The Squire's Daughter

CHAPTER XXI

A GOOD NAME

In a long, barrack-like room, with uncarpeted floor and whitewashed walls, Ralph and Ruth found their mother. She was propped up with pillows in a narrow, comfortless bed. Her hands lay listless upon the coarse coverlet, her eyes were fixed upon the blank wall opposite, her lips were parted in a patient and pathetic smile.

She did not see the wall, nor feel the texture of the bedclothes, nor hear the sound of footsteps on the uncarpeted floor. She was back again in the old days when husband and children were about her, and hope gladdened their daily toil, and love glorified and made beautiful the drudgery of life. She tried not to think about the present at all, and in the main she succeeded. Her life was in the past and in the future. When she was not wandering through the pleasant fields of memory, and plucking the flowers that grew in those sheltered vales, she was soaring aloft into those fair Elysian fields which imagination pictured and faith made real – fields on which the blight of winter never fell, and across which storms and tempests never swept.

She had lost all count of days, lost consciousness almost of her present surroundings. Every day was the same – grey and sunless. There were no duties to be done, no meals to prepare, no butter to make, no chickens to feed, no husband to greet when the day was done, no hungry children to come romping in from the fields.

There were old people who had been in the workhouse so long that they had accommodated their life to its slow routine, and who found something to interest them in the narrowest and greyest of all worlds. But Mary Penlogan had come too suddenly into its sombre shadow and had left too many pleasant things behind her.

She did not complain. There were times when she did not even suffer. The blow had stunned her and numbed all her sensibilities. Now and then she awoke as from a pleasant dream, and for a moment a wave of horror and agony would sweep over her, but the tension would quickly pass. The wound was too deep for the smart to continue long.

She seemed in the main to be wonderfully resigned, and yet resignation was scarcely the proper word to use. It was rather that voiceless apathy born of despair. For her the end of the world had come; there was nothing left to live for. Nothing could restore the past and give her back what once she had prized so much, and yet prized all too little. It was just a question of endurance until the Angel of Death should set her free.

She conformed to all the rules of the House without a murmur, and without even the desire to complain. She slept well, on the whole, and tried her best to eat such fare as was considered good enough for paupers. If she wept at all she wept in secret and in the night-time; she had no desire to obtrude her grief upon others. She even made an earnest effort to be cheerful now and then. But all the while her strength ebbed slowly away. The springs of her life had run dry.

The workhouse doctor declared at first that nothing ailed her – nothing at all. A week later he spoke of a certain lack of vitality, and wrote an order for a little more nourishing food. A fortnight later he discovered a certain weakness in the action of the heart, and wrote out a prescription to be made up in the dispensary.

Later still he had her removed to the sick-ward and placed under the care of a nurse. It was there Ralph and Ruth found her on the afternoon in question.

She looked up with a start when Ralph stopped at the foot of her bed, then, with a glad cry, she reached out her wasted arms to him. He was by her side in a moment, with his arms about her neck, and for several minutes they rocked themselves to and fro in silence.

Ruth came up on the other side and sat down on a wooden chair, and for awhile her presence was forgotten.

"My dear, darling old mother!" Ralph said, as soon as he had recovered himself sufficiently to speak. "I did not think it would have come to this."

She made no reply, but continued to rock herself to and fro.

He drew himself away after a while and took her thin, wrinkled hands in his.

"You must get better now as soon as ever you can," he said, trying to speak cheerfully, though every word threatened to choke him.

She shook her head slowly and smiled.

"When we get you back to St. Goram," he went on, "you'll soon pick up your strength again, for it is only strength you need."

She turned her head and looked up into his face and smiled pathetically.

"If it is God's will that I should get strong again I shall not complain," she answered, "but I would rather go Home now I am so near."

"Oh no, we cannot spare you yet," he replied quickly; and he gulped down a big lump that had risen in his throat. "I'm going to work in real earnest and build a new home. I've lots of plans for the future."

"My poor boy," she said gently, and she tapped the back of his hand with the tips of her wasted fingers, "even if your plans succeed, life will be a hard road still."

"Yes, yes, I know that, mother. But to have someone to live for and care for will make it easier." And he bent his head and kissed her.

"God alone can tell that, my boy," she said wistfully. "But oh, you've been a long time coming to me."

"I wonder if it has seemed so long to you as to me?" he questioned.

"But why did they not release you sooner?" she asked. "Oh, it seems months ago since they told me that Jim Brewer had confessed."

