Wildwater, cousin, with thy tale-bearing. 'Tis thou and I now, a man
against a maid, and the thought of fighting thee is physic to my blood."
He saw now into what folly he had been betrayed. She would seek out
Shameless Wayne, and one more attempt to rid them of their enemy would
be defeated.
"Thou'lt not--not dare to warn him," he stammered.
"Shall I not? Those that they hang at the gibbets, I've heard--down in
the peaceful lands where gibbets are--had as lief be hung for a herd of
oxen as for one poor sheep. Grandfather can do no more than kill
me--well, I'll give him greater cause."
He stood irresolute while the girl moved up the path. Eager as he was to
carry her back forthwith to Wildwater, he knew that any show of force
would serve only to deepen the girl's hate of him.
"She's passing dear to the Lean Man, too," he muttered. "He'll be loath
to turn against her as it is--and 'twould only discredit the tale I have
to tell him if I used force. Well, let her go. Haply she will not set
eyes on Shameless Wayne."
Yet twice he started in pursuit; and when at last she had dipped over
the nearest hill-crest, his bitterness would not be held in check.
"I offered her honest love, and she refused it," he cried, kicking the
peat up with his heel in senseless frenzy. "God curse her, she shall
not wed Wayne of Marsh till thistle-tops grow wheat."
But Janet, swinging free across the moor, was strangely light of heart.
The deceit that had lain between herself and Nicholas was to be lifted
once for all, whatever might be the upshot, and there was no longer any
secret by force of which Red Ratcliffe could press his suit. Not for a
moment did she doubt that her cousin would fulfil his threat; the Lean
Man's wrath she regarded as awaiting her already at Wildwater, and she
had learned not to underrate its fury. But by some means she would
fight them, for her own sake and for Shameless Wayne's; and she came of
a stock to whom battle had ever been what the wind was to the
storm-birds who hovered the year about the chimney-stacks of Wildwater.
She would go straight down to Marsh, she told herself, and ask for its
Master. The servants would wonder, doubtless, and the moorside gossip
would be fed by the strange tale of how a daughter of the Ratcliffes had
come to seek her people's enemy; but what did gossips matter now that
she had declared open warfare with her folk? There was a grim reckoning
for her at Wildwater, and she did not shrink from it for her own sake;
but Shameless Wayne must be kept out of danger's way, and see him she
must before returning if he had to be sought from Marsh to Cranshaw.
Janet laughed on the sudden, as she crossed the rough stretch of moor
that lay this side of Withens. She was to see Shameless Wayne before
the sun went down, and to do him a last service; and the lark's song
overhead found a blithe answer in her heart. Then, too, the moor was in
joyous mood, and no upland tarn ever reflected the sky's face more
faithfully than Janet echoed the shifting humours of this big-little
world of hers. No year went by but she learned all afresh how rare and
bewildering a thing was springtime on the moor; so warm it was, so full
of a thousand clean-cut scents, of wind and peat, of ling and standing
waters. The bilberries, with their green and crimson leaves, lay bushy
to the sunlight, which shone reflected in tints of amethyst or ruby,
pearl or daintiest saffron. The crowberries, which had shown a surly
green the winter through, put on new livery, and all down their serried
stems the brown-red blossoms peeped. A stray bee loitered down the
wind, and cloudlets lay like snow above the blue edge of the heath.
It was the time of year when Janet ceased looking across the endless
spaces of the moor, and turned her eyes to the lesser miracles that
showed at every step. Month after month the waste had shown itself a
giant of awful majesty, whose breath was storm, whose heart was
pitiless; and now--lo, this moor was full of little housewife's cares,
cleaning her floors of last year's litter, suckling her young like any
human mother, neglecting no hidden corner where blade or flower was
thirsting for her milk.
Past Robin Hood's Well the girl went, and across the beck, and over the
moor this side of Withens; and as she went she thought that surely Wayne
of Marsh must lose a little of his sternness under such skies as these.
Nay, she smiled as she looked toward the far-off brink of moor under
which Marsh House lay hidden.
"If not for myself, he'll love me for my news, may be," she said, and
smiled again as she thought of what might chance when she knocked at the
door of the Marsh House and asked for Shameless Wayne. How if his
sister Nell should open to her and ask her business? Once already they
had met, she and Nell, since the feud broke out; and Nell had taunted
her with outright bitterness; and they had not parted till deep wounds
had been given and received on either side.
