THE MORROW
Hardcastle had got to bed somewhere near midnight. There had been a
farm-lad riding for the doctor, the galloping return of both, the
verdict that Donald, with care, might live for a week or two. Old
Rebecca had scolded life and destiny, but had managed with great
deftness to make the pedlar warm and easy on the long-settle, with
blankets under and over him. She had insisted, too, on sharing the watch
with Causleen, after telling the Master there was nothing for a feckless
mule to do by way of help.
“You ordered early breakfast. Best take a wink or two o’ sleep while
you’ve got the chance.”
And now Hardcastle was seeking sleep, and finding little. When he dozed,
it was to go in dreams through things suffered at the Lost Folks’ hands
long since, told and re-told till superstition had given them a bigger
terror than their due. When he woke, it was to remember that he and his
stood alone against them.
He counted his household in the waking hours. Indoors was Rebecca, and
Roy, the old retriever—and out across his acres tenants who numbered a
score, all told. Some of these had five sons, some three or less, and
not all of them up-grown. And among them were a few of Geordie Wiseman’s
kidney, whiners and pay-for-safety folk at any price.
Then his mind roamed out to the crumpled, limestone wastes that
stretched from Drumly Ghyll to grey Weathersett—the land where the Lost
Folk had their dwelling, in a village bare to every wind of devilry that
blew. They were stealthy, pitiless, spawn of the creeping things that
hunt by night.
He would doze again, and nightmares led him into the caves he had
explored in boyhood, because forbidden by the father who knew their
peril. Once he had all but been caught there by a Wilderness Man, and
had returned with a glow of adventure in his heart.
When he woke to restless tossing from one side to another, adventure
loomed close ahead; but it had no glow about it. He recalled Geordie
Wiseman’s complaint that he brought trouble to many a hearth beside his
own. It was true, and doubt took hold of him. What right had he to bring
others into an affair so stark and hard to face?
He got up at last, weary of the phantoms that creep about a sleepless
bed. Below-stairs he could hear Rebecca scolding and coaxing a lazy fire
to burn; and when he came down a half-hour later, he heard still the
murmur of coaxing and scolding, though she was at war with rashers
crinkling on the fire. It was a heartening note—this chiding tongue of
Rebecca’s, the grey, hard woman who kept his house spotless-clean, and
cooked and laboured for him as if she loved the work. She was rough and
loyal, reared in the older days.
As he passed the room where Donald lay, he heard the pedlar chattering
quietly, and went through the half-open door. Causleen’s dark head was
pillowed on the horse-blanket covering Donald. The sleep of dire
exhaustion had found her as she knelt by the settle, and even
Hardcastle, roughened long since against any lure of women, was moved to
grudging pity. She was so slender, so helpless, and her loosened hair
lay round her like a cloud of burnished night.
Then he glanced again at Donald. The pedlar’s eyes were open, and he
talked of glens—talked of Glencoe, and Bannockburn and far Culloden, of
misty sorrows that for ever drenched the hills he loved. Again
Hardcastle was stirred—not by pity now, but by shame. If this ancient
man, his body crumpling into death, could live so bravely with the
long-done battles, counting these heartsease and gain, what had the
younger sort to do with fear?
Donald did not see him standing there, for his eyes were intent on wider
scenes than this cramped room afforded him. To Hardcastle, as he
listened, a wider country opened, too. The pedlar’s body had forsaken
him so utterly that heart and mind were free to roam at large. The very
throb of Scottish battle-strength seemed gathered into this room at
Logie—the skirl of pipes, the sobbing of women as their dead were
brought home on their shields—the harsh challenge of men facing
treachery in many hidden glens.
It seemed to Hardcastle that the pedlar was sharing five centuries of
battle. So he was, maybe, for a man’s dead come close when he nears the
borderland, to welcome him across the little gap between them.
Donald lingered awhile with the feud fights of the clans, with the big
battles and the small; but ever he returned to the tale of how Jaimie
the King went down in splendour when the last, swirling fight at Flodden
closed about him.
