Читать книгу The Shadow of a Crime - Sir Hall Caine - Страница 14

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When Ralph retired to his own room on the night of his father's death there lay a heavier burden at his heart than even that dread occurrence could lodge there. To such a man as he was, death itself was not so terrible but that many passions could conquer the fear of it. As for his father, he had not tasted death; he had not seen it; his death was but a word; and the grave was not deep. No, the grave was not deep. Ah, what sting lay in that thought!—what fresh sting lay there!

Ralph called up again the expression on the face of Simeon Stagg as he asked him in the inn that night (how long ago it seemed!) to give the name of the man who had murdered Wilson. “It's your duty in the sight of Heaven,” he had said; “would you tarnish the child's name with the guilt laid on the father's?” Then there had come into Sim's eyes something that gave a meaning to his earlier words, “Ralph, you don't know what you ask.” Ah, did he not know now but too well? Ralph walked across the room with a sense as of a great burden of guilt weighing him down. The grave was not deep—oh, would it were, would it were! Would that the grave were the end of all! But no, it was as the old book said: when one dies, those who survive ask what he has left behind; the angel who bends above him asks what he has sent before. And the father who had borne him in his arms—whom he had borne—what had he sent before?

Ralph tramped heavily to and fro. His dog slept on the mat outside his door, and, unused to such continued sounds within, began to scrape and growl.

After all, there was no certain evidence yet. To-morrow morning he would go up the fell and see Sim alone. He must know the truth. If it concerned him as closely as he divined, the occasion to conceal it was surely gone by with this night's event. Then Robbie Anderson—what did he mean? Ralph recalled some dim memory of the young dalesman asking about his father. Robbie was kind to Sim, too, when the others shunned him. What did it all mean?

With a heavy heart Ralph began to undress. He had unbelted himself and thrown off his jerkin, when he thought of the paper that had fallen from his father's open breast as he lifted him on to the mare. What was it? Yes, there it was in his pocket, and with a feverish anxiety Ralph opened it.

Had he clung to any hope that the black cloud that appeared to be hanging over him would not, after all, envelop him? Alas! that last vestige of hope must leave him. The paper was a warrant for his own arrest on a charge of treason. It had been issued at the court of the high constable at Carlisle, and set forth that Ralph Ray had conspired to subvert the government of his sovereign while a captain in the trained bands of the rebel army of the “late usurper.” It was signed and countersigned, and was marked for the service of James Wilson, King's agent. It was dated too; yes, two days before Wilson's death.

All was over now; this was the beginning of the end; the shadow had fallen. By that paradox of nature which makes disaster itself less hard to bear than the apprehension of disaster, Ralph felt relieved when he knew the worst. There was much of the mystery still unexplained, but the morrow would reveal it; and Ralph lay down to sleep, and rose at daybreak, not with a lighter, but with an easier heart.

When he took up his shepherd's staff that morning, he turned towards Fornside Fell. Rising out of the Vale of Wanthwaite, the fell half faced the purple heights of Blencathra. It was brant from side to side, and as rugged as steep. Ralph did not ascend the screes, out went up by Castle Rock, and walked northwards among the huge bowlders. The frost lay on the loose fragments of rock, and made a firm but perilous causeway. The sun was shining feebly and glinting over the frost. It had sparkled among the icicles that hung in Styx Ghyll as he passed, and the ravine had been hard to cross. The hardy black sheep of the mountains bleated in the cold from unseen places, and the wind carried their call away until it died off into a moan.

When Ralph got well within the shadow cast on to the fell from the protruding head of the Castle Rock, he paused and looked about him. Yes, he was somewhat too high. He began to descend. The rock's head sheltered him from the wind now, and in the silence he could hear the thud of a pick or hammer, and then the indistinct murmur of a man's voice singing. It was Sim's voice; and here was Sim's cave. It was a cleft in the side of the mountain, high enough and broad enough for a man to pass in. Great bowlders stood above and about it.

The sun could never shine into it. A huge rock stood alone and apparently unsupported near its mouth, as though aeons long gone by an iceberg had perched it there. The dog would have bounded in upon Sim where he sat and sang at his work, but Ralph checked him with a look. Inexpressibly eerie sounded the half-buried voice of the singer in that Solitary place. The weird ditty suited well with both.

