SPITE’S VICTORY
Causleen, when she left Hardcastle asleep in the hooded chair at Logie,
wandered nearer and nearer to the Garsykes country, till she halted at
last on Trolls Hill and stood looking over the barren lands.
The wind, boisterous now, had scattered the mists, and in the keen,
chilly sunlight Garsykes village showed clear across the hollow. She
could hear voices in its street, and wondered if they were planning some
new devilment. A woman’s raucous laugh sounded. Was that in answer to
the plotting?
Her courage ebbed low, after the night’s useless vigil. There were so
many of them. What chance had Logie in the last result? Surely
Hardcastle had done enough, and might give up the unequal battle. He had
only to pay tribute, like the rest, to buy his safety.
She trampled down the thought. If she had half-loved him, that road of
freedom might have brought content. As it was, she could not bear that
he should be less than the Master, whatever came. And yet the odds
against him were pitiful, disastrous.
Still her glance was drawn to Garsykes, as if the very evil of the place
had cast a spell on her; and she started when Nita Langrish stepped
lightly up the track that led from Logie.
“Not afraid to be so near our thieves and cut-throats?” said Nita.
“Logie does not fear such. They came, and had their answer.”
“Riding a tall horse, are you? Logie does not fear, says Hardcastle’s
wanton, as if she was an honest wife there.”
The hot blood flamed in Causleen’s face, and pallor followed. If a knife
had been ready to her hand, there would have been murder done, here
where the wind roared and fluted over Trolls Hill.
“Go,” she said, “back to the styes that bred you!”
“I will go, little beggar on horseback. If you knew what errand I have
been on—but, then, you do not know.”
Nita stood poised on slender feet, like a wild deer of the hills, but
tarried.
“I’m skilled in divination,” she went on, her voice reminding Causleen,
in some haphazard way, of Jonah, the brindled cat when he was playing
with a mouse. “Shall the basket-weaver tell you what is coming?”
In spite of herself, Causleen felt weak and a child in the other’s
hands. The magic that had kept Garsykes Men in thrall was drawing her
into its webs. She followed Nita’s finger as it pointed to the road
below, where the track from Logie split in two—one grey lane going flat
to Garsykes, the other winding steep and rocky to a cavern gaping
open-mouthed across the green face of the pastures.
“Do you see where the tracks divide?” purred Nita. “A man will come to
the two-ways by and by, and take the upper road. And you will follow.”
Causleen remembered Hardcastle asleep at Logie; and he was the one man
in the world she would ever follow willingly.
“It is not true,” she said, with chill disdain.
The basket-weaver made no answer. But still she did not go, and her
silence began to mesh Causleen again with unseen nets. Yonder was
Garsykes, foul and a menace centuries old. And close at hand was Nita.
She felt utterly alone, as if friendless leagues divided her from Logie
and her man.
Strive as she would, panic—headlong, unreasoning panic—was stealing on
her, though the sun shone and the free winds went bristling by.
Nita kept silence. She, of all living Garsykes Folk, had learned most of
the black magic handed down the generations. It had been her joy to
weave it into the baskets she sold, into the ill-starred deeds her men
did by night and day—and Causleen was given into her hands. She would
half slay her now with dread, then let her go to what they had planned
for the pedlar’s girl and Hardcastle.
All that was brave and Highland-born in Causleen fought the terror
stealing on her. What sort of wife would she be to Hardcastle, if she
yielded now to this stealthy dread that came like formless mist about
her?
There came a whimpering through the heather. She did not hear, till a
wet nose was pressed into her hand; and afterwards a tongue red with
sheep-slaying reached up and licked her face.
Then, as on a night gone by when Storm lay in the cupboard under Logie’s
stair, she threw her arms about him.
“Storm, you’ve come,” she said, hugging his tousled body, thick with
bracken-splinters that he carried from his past night’s lair.
Nita drew away. Dogs always distrusted her, and fear of the whole
race—a dread half superstitious—had grown into her life. Yet even now
she could not keep back the bitter gibe.
“He is a friend of the Master’s, too. Dear grief, Logie keeps odd
company nowadays.”
Storm, homeless and tired of the wander-lust, had been sending long
thoughts out to Logie as he sat on a spur of the moors and saw Causleen
swing into sight across the Garsykes track. He had bounded
down—slipping and turning a somersault or two on the way—and, now that
he was in touch again with Logie, he was content. He growled at Nita by
habit, and bared his teeth, then turned again to Causleen and yielded
like a puppy to her daft endearments. She smelt of home to Storm.
Causleen was reliant and herself again. The coming of this four-footed
Ishmael had broken the basket-weaver’s spells. Garsykes mattered no
longer. Out there Hardcastle was sleeping himself into new vigour; and
here was Storm, to guide her safe to the return.
“Logie always had staunch friends,” she said, her glance meeting Nita’s.
