Her voice, sharp-edged with agony, struck like a sword-thrust into the
fight. The Ratcliffes were sweeping all before them; but they stopped
for one half moment. Barguest had carried disaster to them always;
there was not one of them but dreaded the Brown Hound; and the woman's
cry that he was in the room here plucked all the vigour from their
sword-arms. The battle was lost and won in that half-moment's pause;
for what had daunted the Red Folk had put fresh heart into the Waynes
and driven them to the onset with resistless fury.
It was a carnage then. Five Ratcliffes dropped at the first shock, ten
at the next onslaught. The rest fled headlong toward the great main
door, and tried to open it; but Red Ratcliffe had made the bolts too
sure, and they were caught in their own trap. Snarling, they turned at
bay, and showed a serried line of faces, lean, vindictive, bright-eyed
as the weasel's whom tradition named their ancestor. Those who fell
writhed upward from the floor and tried to drive their blades home; and
the Waynes, with low, hoarse cries, put each a foot on the skulls of the
fallen, and fought on in this wise least the dying, weasel-like to the
end, should prove twice as dangerous as those whose limbs were whole.
Janet had followed the battle as best she could. She had heard the
feud-calls swell, and weaken, and grow loud again; had heard Mistress
Wayne's shrill cry of Barguest. And then her lover's voice rose swift
in victory above the growling hum of "Ratcliffe! A Ratcliffe!" And she
knew that Wayne of Marsh had wiped his shame clean out at last.
Red Ratcliffe and two others were all who stood upright now, and they
were fighting behind a bank of fallen comrades.
"Quarter!" gasped Ratcliffe, full of a fresh stratagem.
"Not again," laughed Wayne. "We courteous fools are out of mood
to-night, Red Ratcliffe."
"Quarter! We're defenceless, Wayne. Would'st butcher us?"
"Ay, would I," answered Wayne of Marsh, and cut at Ratcliffe's
head-guard, and grazed his scalp as his own blade slid down the other's
steel.
"Thou'st made a priest of him!" roared Griff, beside himself with the
reek of slaughter. "Look at his bloody tonsure, Ned."
Red Ratcliffe flung his sword in the lad's face, and picked up a dying
Ratcliffe in his arms. Fury lent sinew to despair; a moment he
staggered under the body, then hurled it full at Shameless Wayne and
drove him blundering half across the floor. And then he raced down the
pathway he had made, and gained the hinder door, forgotten until now,
and clashed it to behind him.
The passage was pitch-dark, with a sharp turn and three unlooked-for
steps half down it; and his first thought was to pick off the Waynes who
followed as they stumbled in the darkness, and afterward to make good
his escape in such rough-ready fashion as the ensuing uproar might
suggest. He halted awhile, waiting their coming, while his breath came
and went in hard-won sobs; then, as his brain cooled, he bethought him
of the narrow, winding passage that branched oft from the one in which
he stood and led at one end to a rarely opened door that backed the
orchard, at the other to the room where his Cousin Janet lay.
Behind him he could hear the Waynes calling one to another as they
blundered out in search of him; some went up the main stairway; others
moved cautiously toward him and called to their fellows in hall to bring
them candles. He waited for no more, but crept down the narrowed
passage, and felt for the door, and had his hand already on the hasp
when he remembered Janet. It was his last chance of safety, this, he
knew; but, like the greybeard who had schemed his last behind in hall
there, he had a desperate courage of his own, and a like
remorselessness. Was he to leave Wayne of Marsh to make merry with the
maid for whom he had hungered these twelve months past? Nay, for she
should share his flight; and Wayne should find the dregs of victory less
welcome than he looked for.
His pursuers were moving all about the house; but their thoughts were
all of the main doors and plainer ways of escape, and in their hurry
they neglected the narrow belt of darkness that marked the opening of
the side-passage. Red Ratcliffe laughed softly to himself as he ran to
Janet's room; for there was time, and he could yet plant a mortal thrust
in Wayne of Marsh.
Janet, with the ring of Wayne's last triumph-shout in her ears, heard
steps without her door, and cried, half between tears and laughter, that
Ned had come to free her--Ned, who had fought a righteous quarrel to the
last bitter end; Ned, who was her master, and the master of her enemies.
