Читать книгу Storm - Henry James Halliwell Sutcliffe - Страница 8

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A red sun was going down behind the rim of the far-off hills as Pedlar Donald came to the road-top overlooking Logie Woods, and beyond them the leagues of moorland roving up into the quiet and misty dusk.

He shifted the heavy pack from his shoulders, and laid it down awhile.

“Tired, father?” asked the girl beside him.

Donald Cameron answered nothing for awhile. He came from Highland glens and moors; and all the way south his yearning for the homeland had dragged at his feet as if they were shod with stone. He had bartered and sold in “foreign” lands, right down through the Scottish lowlands, and over the border into Northumberland and Durham. Now he could not be done with looking out and over these blue-purple hills—fold on fold of them, glamoured like his misty Highlands.

The girl had fallen silent, too. This land was setting its spell on her, as on Donald—the first friendly face they had found in exile. She had ached and sorrowed for the land left behind. And now it was with her—strength of the striding hills—the sun going down in fire of hope for the next morrow’s rising—the wide, free liberty of this land of Logie.

“We’ve travelled the rough ways down from Inverness,” said Donald, putting his arm about the girl, “and it’s been hard for you.”

“Nay, but for you.” Her voice was soft and healing. “My feet are young to the roads.”

“Was it worth while to say no to the price they offered us in Inverness? We could have had ease for the asking.”

The soft voice grew full of quick and eager fire. “We could have bought ease—and we’re better as we are.”

Donald laughed quietly as he shouldered his pack and trudged down the hill. The lass was bone of his bone, and had no regrets. Sharing honest exile, they had learnt the strange alchemy of the Pedlar’s Road that turns much bitterness to gold. A laugh by the wayside here, a vigil there with stricken folk—no taxes asked of their poverty, and none to deny them wind and weather—it was a big life, after all, open to the sky.

Only when they came to Logie Brigg, and Donald felt his knees grow weak again, so that he had to rest awhile, he doubted the wisdom of their days together. He was old and tiring fast. What of his girl if he died by the way? There was honour of the Road, and she would not lack many friends among the pedlars and the cheery tinkers and the men who poached fat hares by night. True—but there were perils for a maid who went alone.

“Child,” he said, as they rested on the bridge and heard Wharfe River croon and swirl below them, “it’s a vagabond’s life, after all—and, Causleen, I’m weary.”

“Your mother seems very near to us,” said Donald, his head lifted as if he heard the pipes calling him up some far hill. “There was the night she was dying, and you a week-old baby in her arms—how clear it all returns—and she saw that I hated you.”

“Hated?”

“Because you robbed me of a wife.”

Storm the sheep-stealer had seen ghosts of armed men pass to and fro across the Brigg, no longer since than yesterday. These two were seeing the broken years behind them, the slow growing into a comradeship as strong as the hills that guarded Logie Brigg.

“She put you into my arms,” went on the pedlar by and by, “and bade me christen you Causleen. I fear I was rough with you, lass.” The old, whimsical humour showed in his tired eyes. “Your mother chided me gently—taught me how to hold you.”

“Yes?”

“Again she bade me name you Causleen, because you’d be the Evening Star to me. She was near to death, and knew—what I came to know—that you’d be the light of my westering years.”

A grief too deep for tears came to the girl. Some weakness in the pedlar’s brave old voice—his looking backward, though all his sturdy gospel was to front the hills of each day—as they came—his hard endeavour to get the pack jauntily over his shoulders once again—all pointed the one way.

They crossed the bridge in silence, each knowing that they journeyed to a new life. It might be worse or better than the old. They did not know; but, either way, it was a stage nearer to the end of this life’s climb.

As they went up the road, a light blinked out at them from Logie house across the last glow of twilight that lingered on the hills above.

“There’ll be a bed for the night up there,” said Donald,—“a bed for you with the maids.”

“And the hay-mow for you?”

“There’s worse lying. You needn’t fret, bairn. Smell of the hay is no bad company.”

“We were not born to it, father,” she said, her slim, young body shaken with passion—not for herself, but for him, fuller of courage than strength.

“Aye, but we were, for we’ve come to it, Causleen. Life’s made that way. The road we trudge, with its ups and downs—it’s the long, grey road we were meant to tread.”

Donald was himself again, and the girl’s mood yielded to this indomitable, half-laughing courage that would not be dismayed.

“Does the grey road end somewhere?” she asked, linking her arm in his to help him up the steep.

“I trust not. When my time comes to go, there’ll surely be other hills beyond the Brink—winding roads, and further rises, and gloaming skies. I’d be lonely without them, child.”