She lean'd her head against a thorn,

The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa''; And there she has her young babe born, And the lyon shall be lord of a''. She's howket a grave by the light o' the moon, The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa''; And there she's buried her sweet babe in, And the lyon shall be lord of a''.

The singer stopped, as though conscious of the presence of a listener, and looking up from where he sat on a round block of timber, cutting up a similar block into firewood, he saw Ralph Ray leaning on his staff near the cave's mouth. He had already heard of the sorrow that had fallen on the household at Shoulthwaite. With an unspeakable look of sympathy in his wild, timid eyes, as though some impulse of affection urged him to throw his arms about Ralph and embrace him, while some sense of shame impelled him to kneel at his feet, Sim approached him, and appeared to make an effort to speak. But he could say nothing. Ralph understood his silence and was grateful for it. They went into the cave, and sat down in the dusk.

“You can tell me all about it, now,” Ralph said, without preamble of any sort, for each knew well what lay closest at the other's heart. “He is gone now, and we are here together, with none but ourselves to hear.”

“I knew you must know it one day,” Sim said, “but I tried hard to hide it from you—I did, believe me, I tried hard—I tried, but it was not to be.”

“It is best so,” Ralph answered; “you must not bear the burden of guilt that is not your own.”

“I'm no better than guilty myself,” said Sim. “I don't reckon myself innocent; not I. No, I don't reckon myself innocent.”

“I think I understand you, Sim; but you were not guilty of the deed?”

“No, but I might have been—I might but for an accident—the accident of a moment; but I've thought sometimes that the crime is not in the deed, but the intention. No, Ralph, I am the guilty man, after all: your father had never thought of the crime, not he, but I had brooded over it.”

“Did you go out that night intending to do it?” Ralph said.

“Yes; at least I think I did, but I don't feel sure; my mind was in a broil; I hardly knew what I meant to do. If Wilson had told me as I met him in the road—as I intended to meet him—that he had come back to do what he had threatened to do so often—then—yes, then, I must have done it—I must.”

“What had he threatened?” Ralph asked, but there was no note of inquiry in his voice. “Whom did it concern?”

“It concerned yourself, Ralph,” said Sim, turning his head aside. “But no matter about that,” he added. “It's over now, it is.”

Ralph drew out of his pocket the paper that had fallen from his father's breast.

“Is this what you mean?” he said, handing it to Sim.

Sim carried it to the light to read it. Returning to where Ralph sat, he cried in a shrill voice—

“Then he had come back to do it. O God, why should it be murder to kill a scoundrel?”

“Did you know nothing of this until now?”

“Nothing. Wilson threatened it, as I say; he told me he'd hang you on the nearest gibbet, he did—you who'd saved his life—leastways, so they say—the barren-hearted monster!”

“It's ill-luck to serve a bad man, Sim. Well?”

“I never quite thought he'd do it; no, I never did quite think it. Why is it not a good deed to kill a bad man?”

“How did it happen, Sim?” said Ralph.

“I hardly know—that's the truth. You mind well enough it was the day that Abraham Coward, my landlord, called for his rent. It was the day the poor woman and her two wee barns took shelter with me. You looked in on me that night, you remember. Well, when you left me—do you recollect how?”

“Yes, Sim.”

“My heart was fair maizlet before, but that—that—kiss infected my brain. I must have been mad, Ralph, that's the fact, when I thought of what the man meant to do to the only friend I had left in the world—my own friend and my poor little girl's. I went out to the lanes and wandered about. It was very dark. Suddenly the awful thought came back upon me, it did. I was standing at the crossways, where the road goes off to Gaskarth. I knew Wilson must come by that road. Something commanded me to walk on. I had been halting, but now a dreadful force compelled me to go—ay, compelled me. I don't know what it was, but it seemed as if I'd no power against it, none. It stifled all my scruples, all of them, and I ran—yes, ran. But I was weak, and had to stop for breath. My heart was beating loud, and I pressed my hand hard upon it as I leaned against the wall of the old bridge yonder. It went thump, thump. Then I could hear him coming. I knew his step. He was not far off, but I couldn't stir; no, not stir. My breath seemed all to leave me when I moved. He was coming closer, he was, and in the distance beyont him I could hear the clatter of a horse's feet on the road. The man on the horse was far off, but he galloped, he galloped. It must be done now, I thought; now or not at all. I—I picked up a stone that lay near, I did, and tried to go forward, but fell back, back. I was powerless. That weakness was agony, it was. Wilson had not reached the spot where I stood when the man on the horse had overtaken him. I heard him speak as the man rode past. Then I saw it was your father, and that he turned back. There were high words on his side, and I could hear Wilson's bitter laugh—you recollect that laugh?”