Ah, God! If he had not saved her from Red Ratcliffe!
The key was turned softly in the lock--too softly, she thought, for an
impetuous lover. She put her hands out, felt them prisoned, and with a
"Thank Our Lady, Ned, thou'rt safe!" she yielded herself to a hot
embrace.
"Ned, take me to the light! I want to see thy face. Is there blood on
thee, dear lad? Nay, I care not, so it be not thine own."
Red Ratcliffe's voice came to her through the darkness. "Ay, there's
blood on me, cousin--Wayne blood, that it shall be thy work to cleanse.
Meanwhile, the hunt is up-- Canst not hear them running hot-foot up and
down the house? Come with me, girl, or I'll set thumb and finger to thy
throat and drop thee where thou stand'st."
She was helpless in his grasp. Bewildered, not knowing where Ned was,
nor why Red Ratcliffe was here unharmed, she let herself be carried down
the passage, far as the low door that creaked and groaned as Ratcliffe
opened it. The cold wind blew on her from without, and on the sudden
her senses cleared. This fool whose love she had laughed at thrice a
day had trapped her after all. A few more strides, and they would be
free of the moor, and Wayne might seek till morning light and never find
her. A few more strides, and it would matter little that Wayne of Marsh
had fought his way to the very threshold of possession.
The dawn was yet far off, and the moon was hid, or its light might have
shown Red Ratcliffe the smile that played about his cousin's face, as
her hand slipped to her breast and returned.
"I'll come with thee, cousin, never fear," she whispered softly, and
lifted Wayne's dagger in the gloom.
"Lights! Where are your lights, ye fools?" came Wayne's voice from near
at hand. "'Twill be gall and madness to me if this worst ruffian of the
band escape."
"There's a darksome passage here. Does it lead to a secret way, think
ye?" answered Rolf Wayne of Cranshaw.
"Likely; the wind blows shrewdly down it. Quick with the candles there!
And keep your blades drawn, for by the Dog I'll kill the one who lets
Red Ratcliffe through."
They gained the open door, and on the threshold Janet Ratcliffe stood,
with lips half-parted in a smile, and in her eyes the first tremulous
self-loathing that comes to women after they have done man's work.
"Do ye seek Red Ratcliffe, sirs?" she asked.
"Ay, show him me--show him me, I say!" roared Shameless Wayne, too hot
for any tenderness toward his mistress.
"He is beside me here-- Nay, sheathe your swords; he asks no further
service of you."
All crowded round, and Wayne of Marsh shaded his candle with one hand
and held it low to the face of him who lay close without the door.
"Through the heart," he muttered; "to think the lass should rob
me.--Nay, then, the stroke was good; need I grudge it her?"
An arm was laid on his. "Ned, I am sick; take me out of sight of all
these men," said Janet.
One last look he gave at Red Ratcliffe. "All--all--dead Wayne of Marsh
need never cry again for vengeance," he muttered.
He put an arm about the girl, and led her down the passage, through the
knot of kinsmen who were pressing forward for a sight of Red Ratcliffe's
body, and through the scattered Waynes who still were searching for the
runaway, not knowing he was dead. These last turned wonderingly at
seeing Ned no longer in pursuit, and stopped to wipe the sweat of battle
from their faces.
"Hast overta'en him, Ned?" they asked.
"Ay, his sleep is sound," answered Shameless Wayne.--"Get ye across to
Cranshaw, friends, and tell my sister that her goodman and myself are
safe. And tell her--that I've kept the oath she wots of."
They glanced once at the face of Ned's companion, proud yet for all its
weariness; and then they got them out into the courtyard. And after Ned
had watched them go, he turned to find Janet leaning faint against the
wall.
He touched her on the shoulder. "Courage, lass," he muttered roughly.
Comfort he would have given her, such comfort as a man at such a time
may give the maid who loves him; but he dared not let his heart go out
to her as yet, for there was that in the wide hall to right of them
which overmastered love.
She straightened herself at his touch. "Ned," she cried with sudden
fierceness, "'twas for thee I killed him; he meant to take my right in
thee."
"I know, lass, I know. But would God I had saved thee the stroke."
"Leave me awhile," she whispered, after a silence. "I must go to the
moor--the moor is big, and friendly, and it will understand."