"Were she to open to me," murmured Janet, "she would rive a spear down
from the walls and thrust me out, for fear another than she should help
Ned into safety. Well, I must risk that, too--but I had liefer meet the
Lean Man than this same Mistress Nell. Love is jealous, they say--but
for madness it is naught to this quiet, sisterly affection."
The peewits screamed about her, and the empty basket was still swinging
on her arm; and now and then from very habit, she cast a glance about
her in search of the eggs which she had promised to bring back to
Wildwater. But Marsh was in her mind, and with each mile her stride
grew longer, her carriage firmer. She was to see Ned, and after that
she would let come what would. Soon she came in sight of Hill House
standing bluff on the further slope of Hazel Dene, and a song rose
unbidden to her lips; for Hill House held kinsmen of her lover's, and it
was scarce more than half a league from Marsh.
Janet was nearer to the truth than perchance she guessed; for Nell's
love of her brother, the slow growth of years of thwarted hopes and
bitter self-denial, was firm as the rock on which Marsh House was built.
He had been a ruffler and a drunkard, so wild that his name had grown a
by-word among folk who were not easily moved by any usual excesses of
the gentry; he had all but killed the last spark of love and trust in
her; and now, just when he had cast off old ways, and had stood up, a
man, before scorn and intimate, hourly danger and the slow round of
farm-work which he loathed--now, it seemed that all was to go for naught
because of his love for one of the accursed folk who dwelt at Wildwater.
Jealous she would have been of any wife, but it was shame unspeakable to
think that Janet might ever take her place at Marsh; and she was full of
the matter this morning as she and Shameless Wayne walked up the fields
together.
"Ned," she cried, breaking an uneasy silence, "dost recall how once I
asked thee about Mistress Ratcliffe? Thou said'st then it was a folly
laid aside, yet now----"
"Well, now?" he said, in a hard voice.
"I have heard that not long since thou wast with her on the moor,
stooping more closely to her ear than friendship alone warranted."
"'Twas Hiram Hey told thee as much? He's the wise sort of fool who must
hunt out the wrong side to every trivial matter."
"Nay, it is common gossip by this time. I had it from Nanny Witherlee,
who has loved us well enough, Ned, thee and me, to allow of freedom in
her speech. She is of my mind, too--that the last and worst disaster
would fall on Marsh if----"
"If the clouds dropped, or the sun shone bright at midnight?" he broke
in stormily. "I have told thee, Nell, that there is naught between us
now--can be naught. Dost want to hear me swear it?"
"Yet thou lov'st her," she said, with the keen glance of jealousy.
"Ay, as I love the good life in my veins," he answered, his voice
deepening. "But what of that? Even life must go, soon or late; am I a
woman, to think love the one thing that must not be crushed?"
"'Tis the one thing that none can lay plans against. Hark ye, Ned!
Mistress Ratcliffe met thee by chance, I take it, and ye talked awhile
together and then passed on. Thou wilt meet her again--to-morrow--and
some trick of speech or eye will sweep thee off thy feet--and thou'lt
wonder, having played with steel, that the sharp edge cuts thee to the
bone."
He flushed, and would not meet her glance. "If chance sends her across
my path, I can help it as little as if a dozen of her kinsmen met me by
the way--and, faith, the latter would prove more hazardous, I fancy.
Shut thy mind to it once for all, Nell; I love her, and she's naught to
me, and there we'll leave the riddle."
Never until now had Nell complained, nor touched on her old devotion to
him; but his open confession, twice repeated, jarred on her beyond
endurance. "I've a right to speak, Ned," she cried. "I loved thee
before this wanton crossed thy path; I have cared for thy comfort in
fifty little ways thou know'st naught of. When father was hard on thee
for thy wildness----"
"I know, lass, I know," he muttered, his anger chilled. For remorse
never slept so sound with Wayne of Marsh but that the lightest touch
could wake it.
"And later, when Rolf pleaded hard with me to wed him--he quarrelled
with me but yesterday about it--I would not go, because thou hadst need
of me at Marsh. See, Ned, I've been sorry and glad with thee--I've
given up more, to keep thee out of wildness, than I shall ever tell. Is
all to go for naught, because a woman beckons lightly to thee from
across the moor?"
"I have told thee," he said, and left her without another word.
Old habit claimed her now. "Ned!" she called. "If thou must go to Hill
House, promise thou'lt stray no further afield after thou hast done thy
business there. The Ratcliffes are itching to be at thee, and----"
"I'll go no further," he answered over his shoulder; "and as for the
Ratcliffes--they know how many Waynes are sheltered by Hill House; 'tis
no likely hunting-ground for them."
