CHAPTER III.

"THIS IS THE RAT THAT ATE THE MALT."

ON leaving his brother's room, Ratcliffe groped his way out of the house by the back door that led into the yard. He carefully locked it behind him, and was about to jump over the gate into the road, when the moon came suddenly from behind a cloud and shone full upon the yard and upon him. Like a guilty thing he shrank from the light, and had already placed one hand upon the top of the gate, when his eye was arrested by a small dark object that lay on the dust-heap in a corner. He made a step forward and picked it up; it was a book. This was all he saw, for the fickle moon retreated again behind the clouds, and all was dark once more, excepting for the flickering light of the lamp farther down the street.

Lightly he sprang over the gate, and, book in hand, made his way into the main road. A sharp walk of half an hour brought him into a side street, and at length to the door of a shabby cottage. He paused here and knocked. The door was instantly opened, and he entered.

"Ah, Nan, here I am, you see!" said the young man, trying to look careless and unconcerned, as he flung himself down into a seat.

But his wife's clear eyes were searchingly, questioningly fixed upon him, and, moving uneasily beneath their gaze, he said at last, "No, my girl; no good! I got in easily enough, thanks to my key and to my knowledge of the sliding panel and inside bolt, but Tom is as hard as a millstone, and won't say a good word for me to father, or help me properly himself. There's no help for it, my poor Nan, we're adrift, sure enough; and there's father and Tom as rich as anything, and won't stretch a hand to help us."

Ratcliffe paused, and looked again at his wife. Her young fair face was turned from him now, turned towards the corner of the room where stood a small trundle bed; and, following her eyes, his own rested on the tiny golden head of his child and hers.

The sight of the little one seemed to rouse him to fresh passion, and he exclaimed,—

"Nan, I went there to-night feeling humbled and sorry. I don't mind telling you this, because you've loved me and been patient with me—but I've come back a worse man than I went, for I believe I've turned as hard as Tom himself. And now I'll go no more to ask him for anything, but I know of something that shall keep us from starving, spite of father and Tom." And the young man's face darkened with a menacing scowl that made his wife shudder as she looked at him.

"Don't go and do anything wicked, dear," she said, gently; "better starve, or go into the workhouse, than commit sin. I wish, Ratcliffe, that you hadn't the burden of me and the child, and then you'd do well enough. I wish I had not let my heart tempt me into marrying you—you'd have been better off." And Nan stole to her husband's side, and softly passed an arm round his neck, pressing her smooth cheek to his.

At another time this loving caress would have touched and soothed him, but now, in his fierce mood, he hardly noticed it. Without a word he sprang up, and crushing his old cap again over his brows, he went out.

Nan looked after him in fear and wonder; then she stooped and picked up the book which he had held mechanically, and had dropped when he rose.

"What can this be?" she said to herself. "Why, how strange! It is a Bible. Where could Ratcliffe have found it?"

Drawing a chair to the table, she opened the book, glancing over some of the pages. They were discoloured and defaced, but most of the print was still legible. On the fly-leaf were the initials E. D., and underneath was written the text, "For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost."

As she turned the leaves, her attention was caught by many underlined passages, some of which had been favourite ones of her own, and gradually the familiar words recalled old associations, and she found herself going back in thought to the events of the last few years.

"I wonder what my old priest-uncle would say," she mused, "if he saw me reading this. How angry he was at the idea of my marrying a Protestant. And I remember it was not until I assured him that I did not think Ratcliffe had much religion of any kind that he half consented to my having him. He did not know that at heart I was more than half a Protestant long before Ratcliffe came to court me."

And then there came vividly back to Nancy's recollections, how it was that she had first begun to doubt the faith in which she had been brought up. She remembered walking along the street one Sunday afternoon, and at the corner there was an open-air service going on. As she passed, the preacher was just closing his address, and Nancy, stopping for a moment to listen, had caught the following words:—

"Dear friends, dear fellow-sinners and fellow-sufferers, ye whose hearts are aching with their burden of guilt; ye the darkness of whose souls may be felt, so deep is it; ye whose doubts are honest, and whose helpless hands are ever reaching through the night and striving to grasp at truth, here is a rest for the burdened, a light for the darkened, a solving of all doubt, truth ready to be embraced; for all these are in my text, 'Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.'"

This had set the young girl thinking, and carefully studying a Bible which she bought for the purpose; and, though she said nothing to her uncle, she began to have a new faith and a new hope. Then Ratcliffe had come, and in spite of his wild ways she could not help loving him.

