THE QUIET WEDDING
The Garsykes Folk had grown tired of guarding the cave mouth. For a
night, and half the next day, Nita’s tongue had whipped them into
watchfulness; and when they were growing out of hand at last, she made
light of what Hardcastle could do to them.
“Get you in first, Long Murgatroyd,” she gibed. “What with the ghosts
and the silence, we’ve tamed Hardcastle by this time. You needn’t fear.”
Murgatroyd fetched a laugh up, big as his body. “If you’ll come with
me,” he said.
The devil in her warmed to what she would find, somewhere along the
track in yonder. To see Hardcastle distraught with fear and hunger—to
have him cringe to her for the means of safety—that was the dream she
had woven into her baskets for many a month gone by.
She took Murgatroyd’s hand, with a light and eager smile, and together
they went into the cavern whose every winding was known to the rabble
that followed with shrill, raucous jests.
They had candles in plenty, to scare the ghosts away; but somehow their
laughter grew afraid of itself, and died out in eerie echoes, passed on
from the wet spear-points of rock that came straight, like arrows, from
the roof above. Then the whole cavern was filled with rolling murmurs
that passed on their oaths into the everywhere beyond; but Nita kept
them trudging forward.
They crossed the torrent. No trace of life showed, no sign of struggle.
And now they reached the lake, and Nita paused at its brink, looking
down into its unstirred waters. Were Hardcastle and the pedlar’s brat
lying there, she wondered? But, if that had chanced, why had two
Garsykes Men not returned—the two she had sent with knives to kill
Hardcastle and torture Causleen?
One question was answered speedily, as she and Murgatroyd turned the
bend of the track and saw two huddled shapes blocking their way.
Murgatroyd roared with sudden terror, but Nita, laughing at him, held
her candle low above the dismaying sight.
The man shot by Hardcastle at close quarters showed less ghastly than
his fellow, for the charge had gone through him like a single bullet;
but the other lay face up to the roof, and Storm’s fury was plain about
his tortured throat.
“What is it?” growled the men behind, catching panic from Murgatroyd’s
bellow of affright.
“Two of ours that could well be spared,” said Nita, and stepped on the
fallen, and went forward for a pace or two.
“What is it?” came the uneasy question again as they heard a sharp cry
escape her.
“The end of Logie. Come see it.”
They gathered courage from the exultation; and those who could press
into the new cavern, formed to the left hand of the track, lifted a
score of candles to what had been the end of their rock-fastness. The
straight-faced barrier they had known was now a mad confusion of rocks
broken into shapes fantastic, terrible.
“That’s their marriage-bed,” said Nita, her voice childest in its
gentleness—“Hardcastle’s and his wanton’s. Did I say there’d be an end
of Logie?”
“The man was always a bit of a fool,” growled Murgatroyd, recovering
from his panic. “I reckon he loosed his fowling-piece on one o’ the two
we trod on. A toddling Garsykes kid could have told him what it ’ud do
to pent-in walls.”
When Nita, treading on light feet, led her men back through the cave,
and out into the sweet upland air of afternoon, she took them straight
to Widow Mathison’s inn, and left them there.
“Drink your fill, now Logie’s gone,” she said, and went up into the
fells.
Near dusk she returned, and called them out from the ale that had
merried them—called them into the cobbled street.
“Is Nita wise?” she asked softly. “Did she promise Logie’s end?”
They roared an answer, and suddenly she fell to dancing for their
pleasure. The last crimson of the sunset flared down and over from
Pengables Hill, and lit her slender paces and her slender limbs. As her
fingers wove dark magic into the baskets she sold down and up the Dale,
her whole body now snared and enticed the men she loathed.
Then once more she left them, going fleet-footed as a deer up the
darkening fells, and came to her cottage where the little fir-wood
rustled in the breeze. She slept as a tired child might, and soon after
dawn went to her bath in the pool within the wood. Then she took the
fell-track to Logie, and came to the open door of Rebecca’s kitchen, and
stood there, darkening the wintry sunlight.
“The Master has not returned?” she asked softly.
Rebecca had looked for some such visit, and glanced up from dusting the
china dogs on the chimney-shelf. “Not yet. But what is that to you?”
“He followed the pedlar’s girl into the cave, they tell me, and neither
will come back, I fear.”
“Well, there’s still me and the brindled cat left, and we’ll see to
Logie. Tell Garsykes from me, you basket-weaving trollop, that I’ll comb
’em with the thick end of a besom if they try their pranks.”
Nita could make nothing of the woman, so hard, so unmoved by the
Master’s fate. “Have you no fear?”
“Aye, for such as you, once my fingers get about you. You’d best be
gone.”
Nita tarried only for one last shaft before she fled from the other’s
truculence. “The Master’s gone. And old Rebecca’s wits have gone. It’s
the rarest day that Garsykes ever saw.”
“Maybe,” muttered Rebecca, as she got to her dusting again.
She knew how, after their safe return from the cave, Hardcastle had left
Causleen in her care while he went up the moonlit road to join Shepherd
Brant in his waiting for the Logie yeomen to return from market. She
knew how he had probed under their lazy tribute-giving by plain recital
of what had happened in the cave, and had pledged them to guard Logie
whenever he himself had need to tide abroad.