His mood was bitter as he crossed the brigg below Smithbank Farm and
climbed the narrow stile that opened on to Hazel Dene. Nell had said
hard things of Mistress Ratcliffe, and not all her care for him could
wipe out the memory. Was Janet to be named wanton, because she had been
born at Wildwater? It was unjust. Little by little her beauty took
shape before him, to back his pleading with weightier arguments than his
own poor wit could furnish; and all the while that same resistless
breath of spring was blowing on him which up above was lightening
Janet's feet across the heath.
There was a throstle in every thorn-bush and a merle on every alder,
each singing hard against the other in harmony with the note of the
south wind through the rush and the tinkle of water over smooth-worn
stones. The corn-mill was busy with the hum of toil as he passed, and
along the little strip of garden-path the miller's wife was teaching her
first-born child to walk.
Wayne halted a moment and let his eyes dwell on the tender frolic of it
all; then sighed impatiently and pushed up the stream side till he
reached the moor. To the right the bare fields stretched to the sky,
catching a shadowed softness from the sunlight; to the left, Hill House
glowered down upon the dark cleft that nursed the waterfall.
"Ay, this picture has more truth in 't than yonder idleness of spring
below," he muttered, watching a hawk glance down on molten wing and lift
a screaming moor-tit in its beak.
On the sudden a clear voice came over the swell of the brinkfield up
above, singing a moorland ballad of love and battle--a voice that had
something of the throstle's nesting-note in it. Shameless Wayne,
shading his eyes with both hands, looked up the hill and saw a
well-known figure standing clear against the sky. He started forward
eagerly; but his face was dark again as he waited at the little brigg of
stone until Janet reached the further margin of the stream; and she,
seeing him, halted at the far side of the brigg, under the rowan that
waved its feathery shadows to and fro above the sun-flecked waters. But
still Wayne gave no greeting, though his eyes were fain of her.
"I give thee good-day," she faltered, chilled by his silence. "Wilt not
tell me, Ned, that 'tis well-met by Hazel Brigg?"
Wayne looked across at her, and his face showed harsher than his
thoughts. "Ay--wert thou a Wayne, or I a Ratcliffe, girl," he said.
Janet had learned to know this mood of his; at their last meeting--the
same which Red Ratcliffe and Hiram the farm-man had surprised--he had
met her with the same stubborn front. Then she had given way to her
impatience; but this morning she was minded to be soft toward him,
knowing the danger he was in and eager at all costs to save him from it.
"What ails thee, Ned?" she asked, after they had looked each at the
other across the stream.
"Why, life, I think," he answered, with a hard laugh. "To take the
stoniest road, and all the while to know one's self a fool for 't----"
"I had thought life somewhat sweeter than its wont to-day," she broke
in, obstinate as himself in her own fashion. "The sun shines, and the
larks sing----"
"But the feud-cries are louder still, and not if all the larks in heaven
tried to sing them down would it be otherwise." Cold his voice was,
with only a deeper note in it now and then to show how sorely it was
fretting him to stand his ground.
"Art minded, I see, to take up the tale just where we left it on the
moor when last we met," cried Janet, with a flash of scorn.
"Does the tale go lighter, Janet, for what has been added to it since we
met? Thy folk came down to Marsh, and one of them did not go back
again."
"Thou didst not bid him come--nor I wish him God-speed on his errand,"
said Janet, with a last effort to persuade him.
But Wayne made no answer--only stood there with a line cut deep between
his brows and his face moulded beyond hope of change, it seemed, to an
obstinacy that was almost surly.
"Nay, he was heartless," said Janet to herself. How often had she
crossed the moor, full of the same eagerness that had come with her
to-day? And he had always offered her less than she had brought him.
Of old, some late debauch had dulled his welcome; and nowadays he met
her with a sternness that was harder still to bear. Headstrong, with
her strength and her need of happiness at flood, the girl could see but
the one issue; it was Wayne and she, here on the quiet moor, and she
would brook no interference from without.
"He's heartless," she repeated, and set one foot on the narrow bridge.
Wayne of Marsh stood at the further end, not moving to make way for her.
And Janet, had she glanced at him, might have read indecision plainly in
his face.
"Let me pass," she said, cold as himself. "The brigg, I take it, was
built for all the moorside, and even a Ratcliffe is free to cross by
it."