"Can anybody tell why stupid officialism ever does anything at all?" he questioned. "Liberty is a goddess bound, and justice is fettered and cannot run."

"I know nothing about that," she answered slowly, "but it seemed an easy thing to set you free when your innocence had been proved."

"No, mother; nothing is easy when you are caught in the blind and blundering toils of the law."

"But what is the law for, my boy?"

He laughed softly and yet bitterly.

"Chiefly, it seems," he said, "to find work for lawyers; and, secondly, to protect the interests of those who are rich enough to pay for it."

"Oh, my boy, the bitterness of the wrong abides with you still, but God will make all things right by and by."

"Some things can never be made right, mother; but let us not talk of that now. I want you to get better fast, and think of all the good times we shall have when we get a little home of our own once more."

"Your father will not be there," she answered sadly; "and I want to be with him."

"But you should think of us also, mother," he said, with a shake in his voice.

"I do – I do," she answered feebly and listlessly. "I have thought of you night and day, and have never ceased to pray for you since I came here. But you can do without me now."

"No, no. Don't say that!" he pleaded.

"I should have feared to leave you once," she answered; "but not now."

"Why not now?" he questioned.

"Ah, Ralph, my boy" – and she smoothed the back of his hand slowly and gently – "you will never forget your father and the good name he bore. That name is your inheritance. It is better than money – better than houses and lands. He was one of the good men of the world – not great, nor successful, nor even wise, as the world counts wisdom. But no shadow of wrong, Ralph, ever stained his life. He walked with God. You will think of this, my son, in the days that are to come. And if ever you should be tempted to sin, the memory of your father will be like an anchor to you. You will say to yourself, 'He bore unstained for nearly sixty years the white flag of a blameless life, and I dare not lower it now into the dust.'"

"God help me, mother!" he choked.

"God will help you, my boy. As He stood by your father and has comforted me, so will He be your strength and defence. You and Ruth will fight all the better for not having the burden of my presence."

"Mother, mother, how can you say so?" Ruth interposed, with streaming eyes.

"I may be permitted to watch you from the hills of that Better Country," she went on, "I and your father. But in any case, God will watch over you."

This was her benediction. They went away at length, sadly and silently, but not till they reached the outer air did either of them speak. It was Ruth who broke the silence.

"She will never get better, Ralph."

"Oh, nonsense, sis. She is overcome to-day, but she will pick up again to-morrow."

"She has been gradually failing ever since we left Hillside, and she has never recovered any ground she lost."

"But the spring is coming, and once we have got her out of that dismal and depressing place, her strength will come back."

But Ruth shook her head.

"I don't want to discourage you," she said, "but I have watched the gradual loosening of her hold upon life. Her heart is in heaven, Ralph, that is the secret of it. She is longing to be with father again."

They walked on in silence till they reached Mr. Varcoe's house, then Ralph spoke again.

"We must get mother out of the workhouse, and at once, whatever happens," he said.

"How?" she asked.

"I don't know yet. But think of it, if she should die in the workhouse."

"She has lived in it," Ruth answered.

"Yes, yes; but the disgrace of it if she should end her days there."

"If there is any disgrace in poverty, we have suffered it to the full," Ruth answered. "Nothing that can happen now can add to it."

For a moment he stood silent. Then he kissed her and walked away.

He found William Menire waiting for him at the street corner, a few yards from the Star and Garter.

"I haven't harnessed up yet," he said. "I thought perhaps you might like a cup of tea or a chop before we returned. Your sister, I presume, has gone back to her – to her place?"

"Yes, I saw her home before I came on here."

William sighed and waited for instructions. He was willing to be servant to Ralph for Ruth's sake.

"I should like a cup of tea, if you don't mind," Ralph said at length, and he coloured painfully as he spoke. He was living on charity, and the sting of it made all his nerves tingle.

"There's a confectioner's round the corner where they make capital tea," William said cheerfully. And he led the way with long strides.

The moon was up when they started on their homeward journey, and the air was keen and frosty. Neither of them talked much. To Ralph the day seemed like a long and more or less incoherent dream. He had dressed that morning in the dim light of a prison cell – it seemed like a week ago. He felt at times as though he had dreamed all the rest.

