behind. Jonas looked after him, and shook his head.
"I nobbut once see'd drink so leave a chap all i' a minute," he said,
"an' it takes a bigger shock nor sich a young 'un as yond hes
shoulder-width to stand. There's ill days i' store for th' lad, I sadly
fear."
At the stroke of twelve, the Sexton's wife came down the belfry steps.
Her right foot was numb with tolling the bell, and her fingers ached
with the knitting; yet she had no thought of such matters as she stepped
out into the moonlit burial place, for she was wondering how Nell Wayne
had fared at Wildwater.
"Her father's lass--ay, ivery bone of her," she muttered. "Hes she
killed him by now--hes she struck----"
The sound of a cradle-song, chanted in a sweet, low voice, came from
above. The little old woman stopped her mumbling, and shuffled up the
path, and came to where Mistress Wayne sat, with her lover's head on her
lap and one baby hand pressed close against his breast.
Nanny touched her on the shoulder. "A death for a death," said she;
"yet, not with all your tears to help, will Dick Ratcliffe be a fit
exchange for th' Maister. 'Twill need a score sich as him, or ye, to
pay th' price."
"He is sleeping. Hush! You will waken him, and 'tis early yet to start
for Saxilton," said Mistress Wayne, lifting her childish face.
The little old woman quailed, and crossed herself, as she saw the light
in the other's eyes. "She's fairy-kist! God save us," she muttered, as
she hobbled down the path.
*CHAPTER III*
*THE LEAN MAN OF WILDWATER*
The Sexton's wife was afraid of no man that stepped; but ghosts, and
fairies, and the mad folk who shared communion with the spirits, touched
a bare nerve of dread. And so she stopped midway down the graveyard
path, and turned, and went back to where Mistress Wayne was cowering
above her lover's body. It was not that the Sexton's wife had any wish
to help this woman, who had smirched the honour of the Waynes, but that
she feared the disaster which refusal of such help might bring.
"She's fairy-kist," she muttered for the twentieth time, looking down at
the frail figure. "God or the devil looks to such, they say an' I mun
do th' best for her, I reckon."
"Ay, 'tis cold, 'tis bitter cold, and Dick will surely never come," said
Mistress Wayne, getting to her feet and glancing fearfully across the
kirkyard.
"Not to-night, Mistress. Ye'd best wend home wi' me, an' search for him
to-morn," put in the Sexton's wife.
Mistress Wayne did not answer for awhile; she was watching the moonlight
glance freakish, cold and wan, from out the purple-yellow of the
clouds--was listening to the curlew-wail that thrilled across the stark,
dim moor. And, slowly, as she stood there, the closed door of her mind
seemed to swing back a little, letting the sense of outward things creep
in. It was a dream, then, that Dick was coming to take her safe into
shelter of the valleys; this was the moor that closed her in--the moor,
whose face had frightened her, whose storms had chilled her to the bone,
through all the brief months of her wedlock with Wayne of Marsh. She
gazed and gazed into the moon-dusk, with still face and rounded,
panic-stricken eyes; and from the dusk strange shapes stole out and
mouthed at her.
This for a long moment--and then she ran like a scared child to the
little old woman's arms, and hid her face, and entreated protection from
that wilderness which had grown a live, malignant presence to her.
"Give me house-walls about me--give me light, and warmth--Mary Mother,
hark how the night-birds wail, and scream, and mock me," she cried, with
sobs between each panting plea.
The Sexton's wife, not understanding how any one should fear the moor to
which she had lived bedfellow these five-and-sixty years, was yet quick
to snatch the opportunity. It would never do to leave this witless body
to the night-rain and the cold, and who knew how soon she might fall
again upon her lover's body and again refuse to quit the spot?
"Come wi' me," she muttered, putting an arm about Mistress Wayne and
hurrying her across the gravestones.
"Where wilt take me?" cried the other, half halting on the sudden.
"Not--not to Marsh House, where Wayne lies and haunts me with that still
look of reproach?"