Nita made no answer, but glanced behind her; and presently her slight
body quivered with eagerness.
“Did I lie, little wanton? A man comes up the Garsykes road. He’s a
small figure yet—but, see, he grows bigger—and now he nears the
two-ways that I told you of.”
Causleen was meshed again by webs. She could do no more than follow the
pointing finger, and watch the man till she knew his limber stride, his
way of carrying broad shoulders.
“He has come to the two-roads now,” said Nita softly—“and now he takes
the higher track. Did I lie?”
Hardcastle, in the clear light, seemed so near that Causleen cried aloud
to him, entreating his return. The wind drove her voice back.
“I sent him there—in search of you,” said Nita. “He thinks we have you
in our caves.”
For one still moment Causleen paused. She knew the agony speeding
Hardcastle to the black mouth that grinned across the pasture-lands. She
knew what leaped from her in answer.
“You sent him there?” she echoed.
“Yes—food for our Garsykes wolves.”
Causleen, with sudden, blinding passion, called to the sheep-slayer
“Storm, kill her. Fasten on her throat, Storm.”
The dog was far down the slope already. He, too had seen the Master.
Causleen might smell of home, but Hardcastle was Logie’s self.
The pedlar’s girl raced sure-footed between the wet, gnarled hummocks,
crying as she ran with a warning that the gale caught and drove to
tatters. She came to the parting of the ways, and followed without pause
the grey track that wound upward to the caves.
Hardcastle’s big figure, far ahead, halted for a brief welcome as Storm
overtook him. As if she stood beside them, she knew what went to that
greeting—the man’s joy that he had a toothed and stubborn friend in
this adventure, the dog’s that he was with the chosen one.
“Come back,” she cried again—so loud, it seemed to her, that not even
the wind could hinder its sharp bidding.
Hardcastle did not hear. Like a man possessed he strode forward till he
reached the cave’s mouth. Then they were swallowed by the darkness,
Storm and he, and Causleen knew at last what caring meant.
She neither wavered nor had fear. Where he went she would follow, by
free-will and by right.
Nita watched it all from the benty lands above—saw Hardcastle and Storm
go into the trap prepared. Then Causleen went, and was hidden by the
dark. And after that, ten frowsy men got out from the rocks and closed
about the entry.
The basket-weaver took her way to Garsykes, crooning a song of the Lost
Folk—a low, stealthy ballad, ages old, that reeked of the marshes and
the styes. And, as she came into the village, she found it packed with
men and scolding women.
They snarled and jeered at her, and Long Murgatroyd’s voice was lifted
in sullen fury.
“Here comes Nita. She sent us to fire Logie, and then talked big about
doing what we couldn’t. She’s laughed at us too long, the hussy.”
She faced the answering uproar and laughed afresh at them. “Little Nita
does what she promises,” she said, pointing to the caves above.
“Hardcastle has gone in to find his wanton, and she’s with him there.”
They fell back then, muttering, and her tongue whipped them as of old.
“I’ve trapped them for you—and you whine and skulk here asking
questions. They’d be out of the trap by now, if I hadn’t picked ten from
among you to guard the caves—ten who shaped more like men than
rabbits.”
“Art lying, Nita, as of old?” growled Murgatroyd.
Again she pointed to the black mouth that gashed the fells. And now in
the keen light they saw ten of theirs moving to and fro about the
cave-front, and a great shout went up.
In a moment they were racing pell-mell up the slope, save for Nita and
Widow Mathison, who kept the Garsykes inn.
“You’re coming to see Logie’s end?” asked Nita, looking back after she
had started to follow her men at leisure.
“No,” said the widow. “I’ve too much flesh on my bones to care for
hill-climbing.”
A light shone in the basket-weaver’s eyes—the light of thunder skies
that ripen to full-blooded tempest. Merciless, brooding long, her spite
against Logie had come to victory. But more than that went to this mood
of Nita’s. By mother’s milk and father’s training she had been taught
that Garsykes had striven for centuries out of mind to tumble Logie’s
pride to ground.
“Will you not come, widow?” she asked. “There’ll be such sport as was
never seen.”
“I’m too fat, I tell you. I should sweat myself to death in climbing.”
“More’s the pity, for you’d look on at what men long dead in Garsykes
hungered to see. It was left to little Nita to bring Logie down.”
Then she mocked the widow’s grossness, and went up the breast of the
fells. And Widow Mathison got heavily to a spur of the rising ground
that gave her a better outlook on the caves. She remembered how
Hardcastle had brought her lad from the wet of the slimy marshes and
given him back to her on a night not long gone by. Nothing could ever
bridge that debt she owed him.
She listened to the roar of Garsykes voices, saw Nita going tireless up
the slope; and the tears ran amain down the furrows of her plump,
good-natured face.
“We could spare most on Logie-side,” she sobbed, “but not its Master.”