’s room. A candle still burned on the table. The fire had smoldered out. A servant-maid sat by the bedside with head aslant, sleeping the innocent sleep. He approached the bed. His mother was breathing softly. She had fallen into a doze; the pale face was very quiet; the weary look of the worn cheeks was smoothed out; the absent eyes were lightly closed. Closed, too, on the rough world was the poor soul that was vexed by it.
Hugh Ritson was touched. Somewhere deep down in that frozen nature the angel of love troubled the still waters.
Bending his head, he would have touched the cold forehead with his feverish lips. But he drew back. No, no, no! Tenderness was not for him. The good God gave it to some as manna from heaven. But here and there a man, stretched on the rack of life, had not the drop of water that would cool his tongue.
With stealthy steps, as of one who had violated the chamber of chastity, Hugh Ritson crept back to his own room. He took brandy from a cupboard and drank a glass of it. Then he lay down and composed himself afresh to sleep. Thoughts of Greta came back to him. Even his love for her was without tenderness. It was a fiery passion. It made him weep, nevertheless. Galling tears, hot, bitter, smarting tears, rolled from his eyes. And down in that deep and hidden well of feeling, where he, too, was a man like other men, Hugh Ritson’s strong heart bled. He would have thought that love like his must have subdued the whole world to its will; that when a woman could reject it the very stones must cry out. Pshaw!
Would sleep never come? He leaped up, and laughed mockingly, drank another glass of brandy, and laughed again. His door was open, and the hollow voice echoed through the house.
He put on a dressing-gown, took his lamp in his hand, and walked down-stairs and into the hall. The wind had risen. It moaned around the house, then licked it with hissing tongues. Hugh Ritson walked to the ingle, where no fire burned. There he stood, scarcely knowing why. The lamp in his hand cast its reflection into the mirror on the wall. Behind it was a flushed face, haggard, with hollow eyes and parted lips.
The sight recalled another scene. He stepped into the little room at the back. It was in that room his father died. Now it was empty; a bare mattress, a chair, a table — no more.
Hugh Ritson lifted the lamp above his head and looked down. He was enacting the whole terrible tragedy afresh. He crept noiselessly to the door, opened it slightly, and looked cautiously out. Then, leaving it ajar, he stood behind it with bent head and inclining ear. His face wore a ghastly smile.
The wind soughed and wept without.
Hugh Ritson threw the door open and stepped back into the hall. There he stood some minutes with eyes riveted on one spot. Then he hurried away to his room. As he went up the stairs he laughed again.
Back at his bedside he poured himself another glass of brandy, and once more lay down to sleep. He certainly slept this time, and his sleep was deep.
Natt’s dreamy ear heard a voice in the hall. He had drunk his hot ale, and from the same potent cause as his master, he also had slept, but with somewhat less struggle. Awakened in his chair by the unaccustomed sound, he stole on tiptoe to the kitchen door. He was in time to see from behind the figure of a man ascending the stairs carrying a lamp before him. Natt’s eyes were a shade hazy at the moment, but he was cock-sure of what he saw. Of course it was Mister Paul, sneaking off to bed after more “straitforrad” folk had got into their nightcaps and their second sleep. That was where Natt soon put himself.
When all was still in that troubled house, the moon’s white face peered through a rack of flying cloud and looked in at the dark windows.
CHAPTER X.
Next morning, Tuesday morning, Hugh Ritson found this letter on his table:
“Dearest, — I do not know what is happening to me, but my eyes get worse and worse. To-day and yesterday I have not opened them. Oh, dear, I think I am losing my sight; and I have had such a fearful fright. The day after I wrote to you, Mrs. Drayton’s son came home, and I saw him. Oh, I thought it was your brother Paul, and his name is Paul, too, but I think now it must be my eyes — they were very bad, and perhaps I did not see plain. He asked me questions, and went away next morning. Do not be long writing, I am, oh, so very lonely. When are you coming to me? Write soon. Your loving, Mercy.”
Hugh Ritson had risen in a calmer mood. He was prepared for a disclosure like this. Last night he had been overwhelmed by the discovery that Paul Ritson was not the son of Robert Lowther. With the coming of daylight a sterner spirit of inquiry came upon him. The question that now agitated him was the identity of the man who had been mistaken for Paul.
After Mercy’s letter the mystery was in a measure dispelled. There could hardly be the shadow of a doubt that the man who had slept at the Pack Horse — the man who had been seen by many persons at the fire — the man who Greta had encountered in the lane — was one and the same with the man whom Mercy knew for Paul Drayton, the innkeeper at Hendon.