"Not to Marsh, Mistress--nay, not to Marsh. See ye, 'tis but a step,
and there'll be a handful o' fire for ye--an' walls to keep th' cold
out----"
"Then, we'll hurry, will we not? Quick, quick! The shadows are
laughing at us--and the owl on the church steeple yonder hoots loud in
mockery. Oh, let us hurry, hurry!"
"Well, then, we're here. Whisht, Mistress, for there's naught ye need
to fear," cried Nanny, halting at the door of the cottage which stood
just across the road.
The Sexton, Luke Witherlee, was smoking his pipe in the ingle-nook and
hugging the last embers of the peat-fire. A thin, small-bodied man,
with parchment cheeks, crow's-footed, and a weakish mouth, and eyes that
were oddly compact of fire and dreaminess. He glanced up as the
goodwife entered, and let his pipe fall on the hearthstone when he saw
what manner of guest she had brought back with her.
"Nay, Luke, muffle thy tongue, an' axe no questions," said Nanny, in a
tone that showed who was master of the Sexton's household. "This poor
body wants a lodging, an' so we mun lie hard, me an' thee, for this one
neet. What, ye're minded to make friends, are ye, Mistress?" she broke
off, surprised to see her guest, after a doubtful glance at Witherlee,
go up to him and lay her slim hand in his own earth-crusted palm.
"An' welcome to ye, Mistress," said the Sexton quietly. "We've nowt so
mich to gi'e--but sich as 'tis, 'tis yourn."
Mistress Wayne forgot her terror now that the stout walls of the cottage
shut out the whimpering goblins of the moor. She sat her down by the
Sexton's side, and looked into his face, and saw a something
there--something friendly, quiet and tender--which soothed her mood.
And he, for his part, seemed full at home with her, though he fought shy
at most times of the gently-born.
"Good-hap," muttered Nanny, "to think there should be fellowship 'twixt
Witherlee and her! Well, I allus did say Witherlee war ower full o'
dreams to be a proper man, an' happen they understand one t' other,
being both on th' edge o' t' other world, i' a way o' speaking."
Nanny stood open-mouthed awhile, regarding the strange pair; then
hobbled to the three-cornered cupboard that stood in the far corner of
the kitchen, and reached down cheese and butter and a loaf of oaten
bread. To and fro she went, restless and alert as when she sat in the
belfry-tower and sent Wayne's death-dirge shuddering out across the
moor. Mistress Wayne was talking with the Sexton now--childish talk,
that simmed the old man's eyes a little--and Nanny as she went from
cupboard to table and back again, laying the rude supper, kept glancing
at them with a wonderment that was half disdain.
"Will ye be pleased to sup, Mistress," she said, when all was ready.
"Th' fare is like yond moor that frights ye so, rough and wholesome; but
I doubt ye're sadly faint for lack o' belly-timber, and poor meat is
better nor none at all, they say."
Mistress Wayne shook her head, with a bairn's impatience, and tightened
her hold of the Sexton's hand. "I'm not hungry, I thank thee--not
hungry at all," she murmured.
But Nanny would take no denial, and at length she coaxed her visitor to
break her fast.
"That's likelier," growled the little old woman, as she threw fresh
peats on the fire. "Victuals is a rare stay-by when sorrow's to be met.
Now, Mistress, warm yourseln a bit, an' then I'll see ye safe between
sheets."
The peat-warmth, following her long exposure to the wind, set Mistress
Wayne a-nodding; and the Sexton, seeing how closely sleep had bound her
in his web, took her in his arms with a strength of gentleness that was
all his own, and carried her to the bed-chamber above, and left her safe
in Nanny's care.
"She slumbers like a year-old babby," said Nanny, coming down again, by
and by.
"Oh, ay? Well, she looked fair worn out ai' weariness. What ails her?"
answered Witherlee, filling his pipe afresh and watching Nanny's shadow
go creeping up the wall as she stepped in front of the rushlight burning
on the table.
