The Squire's Daughter Part 24

"But he will confess. n.o.body would let you be wrongfully accused," she interrupted.

He shook his head dubiously. "Most people are so anxious to save their own skin," he said, "that they do not trouble much about what becomes of other people."

"But if the worst should come to the worst, Ralph," Ruth questioned timidly, "what would it mean?"

"Transportation," he said gloomily.

Mrs. Penlogan began to cry. It seemed almost as if G.o.d had forsaken them, and her faith in Providence was in danger of going from her. She and Ruth had been bewailing the hardness of their lot that afternoon while Ralph was out with his gun. The few pounds saved from the general wreck were nearly exhausted. When the funeral expenses had been paid, and the removal accounts had been squared, there was very little left.

To make matters worse, Ralph's accident had to be added to their calamities. He was only just beginning to get about again, and when the doctor's bill came in they would be worse than penniless, they would be in debt.

And now suddenly, and without warning, this new trouble threatened them.

A trouble that was worse than poverty--worse even than death. Their good name, they imagined, was una.s.sailable, and if that went by the board, everything would be lost.

Ralph sat silent, and stared into the fire. In the main his thoughts were very bitter, but one sweet reflection came and went in the most unaccountable fas.h.i.+on. One pure and almost perfect face peeped at him from between the bars of the grate and vanished, but always came back again after a few minutes and smiled all the more sweetly, as if to atone for its absence.

Why had Dorothy Hamblyn taken the trouble to interview him? Why was she so interested in his fate? How was it that she was so ready to accept his word? To give any rational answer to these questions seemed impossible. If she felt what he felt, the explanation would be simple enough; but since by no exercise of his fancy or imagination could he bring himself to that view of the case, her conduct--her apparent solicitude--remained inexplicable.

Nevertheless, the thought of Dorothy was the one sweet drop in his bitter cup. The why and wherefore of her interest might remain a mystery, yet the fact remained that of her own free will she had come to see him that she might get the truth from his own lips, and without any hesitation she had told him that she believed his word. Sir John might hunt him down with all the venom of a sleuth hound, but he would always have this crumb of consolation, that the Squire's daughter believed in him still.

He had given up trying to hate her. Nay, he accepted it as part of the irony of fate that he should do the other thing. He could not understand why destiny should be so relentlessly cruel to him, why every circ.u.mstance and every combination of circ.u.mstances should unite to crush him. But he had to accept life as he found it. The world seemed to be ruled by might, not by justice. The strong worked their will upon the weak. It was the fate of the feeble to go under; the helpless cried in vain for deliverance, the poor were daily oppressed.

He found his youthful optimism a steadily diminis.h.i.+ng quant.i.ty. His father's fate seemed to mock the idea of an over-ruling Providence. If there was ever a good man in the parish, his father was that man. No breath of slander had ever touched his name. Honest, industrious, pure-minded, G.o.d-fearing, he lived and wrought with all his might, doing to others as he would they should do to him. And yet he died of a broken heart, defeated and routed in the unequal contest, victimised by the uncertain chances of life, ground to powder by laws he did not make, and had no chance of escaping. And in that hour of overwhelming disaster there was no hand to deliver him save the kindly hand of death.

"And what is there before me?" he asked himself bitterly. "What have I to live for, or hope for? The very springs of my youth seem poisoned. My love is a cruel mockery, my ambitions are frost-nipped in the bud."

For the rest of the evening very little was said. Supper was a sadly frugal meal, and they ate it in silence. Ruth and her mother could not help wondering how long it would be ere they would have no food to eat.

Ralph kept listening with keen apprehension for the sound of a measured footstep outside the door. At any moment he might be arrested. Sir John was one of the most important men in St. Goram, hence the law would be swift to take its course. The policemen would be falling over each other in their eagerness to do their duty.

The tall grandfather's clock in the corner beat out the moments with loud and monotonous click. The fire in the grate sank lower and lower.

All the village noises died down into silence. Mrs. Penlogan's chin, in spite of her anxiety, began to droop upon her bosom.

"I think we shall be left undisturbed to-night," Ralph said, with a pathetic smile. "Perhaps we had better get off to bed."

Mrs. Penlogan rose at once and fetched the family Bible and handed it on to Ruth. It fell open at the 23rd Psalm: "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want."

Ruth read it in a low, even voice. It was her father's favourite portion--his sheet-anchor when the storms of life raged most fiercely.

Now he was beyond the tempest and beyond the strife.

For the first time Ralph felt thankful that he was dead.

"Dear old father," he said to himself. "He has got beyond the worry and the pain. His heart will ache no more for ever."

They all knelt down when the psalm ended; but no one prayed aloud.

Ralph remained after the others had gone upstairs. It seemed of little use going to bed, he felt too restless to sleep.

Ever since Dorothy went away he had been expecting Policeman Budda to call with a warrant for his arrest. Why he had not come he could not understand. He wondered if Dorothy had interceded with her father, and his eyes softened at the thought.