Then the pedlar’s restless glance fell on the pike nailed above the
mantel, and stayed there awhile, and roamed to the big man looking down
at him. For the first time he saw Hardcastle, and came sharply from the
glens of mist.
“Small wonder I dreamed of Flodden and the king. There’s a pike yonder
with Scots’ blood on it. What could there be but haunted sleep in such a
room?”
He strove to rise, but all of him from waist to feet refused his
bidding. It was terrible, piteous, to see the struggle of a proud man
anxious to be gone from a house at enmity with his so long ago.
“I thank you for the lodging,” he murmured, courteous to the last; “but
we must go. Causleen, child, where are you? The mists are gathering over
Ben Crummart, and winds are sobbing in the glens. We must be going.”
Through the sleep of exhaustion Causleen heard the call. She was on her
feet in a moment, laying the pedlar’s head back and soothing him to
quiet. The quickness of it, the eagerness that gave all and at once to
this wayworn vagabond, brought a rough wonder to Hardcastle. But then
she was a woman, and no doubt there was trickery of some kind under this
show of great affection.
He longed to go, but could not. If Donald were to die now and here, he
must not leave one slim girl to face the trouble, full of guile though
she might be. He watched her put a hand on the old man’s heart, and wrap
the blankets round him; and still he could not go.
When she turned and saw him there, shame and pride took fire together.
She glanced at the hair which ran loosened to her knees, and hated him
for the surprise. She glanced, too, as Donald had done, at the pike
above the mantel; her voice was cold and hard.
“We shall not trouble you for long.”
A great anger flamed in Hardcastle. “Am I such a churl as that?”
“You were a churl last night.”
“How should I know he was an ailing man? There’d have been no doubt of
your welcome then.”
“In our country all benighted guests are welcome; but you’re a harsher
folk in Yorkshire.”
He glanced again at Donald. “Shall I send Rebecca to you?”
“There is no need.”
The Master turned without a word. She chose to be at war with him, and
he was content enough; better that than the pity she had roused. When a
man began to pity any woman, he had one foot already in the marshes.
He had reached the door, and was closing it behind him, when she
recalled him. “You, too, were ill last night. Have you recovered?”
“I’m in rude health, now as then.”
“Fear is a sickness.”
Hardcastle glowered down at her, and Causleen learned in that moment
what the strength of his blow would have meant if she had carried a
man’s shape.
“It may be. I never had much traffic with it.”
“Until yesterday. We brought the token, and I watched grey fear come to
the Master of Logie as he touched it.”
Her rancour was less for herself than for the slight put on Donald, sick
and old, who in his prime had known the glow of candlelight on a
well-ordered table, the ruby in the wine of life. And now her father lay
there, a pensioner on the bounty of this dour host—lay dying, with the
Flodden pike sneering at him overhead, and all the room packed with
ghosts of men who had boasted through the generations of what they had
done aforetime to the Scots.
“Your Highland men have never known fear?” asked Hardcastle.
She faced him, slender and straight, her dark hair like a glory about
her tattered pedlar’s clothes. “Only its name,” she said, with the same
quiet mockery—“and that they had from the Southrons.”
“Then God help them for no more than beasts of the field. What courage
could they learn, unless they came to grips with fear?”
Causleen remembered many journeys, with fortune at its worst and only
the pedlar’s voice to rouse her from the depths. “Fear is a good
whetstone, child,” he would say. “It breaks poor metal, but sharpens
steel.” And now Hardcastle was giving her the same rough gospel.
“When did you learn so much?” she asked, half-defiant still.
“Last night—no longer since than that—while I thought of all the
uproar I’d brought to Logie-side.”
He glanced once more at Donald, then turned and went down the passage.
Rebecca was bustling into the sunlit breakfast-room with a tray that
held many tempting odours for a hungry man. She fussed pleasantly about
the Master’s needs, as of old, but with a new solicitude.
“Storm-cocks were crying round Logie all the night,” she said, breaking
the silence at last—“or else I dreamed they were.”