"Tha's heard nowt, I'm thinking, o' what chanced i' th' kirkyard?"
"Nay, I've heard nowt. I've been dozing, like, by th' ingle, an' niver
a sound I heard save th' death-bell tha wen ringing for Wayne o' Marsh.
Ay, it seemed i' tune wi' my thowts, did th' bell, for I war thinking o'
th' owd feud 'twixt Wayne an' Ratcliffe. 'Tis mony a year sin' that war
staunched, lass, but I can see 'em fight fair as if 'twere yesterday."
"Trust thee to doze! I wonder whiles what thou hast to show for
thyseln, Luke Witherlee, that I do, while th' wife is ringing her arm
off," snapped Nanny, her temper sharpened by the long day's work and
sorrow.
"Show for myseln?" said he, with a sort of weary patience. "Nowt--save
that I can plank a grave better nor ony Sexton fro' this to Lancashire.
An' that's summat i' these times, for we shall see what we shall see now
Wayne o' Marsh is killed. Ay, for sure; there'll be need of a good
grave-digger i' Marshcotes parish.--What's been agate, like, i' th'
kirkyard? I knew there war summat bahn to happen for I heard th'
death-watch as plain as noonday."
"Why, Dick Ratcliffe war for carrying off yond little Mistress
Wayne--her as sleeps so shameless-peaceful aboon stairs--an' Rolf Wayne
o' Cranshaw met them fair i' th' kirkyard."
The Sexton roused himself, and his eyes lost their dreaminess.
"Did they fight, lass?" he cried.
"Hark to him! Give him a hint o' blood-letting, an' he's as wick as ony
scoprel."
"It's i' th' blood, lass, and 'twill out at th' first taste o' blows,"
said Witherlee, with a shamefaced glance at his wife. "I'm not mich of a
man myseln, but I aye loved a fight, an' that's plain truth."
"Well, tha'd hev seen one, I reckon, if tha'd been where Wayne o'
Cranshaw war to-neet," retorted Nanny grimly. "I missed it myseln, for I
war ringing th' bell; but when I came out into th' graveyard, there war
Dick Ratcliffe stretched on th' vault-stone, an' Mistress Wayne greeting
aboon his body. An' a rare job I had, my sakes, to get her safe within
doors."
"They fought at th' vault-stone, did they?" murmured Witherlee. "Where
did they stand, Nanny? An' who strake first? An' how did t'other
counter?" His voice, smooth and gentle, was ill in keeping with the
brightness of his eyes, the restless movement of his hands.
"How should I tell thee? I see'd nowt o' th' fight, being thrang wi'
other wark."
"That's a pity, now. I allus like to hev th' ins an' outs of a fight
fixed fair i' my head, so I can go ower it all again when sitting by th'
hearthstone o' nights. Well, well, we shall see summat, lass, afore so
varry long."
The little old woman twisted her mouth askew. "Luke," said she, "tha'rt
at thy owd tricks again. Tha breeds visions an' such-like stuff as fast
as a cat breeds kitlings, an' they run all on th' days when Waynes
killed Ratcliffes at ivery crossroad, when ivery fair day war like a
pig-killing."
"There's sorrow goes wi' fighting, an' there's mony a gooid life spilt,"
said the Sexton, "but 'tis sweet for a man's stomach, for all that, an'
th' lads grow up likelier for 't. Look at yond Shameless Wayne, now--wod
he be th' racketty ride-th'-moo'in he is if he hed to carry his life i'
his hand fro' morn to neet?"
"He'd hev no life to carry, most like," retorted Nanny. "He'd do wi'
mending, would th' lad; but there's a mony other men-folk i' like case,
an' I could do wi' all on ye better if ye war made all ower again. An'
I'll thank ye, Witherlee, to say nowt agen Shameless Wayne i' my
hearing, for I'll listen to nowt but gooid of him. There's more i' him,
let me tell thee, nor thee or onybody hes found out yet."
