"Only--what?"
"Only--oh, it"s nothing!"
"Mercy, my la.s.s," said the Laird Fisher, and the tears stood now in his own dim eyes, "Mercy, remember if owt goes wrong with a girl, and her mother is under the gra.s.s, her father is the first she should come to and tell all."
The old man had seated himself on a stout block cut from a trunk, and was opening the basket, when there was a light, springy step on the road.
"So you fire to-night, Matthew?"
An elderly man leaned over the stile and smiled.
"Nay, Mr. Bonnithorne, there"s ower much nastment in the weather yet."
The gentleman took off his silk hat and mopped his forehead. His hair was thin and of a pale yellow, and was smoothed flat on his brow.
"You surprise me! I thought the weather perfect. See how blue the sky is."
"That doesn"t argy. It might be better with never a blenk of blue. It was rayder airy yesterday, and last night the moon got up as blake and yellow as May b.u.t.ter."
The smile was perpetual on the gentleman"s face. It showed his teeth constantly.
"You dalesmen are so weather-wise."
The voice was soft and womanish. There was a little laugh at the end of each remark.
"We go by the moon in firing, sir," the charcoal-burner answered, "Last night it rose sou"-west, and that doesn"t mean betterment, though it"s quiet enough now. There"ll be clashy weather before nightfall."
The girl strayed away into the thicket, and startled a woodc.o.c.k out of a heap of dead oak leaves. The gentleman followed her with his eyes. They were very small and piercing eyes, and they blinked frequently.
"Your daughter does not look very well, Matthew."
"She"s gayly, sir; she"s gayly," said the charcoal-burner shortly, his mouth in his can of tea.
The gentleman smiled from the teeth out. After a pause, he said: "I suppose it isn"t pleasant when one of your hurdles is blown down, and the charcoal burning," indicating the wooden hurdles which had been propped about the half-built charcoal stack.
"Ey, it"s gay bad wark, to be sure--being dragged into the fire."
The dog had risen with a startled movement. Following the upward direction of the animal"s nose, the gentleman said, "Whose sheep are those on the ghyll yonder?"
"Auld Mr. Ritson"s, them herdwicks."
The sheep were on a ridge of shelving rock.
"Dangerous spot, eh?"
"Ey, it"s a bent place. They"re verra clammersome, the black-faced sorts."
"I"ll bid you good-day, Matthew." The yellow-haired elderly gentleman was moving off. He walked with a jerk and a spring on his toes. "And mind you take your daughter to the new doctor at Keswick," he said at parting.
"It"s not doctoring that"ll mend Mercy," the charcoal-burner muttered, when the other had gone.
CHAPTER III.
Josiah Bonnithorne was quite without kinspeople or connections. His mother had been one of two sisters who lived by keeping a small confectioner"s shop in Whitehaven, and were devoted Methodists. The sisters had formed views as to matrimony, and they enjoyed a curious similarity of choice. They were to be the wives of preachers. But the opportunity was long in coming, and they grew elderly. At length the younger sister died, and so solved the problem of her future. The elder sister was left for two years more alone with her confectionery. Then she married a stranger who had come to one of the pits as gangsman. It was a sad falling off. But at all events the gangsman was a local preacher, and so the poor soul who took him for husband had effected a compromise with her cherished ideal. It turned put that he was a scoundrel as well, and had a wife living elsewhere. This disclosure abridged his usefulness among the brethren, and he fled. Naturally, he left his second wife behind, having previously secured a bill of sale on her household effects. A few months elapsed, the woman was turned adrift by her husband"s creditors, and then a child was born. It was a poor little thing--a boy. The good souls of the "connection" provided for it until it was two years old, and afterward placed it in a charity school.
While the little fellow was there, his mother was struck down by a mortal complaint. Then for the first time the poor ruined woman asked to see her child. They brought the little one to her bedside, and it smiled down into her dying face. "Oh, that it may please the Lord to make him a preacher!" she said with a great effort. At a sign from the doctor the child was taken away. The face pinched by cruel suffering quivered slightly, the timid eyes worn by wasted hope softened and closed, and the mother bid farewell to everything.
The boy lived. They christened him Josiah, and he took for surname the maiden name of his mother, Bonnithorne. He was a weakling, and had no love of boyish sports; but he excelled in scholarship. In spite of these tendencies, he was apprenticed to a butcher when the time came to remove him from school. An accident transferred him to the office of a solicitor, and he was articled. Ten years later he succeeded to his master"s practice, and then he sailed with all sail set.
He disappointed the "connection" by developing into a Churchman, but otherwise aroused no hostile feeling. It was obviously his cue to conciliate everybody. He was liked without being popular, trusted without being a favorite. Churchwarden, trustee for public funds, executor for private friends, he had a reputation for disinterested industry. And people said how well it was that one so unselfish as Josiah Bonnithorne should nevertheless prosper even as this world goes.
But there was a man in c.u.mberland who knew Mr. Bonnithorne from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. That man was Mr. Hugh Ritson.
Never for an instant did either of these palter with the other.
When Mr. Bonnithorne left the charcoal pit, he followed the road that crossed the Newlands Beck, and returned on the breast of the Eel Crags.
This led him close to the booth where the sports were proceeding. He heard, as he pa.s.sed, the gurgling laugh with which the dalesfolk received the peddler"s story of how he saw Paul Ritson at Hendon. A minute afterward he encountered Hugh Ritson on the road. There was only the most meagre pretense at greeting when these men came face to face.
"Your father sent for me," said Mr. Bonnithorne.
"On what business?" Hugh Ritson asked.
"I have yet to learn."
They walked some steps without speaking. Then the lawyer turned with his constant smile, and said in his soft voice:
"I have just seen your little friend. She looks pale, poor thing!
Something must be done, and shortly."
Hugh Ritson"s face flushed perceptibly. His eyes were on the ground.
"Let us go no further in this matter," he said, in a low tone. "I saw her yesterday. Then there is her father, poor, broken creature! Let it drop."
"I did not believe it of you!" Mr. Bonnithorne spoke calmly and went on smiling.
"Besides, I am ashamed. The thing is too mean," said Hugh Ritson. "In what turgid melodrama does not just such an episode occur?"
"So, so! Or is it the story of the cat in the adage? You would and you wouldn"t?"
"My blood is not thick enough. I can"t do it."
"Then why did you propose it? Was it your suggestion or mine? I thought to spare the girl her shame. Here her trouble must fall on her in battalions, poor little being. Send her away, and you decimate them."
"It is unnecessary. You know I am superior to prejudice." Hugh Ritson dropped his voice and said, as if speaking into his breast: "If the worst comes to the worst, I can marry her."
Mr. Bonnithorne laughed lightly.