He knew her better than to thwart her mood at such a time, and let her
go; but while she was crossing to the door, a frail little woman came
out from the hall and moved to meet them.
"What, bairn!" said Wayne gently. "We've fought our troubles through
together, thou and I; and there'll be none can break our friendship now,
I warrant."
"Blood, blood--see how it drips--oh, hurry, hurry! The stain can never
be washed out if once it reaches Wayne of Marsh--he lies under the
vault-stone yonder--he stares at me with cruel, unrelenting eyes."
And Wayne knew that she had fallen back to the witlessness of that
long-buried night when he had watched his cousin fight above the
vault-stone. The crash of blows, the bloodshed and the tumult, had
touched the hidden spring in her and made her one again with those
piteous-happy folk whom Marshcotes gossips called the fairy-kist.
A great awe fell upon him as he watched the milk-soft face under its
loosened cloud of hair, as he hearkened over and over to the happenings
of a night that was scarce less terrible than this. That was the night
which had re-opened the old feud of Wayne and Ratcliffe but this had
killed it once for all.
"Will my lover ever come, think'st thou?" said Mistress Wayne. "The
post-chaise has been waiting long--the horses fret--the postillion says
we shall never gain Saxilton unless Dick Ratcliffe hastens." She
paused, and her mind seemed for a space to grapple with the present.
"Didst see Barguest steal into the hall?" she whispered. "He came and
couched at the bier-side--and then he sprang--come see the teeth-marks
in the Lean Man's throat."
She beckoned them so imperiously that they were drawn against their will
into the reeking chamber, and between the still heaps of the slain, and
up to the bier whereon Nicholas Ratcliffe lay with death stamped livid
on his face. Quietly as if it were a usual office, the little woman
turned down the shroud and pointed to the sinewy throat; and Janet's
eyes met Wayne's across the body of their foe, while they whispered one
to the other that Mistress Wayne saw something here which was denied to
any save the fairy-kist.
Wayne of Cranshaw came striding into hall, and after him Griff and his
brothers, with a press of Hill House folk behind. But Rolf silenced them
when he saw the figures by the bier, and led them quiet out into the
night.
"Best leave them to it," he muttered to a kinsman. "'Tis an ill knot to
unravel, and God knows how 'twill fare with yond sad pair of lovers."
They stayed there for awhile, Wayne and Janet. The battle-heat went
from him; passion was stilled; he stood and went over, one by one, the
turmoils that were past--stood, and watched the hate of feud shrink,
mean and shamed, into the darkness that had bred it--stood, and wondered
to what bitter harvesting the aftermath of feud must come.
And Janet watched him, with the dead man's bulk between them--watched
him, and sought for a shaft of hope to cross the gloomy hardness of his
face.
Shameless Wayne lifted his head by and by and moved to the door to rid
him of the spell. "Come where the wind blows cool, girl. There's a
taint in every breath we draw," he cried.
In silence she followed him to the threshold of the great main floor and
looked with him across the lone reaches of the wilderness. Dark, wide
and wet it stretched. The rains seethed earthward from a shrouded sky.
There was no wail of moor-birds, no voice save the sob of the failing
wind among the ling.
"Is this our wedding-cheer?" said Janet, meeting his glance at last.
"And those in hall there--are they the bridal-guests?"
Wayne answered nothing for a space. And then he gave a cry, and took
her to him, so close he seemed to dare each whispering ghost of feud to
snatch her from him.
"We never sought the thing that's ended yonder," he whispered hoarsely.
"We'll shut it out--we'll--Janet, hast no word for me?"
But the Lean Man, quiet on the bier where he had gibed at death, paid
little heed to them. The feud was stanched between Wayne and Ratcliffe;
yet he had never a word to say, of protest or of sorrow. The feud was
stanched; yet Mistress Wayne, while she plucked at the dead man's shroud
as if to claim his notice, was sobbing piteously.
"My lover waits me at the kirkyard gate," she faltered; "but I dare not
pass the vault-stone. Sir, it drips crimson as the sun that lately set
behind Wildwater Pool. And hark! There's Barguest whining down the
wind."
The rain still fell without. The clouds came thickening up above the
house of Wildwater. And far off across the moor a whining, comfortless
and long-drawn-out, fluttered on the brink of silence.
THE END