William was dreaming of Ruth, and so did not disturb his companion. The horse needed no whip, he seemed the most eager of the three to get home. The fields lay white and silent in the moonlight. The bare trees flung ghostly shadows across the road. The stars twinkled faintly in the far-off depths of space, now and then a dove cooed drowsily in a neighbouring wood.

At length the tower of St. Goram Church loomed massively over the brow of the hill, and a little later William pulled up with a jerk at his own shop door.

Mrs. Menire had provided supper for them. Ralph ate sparingly, and with many pauses. This was not home. He was a stranger in a stranger's house, living on charity. That thought stung him constantly and spoiled his appetite.

He tried to sleep when he got to bed, but the angel was long in coming. His thoughts were too full of other things. The fate of his mother worried him most. How to get her out of the workhouse and find an asylum for her somewhere else was a problem he could not solve. He had been promised work at St. Ivel Mine before his arrest, and he had no doubt that he would still be able to obtain employment there. But no wages would be paid him till the end of the month, and even then it would all be mortgaged for food and clothes.

He slept late next morning, for William had given orders that he was not to be disturbed. He came downstairs feeling a little ashamed of himself. If this was his new start in life, it was anything but an energetic beginning.

William was on the look-out for him, and fetched the bacon and eggs from the kitchen himself.

"We've had our breakfast," he explained. "You won't mind, I hope. We knew you'd be very tired, so we kept the house quiet. I hope you've had a good night, and are feeling all the better. Now I must leave you. We're busy getting out the country orders. You can help yourself, I know." And he disappeared through the frosted glass door into the shop.

He came back half an hour later, just as Ralph was finishing his breakfast, with a telegram in his hand.

"I hope there ain't no bad news," he said, handing Ralph the brick-coloured envelope.

Ralph tore it open in a moment, and his face grew ashen.

He did not speak for several seconds, but continued to stare with unblinking eyes at the pencilled words.

"Is it bad news?" William questioned at length, unable to restrain his curiosity and his anxiety any longer.

Ralph raised his eyes and looked at him.

"Mother's dead," he answered, in a whisper; and then the telegram slipped from his fingers and fluttered to the floor.

William picked it up and read it.

"Your mother found dead in bed. Send instructions re disposal of remains."

"They might have worded the message a little less brutally," William said at length.

"Officialism is nothing if not brutal," Ralph said bitterly.

Then the two men looked at each other in silence. William had little difficulty in guessing what was passing through Ralph's mind.

"If I were in his place," he reflected, "what should I be thinking? Should I like my mother to be put into a parish coffin and buried in a pauper's grave?"

William spoke at length.

"You'd like your mother and father to sleep together?" he questioned.

Ralph's lips trembled, but he did not speak.

"The world's been terribly rough on you," William went on, "but you'll come into your own maybe by and by."

"I shall never get father and mother back again," Ralph answered chokingly.

"We oughtn't to want them back again," William said; "they're better off."

"I wish I was better off in the same way," Ralph answered, with a rush of tears to his eyes.

"She held on, you see, till you came back to her," William said, after a long pause; "then, when she got her heart's desire, she let go."

"Dear old mother!"

"And now that she's asleep, you'll want her to rest with your father."

"But I've no money."

"I'll be your banker as long as you like. Charge you interest on the money, if you'll feel easier in your mind. Only don't let the money question trouble you just now."

Ralph grasped William's hand in silence. Of all the people he had known in St. Goram, this comparative stranger was his truest friend and neighbour.

So it came to pass that Mary Penlogan had such a funeral as she herself would have chosen, and in the grave of her husband her children laid her to rest. People came from far and near to pay their last tribute of respect. Even Sir John Hamblyn sent his steward to represent him. He was too conscience-stricken to come himself.

And when the grave had been filled in, the crowd still lingered and talked to each other of the brave and patient souls whose only legacy to their children was the heritage of an untarnished name.

CHAPTER XXII

A FRESH START

Some people said it was a stroke of good luck, others that it was an exhibition of native genius, others still that it was the result of having a good education, and a few that it was just a dispensation of Providence, and nothing else. But whether luck or genius, Providence or education, all were agreed that Ralph Penlogan had struck a vein which, barring accidents, would lead him on to fortune.

For six months he had worked on the "floors" of St. Ivel Mine, and earned fourteen shillings a week thereat; but as a friendly miner and his wife boarded and lodged him for eight shillings a week, he did not do badly. His savings, if not large, were regular. Most months he laid by a pound, and felt that he had taken the first step on the road to independence, if not to fortune.