A graver result than any that Mattha dreamt of hung at this moment on Robbie"s insensibility, and when consciousness returned the catastrophe had fallen.
CHAPTER XL. GARTH AND THE QUAKERS.
As Rotha left the weaver"s cottage she found Liza in the porch.
"I"m just laughing at the new preachers," she said huskily. She was turning her head aside slyly to brush the tears from her eyes into a shawl which was over her head.
"There they are by the Lion. It"s wrong to laugh, but they are real funny, aye!"
The artifice was too palpable to escape Rotha"s observation. Without a word she put her arms about Liza and kissed her. Then the lurking tears gushed out openly, and the girl wept on her breast. They parted in silence, and Rotha walked towards a little company gathered under the glow of a red sun on the highway, and almost in front of the village inn. They were the "new preachers" of whom Liza had spoken.
The same that had, according to Robbie"s landlady, foretold the plague. They were three men, and they stood in the middle of a ring of men, women, and children. One of them, tall and gaunt, with long gray hair and wild eyes, was speaking at the full pitch of his voice.
Another was emphasizing his words with loud hallelujahs. Then the third dropped down on his knees in the road, and prayed with earnestness in a voice that rang along the village street--silent to-day, save for him--and echoed back and back. Before the prayer had quite ended a hymn was begun in a jaunting measure, with a chorus that danced to a spirit of joyfulness.
Then came another exhortation. It was heavy with gloomy prediction.
The world was full of oppression, and envy, and drunkenness, and vain pleasures. Men had forsaken the light that should enlighten all men.
They were full of deceit and vanities. They put their trust in priests and professors who were but empty hollow casks. "Yet the Lord is at hand," cried the preacher, "to thrash the mountains, and beat them to dust."
Another hymn followed, more jubilant than before. One by one the people around caught the contagion of excitement. There were old men there with haggard faces that told of the long hard fight with the world in which they were of the mult.i.tude of the vanquished; old women, too, jaded and tired, and ready to slip into oblivion, their long day"s duty done; mothers with babes in their arms and young children nestling close at their sides; rollicking boys and girls as well, with all the struggle of life in front of them.
The simple Quaker hymn told of a great home of rest far away, yet very near.
The tumult had attracted the frequenters of the Red Lion, and some of these had stepped out on to the causeway. Two or three of them were already drunk. Among them was Garth, the blacksmith. He laughed frantically, and shrieked and crowed at every address and every hymn.
When the preachers shouted "Hallelujah," he shouted "Hallelujah" also; shouted again and again, in season and out of season; shouted until he was hoa.r.s.e, and the perspiration poured down his crimsoning face. His tipsy companions at first a.s.sisted him with noisy cheers. When one of the men in the ring lifted up his voice in the ardor of prayer, Garth yelled out yet louder to ask if he thought G.o.d Almighty was deaf.
The people began to tremble at the blacksmith"s blasphemies. The tipsiest of his fellows slunk away from his side.
The preacher spoke at one moment of the numbers of their following.
"You carry a bottle of liquor somewhere," cried Garth; "that"s why they follow you."
Wearied out by such a shrieking storm of discord, one of the three Quakers--a little man with quick eyes and nervous lips--made his way through the crowd to where the blacksmith stood at the outskirts of it. Garth propped his back against the wall of the inn and laughed hysterically at the preacher"s remonstrance: "Woe to thee and such as thee when G.o.d"s love pa.s.ses away from thee."
Garth replied with a mocking blasphemy too terrible for record. He repeated it, shouted it, screamed it.
In sheer horror the Quaker dropped on his knees in front of the blacksmith and muttered a prayer that was almost inaudible:--
"G.o.d grant that the seven devils, yea seven times seven, may come out of him!"
Then Garth was silent for a moment.
"I knew such a one as thou art five years ago," said the Quaker; "and where thinkest thou he died?"
"Where?" said Garth, with a drunken hiccup.
"But he was a saved man at last--saved by the light with which Christ enlightened all men--saved--"
"Where?" repeated Garth, with a hideous imprecation.
"On the gallows--he had killed his own father--he was--"
"Curse you! Curse you on earth and in h.e.l.l!"
The people who had crowded round held their hands to their ears to shut out the fearful blasphemies. Garth, sobered somewhat by rage which was no longer a.s.sumed but real, pushed them aside and strode down the lane.
Rotha turned away from the crowd and walked towards Shoulthwaite.
Before her, at fifty paces, the blacksmith tramped doggedly on, with head towards the ground. Drunk, mad, devilish as at this moment he might be, Rotha felt an impulse to overtake him. She knew not what power prompted her, or what idea or what hope. Never before had she felt an instinct drawing her to this man. Yet she wished to speak with him now. Would she had done so! Would she had done so--not for his sake or yet for hers--but now, even now, while the impieties were hot on his burning lips!
Rotha ran a step or two and stopped. Garth shambled sullenly on. He never lifted his eyes to the sky.
When he reached his home he threw himself on the skemmel drawn up to the hearth. He was sober now. His mother had been taking her Sunday afternoon"s sleep on the settle, which stood at one side of the kitchen. His noisy entrance awoke her. He broke the peat with the peat-stick and kicked it into the fire.
"What"s come ower thee?" said Mrs. Garth, opening her eyes and yawning.
"What"s come over you more like?" growled Joe.
"What now?"
"Do you sell your own flesh and blood?" said Joe. "Sell? What"s thy mare"s nest now, thou weatherc.o.c.k? One wouldn"t think that b.u.t.ter wad melt in thy mouth sometimes, and then agen--"
"I"m none so daft as daftly dealt with, mother," interrupted the blacksmith.
"I"ve telt thee afore thou"rt yan of the wise a.s.ses. What do you mean by _sell?_"
"I reckon _you_ know when strangers in the street can tell me."
The blacksmith coiled himself up in his gloomy reserve and stared into the fire.
"Oh, thou"s heard "at yon man"s in Doomsdale, eh?"
Joe grunted something that was inarticulate.
"I mean to hear the trial," continued Mrs. Garth, with a purr of satisfaction.
"Maybe you wouldn"t like to see me in his place, mother? Oh, no; certainly not."
"Thou great bledderen fool," cried Mrs. Garth, getting on to her feet and lifting her voice to a threatening pitch; "whearaway hast been?"
Joe growled again, and crept closer over the fire, his mother"s brawny figure towering above him.
CHAPTER XLI. A HORSE"S NEIGH.