"Ah," sighed she now, as she laid the book down on the table, and began to turn her wedding-ring round and round her finger, "it was not surprising that uncle disapproved of the match, for he is such a staunch Romanist, and so, he says, were my parents; and also, he did not like my marrying into a family of which he knew so little. I remember we had been married some time before Ratcliffe told me that his relatives must not know of his altered circumstances. No wonder uncle was offended then; the idea that his niece was married to a man who would not acknowledge her to his own friends hurt his feelings, and I could not be surprised that he ceased writing to us, and that a coolness sprang up between him and Ratcliffe. And yet all my husband's relations were not quite strangers, for I recollect long ago meeting Tom Drinkrow in my cousin's house near London. It seemed to me at the time as if he rather wanted to make me like him; but one look at that cold, hard face was enough for me, and I soon showed him what I thought. What an age it seems since all this happened, yet it isn't quite four years ago.

"Poor uncle! He had very little satisfaction in either of his nieces, for Sister Susie married a sailor, and left the neighbourhood soon after I came to settle here. She wrote me that he had pretended to be a Roman Catholic just to get her, knowing that uncle would never have allowed his favourite niece to marry him otherwise. He had lived among Romanists in several countries, and knew their ways and the outward forms of their religion, or he could not have deceived uncle as he did. Poor Susie! She died soon after her baby's birth, and the little one only lived a week or two longer. As for her husband—Frank, as we used to call him—I suppose he went back to sea; strange I have never heard of him since: Only four years ago, yet how much has happened since then!" And Nancy glanced round the room till her eye rested on the crib where her child was lying.

She was still living over the past when her husband returned. His passion had given place to a deep sullenness, and he did not explain why he had gone out, or answer a single question that Nan put to him.

He only said in a surly tone, wholly different from that in which he usually addressed her, "Stop chattering, Nan, and get to bed. If you're not tired, I am."

And Nancy obediently did as she was told. She did not soon fall asleep, however; long after Ratcliffe was breathing heavily at her side, she was broad awake, and thinking sadly over the troubles of which their lot was full, and trying to find a way out of them.

At last, however, she was just dropping off into sleep, the tears yet wet on her cheeks, when her husband, turning uneasily in his feverish slumber, muttered with a groan, but in the strange unconscious voice of the sleep-talker, "Hist, don't tell her! Don't tell Nan; she'd never forgive me. But there; I can't see her starve for want of the gold—gold! Oh, those bags! So heavy; dragging me lower, lower still. No, they're not; gold's never too heavy; yes, they are; curse them! I'm going down, down, down to perdition. Save, oh save me!" And the young man awoke with a start and smothered cry, to find his wife's tender face bent over him in fear and anxiety.

"Nothing but a dream, my girl; nothing in the world but a dream!" said he. "Don't be afraid; I shall sleep quieter now."

Nan saw very little of her husband during the next few days, and what she saw caused her a strange, undefined uneasiness. On the evening of the fifth day he went out, saying, as he was about to close the door behind him, "Don't sit up for me, Nan; I've a little bit of business that may keep me late. Go to bed, and I'll let myself in with the key."

"Won't you tell me where you're going?" cried Nancy. "Ratcliffe, dear, do stay one moment and answer me."

But her words did not reach her husband's ear, for he was already gone, and the door was shut between them.

There was no sleep for the wife that night; her heart was full of foreboding fear. It was about three o'clock in the morning when she heard Ratcliffe's step outside the door, and the key turned in the lock.

Springing up at once, she struck a light which flashed full in the young man's face. It was deathly pale, and full of a ghastly expression of blended mental and physical pain.

"I've been in a bit of a row, Nan," he stammered, as he sank into a chair; "and I got a blow and a fall which hurt me a little, and I think I must have broken a blood-vessel, for I've thrown up a lot of blood. Don't look so frightened, child; I'm better now. I'll keep quiet for a day or two, and then I shall be all right." And he smiled a dreadful smile, a conscious, guilty, hopeless kind of smile, which struck terror to the heart of his poor wife.

"For God's sake, my darling," she cried, "tell me where you have been, and what you have done this night! No matter what it is, do tell me." And Nan threw her arms round her husband's neck and clung to him as though her embrace must bring to her a knowledge of the truth.

But he put her away, not roughly, but decidedly, saying, "I am very tired and faint, Nan, and I haven't the strength to talk. Help me to undress and get to bed."

So Nan obeyed without another word, and then lay down herself, her heart heavier than ever, and finding no outlet for its grief save in the plaintive cry of the Psalmist of old, "O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me."

Ah, loving heart of God! Did ever a child of Thine cry to Thee in affliction and pain, and receive no help and comfort? Never, oh never! Blessed be Thy Holy Name!