“Yes, yes; well?”

“In a moment Angus had jumped from the horse's back—and then I heard a thud—and that's all.”

“Is that all you know?”

“Not all; no, not all, neither. Your father had got up into the saddle in an instant, and I labored out into the middle of the road. He saw me and stopped. 'Ye've earned nowt of late,' he said; 'tak this, my man, and gae off and pay your rent.' Then he put some money into my hand from his purse and galloped on. I thought he'd killed Wilson, and I crept along to look at the dead man. I couldn't find him at first, and groped about in the darkness till my hand touched his face. Then I thought he was alive, I did. The touch flayt me, and I fled away—I don't know how. Ralph, I saw the mark of my hand on his face when they drew me up to it next day in the bedroom of the inn. That night I paid my rent with your father's money, and then I went home.”

“It was my father's money, then—not Wilson's?” said Ralph.

“It was as I say,” Sim answered, as though hurt by the implication.

Ralph put his hand on Sim's shoulder. Self-condemned, this poor man's conscience was already a whirlpool that drew everything to itself.

“Tell me, Sim—that is, if you can—tell me how you came to suspect Wilson of these dealings.”

As he said this Ralph tapped with his fingers the warrant which Sim had returned to him.

“By finding that James Wilson was not his name.”

“So you found that, did you; how?”

“It was Mother Garth's doings, not mine,” said Sim.

“What did she tell you?”

“Nothing; that is, nothing about Wilson going by a false name. No; I found that out for myself, though it was all through her that I found it.”

“You knew it all that bad night in Martinmas, did you not?”

“That's true enough, Ralph. The old woman, she came one night and broke open Wilson's trunk, and carried off some papers—leastways one paper.”

“You don't know what it was?”

“No. It was in one of Wilson's bouts away at—at Gaskarth, so he said. Rotha was at the Moss: she hadn't come home for the night. I had worked till the darknin', and my eyes were heavy, they were, and then I had gone into the lanes. The night came on fast, and when I turned back I heard men singing and laughing as they came along towards me.”

“Some topers from the Red Lion, that was all?”

“Yes, that was all. I jumped the dike and crossed the fields instead of taking the road. As I came by Fornside I saw that there was a light in the little room looking to the back. It was Wilson's room; he would have no other. I thought he had got back, and I crept up—I don't know why—I crept up to the window and looked in. It was not Wilson who was there. It was Mrs. Garth. She had the old man's trunk open, and was rummaging among some papers at the bottom of it.”

“Did you go in to her?”

“I was afeart of the woman, Ralph; but I did go in, dotherin' and stammerin'.”

“What did she say?”

“She was looking close at a paper as I came upon her. She started a little, but when she saw who it was she bashed down the lid of the trunk and brushed past me, with the paper in her hand. 'You can tell him, if you like, that I have been here.' That was all she said, and before I had turned about she had gone, she had. What was that paper, Ralph; do you know?”

“Perhaps time will tell, perhaps not.”

“There was something afoot atween those two; what was it?”

“Can't you guess? You discovered his name.”

“Wilson Garth, that was it. That was the name I found on his papers. Yes, I opened the trunk and looked at them when the woman had gone; yes, I did that.”

“You remember how she came to these parts? That was before my time of remembrance, but not before yours, Sim.”

“I think they said she'd wedded a waistrel on the Borders.”

“Did they ever say the man was dead?”

“No, I can't mind that they ever did. I can't mind it. He had beaten her and soured her into the witch that she is now, and then she had run away frae him with her little one, Joe that now is. That was what they said, as I mind it.”

“Two and two are easily put together, Sim. Wilson Garth, not James Wilson, was the man's name.”

“And he was Mrs. Garth's husband and the father of Joe?”

“The same, I think.”

Sim seemed to stagger under the shock of a discovery that had been slow to dawn upon him.

“How did it come, Ralph, that you brought him here when you came home from the wars? Everything seems, someways, to hang on that.”

“Everything; perhaps even this last disaster of all.” Ralph passed his fingers through his hair, and then his palm across his brow. Sim observed a change in his friend's manner.

