GARSYKES
Nita made sport of the Garsykes Men when they returned from Logie in the spitting rain of dawn. Slim, and fresh as if she came out of the new day’s heart, she waited for them in the village. And first there came a slack-set company of twenty, glancing behind them constantly.
“Is Logie fired?” asked Nita softly.
“Aye, we blazed the door through,” came an answering growl.
The twenty men went their way, and presently another company lumbered over the hill and down. Most of them went lame, pitted by what Shepherd Brant had crammed into his blunderbuss.
“What have they done to you, there at Logie?”
Nita knew now that all had miscarried, and they snarled in answer to her spite. For a moment they had in mind to rive her limb from limb; and, knowing the danger, she faced them with outstretched hands and a pleading smile that might have been a child’s.
“Why should you hurt your little basket-weaver?”
“Because we’re plugged with lead and rusty nails,” grunted a shammocky rogue whose right arm hung limp.
“Aye,” said another. “It was you that sent us up to Logie.”
They were round her now like wolves. Foiled and wounded, they longed to spring on this new prey, yet could not. Nita had queened it over Garsykes so long that old experience did not fail her now. She wove little, wanton spells about them—then pleaded again with frail, helpless hands—till the old witchcraft stirred about them. The grumbling oaths grew muffled, and Nita, seeing them half-cowed already, laughed with stinging mockery.
“I sent you up to Logie, thinking you were men. Thirty of you went against Hardcastle and could not take him.”
The snarling uproar rose afresh, but she held the lash now and wielded it.
“You were to bring him—alive, if might be—to little Nita, so she could teach him many ways of humbling pride. And all you bring is—your tattered selves.”
Widow Mathison had joined them—plump and touzled, just as she had left her bed at sound of the uproar, except for a cloak thrown over her nightwear.
“All Garsykes couldn’t lay hands on one man up yonder?” she asked, rocking to and fro with laughter. “If Hardcastle was minded that way, I’d risk a second wedding. The more I see of our sort, the deeper I fall into love with Logie’s Master.”
“Hardcastle’s got a bonnier wench up there,” said the shammocky rogue, striving to rally his wilting fellows—“bonnier than Nita, if it comes to that.”
The chance shaft found its mark. The girl stood silent for a moment, gathering years behind and years to come into her hands. When she spoke at last, they drew away as from some instant menace in their midst; and each poor fool began to scratch at his wounds afresh and to long for ale.
“They couldn’t bring Hardcastle to Garsykes—thirty of our strong men could not. But little Nita can.”
Her voice was bitter quiet. She did not seem to see the frowsy press of men about her. Aloof, hard as mid-winter on the barren uplands, she saw Hardcastle taken in toils of her devising—and not Hardcastle alone.
“What will you do?” asked the rogue with the splintered arm.
“Aye, what will I do? Let him wait, first of all, till he’s sick with fear for another. Then I’ll put fire of hell into him before ever he comes to our village in the hills—and afterwards——”
A man’s full-throated curses broke across the dawn’s stillness, and Long Murgatroyd came lurching up, his arms thrown about two comrades who steadied him on either side. They had clapped rough bandages about the wound that Donald’s pike had given, and he had thought his end was come till now, in the grey dawn, he saw Nita.
“A rare warrior, you,” she said, her bitterness let loose afresh.
The will to live returned to Murgatroyd. Hardihood came back though his wound dripped and snarled.
“Aye,” he said—“and I’ll wive you, soon or late.”
His face was so white and livid in the dawn-light, that Nita drew back with a sense of sharp foreboding. Twice she had felt this same dread of Murgatroyd, but it was keener now. Then she rallied her courage.
“When Garsykes is ended, you’ll wive me, maybe. Can you wait as long?” she mocked.
“I can bide,” he said, and limped bravely on till he was out of sight. Then his head drooped. “Get me home, mates,” he muttered. “I’m sick and wambly. Get me home.”
Nita stayed on, alone with the grey mists that eddied over from Pengables. She thought of Logie, secure after long warfare against odds—of Hardcastle, who was another’s now—and no winter’s spite, packed with hurricane and sleet, had ever blown so cold, so merciless, as the storm in her own heart.
An old man of the village passed, and glanced at the silent figure.
“At your dreams, little Nita?” he asked, with grandfatherly indulgence of a favourite.
“At my dreams, Tanty.”
“It’s well to be young while you can,” said he, and went by on rheumy knees.
Still Nita halted. She had spun as many webs in her time as she had woven baskets, but none as strong as these she was binding into a net for Hardcastle. Like a figure of doom she stood, the wet mists hurrying by.
For two weeks and a day thereafter there was peace round Logie. No attack came on the house, no ambush waited in the roads when dusk crept down. Farm-servants carried Donald to the kirkyard under the hill, and none molested the mourners in going or returning.
Then came afterwards the quiet, half-awed return to usual life that follows death in any house. Rebecca and the brindled cat got to their friendship’s bickerings. The Master rode abroad on business of his lands, or brought game home for the larder. And, as if the skies were in league with peace, the long warmth-in-winter held.
