The Shadow of a Crime | Page 8

mind was really giving way. His staring eyes, his unconscious, preoccupied manner as he tramped to and fro in his little work-room, sitting at intervals, rising again and resuming his perambulations, now gathering up his tools and now opening them out afresh, talking meantime in fitful outbursts, sometimes wholly irrelevantly and occasionally with a startling pertinency,--all this, though no more than an excess of his customary habit, seemed to denote a mind unstrung. The landlord had called that morning for his rent, which was long in arrears. He must have it. Sim laughed when he told Ralph this, but it was a shocking laugh; there was no heart in it. Ralph would rather have heard him whimper and shuffle as he had done before.
"You shall not be homeless, Sim, if the worst comes to the worst," he said.
"Homeless, not I!" and the little man laughed again. Ralph felt unease. This change was not for the better. Rotha had been sitting at the window to catch the last glimmer of daylight as she spun. It was dusk, but not yet too dark for Ralph to see the tears standing in her eyes. Presently she rose and went out of the room.
"Never fear that I shall be clemm'd," said Sim. "No, no," he said, with a grin of satisfied assurance.
"God forbid!" said Ralph, "but things should be better soon. This is the back end, you know."
"Aye," answered the tailor, with a shrug that resembled a shiver.
"And they say," continued Ralph, "the back end is always the bare end."
"And they say, too," said Sim, "change is leetsome, if it's only out of bed into the beck!"
The tailor laughed loud, and then stopped himself with a suddenness quite startling. The jest sounded awful on his lips. "You say the back end's the bare end," he said, coming up to where Ralph sat in pain and amazement; "mine's all bare end. It's nothing but 'bare end' for some of us. Yesterday morning was wet and cold--you know how cold it was. Well, Rotha had hardly gone out when a tap came to the door, and what do you think it was? A woman, a woman thin and blear-eyed. Some one must have counted her face bonnie once. She was scarce older than my own lass, but she'd a poor weak barn at her breast and a wee lad that trudged at her side. She was wet and cold, and asked for rest and shelter for herself and the children-rest and shelter," repeated the tailor in a lower tone, as though muttering to himself,--"rest and shelter, and from me."
"Well?" inquired Ralph, not noticing Sim's self-reference.
"Well?" echoed Sim, as though Ralph should have divined the sequel.
"Had the poor creature been turned out of her home?"
"That and worse," said the little tailor, his frame quivering with emotion. "Do you know the king's come by his own again?" Sim was speaking in an accent of the bitterest mockery.
"Worse luck," said Ralph; "but what of that?"
"Why," said Sim, almost screaming, "that every man in the land who fought for the Commonwealth eight years ago is like to be shot as a traitor. Didn't you know that, my lad?" And the little man put his hands with a feverish clutch on Ralph's shoulders, and looked into his face.
For an instant there was a tremor on the young dalesman's features, but it lasted only long enough for Sim to recognize it, and then the old firmness returned.
"But what of the poor woman and her barns?" Ralph said, quietly.
"Her husband, an old Roundhead, had fled from a warrant for his arrest. She had been cast homeless into the road, she and all her household; her aged mother had died of exposure the first bitter night, and now for two long weeks she had walked on and on--on and on--her children with her--on and on--living Heaven knows how!"
A light now seemed to Ralph to be cast on the great change in his friend; but was it indeed fear for his (Ralph's) well-being that had goaded poor Sim to a despair so near allied to madness?
"What about Wilson?" he asked, after a pause.
The tailor started at the name.
"I don't know--I don't know at all," he answered, as though eager to assert the truth of a statement never called into dispute.
"Does he intend to come back to Fornside to-night, Sim?"
"So he said."
"What, think you, is his work at Gaskarth?"
"I don't know--I know nothing--at least--no, nothing."
Ralph was sure now. Sim was too eager to disclaim all knowledge of his lodger's doings. He would not recognize the connection between the former and present subjects of conversation.
The night had gathered in, and the room was dark except for the glimmer of a little fire on the open hearth. The young dalesman looked long into it: his breast heaved with