The Sexton set flint to steel and lit his pipe afresh; and a smile
lurked fugitive about his mouth. "Well, if there's owt behind his
shamelessness, he'll hev his chance o' showing it," he said. "Th' feud
'ull be up, Nanny, by and by. Last neet Dick Ratcliffe war
killed--that's to mak even deaths on one side an' on t' other. To-morn
likely or th' next day after, another Wayne 'ull be fund stretched stark
by some roadside; an' that 'ull be Nicholas Ratcliffe's way o' saying,
'Come on, lad's, an' fight it out.' Ay, I've seen th' feud get agate
afore this, an' I know th' way on 't."
"Then tha should think shame to let thy een brighten so. If tha'd seen
th' face o' yond lass o' Waynes, when she came up to me while I war
ringing i' th' belfry-tower a while back--if tha'd seen th' poor bairn's
eyes wild for lack o' th' tears that wouldn't come--tha'd sing to a
different tune, Luke Witherlee, that tha wod, about this sword-fighting
an' pistoling. Nay, I've no patience wi' thee. Lig thee down on th'
settle, Luke, an' get to sleep. I've a long day afore me to-morn."
The little old woman settled herself as comfortably as might be in her
rocking-chair, turning her back on Witherlee, and shutting her eyes in
token that she had said her last word for the night. But the Sexton
still sat on, his pipe-bowl in the hollow of one hand, his eyes upon the
grey-red ashes of the peats. Old and gnarled his body was, and shrunken
his face; but he was thinking of the fights to come and the heart of him
was lusty as a boy's.
Only once did Nanny break the silence. "I cannot thoyle to thin' o' th'
way yond little body aboon stairs is sleeping," she said, half rousing
herself. "She's no light sins to carry, an' wakefulness wod hev shown a
likelier sperrit."
"Live an' let live, lass," said Witherlee gently; "an' when Mistress
Wayne hes fund her wits again, 'twill be time to cry out on her for her
sins."
"Tha'rt ower tender for this rough world. I allus telled thee so,"
murmured the little old woman.
Soon she was breathing in the sharp, stifled fashion that told the
Sexton she was hard asleep. And he, too, began to nod, with softer
thoughts than fight to give him company--thoughts of the frail woman who
had claimed his hospitality, the little fairy-kist wanton who seemed so
full in sympathy with his dreamings.
"Good or bad, God keep the little body," he whispered in his sleep.
Silence crept shadowy from the corners of the room--the silence, compact
of rustling undersounds, that seems full of tragedies half lost yet
unforgotten. The little sounds grew big, the big ones thunderous. The
eight-day clock on the right hand of the chimney-piece ticked weightily,
with grave disregard of everything save Time's slow passing. Nanny's
harsh breathing crossed her goodman's softer snore. And now a rat
floundered in the rafters overhead; and now the spiders in the walls
began their clear and eerie ticking--_tick-tick_, _tick-tick_, like the
swinging of an elfin pendulum. Once in a while an owl hooted, or the
long-drawn wailing of a peewit sounded from the moor without. The
night, in this cottage-kitchen, was endless, ghoulish and unrestful; and
the slumbering folk on chair and settle served but to heighten the
unrestfulness.
Witherlee turned in his sleep, and lifted his eyelids for a moment, and
heard the spiders ticking in the wall. "Yond is th' death-tick," he
muttered drowsily. "Lord save us, there'll be blows afore th' moon
wears old."
Again the fret of little sounds fell over the cottage--over the
living-room, and over the bed-chamber above where Mistress Wayne was
tricking a brief spell of sleep from fate. But her sleep was neither so
lasting nor so light as Nanny Witherlee had named it, and dawn was
scarce greying over the moor-reaches when she waked.
Full of a sense of disaster, confused and rudderless, she rose and went
to the window and looked out across the graves. And the dawn was a
pitiful thing, that came to touch her sorrows into life. Where was she?
