A Son of Hagar: A Romance of Our Time. Hall Sir Caine
seat.
As he entered the garden Mercy was crossing it with a pail of water just raised from the well. She had seen him, and now tried to pass into the house. He stepped before her and she set down the pail. Her head was held very low, and her cheeks were deeply flushed.
"Mercy," he said, "it is all arranged. Mr. Bonnithorne will see you into the train this evening, and when you get to your journey's end the person I spoke of will meet you."
The girl lifted her eyes beseechingly to his face.
"Not to-day, Hugh," she said in a broken whisper; "let me stay until to-morrow."
He regarded her for a moment with a steadfast look, and when he spoke again his voice fell on her ear like the clank of a chain.
"The journey has to be made. Every week's delay increases the danger."
The girl's eyes fell again, and the tears began to drop from them on to the brown arms that she had clasped in front.
"Come," he said in a softer tone, "the train starts in an hour. Your father is not yet home from the pit, and most of the dalespeople are at the sports. So much the better. Put on your cloak and hat and take the fell path to the Coledaie road-ends. There Mr. Bonnithorne will meet you."
The girl's tears were flowing fast, though she bit her lip and struggled to check them.
"Come, now, come; you know this was of your own choice."
There was a pause.
"I never thought it would be so hard to go," she said at length.
He smiled feebly, and tried a more rallying tone.
"You are not going for life. You will come back safe and happy."
The words thrilled her through and through. Her clasped hands trembled visibly, and her fingers clutched them with a convulsive movement. After awhile she was calmer, and said quietly:
"No, I'll never come back – I know that quite well." And her head dropped on her breast and she felt sick at heart. "I'll have to say good-bye to everything. There were Betsy Jackson's children – I kissed them all this morning, and never said why – little Willy, he seemed to know, dear little fellow, and cried so bitterly."
The memories of these incidents touched to overflowing the springs of love in the girl's simple soul, and the bubbling child-voice was drowned in sobs.
The man stood with a smile of pain on his face. He came close, and brushed away her tears, and touched her drooping head with a gesture of protestation.
Mercy regained her voice.
"And then there's your mother," she said, "and I can't say good-bye to her, and my poor father, and I daren't tell him – "
Hugh stamped on the path impatiently.
"Come, come, Mercy, don't be foolish."
The girl lifted to his the good young face that had once Been bonny as the day and was now pale with weeping and drawn down with grief. She took him by the coat, and then, by an impulse which she seemed unable to resist, threw one arm about his neck, and raised her face to his until their lips all but touched, and their eyes met in a steadfast gaze.
"Hugh," she said, passionately, "are you sure that you love me well enough to think of me when I am gone? – are you quite, quite sure?"
"Yes, yes; be sure of that," he said, gently.
He disengaged her arm.
"And will you come and fetch me after – after – "
She could not say the word. He smiled and answered, "Why, yes, yes."
Her fingers trembled and clung together; her head fell; her cheeks were aglow.
"Why, of course." He smiled again, as if in deprecation of so much child-like earnestness; then put his arm about the girl's shoulder, dropped his voice to a tone of mingled compassion and affection, and said, as he lifted the brightening face to his, "There, there – now go off and make ready."
The girl brushed her tears away vigorously, and looked half ashamed and half enchanted.
"I'm going."
"That's a good little girl."
How the sunshine came back at the sound of his words!
"Good-bye for the present, Mercy – only for the present, you know."
But how the shadow pursued the sunshine after all!
Hugh saw the tears gathering again in the lucent eyes, and came back a step.
"There – a smile – just one little smile!" She smiled through her tears. "There – there – that's a dear little Mercy. Good-day; good-bye."
Hugh turned on his heel and walked sharply away. As he passed out through the gate he could not help observing that the cat from the foot of the chestnut-tree was walking stealthily off, with something like a dawning smile on its whiskered face, and the brush of the squirrel between its teeth.
Hugh Ritson had gained his end, and yet he felt more crushed than at the darkest moment of defeat. He had conquered his own manhood; and now he crept away from the scene of his triumph with a sense of utter abasement. When he had talked with Mr. Bonnithorne it was with a feeling of the meanness of the folly in which he was involved; and if any sentiment touching the girl's situation was strong upon him it was closely bound up with a personal view of the degradation that might come of a man's humiliating unwisdom. The very conventionality of his folly had irked him. But its cowardice was now uppermost. That a man should enter into warfare with a woman on unequal terms, and win by cajolery and deceit, was more than cruel; it was brutal. He could have borne even this hard saying so far as it concerned the woman's suffering, but for the reflection that it made the man something worse than a coxcomb in his own eyes.
The day was now far spent; the brilliant sun had dipped behind Grisedale, and left a ridge of dark fells in the west. On the east the green sides of Cat Bells and the Eel Crags were yellow at the summit, where the hills held their last commerce with the hidden sun. Not a breath of wind; not the rustle of a leaf; the valley lay still, save for the echoing voices of the merrymakers in the booth below. The sky overhead was blue, but a dark cloud, like the hulk of a ship, had anchored lately to the north.
Hugh Ritson took the valley road back to Ghyll. He was visibly perturbed; he walked with head much bent, stopped suddenly at times, then snatched impetuously at the trailing bushes, and passed on. When he was under Hindscarth, the sharp yap of dogs, followed by the bleat of unseen sheep, caused him to look up, and he saw a group of men, like emmets creeping on a dark bowlder, moving over a ridge of shelving rock.
There was a slight spasm of his features at that moment, and his foot trailed more heavily as he went on. At a twist of the road he passed the Laird Fisher. The old man looked less melancholy than usual. It was as if the familiar sorrow sat a little more lightly to-night on the half-ruined creature.
"Good-neet to you, sir, and how fend ye?" he said almost cheerily.
Hugh Ritson responded briefly.
"So you're not sleeping on the fell to-night, Matthew?" and as he spoke his eyes wandered toward the fell road.
"Nay; I's not firing to-neet, for sure; my daughter is expecting me."
Hugh's eyes were now fixed intently on the road that crossed the foot of the fell to the west. The charcoal-burner was moving off, and, following at the same moment the upward direction of Hugh Ritson's gaze, he said:
"It's a baddish place yon, where your father is with Reuben and the lad, and it's baddish weather that is coming, too – look at yon black cloud over Walna Scar."
Then for an instant there was embarrassment in Hugh Ritson's eyes, and he answered in a faltering commonplace.
"Ways me; but I must slip away home, sir; my laal lass will be weary waiting. Good-neet to you, sir; good-neet."
"Good-night, Matthew, and God help you," said Hugh in a tone of startling earnestness, his eyes turned away.
He had walked half a mile further, and reached the lonnin that led to the Ghyll, when