“You dreamed it, likely. This weather’s not for breaking yet.”
“Maybe not—but the Lost Folks’ weather is.”
“It had to break,” said Hardcastle.
Again the silence fell between them—the silence that was more ultimate
than speech. None knew better than these two the staunchness that would
be asked for by and by, when the Wilderness loosed its spite against
them, and only a few were left to stand against the pestilence that
would sweep over Logie-side—the pestilence of dread.
“Donald is sinking fast, by the look of him,” said the Master presently.
“He’ll not quit the house till he dies. Not a doubt o’ that; but he may
sink very gradual. I’ve seen such cases.”
“It was as well I didn’t turn him away last night. He’d not have got
far, poor devil.”
“As well maybe,” grumbled Rebecca, “though I’ve no stomach for tending
him and the dark-eyed hussie for weeks on end. We’ve lived to ourselves
till now, and I never relished foreigners.”
“They’re under my roof.”
“Oh, they’ll be looked after, Master. And, to be sure, it’s as ill to
slight the pedlar-sort as it is to kill a spider. Lucky they are, both
o’ the tribes, if you treat ’em kindly.”
“Lucky?” said Hardcastle, getting up from table. “Donald found the token
for me, if that spells luck.”
“It does. We’ll be rid of the Wilderness scum at last.”
“At last—and may it be a long last,” snapped the Master.
He had forgotten Storm the sheep-slayer—as he was forgetting many
things in this new day of strife—until he passed the cupboard where he
had housed the culprit over-night.
Storm was not there. He had watched for this moment, after the
house-doors were opened, and had gone away to the hills by stealth.
Hardcastle laughed soberly. One guest the less under his roof was one
load taken from his shoulders; and the pack promised to be heavy by and
by.
His own dog, Roy, was waiting for him in the hall—a big retriever, his
coat sleek and gold-red as October on the brackens. His nut-brown eyes
danced as he saw the gun under Hardcastle’s arm, and clouded when the
Master checked him.
“As far as the gate, lad. There’s only you to guard Logie, and the
Wilderness Folk are out at last.”
A sharp regret came to Hardcastle as he shut the gate on Roy, a sense
almost of foreboding. It did not seem good to be separate at such a
time, from a friend of ten years’ standing.
“Guard,” he said. “The Lost Folk are out, I tell you.”
Roy whimpered as he reared across the closed gate and licked
Hardcastle’s face. He was getting near to old age, as dogs count life;
but the lure of a gun renewed his youth at all times.
Hardcastle turned as he went down Logie-lane. The dog had his forepaws
on the gate still, and he barked a friendly, dolorous farewell. “Guard,
lad,” said the Master, “the Lost Folk are out, I tell you.”
His errand lay over Logie Brigg, and up into the wooded roadway that
climbed steeply to Langerton. Beyond Langerton were the Wilderness Folk,
who were out against him to a man—lurking close at hand, maybe, in twos
or threes. Hardcastle paid no heed. He had gone through the sweat of
fear last night, and to-day sunrise was with him after that long battle.
Dread, rooted generations deep, had been fought and thrown in the space
of a night, he fancied.
At the bend of the road where it strode, over Crooning Water, a quiet,
slender woman sat on the copestone of the bridge. She had a pile of
picked willow-stems at her right hand, and was busy with a half-made
basket lying in her lap. In all the Dale there was no more sequestered
nook than this, none richer with the peace and mellowed glory of
October. Crooning Water, escaped not long since from the prison-house of
Drumly Ghyll—its rocks steep and dark and terrible—raced down with a
bubbling song of liberty, and halted to play round the whirlpool delved
by waters that had gone before and were one by now with the distant
seas. A place of sanctuary, like an old kirk ready with its welcome for
young, honest love.
The woman on the bridge glanced up at Hardcastle’s approach, and into
her eyes there leaped God knows what of devilry, appeal, regret. And he,
for his part, stood looking at her with a wonder that for a moment was a
boy’s wonder, till he shut the gates on what had been.