And why should the grave stones, set toward the brightening East, show
red as blood? She could not tell--only, that some one was waiting to
carry her far from these dreadful places of the moor. Someone was
waiting for her--that was the one surety she had. But where?
She smiled on the sudden, and clapped her slender, blue-veined hands
together. "Why, yes," she lisped, "'tis Dick Ratcliffe who waits for
me--strange that I cannot see him in the graveyard. We should have met
there, he and I." She stopped and knit her little brows. "Dick lives
at Wildwater," she went on slowly. "How if I seek him out, and reproach
him that he did not wait? Yes, yes, I'll go to Wildwater--we have far
to go to-day, and I must hurry."
She picked up her wearing-gear and eyed it questioningly; then donned it
quickly, stole down the stair, and stood, finger on lip, regarding the
Sexton and his wife.
"If they should waken, they would never let me go," she murmured. "I
must tread softly--very softly."
"'Tis th' death-tick, an' there'll be fight afore th' new moon's in her
cradle," muttered the Sexton in his sleep.
Mistress Wayne, startled by his voice, ran fast across the floor, and
lifted the latch, and went out into the gathering dawn. A moment only
she halted in the lane, then turned to her right hand and went up toward
the moor with hurried steps. She must reach Wildwater--and Wildwater,
she knew lay somewhere up among the moors.
Up and up she went, past naked pasture-land and lank, rough-furrowed
fields. She passed a shepherd tending the ewes which had lambed in the
inclement weather--one of the Marsh shepherds, who wondered sorely to
see his late master's wife come up the moors in such guise and at such
an hour.
"I want to get to Wildwater; some one is waiting for me there, and we
have far to go, and I cannot find the way," she said, drawing near to
the shepherd, yet keeping a watchful eye on him, and ready, like some
wild thing of the moor, to take flight at the first hint of danger.
The shepherd eyed her queerly. "Ye want Wildwater, Mistress? Well,
'tis a fairish step fro' here to there--though yond bridle-track will
land ye straight to th' door-stun, if ye follow it far enough. Are ye
forced to wend thither, if I mud axe a plain question?"
"Oh, yes, I have a friend there who waits my coming. He'll be angry if I
fail him."
"'Tis no good house to visit," said the shepherd, scratching his head in
dire perplexity. "Have a thowt, Mistress, o' them that live theer."
"My lover dwells there. Is not that enough?" she answered gravely, and
went her way.
Up and up, till she gained the wildest of the moor, where eagles nested
and the goshawk soared. Up and up, until she stood beside Wildwater
Pool, and looked across its stagnant waters, and saw the long house of
the Ratcliffes frown beetle-browed upon her from amid the waste of ling.
And half she feared; and half she gladdened, thinking what welcome her
lover held in store for her; but when she neared the gate and felt the
swart defiance of the house, she halted.
Between Ling Crag and Bouldsworth Hill it stood, this house of the
Wildwater Ratcliffes. Above it were the wind-swept wastes of heath;
below, the lean acres which bygone Ratcliffes had wrested from the
clutches of the moor. Yet the dip of the hills sheltered it a little
and the garden was trim-kept adding, if need were, the last touch of
desolation to the homestead. A rambling house, shouldering roughly at
the one end a group of laithes and mistals; above the narrow latticed
windows the eaves hung sullenly, and the stone porch without the door
offered at the best a cold welcome, and at the worst defiance. Over the
porch was a motto, deep chiselled in the blackened stone.
"We hate, we strike," said the house to the outside world, and the
motto, though it matched well the temper of each generation of the
Waynes, suited none of the stock so well as old Nicholas Ratcliffe,
known through the moorside as the Lean Man of Wildwater.