For answer he stood more squarely across her path. "I'll not let thee
go!" he cried. Then, as if asking her help against himself, "Janet," he
said, laying a hand on her shoulder, "I have killed three of thy folk,
and the Ratcliffes in times past have slain more of mine than the
fingers of both hands could count. Thou'rt free to pass, and--I was a
fool to block thy way."
She looked him fairly in the face. "If thou hadst not killed when it
was thy right, should I have thought the better of thee for it?" she
asked.
Again Wayne did not answer. He wanted no wayward riddles of the sort
that women give a man; temptation pressed more and more on him at each
of these chance meetings, and it was bitter hard to fight it down.
Janet, misreading his silence, moved down the path; but Wayne did not
follow, and soon she faltered in her walk. Angered and ashamed she was,
but she could not forget the errand that had brought her here; if she
left Ned now without the warning she had come to give, his death would
lie at her door. He was harsh now, and would turn a deaf ear to any
warning; well, she must humour him until his mood showed likelier.
"Canst tell me, Ned, where best to search for plovers' eggs?" she asked,
turning about and touching the basket on her arm to show its purpose.
"They are so fond of the eggs at Wildwater, thou know'st, and I have
been seeking all across Ling Crag Moor for them."
Wayne smiled despite himself. So like a child she was on the sudden, so
earnest touching a light matter; and yet awhile since she had tempted
him with storm and subtlety and all her woman's weapons.
"Fond of them, are they, at Wildwater?" he cried. "My faith, Janet,
'tis a pretty reason to give a Wayne of Marsh.-- Come, then, for as it
chances I can help thee in thy search. The Hill House folk showed me
their nesting place but yesterday, and it lies at a stone's-throw above
us yonder." He did not wait for her, but turned to climb the slope as
if he guided her unwillingly.
Janet followed him up the spur of moor that backed Hill House; and still
she would not remember the Lean Man, nor what awaited her at Wildwater;
her mind was set wholly upon winning Ned from this black mood of his,
that he might hearken to her warning. The climb grew steeper, and
Wayne, with tardy courtesy, took the girl's hand to help her up the
slippery clumps of bilberry.
"What brings thee so near to a Wayne homestead?" he asked, pointing to
the grim front of the house above.
"Why should I fear? Our men folk fight, but none ever heard of one of
your name waging war upon a woman."
"That is a true word," muttered Wayne, and would have said more, but
checked himself.
"But the Ratcliffes have no such good repute? Nay! I know what was on
thy tongue, Ned." Her face grew clouded, and a sudden, bitter cry
escaped her. "Would God, dear lad, that it were different!" she cried.
Wayne's grasp tightened on her hand as he drew her half toward him.
"There's a quaking bog, Janet, lies 'twixt what a man would and what he
will," he cried. "God's life, girl, why must we always look askance at
happiness?"
The words were forced from him, and under them was such a ring of
passion as Janet had hungered for during many a long day of misery and
dread that she had lately spent at Wildwater. This was a glimpse of the
Ned she loved--hot, and eager, and rebellious. She had given all to
him--shame and love of kin; and she was justified, whatever followed
after. She would force him to tell her the secret that showed plain
enough in eyes and voice; and then, if his sternness came again, she
would not heed it.
"_We_ have no feud, Ned, thou and I," she said, in the voice that once
before the quarrel ripened, he had been free to hearken to.
For a moment he wavered, looking down at her. Behind her a sweep of
blue leaned to the shoulders of the heath. The throstle's note came low
and mellow from below, and in the sun's eye larks were singing wildly.
Slim, warm and sweet she stood, a Ratcliffe and a maid.
Shameless Wayne had fought this battle once before, and thought to have
killed desire; yet the struggle when he had met her by the kirk-stone,
weeks ago, was but the beginning of an uphill road. It was as Nell had
said, not an hour since, and this thing called love had fifty ways of
ambush for a man.
"Hark ye, Janet," he said at last. "There shall no feud stand between
us; 'twas of their making, and I love thy little finger better----"
He freed her on the sudden; his eyes went out far across the moor, and
into them there leaped a fierceness and a dread.
"Ned, what is't?" she cried.
"What is't? I saw dead Wayne of Marsh come up the slope, with blood on
his wearing-gear and sorrow on his face."
"Hush, for Our Lady's sake! Hush----"
"There 'twas a fancy, girl," he said, huskily. "We'll think no more on
't.--Here is the nesting-ground; and, see, I all but trode on the first
pair of eggs."
