The Shadow of a Crime Part 12

"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 pa.s.sed 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, G.o.d 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 grat.i.tude, 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?"