And now the Master had ridden over-hill to Skipton, on an errand that
she guessed; and Causleen herself lay in the room above, in a dead sleep
of weariness that was saving life and reason after the hell she had
passed through in the cavern.
“You’re the one spoil-sport among us, my brindled cat,” she snapped, as
Jonah mewed about her skirts. “I loved old Storm myself; but he’s gone,
and you can’t mew him back.”
For an hour she went about her work, then grew as restless as Jonah
himself. It was time the Master was home again, and he tarried. What if,
at the end of his rough journey through the cave, his horse had thrown
him somewhere between this and Skipton? Life, as she knew it, had that
apeish way of letting folk go safe through harsh odds, only to crack
thin skulls against a moorland boulder as they rode quietly home.
Keenly as Rebecca listened for the tip-tap of hoofs up the road,
Causleen heard it first. She wakened from a sleep befogged by peddling
days, and memories of the harsh greeting she had found once at
Logie—sleep threaded through and through by flame-red memories of
Garsykes and its cavern.
Far down the road she heard the music of her man’s
returning—_clickety-clack_, faint at first as the tread of elfin feet.
Where had he been, risking his life in these disastrous days? And was he
wounded by a stealthy blow aimed at him by some foul lout from Garsykes
lurking in the heather?
Need to know how it fared with him drew her from her bed. She put the
frayed cloak about her—the cloak that had been blue as hope once, but
now was like a Jacob’s coat, painted by many kinds of weather—and went
down the stair, and out to Logie’s gate.
She was in time to open it for Hardcastle, in time to see the light in
his eyes as he got from the saddle, and told his horse to find his own
way to stable.
“Where have you been?” she asked, fingering his sleeve.
“To Skipton-in-Craven,” said Hardcastle. “I had business there.”
She touched his sleeve no longer. “And left me here—alone, except for
Rebecca and a farm-lad? At such a time—after all we’d shared, and with
Garsykes near—_You went on business?_”
“I left a body-guard. Some of our Logie Men are in the woods—and two by
Logie Brigg, to let none from Garsykes through—except Nita, if she’s a
mind to come.”
She took a further step away. “You might have stayed, for all that—just
to be near me, Dick.”
“I went over-hill for the right to keep you near.”
She had known him taciturn and hard, known the laughter that came rarely
and was far away from joy; but now he was a riddle, as he took her hands
and would not let them go.
“You left me so soon—for what?” asked Causleen wearily.
His heart spoke now. By all he said and left unsaid she knew at last the
caring that had come at the end of their uphill, stormy wooing. Garsykes
might be broken, once for all, he told her; but the old, stealthy siege
of Logie might be renewed by slow degrees. Either way, they’d meet the
coming weather as man and wife. The licence would be ready in three
days’ time, and it was no far ride to Skipton Kirk.
“That was your business?” she asked, her voice brave and vibrant. “And I
chided you—and so, Dick, do what you will with me.”
When his will was made plain, however, that on the fourth day from now
they would be married, she was submissive no longer, but pleaded for
delay. She had no clothes for her wedding, and would shame him in his
own market-town unless he gave her time.
“Wear the old cloak over all,” said Hardcastle, “and I’ll be content
enough.”
So there came a day when Rebecca watched them ride out from Logie. The
Master had not said what their errand was, but she knew; and she scolded
Jonah till he spat at her. And then she gathered him into her arms, and
cried, and cried.
“Love of a man sees far, when you’ve mothered his cantrips since he was
a babby,” she said by and by, with a smile utterly forlorn. “And
jealousy sees far. But it’s hell’s own spite when the two keep company.”
Causleen and Hardcastle guessed nothing of all this, as they rode, in
wonder and in silence, over the hill to Skipton. They guessed nothing of
it as they rode home again, drawing rein to glance at the pride of that
one word, _Desormais_, carved high above the grey, stubborn
castle-gateway.
Long as he had known it—and he rode seldom from Skipton without a
glance at the message overhead—Hardcastle had taken it as a symbol of
his own grim fight for Logie. Now that was changed. He had a wife beside
him, and the feud with Garsykes grew doubly worth the while.
He glanced at the carved challenge, and made English of it for her.
“_Henceforth_, sweetheart,” he said, and laughed quietly as a conqueror
might.
In silence they rode past the castle walls and up into the grey,
solitary fells. The track twisted this way and that to lessen the
steepness of the climb, till they breasted the last of the hill and
passed through the rocky gap that was the gateway of the homeland
watered by Wharfe River.
They drew rein, and could only marvel at the land stretched wide below
them. The winter’s sun shone warm and mellow over the far spaces,
grey-blue with haze. Every striding league of heath, each gully where
leafless rowans waited for the spring, showed to Hardcastle like the map
of his own heart. Pride—big hearted, eager pride—leaped out as he
pointed down the slope.
“We own most of it, wife. Is it a good bridal-gift?”
Her eyes filled with tears. He gave all he had, for her to share. And he
named her wife. She had not guessed how all-sufficing the name was, how
real and warm and safe. And somehow, across the chill upland breeze, a
summer fragrance blew, as of clove-pinks and ladslove in a wayside
garden.