Below the wan strip of intake, an upland tarn showed its sullen,
unreflecting face to the sky. Nor curlew nor moor-fowl was ever known
to haunt the rushes that fringed Wildwater Pool, no fish ever rose from
its waters; and men said that God had cursed the pool, since a winter's
night, nigh on a hundred years agone, when a Ratcliffe had tempted a
Wayne to sup with him in amity and had thereafter thrown his body to the
waters. But Nicholas Ratcliffe loved the tarn, as he loved the storms
that broke over the naked hills and the wild deeds that had made his
fathers a terror and a scourge; and the sons and grandsons who grew up
about him he trained to the rough logic of tradition. Brave the Lean
Man was, and crafty as a stoat; wiry of body, lank-jawed of face; and
the hair stood up from his crown a rusty grey, like stubble when the
first frost has nipped it.
Old Nicholas sat in the hall this morning, in the carved oaken chair
that stood over against the lang-settle. Robert, his eldest-born, sat
opposite, and three other of the grandsons were at table still,
finishing a breakfast of mutton-pasty and ham and oaten-bread, washed
down with nut-brown ale. For the hall, running a quarter the length of
the house and all its width, was the chief living chamber, where the
indoors business of the day was gone through; a cool and pleasant
chamber in summer heat, but in winter the winds piped through and
through it, driving the women-folk for warmth to the more cosy parlour.
The Lean Man had been cradled in cold winds, and it pleased him to see
as little as might be of the women; for women were rather a cumbrous
necessity than a joy to Nicholas Ratcliffe. "Thy son should be safe off
with Mistress Wayne by now," said Nicholas to his eldest-born.
"Likely. 'Tis all the lad is good for, curse him! Dick was ever the
weakling of the breed."
"Aye, but there's a use for weaklings, when all is said," chuckled the
old man. "They fear dishonour worse than aught that can chance to them,
these Waynes, and when first I learned that Dick was playing
kiss-i'-the-dark with yon milk-faced wife of Wayne's, I gave him rope
enough to strangle the Marsh pride."
"He starts well!" laughed one of the youngsters from the breakfast
board.
"He starts well," said the Lean Man. "First to make a cuckold of the
husband, and then to run him through--he's half a Ratcliffe, this
shiftless Dick-o'-lanthorn, after all."
"Why did you let him go with the wench, father?" put in Robert. "Dick
can wield a sword if he's forced to it, and scabbards will need to be
empty in a while."
"Pish! We can spare one arm, I warrant, and 'twas sweet to cry Wayne's
wife up and down the country-side for what she is. The lad will wed her
soon as they get free of Marshcotes, she thinks--but I know different;
and 'twill eat the heart out of the Waynes to know--what, Janet! Thou
look'st scared as a moor-tit," he broke off, as a trim lassie came in
through the parlour door and stood at the elbow of his chair.
Janet Ratcliffe, the youngest of all the Wildwater clan, was the only
one among them who could touch the old man's heart; some said it was
because she was the comeliest of the women, and others vowed it was that
her raven hair had caught her grandfather's fancy by contrast with the
ruddy colouring and freckled cheeks that nearly every other Ratcliffe in
the moorside boasted. But sure it was that whenever the Lean Man's
brittle temper had to be tried, Janet was sent as tale-bearer.
"There's one would speak with you, grandfather," said the girl, coming
to the elbow of his chair.
"Then bid him enter. Any man can come into Wildwater--'tis for us to
say whether we let them out again."
"Nay, but 'tis a--a woman, sir. I found her wandering up and down the
garden, plucking the daisies and singing to herself."
"By the Lord, we do not have so queer a guest every day! Let her come
in, Janet, and we'll give her the bottoms of the ale-flagons if her song
be a good one."
"But, sir--she bears a name that is not welcome here--and she talks so
wildly that I fear her wits are gone."
"What name?" snarled the old man.
"She is wife to Wayne of Marsh--and her clothes are dripping--and she
speaks all in riddles----"
Nicholas laughed grimly. "Bring her to me," he said--"though, 'tis no
new thing, my faith, to talk to a Wayne who is scant of wit."
"There's something untoward in this," muttered Robert. "What should she
want at Wildwater, if Dick's plans had not miscarried?"