They came to the grey house on the hill, through a rain of beech-leaves slanting down the breeze. The pedlar’s glance, quick for big things and little, caught a glint of the after-light on a small, polished thing that lay on top of the gate.

“The Wilderness Folk told no lies as we passed through,” said Donald. “I had speech with two or three, and their talk was all of this.”

“What is it?” asked Causleen, peering down at the thing lying in the old man’s palm.

“Just a token—and I’m wondering what sort of man lives here at Logie. He’ll need to be dour and staunch, with no fear about him.”

“They were kind enough to us, those folk,” she said, shivering a little at the memory; “but they were evil. While we were selling from the pack, and till we got away into the hills, there was poison round us.”

“There was. It’s a pity, girl, we haven’t let life dull the Highland vision. We ought to be toughened by this time.”

Again she glanced at the little thing in his palm. “Does it go hard with the man they hate?”

“It goes so hard that I’d not change places with him for a wealth of money. Weather is weather; fight in the open is fight; but what they’re putting on the Master of Logie would chill me to the bone.”

A dog barked suddenly, then came at them with a low, running growl.

“Be quit of your nonsense, laddie,” said Donald. “I’ve been through worse fights than you can give.”

The dog smelt them round and about to learn more of these tattered strangers, then put his nose into the pedlar’s hand.

“His sort were always friendly to us,” laughed the girl—“but what of his master?”

“He’s here to answer for himself,” said Hardcastle of Logie, turning at his own door.

They saw a big, loose-built man, with a gun under his arm, and a brace of partridge in his left hand—a man, Donald judged, accustomed to live alone, resenting all intrusion.

“Come to heel, Roy,” snapped Hardcastle. “I’ve no use for a dog that makes easy love to strangers.”

Causleen’s pride took fire, and her glance met his with sharp hostility. “Dogs have clearer sight than their masters sometimes—and gentler breeding.”

“He’s getting old, and forgets that gentleness and breed are under the harrow these days. You’ve blundered into a hard country, and I tell you so.”

She turned from him with tired disdain. “Come away, father,” she said. “They are surly here in Yorkshire. He will not buy.”

“What have you to sell?” asked the Master of Logie, aloof and cold.

“Favours for the maids,” said the pedlar, his voice soft with persuasion. He was thinking of Causleen’s safe lodging for the night, as he opened his pack and praised its wares. She was too tired, poor wean, to journey further, though he was so used to weariness that a further tramp through the night was of small account. “Favours for the maids—a blue mob-cap that sits bonnie enough on a young girl’s hair, with her eyes bo-peeping under it.”

“No maids live at Logie. There’s a grey, old woman indoors—a good cook, and quiet about the house—but she’s past favours.”

“You’re wrong,” persisted Donald. “If a woman neared her end at ninety, she’d cry for the pedlar to dress her up for bridegroom death.”

“Not Rebecca,” said Hardcastle. “I chose her with great care—a nether-millstone of a woman, without a frill or a furbelow about her.”

“You know much of women?” asked Causleen.

“Enough to last me a lifetime.” Something cold and savage showed in his face for a moment, then was gone. “My housekeeper is like the walls of Logie—staunch and weathered.”

“She never loses temper?” The girl was measuring swords with this self-secure, blunt man who disdained all pedlars. “You never find her crying her heart out when you come home before she looks for you?”

“She loses temper,” said Hardcastle, with lazy unconcern. “Not every day, or every week, but when the time comes for outlet. I’m made that way myself. We treat it like the ding of storm about a house that’s outlived many such.”

“And she never weeps?”

“She forgot the way of it long since. Life’s salt enough for most of us as it is.”

“Let’s leave him with this wonder-woman, who never cries,” said the girl, with the same quiet mockery. “She wants nothing from us and the Master of Logie will not buy.”

Hardcastle stood watching them with grim humour. “He would, if you’d anything to sell he needed. Pedlars have to carry all things in their packs for the women. They seldom have the man of the house to reckon with.”

“Seldom,” Donald agreed; “but I’ve something to barter for a night’s lodging.”

“A wheedling tongue? That never carried far with me.”

“Something I found on your gate. Gossip blows down all winds to us tramping folk, and they say the Wilderness People grow busy.”

The Master was silent. For a moment Causleen, as she watched him, saw beyond the mask of his hard, impassive face—saw down into his heart, where fear was dwelling—grey, chilly fear, at war with his manhood and his lusty strength.

“They’ve left their token on me? Show it,” he said, with rough command.

