Читать книгу Storm - Henry James Halliwell Sutcliffe - Страница 12

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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.