“It was wrong of me to say that, it was,” he said. “I don't know that it's true, either. But tell me how it came about.”

“It's a short story, old friend, and easily told, though it has never been told till now. I had done the man some service at Carlisle.”

“Saved his life, so they say.”

“It was a good turn, truly, but I had done it—at least, the first part of it—unawares. But that's not a short story.”

“Tell me, Ralph.”

“It's dead and done with, like the man himself. What remains is not dead, and cannot soon be done with. Some of us must meet it face to face even yet. Wilson—that was his name in those days—was a Royalist when I encountered him. What he had been before, God knows. At a moment of peril he took his life at the hands of a Roundhead. He had been guilty of treachery to the Royalists, and he was afraid to return to his friends. I understood his position and sheltered him. When Carlisle fell to us he clung closer to me, and when the campaign was over he prayed to be permitted to follow me to these parts. I yielded to him reluctantly. I distrusted him, but I took his anxiety to be with me for gratitude, as he said it was. It was not that, Sim.”

“Was it fear? Was he afeart of being hanged by friends or foes? Hadn't he been a taistrel to both?”

“Partly fear, but partly greed, and partly revenge. He was hardly a week at Shoulthwaite before I guessed his secret—I couldn't be blind to that. When he married his young wife on the Borders, folks didn't use to call her a witch. She had a little fortune coming to her one day, and when she fled the prospect of it was lost to her husband. Wilson was in no hurry to recover her while she was poor-a vagrant woman with his child at her breast. The sense of his rights as a husband became keener a little later. Do you remember the time when young Joe Garth set himself up in the smithy yonder?”

“I do,” said Sim; “it was the time of the war. The neighbors told of some maiden aunt, an old crone like herself, who had left Joe's mother aboon a hundred pound.”

“Wilson knew that much better than our neighbors. He knew, too, where his wife had hidden herself, as she thought, though it had served his turn to seem ignorant of it until then. Sim, he used me to get to Wythburn.”

“Teush!”

“Once here, it was not long before he had made his wife aware of his coming. I had kept an eye on him, and I knew his movements. I saw that he meant to ruin the Garths, mother and son, to strip them and leave them destitute. I determined that he should not do it. I felt that mine was the blame that he was here to molest them. 'Tamper with them,' I said, 'show once more by word or look that you know anything of them, and I'll hand you over as a traitor to the nearest sheriff.'”

“Why didn't you do it anyhow, why didn't you?” said Sim eagerly.

“That would have been unwise. He now hated me for defeating his designs.

“You had saved his life.”

“He hated me none the less for that. There was only one way now to serve either the Garths or myself, and that was to keep the man in hand. I neither sent him away nor let him go.”

“You were more than a match for him to the last,” said Sim, “and you saved me and my lass from him too. But what about Joe Garth and his old mother? They don't look over-thankful to you, they don't.”

“They think that I brought Wilson back to torment them. No words of mine would upset the notion. I'm sorry for that, but leave such mistakes for time to set right. And when the truth comes in such a case it comes to some purpose.”

“Aye, when it comes—when it comes.”

Sim spoke in an undertone, and as though to himself.

“It's long in the coming sometimes, it is.”

“It seems long, truly.” The dalesman had caught Sim's drift, and with his old trick of manner, more expressive than his words, he had put his hand on Sim's arm.

“And now there is but one chance that has made it quite worth the while that we should have talked frankly on the subject, you and I, and that is the chance that others may come to do what Wilson tried to do. The authorities who issued this warrant will hardly forget that they issued it. There was a stranger here the day after the inquest. I think I know what he was.”

Sim shuddered perceptibly.

“He went away then, but we'll see him once more, depend upon it.”

“Is it true, as Wilson said, that Oliver's men are like to be taken?”

“There's a spy in every village, so they say, and blank warrants, duly signed, in every sheriff's court, ready to be filled in with any name that malice may suggest. These men mean that Puritanism shall be rooted out of England. We cannot be too well prepared.”

“I wish I could save you, Ralph; leastways, I wish it were myself instead, I do.”

“You thought to save me, old friend, when you went out to meet Wilson that night three months ago. My father, too, he thought to save me when he did what he did. You were both rash, both wrong. You could not have helped me at all in that way. Poor father! How little he has helped me, Heaven knows—Heaven alone knows—yet.”

Ralph drew his hand across his eyes.