“Still basket-weaving, Nita?” he asked gravely.
“And still weaving spells about the men of Logie-side.”
She was provocative, inscrutable, as of old, this girl-woman whose grey
eyes and flower-like face were all in keeping with the russet autumn
peace.
“About all but one,” said Hardcastle.
“And that one’s here with me. He’s here with me where we met first. Do
you remember?”
Hardcastle remembered, in savage earnest. She had not changed in these
five years, so far as slender beauty went, and the nameless charm that
drew men to her—drew all men except one.
“I was a dreamer then—and younger.”
“It’s good to dream at times. I weave a good deal of dream-stuff into my
baskets as I make them—and wonder what happens when a simple lass
up-dale sets her arm under the handle. Queer thoughts will come to her.”
“They will,” said the Master, rough and stubborn—“but the thoughts will
be good for your trade. _Never put all your eggs into one basket, for
fear the withies break._ So they’ll buy two, when next you come.”
“You’ll never forgive?” said Nita Langrish, her voice soft as Crooning
Water’s where it lapped the archway of the bridge below them.
“I’ve done better, Nita—I’ve forgotten.”
She glanced up to learn if it was true. He stood there unyielding,
utterly remote; and a great longing came to Nita to chain and hold this
man who had put her out of his life.
“You wanted me for your wife once. Is it too late, Hardcastle of Logie?”
He looked down at her in frank astonishment.
“Are last year’s nests too late?”
“I was a fool. Perhaps five years have taught me to be wise. And you’re
harsh these days. Is it love of me that’s hardening you?”
“No, God be thanked. It’s love of hardness for its own sake.”
She let him go the length of the bridge and a little beyond, then called
him back.
“You’re hardy, to come so near the Wilderness Folk, after what we’ve
left on your gate.”
In spite of his boast not long ago, Hardcastle remembered how he had
once cared for this bonnie slip of devildom, the sleepless nights he had
gone through in that far-off time.
“Put what you will on my gate,” he said, “except those slim hands of
yours.”
“Was it not enough to meet three of our men,” she asked, with dangerous
quiet, “and send them bleeding home?”
“It was good while it lasted.”
“Yet you want me, too, for enemy.”
“You’re of the Wilderness these days, Nita.”
“Was I, a moment since? You would laugh if I told you what I was weaving
into my baskets, before you came and spoiled it all.”
Hardcastle’s face was grim as the nether-millstone. “I’m past your sort
of guile, Nita. No woman takes me twice in the same net.”
“But was it guile? Suppose, as I threaded the withies in and out, I was
thinking of Logie—and its Master?”
“And of twenty other men, no doubt.”
He had struck home at last. She got to her feet, shaken by a storm of
passion. “Fancies are no crime. I’d have lost every man in the dale for
sake of Hardcastle of Logie—aye, and have burned their houses at a word
from him.”
Hardcastle felt a touch of her old, bewildering power, but recovered
sharply. “You had me at call once, and tore that dream to tatters.”
“You were too much at call. I’m of the sort that wearies unless a man’s
escaping me.”
“You’re frank,” said Hardcastle, shrugging his wide shoulders. “It seems
a long way off, Nita—the time when you would come and make a day hell
or heaven for me. You chose your road.”
Now she had lost him; she recalled with bitter clearness the way of her
playing with him long since, because he was so big and yet so downright
drowned in love. All the might-have-been turned to venom, though she had
caged her temper and was smiling in quiet mockery.
“Yes,” she said—“as you chose your road yesterday. The Wilderness Men
you taunted me with just now—I keep them at bay by promising favours to
one and another, and by giving none. When danger gets too close, I set
them at each other’s throats—for your sake, until now.”
“For my sake?”
“Men know so little.” Her glance met his in search of weakness or
relenting, and found none. “So now I shall set them all at _your_
throat, Hardcastle of Logie, and they’ll bring blithe hearts to the
game. You know what follows the token left on a gate? There comes a
shaft out of nowhere, aimed at Logie. Then a spell of quiet, and after
that another shaft. You’ve heard the way of the Lost Folk?”