“For the price of a night’s lodging.”

“Oh, you can have it, man.”

“Not so hasty. It must be good lodging for my girl, however it goes with me.”

The Master glowered down at them from under sullen brows. “I’ve power to take it without price of any sort.”

“You have—but not power to use your strength against an aged man. Your face tells me that.”

“Well, then, your price is granted—a good lodging for the night.”

“For both?” asked Causleen. “Father cares little what bed he finds—but I care for him.”

“Beggars seem to be choosers these days,” snapped Hardcastle, raw with trouble.

“It does seem so,” said Donald gently. “The beggars out there are riding on your gate already.”

He opened his palm, and the moonlight glinted on a flint arrow-head, smooth and polished.

Do as he would, something near panic took the Master. The men of Logie-side had paid tribute diligently—till yesterday, when at last it was asked of a Hardcastle and met with blunt refusal. The fight at the pinfold had marked him. He was lame and bruised, but that was the pleasant fruit of victory in single combat against three.

The thing he looked on now was a token hedged about with dread of the forefathers. Once, in the twilight days of the Logie country, a man of the caves had killed his enemy with it, or had slain a wild-fowl for daily food. Since then it had grown to be what it was to Hardcastle—a thing of stark terror, known to all since the Lost Folk first bit their way into an honest country. He would have been less than flesh-and-blood if he had not weakened to this harsh trial time.

“They find such in the caves behind their houses, they tell me,” said Donald.

“Aye, and lay them on the gates of honest men.” Hardcastle had come to grips with fear, as he had closed yesterday with the three men at the pinfold; but dread was a harder foe to meet. As he advanced it withdrew its phantom regiment, only to loose another on him from behind—quick, cold shapes that leaped on him and clung. This was the price asked of him for keeping Logie’s honour safe. He had given no tribute to the Lost Folk—would give none in the future—and already the creeping stealth of their revenge was with him.

“It’s a bleak thing to have at your door for ever, this hate of the Wilderness Men?” said Donald, watching him.

Hardcastle, whatever he was feeling, shut a trapdoor on it. His face was grim again, inscrutable. “A bleak thing, pedlar—but then I was reared on winter gales.”

Donald was aware, by some hidden gift that came to him at times, of much that was to come about the house of Logie. “This gale from the Wilderness is like to blow for a longish while.”

“Then I’ll have to weather it for a longish while, and so much for that.”

Something stirred in Causleen’s heart against her will. Hardcastle had given them a churlish welcome. He did not want them at his door, asked only to be rid of them; but resentment was dulled, because she had seen the sudden weakness of his fear, his hard recovery. She, too, had known the broken roads, the dread that walked by night. She, too, had made, day in and day out, her own hard recovery. They had this in common, she and the Master of Logie.

A clank of pattens sounded from the stable-yard, breaking a silence heavy with the sense of doom, and old Rebecca came into their midst, a lean, tall figure of a woman.

“Jacob, the farm-boy, said there was a pedlar here,” she croaked.

“There is,” said Donald, and in a twinkling unfastened his pack and laid its wares out in the moonlight that rode high and clear above the russet beeches.

Rebecca could not be done with handling them—took up an apron here, a piece of lace-work there, all as if her youth returned.

“I’m too old for such-like trash, pedlar, though God knows I like the feel of it.”

“Too old? I shouldn’t have guessed it,” purred Donald. “You’ve no mirror in the house, maybe, to cure you of that fancy.”

He put a mob-cap into her hands—a cunning thing of lavender, simple enough till a woman’s eye appraised all the little by-ways of its blandishment. Against her will, the years fell away from Rebecca. She hid her grey, scanty locks beneath the cap—donned a lavender apron to match it—and was away in dreamland, a lass of twenty waiting for her man.

It was a good dream while it lasted; but she wearied of it, and searched restlessly among the strewn litter of the pack till she chanced on odds and ends of baby-wear—a pair of shoes, the two of them small as the hollow of a man’s hand, and the little intricate clothes, with daft blue ribands, threaded in and out about them. All they meant crept round her, and tears unshed too long found outlet. Donald heard the great broken heart of life find voice. He was himself a broken man, and knew. Rebecca came out of that weakness with a temper raw as a file. “Pedlars are seldom fools,” she snapped, “but you’re the primest that ever stepped into Logie-side.”

“What have I done?” asked Donald.

“You’ve bared sorrow to the bone, when I thought I’d done with grief!”