She answered nothing but stooped for the blue-white eggs that lay on the
bare ground at her feet. Each welcomed the excuse for silence, and each
went gravely forward with the search. But neither the tragic thought of
the dead master of Marsh, nor yet Ned's chill withdrawal from her
glance, could make Janet less than glad that she had come to Hazel
Brigg. He loved her, and by and by she would carry back the knowledge to
lighten her footsteps home to Wildwater.
Overhead the mother-birds were wheeling--crying piteously each time that
one or other of the searchers stopped to a fresh nest, yet striving all
the while to lure them from this strip of heath that held a year's hopes
for them. Birds and beasts were always sure of friendliness from Janet,
and something in the plovers' screams touched a soft chord in her.
"They have a human sort of wit, Ned," she murmured, stopping to watch
them when the basket was three-quarters filled. "See how they coax, and
make feint, and do all to persuade us that their nests lie otherwhere.
'Tis pity we should rob them, when all is said."
Wayne was looking at her with his old bitter smile; for he had been
thinking, not of love, but of the father who called him from the grave
to gird his loins for the fights to come.
"Wilt take this basket to the Lean Man, Janet, and say that Shameless
Wayne sends greeting with it?" he said.
"'Twould be a fairer token than thy last."
"Why, what dost thou know of tokens? They did not tell thee, surely?"
"I was the first to chance on it--the hand that lay on the
boundary-stone, with thy greeting scrawled beside it."
He came and put his hand on hers, half tenderly. "It was no sight for
thee. God knows I never thought a maid's eyes would light on it."
Janet, bewildered by the ebb and flow of feeling, could not withstand
this touch of kindliness. She read his trouble with new understanding,
and for the first time she realised how at each step she had made the
struggle harder for him. Her pride in him took clear shape on the
sudden. Nay, in this moment she loved the very stubbornness that held
her from him. He had fought her as he had fought her kinsfolk, and he
had won. One by one her doubts grew clearer; her folk were Waynes, as
they had not been until now; and some day she would prove to him that
she was as little a Ratcliffe as any who dwelt at Cranshaw or at Marsh.
All this passed through her mind, in hurried, half-formed fashion; and
then she needs must tell him of it.
"Speech has been hindered, Ned, between us," she said, "and we know not
when another chance may come. I'll tell thee now what I have wished to
tell thee many a long day past. Thou art one, and they are many; and it
stirs my blood, Ned, to see the gallant fight thou'rt making."
Wayne tried to check her but she did not heed him.
"Once in the kirkyard and once at Marsh--and even the Ratcliffes say
thou'rt something between man and devil when a sword is in thy hand.
Hold fast, Ned, and strike keen, and thou'lt have the last word yet in
this ill-matched quarrel."
"Nay, the pitcher goes once too oft to the well, Janet.--And as for the
attack on Marsh, 'twas none of my doing that we beat them off. If the
lads had not returned in good hour from the hunting, it would have been
the Lean Man's turn."
She was silent awhile, thinking of what Red Ratcliffe had confessed to
her this morning. _The pitcher goes once too oft to the well_--ay,
there was truth in the hard old proverb.
"Ned," she cried, looking up on the sudden, "do not go to Bents Farm
this week."
"Not go to Bent's? How didst learn I meant to ride up there at all?"
"Red Ratcliffe told me this morning. Ned, I'll not let thee go! They
learned of thy coming from the farmer, and some plot is laid--I know not
what--to meet thee by the way."
She stopped, for Wayne's face was darker than she had ever seen it, and
there was anger in his voice--anger against her, who had sought only to
rescue him from treachery. Thwarted, driven back upon herself, she
forgot that Wayne's temper was sharpened to a knife-edge by his long
struggle with desire. He stood defenceless between love and hate, and
the knowledge of his weakness maddened him.
"What is your folk's is yours, Janet," he cried, "and what is my folk's
is mine; and the Waynes must fall lower before they hearken to what a
Ratcliffe has to tell them of her kinsmen's plans."
Her eyes were wide with amazement, and anger, and a hard sort of
contempt. "That is the Wayne pride," she said--"what they call honour,
but what their neighbours call stark folly. Nay! I know what is in thy
mind. Women have no hold on the niceties of honour, thou would'st
say--but I tell thee, Wayne of Marsh, if thou'rt to fight this through
like a man, not like a want-wit babe, thou'lt have to use the Lean Man's
weapons. What are scruples when life--life, Ned, the one thing that
we're sure of----"