“I have,” said the Master, his head lifted sharply. “And now the Lost
Folk are to learn the way of Logie.”
Nita warmed to the change in this man who had been easy going once, a
slave to her whims. And with the warmth came a new bitterness that she
had lost one who could show this spirit, walking alone as he did so near
the Wilderness that soon would be eating into his courage like a cancer.
“You’ve a gun under your arm,” she said. “That’s for fear, I take it.”
“No. It’s for a chance shot at partridge on the way to Michael
Draycott’s. He fancies he’s a day or two from death, and wants his will
made out.”
“Men do fancy that, if they’ve the toothache or their little finger
smarts. And of course you’re a magistrate these days.” The grey eyes
enticed and mocked him. “I had forgotten. I was back, somehow, in the
times when we roamed Logie Woods together.”
“They’re gone,” said the Master—“dead and mouldered out of sight by
now.”
“Are you a man at all, or just an oak-tree going on two feet about
Logie-side?”
“A man?” echoed Hardcastle, with a quiet laugh. “That’s in the proving.”
With that he went up the road, and turned in at the gate that opened on
Michael Draycott’s pastures. Nita thought he would glance back once at
least, drawn by old allegiance. She would have forgiven him much for the
glance; but he went up the slope and out of sight, cocking the hammers
of his gun. He was thinking already of partridge, not of the random days
behind.
She seated herself again on the parapet and took up her basket-work; and
none could have guessed, seeing her tranquil beauty, what thoughts she
was weaving now into the plaited withies. Crooning Water lapped and
gurgled. A curlew was plaining across the fells, and from some wayside
tree a starling was mimicking his note. No other sound broke the
fragrant peace till the scrunch of feet sounded down the highway and a
stocky, undersized man swung round the bend. He stopped on seeing Nita
and touched his cap with rough deference. Bonnie, a temptress who
flouted and smiled on them by turns, Nita had a strange hold on the
regard of the Wilderness Men, though few of their women were of like
mind. The men held her in honour, too; and this was due, maybe, to the
knowledge that more than once she had set them an example of
cold-blooded savagery that none could equal.
“I met him of Logie up Draycott’s pasture,” said the man, a still look
in his beady eyes. “Walked as if he owned all from this to hell
hereafter. ‘Got a gun with you. You’re wise,’ says I; ‘but why do you go
sporting without a dog?’ and Hardcastle laughs. ‘The dog’s guarding
Logie from such as you.’ ‘Then you’re wise again,’ says I, ‘for Logie
will ask for a lot of guarding by and by.’”
“Is he a fool altogether?” asked Nita, glancing up from her basket.
“I wouldn’t say that—not by a long way.”
“It looks like it. He’s chosen to rouse the Wilderness round him, like a
hive of bees. There can only be one end to that.”
“That’s true enough; but the ending mayn’t be this year or next. Fight
sinks the fool in Hardcastle. That’s what our three Broken Men said when
they came from the pinfold yesterday, and all the women laughing at
them.”
“Afraid of him already, are you?”
“I’m not myself. A darkish night, and me with just enough light to see
where to crack his skull—and Hardcastle riding the lonely roads he’s
fond of——”
“All in good time.” Nita’s voice was clear as a throstle’s, her fingers
busy with the willows. “Before an end comes to him that way, Jake, we’ll
strike elsewhere.”
“If you choose. You’re wiser than the rest of us put together.”
“We’ll maim before we kill. Hardcastle is a fool altogether, I tell you
so. He cares for his own, when wise folk care for themselves.”
“There’s few enough he cares for these days, I should have said.”
“So he cares deeper for the few. There’s one close friend the Master
has—and this is what you’ll do, Jake.”
Then she told her mind to him; and he gaped in admiring wonder for a
while, till she bade him get about his business of the day. And after
that, in the hollow’s tranquil silence, she threaded her withies in and
out as she sat on the bridge—the bridge where Hardcastle had seen her
first.