CHAPTER XXVIII.

FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

And so as the shadows fled away, and breaking day cast its pale gleams across the face of the dead conspirator, Ruth drew the panel back into its place; for down in the malting-yard she could hear the voices of the men getting to their work, and she turned away, making an effort to collect her thoughts.

It was no easy task; and she was still far from having achieved it when she was roused by the apparition of Maudlin Sweetapple's head through the tapestry.

"Marry come up! Dressed a'ready!" cried the old woman grumblingly. "We shall be havin' thee astir in the middle o' the night next! That comes o' the maaster sendin' o' thee off to bed at sundown, like he's bin so fond o' doin' o' late. Oh, ay! they may say what pleases 'em," continued Maudlin, searchingly scanning Ruth's face in the young yellow sunshine; "but I say it don't agree with thee, child. Thy cheeks are as white as turnips; an' thy face as gastered as if thou'dst bin seein' of spirits. And--for the gracious power's sake!" she shrieked in terror as a rattling at the locks of the opposite door suddenly made itself audible, "what's that? Master Rumbold, as I'm a livin' soul! And me--"

[Sidenote: Rumbold home again.]

The rest was lost in the privacy of her own apartment, into which Maudlin speedily withdrew her benightcapped head.

"I may come in, Ruth?" said the maltster, as he pushed open the door, and paused for an instant on its threshold for her reply, casting, as he did so, one swift keen glance round the room. "I was upon the drawbridge and saw you opening the window. Up and dressed earlier than usual; is it not so?"

"Is it, father?" said Ruth mechanically.

"Ay, is it, is it," he rejoined in impatient tones. "Have you and your pillow quarrelled, that you are so soon astir?" he went on. "Come, can you not answer me?"

"I could not sleep, father," faltered she.

"And why not, mistress?" he demanded with the uneasy twitch of his lips which sometimes did duty with him for a smile. "Were the rats more troublesome than usual? A plague on the vermin for eating my malt till I shall be ruined; and vexing thy rest."

But Ruth only shook her head.

"Why, what then?" he insisted. "Was perhaps the White Woman walking? Ah! for shame, child, on thy foolish fancies!"

"Alack! father, 'twas no fancy," answered she. "It was no White Woman's spirit that haunted yonder room last night; but the black one of an evil, wicked-hearted man."

"Psha!" said Rumbold with an uneasy laugh. "Let us have done with riddles. I understand you now. You heard me and my boys--" He stopped with a confused, shamefaced smile. "That is what the foolish fellows, you know, love to call themselves. You heard, belike, I say, me and my friends--"

"Friends, father!" reproachfully interrupted she.

[Sidenote: An anxious question.]

A deep flush suffused Rumbold's face, but his tones of assumed careless indifference changed. "How now, mistress?" he demanded with sternly knitted brows. "Was it needful to be craving your leave for them to pay a little visit to the Warder's Room to--to inspect its pictures, and--and--its old oak chest, and--and--what not?" rather lamely concluded Rumbold, darting at the same time a keen sideways glance at her. "But let me tell you, Ruth, I like not these would-be prying ways of yours. 'Tis fortunate that these walls"--and he glanced with infinite satisfaction round the solid-looking wainscot--"were not made in to-day's gimcrack fashion, for the entertainment of every eaves-dropper who pleases to be lending his idle ear to--to concerns that are too high for him. You did hear nothing?" he added with ill-concealed anxiety after a moment's pause.

"Father--dearest, do you love me?" was all her answer. "In truth, do you love me?"

"Ay, ay. What a strange girl you are, Ruth! I love you dearer than life, little one;" and he drew her towards him, and laid her head down gently on his breast. "Far, far dearer than life. But hark you," and then all the wistful tenderness died out of his voice, "that says not that I love your faults. Among which I find this prying, curious habit--that accursed inheritance of which our poor unhappy mother Eve has bequeathed her daughters so large a share of."

"But, father--dearest--"

"Ay. Then let me see thee thy father's child. Seek truth and righteousness as he has always done; and put off,--as some one put off certain mountebank pink petticoats we wot of--eh, little Ruth?--the pride of life, and the lust of the eye and the ear; for these are but part and parcel all of things that lead to the soul's destruction; feeding vain imagination and empty fancy--"

"Father! father!" interrupted Ruth, wildly, "I would it were fancy, or that my poor silly imagination were to blame. But 'tis truth and fact indeed. See here!" and dragging him before the panel, she pushed it open with hasty trembling hands. "See what these--friends of yours have done!"