Causleen, looking on, felt once again that the end of an old life, the beginning of a new, had come to them—to tired Donald, and herself. The moonlight, racing between dappled clouds, shone free above the beeches on Rebecca—on Hardcastle, grim and silent. From under Logie Bridge, far below them, Wharfe River sang her slumber-song as she swept between her high, grey arches. Roy, the old retriever that had snarled at them, was fidgetting about the Master, and whined as if he scented peril. All was stealthy trouble, though owls were hooting tranquilly across the woods, and rooks cawed fitfully through the soft storm of leaves that was baring their spring nests to sight.

“That’s the best cure,” said the pedlar gently—“the best for any sort of wound. Let fresh air into it, though the knife grits down to the bone.”

Rebecca stood there, tall and lean. In her eyes was a smouldering fire that Causleen and the pedlar understood.

“Maybe you’re no fool after all. I’ve let fresh air into a grief that was festering inward, and praise the dear God for that. They say you met three of the Lost Folk yesterday,” she went on, turning to Hardcastle after a restless silence.

“Three at the pinfold—yes. They took tribute.”

“Not of the sort they asked?”

“Not of the sort they asked,” snarled Hardcastle.

And now again Causleen knew that she had come into a haunted country and to a haunted house. They were sorrowing for their dead, slain foully, Rebecca and the Master—were tending some feud-fire kindled generations since—and the girl was wrapt away to the Highlands, where pipes were playing gallantly about the hills and moaning in the glens of slaughter. They played now about this house of Logie, but with a difference. Up yonder the strife was ended long since—the forlorn hopes that had tilted against merchantry, and bribes, and guile. They could only grieve for what could never come again. But here was a fight in the making. Hardcastle was resolute for some quarrel close at hand; and she had learned enough of the Lost Folk, as they went through their evil country, to know what the strife must mean in the coming days.

“Would you have the tale, pedlar?” said Rebecca. “I’ve need to excuse tears shed in sight of any stranger.”

“Aye, tell it.”

“I had a man of my own once—a straight lad to his height, and good at the wooing. We’d had a lover’s tiff, and me too proud to do aught but send word by roundabouts that he might come and be sorry for his lout’s ways.”

Rebecca fought with her grief again, and conquered it. The rooks cawed fitfully from overhead. A bat fluttered up and down the moonlit courtyard, and Wharfe River sang old ballads of the peaceful days under her time-worn bridge. But there was no peace, here at Logie—only the rasp of Rebecca’s voice as she went on with her tale.

“Instead of my man, there came news to the gate. Two of the Lost Folk had met him by the way, and asked tribute. He said he was Hardcastle’s man, and wouldn’t budge. And they killed him for it.”

“A good sort of death,” said Hardcastle, and Causleen saw grey fear creep round him while he spoke.

The russet gloaming, the quietness of wood and pastures, the silent front of Logie, grey with travail of the years—all made for the realities that live beneath the turmoil of each day’s duties. Rebecca seldom showed any of her heart. She bared it now.

“You chose to loosen your pack, pedlar,” she said, in harsh, even tones, “and you loosed the bygone years as well. Every night and all I go to the gate, and keep tryst with my man that never came. I’d have kissed him free and full—would have worn my hands to the knuckle for him through our wedded days—but he couldn’t come.”

The woman in Causleen answered the break in Rebecca’s voice. “How long ago was this?” she asked, with soft, Highland pity.

“I’ve forgotten. Forty years, maybe, but I’ve lost count.”

Rebecca still wore the mob-cap and the apron, and the moonlight softened the harsh lines of face and body. It was only when she spoke again, after long silence, that she seemed old indeed.

“The Lost Folk killed him, and every night I get to the gate and say my prayers. For every kiss he might have had, I pray a blight on them. For every child that might have run about my knees I ask that two of their heathen brats may die in trouble. They robbed me; and before I die, God send word to the Wilderness Men that curses stick and sting.”

“From what I’ve seen of the Wilderness Folk,” said Donald, “they’ll be dour enemies, stubborn and crafty.”

“That’s no news,” snapped Hardcastle.

“Stubborn and dour they’ll be—and I wish I’d a younger pair of arms to help you.”

A hard, keen light showed in Rebecca’s eyes. Her thin body quivered with sudden passion. “There will come a token on the gate, Master.”

“It’s here.”

Hardcastle held out his palm, as Donald had done awhile since, and Rebecca gloated on the sight of the little, brown thing that meant the end of peace for all at Logie.

“Through the years I’ve wanted this. What will you do with it, Master?”

Hardcastle turned, with a hard laugh, and set the arrow-head on the drip-stone over his door.

“It stays here—a charm against all alms-giving on Logie roads.”