All they had gone through together returned—the stealthy siege of
Logie, the stark, long peril in the cave—and she drew a sharp breath of
thanksgiving that this was the end of nightmare.
“Life is sweet to hold, Dick,” she said, smiling through her tears.
They rode in another silence, rich with speech, down the slack of
Storner Bank. And now the wood-reek from Logie’s chimneys eddied up, so
near that they could smell its savour.
“We’re home,” said Hardcastle, drawing his horse nearer hers.
Then, as they rounded the bend, he pulled up sharply. Nita Langrish, a
bundle of withies over her shoulder, was standing in the roadway, her
glance fixed on Logie. So intent she was on thoughts of the dead Master
who had flouted her—hidden deep with the pedlar’s brat under the rocks
in Garsykes cave—that she heard no sound of hoofs behind.
Nita had had her will of them both, and stood there as in a trance.
Vengeance was sweet. She was minded to taste it to the full, looking
down at masterless Logie. Every curling wisp of smoke rose from a hearth
Hardcastle would never know again. No son of his would grow to claim the
heritage. Logie and its seven hundred years ended with old Rebecca and a
brindled cat; and so much for pride.
A man’s cry of warning roused her, and she turned to see Hardcastle’s
cob rearing scarcely a yard away, his fore-feet perilously close.
Nita leaped aside, then stood gazing at these two who were buried in the
cave out yonder—these two, who seemed to ride on horseback through the
sunlight and the free moorland wind.
Hardcastle glanced once at her. It was not his way to fight with women;
but a sullen loathing came.
“We’re dead in Garsykes cavern,” he said. “It’s only our ghosts that
ride.”
“Only your ghosts?” asked Nita eagerly, snatching at a straw in this
torrent of dread that raced over her.
“And Storm’s,” said Hardcastle. “He died with us, and runs close behind,
I fancy.”
With that they rode on, and Hardcastle’s grim smile died out as he
glanced at Causleen’s face.
“You’re tired, wife,” he said gently.
“I was not tired at all until—until she stood there—stood on the
threshold of our home-coming.”
A shadow crept, too, about Hardcastle and stayed with him as they came
indoors, Causleen and he, and found Rebecca waiting for them.
“Step forrard,” said Rebecca. “It was time you married, Hardcastle of
Logie.”
“How did you know?” he asked, wondering that there was no need to break
the news.
Gaunt and straight, Rebecca stood facing them with a hard, roving
glance. “How did I know, asks he, when I’ve given my life to watching
his ins-and-outs? How could I help but know?”
On one side of the threshold Nita had met them. On the other stood this
henchwoman, grief and jealousy showing in her sombre eyes. Against their
will, a sense of doom crept out from Logie’s storied walls, chilling
their eager wedlock.
“I kept young for you, Master,” went on Rebecca, “till you found a bride
for Logie. And now I’ll let myself grow old.”
“I’d have told you our errand——”
She cut short his troubled words. “You would, but for thinking of old
Rebecca. The blow would fall softer, you fancied, if you brought a
full-fledged wife, instead of letting me wait all day for a promised
one. Men, poor lambs, are not good at breaking news, and never were.”
Her tart humour swept him like a moorland breeze through the gloom she
had brought about these two.
“I’ve the bridal-supper ready, and near spoilt. You were always late to
your vituals, Master.”
She sat on in the kitchen, after all was served and she had left them to
their meal; and she missed Jonah sorely. The cat had been with her till
the moment when she went to greet the bridal-pair, and now had vanished
like her own joy in serving Hardcastle. All had gone, it seemed, and she
yielded to loneliness utter and complete.
She threw her apron over her head, and rocked to and fro. Grief had its
way with her. The years behind gathered their hardships to a head, and
tears broke through at last.
Then by and by she heard the kettle singing on the hob, and made a hefty
brew of tea. And after that she went in search of Jonah.
They heard her tramping forlornly upstairs and down, and Causleen’s hand
reached out to Hardcastle’s across their wedding-table.
“She’s old and sorry, Dick—and we’ve so much.”
Hardcastle found a quick new tenderness for this wife of his. She knew,
as he did, that Rebecca was bone and fibre of his house—one by this
time with its thick-set walls, the people who lived here aforetime—one
to be cherished like a heritage.
Together they went in search and found Rebecca standing at the cupboard
under the stair. The door was open, and her candle showed the brindled
cat spitting and growling from the lair he had shared with Storm on many
a day gone by.
The candlelight showed something else to Causleen, her vision sharpened
by this wild home-coming—showed her the shape of Storm, the
sheep-slayer, with a long, brown-red gash across his filmy hide—Storm,
who was dead, returned to Logie and the Master.
Hardcastle had made a bitter jest to Nita of Storm’s following them, a
ghost. And Storm was here.
“What d’ye see,” asked Rebecca—“what d’ye see, beyond that dratted cat
o’ mine?”
“A leal friend, Rebecca.”
And with that she put a hand in Hardcastle’s, ready for whatever weather
came to Logie. The end of the stark battle was not yet.