But so much light on one small spot only made the surrounding gloom more dark. Far more important than any question of who this man was by repute was the other question of why he was there. Wherefore had he come? Why did he not come openly? What hidden reason had he for moving like a shadow where he knew no one and was known of none?
Hugh thought again of the circumstance of his mother’s strange seizure. Last night he had formulated his theory respecting it. And it was simple enough. The second man, whoever he was, had, for whatever reason, come to the house, and, failing to attract attention in the hall, had wandered aimlessly upstairs to the first room in which he heard a noise. That room happened to be his mother’s, and when the stranger, with the fatal resemblance to her absent son, presented himself before her in that strange way, at that strange hour, in that strange place, the fear had leaped to her heart that it was his wraith warning her of his death, and she had fainted and fallen.
The theory had its serious loop-holes for incredulity, but Hugh Ritson minded them not at all. Another and a graver issue tortured him.
But this morning, by the light of Mercy’s letter, his view was clearer. If the man who resembled Paul had come secretly to Newlands, he must have had his reasons for not declaring himself. If he had wandered when none was near into Mrs. Ritson’s room, it must have been because he had a purpose there. And his mother’s seizure might not have been due to purely superstitious fears, or her silence to shattered nerves.
There was one thing to do, and that was to get at the heart of this mystery. Whoever he was, this second man was to be the living influence in all their lives.
Thus far, one thing only was plain — that Paul Ritson was not the half-brother of Greta.
Hugh determined to travel south forthwith. If the other man was still beating about Newlands, so much the better. Hugh would be able to see the old woman, his mother, and talk with her undisturbed by the suspicions of a cunning man.
Hugh spent most of that day in his office at the pit-head, settling up such business as could not await his return. On Wednesday morning early he dispatched Natt on foot with a letter to Mr. Bonnithorne, explaining succinctly, but with shrewd reservations, the recent turn of events. Then he stepped for a moment into his mother’s room.
Mrs. Ritson had risen, and was sitting by the fire writing. Hugh observed, as she rose, that there were tears in her eyes, and that the paper beneath her pen was stained with great drops that had fallen as she wrote. A woman was busy on her knees on the floor sorting linen into a trunk. This garrulous body, old Dinah Wilson, was talking as Hugh entered.
“It caps all — you niver heard sec feckless wark,” she was saying. “And Reuben threept me down, too. There he was in the peat loft when I went for the peats, and he had it all as fine as clerk after passon. ‘It was Master Paul at the fire, certain sure,’ he says, ower and ower again. ‘What, man, get away wi’ thy botheration — Mister Paul was off to London!’ I says. ‘Go and see if tha can leet on a straight waistcoat any spot,’ I says. But he threept and he threept. ‘It was Master Paul or his own birth brother,’ he says.”
“Hush, Dinah!” said Mrs. Ritson.
Hugh told his mother, in a quiet voice, that business was taking him away. Then he turned about and said “Good-day” without emotion.
She held out her hand to him and looked him tenderly in the eyes.
“Is this our parting?” she said, and then leaned forward and touched his cheek with her lips.
He seemed surprised, and turned pale; but he went out calmly and without speaking. In half an hour he was walking rapidly over the snow-crusted road to the station.
CHAPTER XI.
When Paul parted from Natt at the station on Saturday night, he had told the stableman to meet him with the trap at the same spot and at the same hour on Wednesday. Since receiving these instructions, however, Natt had, as we have seen, arrived at conclusions of his own respecting certain events. The futility of doing as he had been bidden began to present itself to his mind with peculiar force. What was the good of going to the station for a man who was not coming by the train? What was the use of pretending to bring home a person who had never been away? These and other equivocal problems defied solution when Natt essayed them.
He revolved the situation fully on his way home from Mr. Bonnithorne’s, and decided that to go to the station that night at eight o’clock would be only a fine way of making a fool of a body. But when he reached the stable, and sat down to smoke, and saw the hour approaching, his instinct began to act automatically, and in sheer defiance of the thing he called his reason. In short, Natt pulled off his coat and proceeded to harness the mare.
Then it was that, relieved of the weight of abstract questions, he made two grave discoveries. The first was that the horse bore marks of having been driven in his absence; the next, that the harness was not hanging precisely on those hooks where he had last placed it. And when he drew out the trap he saw that the tires of the wheels were still crusted with unmelted snow.
These concrete issues finally banished the discussion of general principles. Natt had not entirely accounted for the strange circumstances when he jumped into his seat and drove away. But the old idea of Paul’s dubious conduct was still fermenting; the froth and bubbles were still rising.