"Sheriff Goodenough!" cried Rumbold, recoiling in horror-struck amazement! "Dead?"

[Sidenote: Murdered!]

"Murdered--look. There is blood upon his hands."

"Who has done this? Who?--"

"Colonel Rumsey."

"The villain!" muttered Rumbold, grinding his teeth. "I knew," he went on meditatively, knitting his brows, "that their hearts were not at peace with one another. How came we to be so ill-advised as to leave them alone together?--Yet to dream of its coming to this! And how--" Then he paused. What need to ask how she had come by her information? The broken panel explained all. "What brought it about?" he said after another silence. "They came to high words?"

Ruth nodded.

"Concerning?--"

"The murder of the king."

"Master Goodenough being opposed to it?"

"And Master Rumsey," nodded Ruth, "all for striking him down--unawares--like he has poor Master Goodenough himself."

[Sidenote: Honour among conspirators.]

"Ay," said Rumbold, "I guessed as much; though he breathed no word of it. I suspected it, I say, to be in his thoughts. Heaven forgive him! I think now, he would not have hesitated at putting poison in--a man's food, be he Charles Stuart, or any other--or stabbing him in his sleep, so only that he might gain his end."

"But you, father, you?" almost joyfully cried Ruth.

"Nay, we are not assassins. I and my--friends. And this scum of the earth, Richard Rumsey was not fit to consort with men of honour like us--we looked, Walcot and the rest of us, we looked indeed to be the slayers, if heaven blessed our project, or the slain, and it saw fit. A fair fight, front to front--"

"Fair!" cried Ruth, "Fair? In that narrow by-way? Where the coach could not pass for the overturned cart!"

Rumbold frowned. "You have it all, seemingly, at your fingers' ends, mistress," he said, "and 'tis useless to dissemble with you; or to reason over nice and just distinctions with obstinate young maids' brains. Enough! See only that you make a discreet use of your indiscretion. Keep a silent tongue in your head. Do you hear me, mistress? Or by--"

"Father! father! kill me. Do with me what you will," cried Ruth, throwing herself at his feet. "By this time the king knows all!"

"Girl!" and in his fury he turned pale as the dead man beside him, and seized her by both wrists. "How? By what means? Who? This is Lawrence Lee's handiwork? Speak."

Her lips moved, but she made no answer.

[Sidenote: The looming gallows.]

"Betrayed!" he wailed forth in a paroxysm of impotent fury, "and brought to naught! Destroyed like any wind-bag. All our holy work--our sacred compact. By the machinations of a frivolous girl, and a love-sick Don Quixote of a boy! Oh, Ruth, Ruth! Little Ruth, was he indeed more to you than your father--and your very faith? Ay, but 'tis so--'tis so. What have you done? And is it nothing to you neither, that this brave night's work of your's must see me swing for it on Tyburn tree?"

"Father! father! No, no," shuddered Ruth. "There is time--time yet to escape."

"Ho! Is there so?" cried he with a grating bitter laugh. "I protest now, my daughter, you are really too tender and dutiful. Time is there? Time for me to play the poltroon's part, and make a byword and a scorn of myself while the world lasts! No, let them take me here. And yet--"

[Sidenote: A father lost.]

He paused, and his hold on Ruth's arms relaxed, so that she slowly fell away from him, while he stood sternly gazing into the chilly morning haze as though he saw in it some prophetic vision. "And yet," he murmured, "to be hunted down so. To let myself be trapped like vermin--when still I may be preserved, for an instrument to crush out the superstition and the tyranny of these evil days that darken more and more--"

"Father! father!" implored Ruth. "Quick! By the vaults. Before it is too late!"

"Yes," he went on, letting his keen glance drop on her for a moment, and then fixing it again like some prophetic seer, on empty space. "So it shall be. And my voice shall yet once more be uplifted to cry: Woe! woe! to the doers of wickedness in high places. Yes, I will live. I will live! I will stoop, even to the very dust beneath my feet--to conquer. I will live--and if every hair of my head were a man, I would venture them all in this quarrel."

Then he turned, and looked towards the door.

"Father!" cried Ruth, dashing aside the tangle of hair all fallen about her face, and clinging to him with agonized clutch. "Father! one kiss--one word--one little word before you go!" But his face was turned stonily upon the door.

"Father!"

[Sidenote: Alone!]

Then he was gone, leaving her stretched where at last he wrenched himself free of her clinging agonized hands, prone and senseless upon the threshold.