He did not blame himself for loving her in a restrained and far-off way.

She was so fair and sweet and generous. That she was beyond his reach was no fault of his--that he had carried her in his arms and pressed her to his heart was the tragedy as well as the romance of his life. That she had watched by him and succoured him in the plantation was only another cord that bound his heart to her. That he should love her was but the inevitable sequence of events.

It was foolish to blame himself. He would be something less than man if he did not love her. He had tried his hardest not to--had struggled with all his might to put the memory of her out of his heart. But he gave up the struggle weeks ago. It was of no use fighting against fate. It was part of the burden he had been called upon to bear, and he would have to bear it as bravely and as patiently as he knew how.

He was not so vain as to imagine that she cared for him in the smallest degree--or ever could care. Moreover, she was engaged to be married, and would have been married months ago but for her accident.

Ralph got up from his chair and began to walk about the room. Dorothy Hamblyn was not for him, he knew well enough, and yet whenever he thought of her marrying Lord Probus his whole soul revolted. It seemed to him like sacrilege, and sacrilege in its basest form.

It was nearly midnight when he stole silently and stealthily to his little room, and soon after he fell fast asleep.

When he opened his eyes again the light of a new day filled the room, and a harsh and unfamiliar voice was speaking rapidly in the room below.

Ralph leaned over the side of his bed for a moment or two and listened.

"It's Budda's voice," he said to himself at length, and he gave a little gasp. If Dorothy had interceded for him, her intercession had failed.

The law would now have to take its course.

He dressed himself carefully and with great deliberation. He would not show the white feather if he could help it. Besides, it was just possible he might be able to clear himself. He would not give up hope until he was compelled to.

Budda was very civil and even sympathetic. He sat by the fire while Ralph ate his breakfast, and retailed a good deal of the gossip of the village so as to lessen the strain of the situation. Ralph replied to him with an air of well-feigned indifference and unconcern. He would rather die than betray weakness before a policeman.

Mrs. Penlogan and Ruth moved in and out of the room with set faces and dry eyes. They knew how to endure silently. So many storms had beaten upon them that it did not seem to matter much what came to them now.

Also they knew that the real bitterness would come when Ralph's place was empty.

Budda appeared to be in no hurry. It was all in his day's work, and since Ralph showed no disposition to bolt, an hour sooner or later made no difference. He read the terms of the warrant with great deliberation and in his most impressive manner. Ralph made no reply. This was neither the time nor the place to protest his innocence.

Breakfast over, Ralph stretched his feet for a few moments before the fire. Budda talked on; but Ralph said nothing. He sprang to his feet at length and got on his hat and overcoat, while his mother and Ruth were out of the room.

"Now I am ready," he said; and Budda at once led the way.

He met his mother and sister in the pa.s.sage and kissed them a hurried good-morning, and almost before they knew what had happened the door closed, and Ralph and the policeman had disappeared.

On the following morning he was brought before the magistrates and remanded for a week, bail being refused.

It was fortunate for him that in the solitude of his cell he had no conception of the tremendous sensation his arrest produced. There had been nothing like it in St. Goram for more than a generation, and for a week or two little else was talked about.

Of course, opinions varied as to the measure of his guilt or innocence.

But, in the main, the current of opinion went strongly against him. When a man is down, it is surprising how few his friends are. The bulk of the St. Goramites were far more ready to kick him than defend him. Wiseacres and busybodies told all who cared to listen how they had predicted some such catastrophe. David Penlogan was a good man, but he had not trained his children wisely. He had spent more on their education than his circ.u.mstances warranted, with the result that they were exclusive and proud, and discontented with the station in life to which Providence had called them.

Ralph would have been infinitely pained had he known how indifferent the ma.s.s of the people were to his fate, and how ready some of those whom he had regarded as his friends were to listen to tales against him. Even those who defended him, did it in a very tepid and half-hearted way; and the more strongly the current ran against him, the more feeble became his defence.

At the end of a week Ralph was brought up and remanded again. Sir John Hamblyn was still confined to his bed, and the doctor could not say when he would be well enough to appear and give evidence.

So time after time he was dragged into the dock, only to be hustled after a few minutes back into his cell.

But at length, after weary weeks of waiting, Sir John appeared at the court-house with his arm in a sling. The bench was crowded with magistrates, all of whom were loud in their expressions of sympathy and emphatic in their denunciation of the crime that had been committed.

Sir John being a baronet and a magistrate, and a very considerable landowner, was accommodated with a cus.h.i.+on, and allowed to sit while he gave evidence. The court-room was packed, and the crowd outside was considerably larger than that within.

Ralph was led into the dock looking but a ghost of his former self. The long weeks of confinement--following upon his illness--the scanty prison fare in place of nouris.h.i.+ng food, had wasted him almost to a shadow. He stood, however, erect and defiant, and faced the bench of country squires with a fearless light in his eyes. They might have the power to shut him up within stone walls, but they could not break his spirit.