Causleen began to fret—not for the father who had ended bravely and in happiness—but for Hardcastle. He grew lean and gaunt, ate as if he must, with no relish for what lay on his plate, and left the wine scarce tasted. Try as she might, she could get no answer to the riddle of his moodiness, until, one morning near November’s end, he strode restlessly about the breakfast chamber, and came to a sharp halt before her.
“Causleen,” he said. “I want you to go up to Shepherd Brant’s. It’s a rough lodging—but it’s safe.”
And now she understood; and, for very gladness, she made pretence of doubt.
“Tired of me already?”
“Don’t jest, child.” He was hard, peremptory. “You must go to-day.”
“And if I will not?”
“I shall set you on pony-back and take you there.”
“What is amiss with you?” she asked—knowing, but longing for the spoken word.
“Fear,” said Hardcastle.
“Fear?” she echoed.
Again he paced up and down, and again came to her side. “I’ve a lifetime’s knowledge of Garsykes, and I tell you we’re in the thick of danger. Whenever their silence comes——”
“It means another firing of the house?”
“Or worse, now that you’re here at Logie. Will you not understand?”
“If they took me from you? If you fought till you could do no more, and they took me?”
“I should run mad.”
He was fierce, possessive, as he drew her to him, and she was content. The lean years of her trudging days—weather, and blistered feet, and scorn of men for the peddling-sort—were forgotten. Deeper than his love of Logie—deeper than his love of life for its own good, stalwart sake—lay fear for her.
“You’ll go up to Brant’s?” he said by and by, half between entreaty and command.
“How can I—now that you care? My place is with you.”
Then she cried happily against his sleeve, and he could make no further headway with persuasion. The next day it was the same. Whenever, out of his stifling dread for her, he tried to get her out of Logie and up into the trackless hills, she glanced away.
“They’re rough quarters, I know,” he would begin.
“That does not trouble me,” she would answer gently.
“And, of course, there’ll be only an old shepherd-man up there, and you’d want another woman with you. Rebecca can go.”
“And what would you do here without her?”
“Fend for myself.”
“If we can persuade Rebecca to it, I will go,” she said, her glance inscrutable and grave.
And now, as time dragged slowly by, Hardcastle learned much of the ways of women, and more and more he was reminded of the slant, drooping flight of plover when their nests are threatened.
Rebecca’s mind had been his own—to get the girl into safety—till Causleen’s heart to endure had captured her grim liking. If the Master must find a wife—and it was time there was an heir to Logie—he might go further and fare worse.
“I cannot thoyle it, Jonah,” she would grumble to the brindled cat, “but I’ve got to. Me and you watching the Master’s goings out and his comings in—slaves, as you might say, to his will—and a slip of a lass making all as if it had never been. But she’s hill-born, with a spirit of her own. That’s so much to be thankful for.”
When the second week was nearing its end, Hardcastle grew so weary of the peace brooding like thunder-weather over Logie, so sick with dread for Causleen, that he strode into Logie like a hurricane.
Rebecca was in the hall, as it chanced, plying her broom as if it were a flail she wielded against the Garsykes Men.
“What is it, Master?” she asked, standing in a dust-storm of her own making.
“It’s this, Rebecca. You take her to Brant’s hut to-morrow of your own will, or by mine.”
“Afraid they’ll burn the roof over your head? They’ve tried it twice—and we’ll teach ’em that the third time pays for all.”
“Are you a fool altogether, woman? There’s Causleen in the house.”
“Aye, it’s her place. She’d be a poor sort o’ wife for Logie, if she left you at the pinch.”
Hardcastle was in no mood for argument. He told her—simply and with command—that she must take Causleen to Brant’s hut to-morrow. And Rebecca grew submissive on the sudden.
“It’s as well she should be away,” she admitted, “if only for your peace of mind.”
The next day, however, when Hardcastle came down to breakfast, he was met by Causleen with news that Rebecca could not stir from her bed and sent word to the Master that she was “twisted with rheumatics.”
“She has chosen the worst time she could,” snapped Hardcastle. “If the woman must have luxuries of that sort let her have them when you’re safely up at Brant’s, the two of you.”
Causleen fingered the spray of crimson-berried hawthorn she had gathered for the breakfast-table in place of flowers. She put it into the jar, turned it this way and that till she was satisfied, then glanced up at Hardcastle.
“You can only be hurt through me nowadays. You care as much as that?”
“Yes. They can rob me of more than Logie now.”
“Garsykes knows. Gossip would tell them where you had hidden me—and what could two women and Brant do against them when they came—to rob you of me, and me of you?”
A great cavern opened in the man’s heart. All that was in her eyes, in the simple, candid words, broke into deeps that had not been stirred till now.
“I was sending you out of my reach?” he said, aghast at his own folly.
She came to him of her own accord, and crept close into his arms. “I could not bear it. I—I have only you—and we must be together.”
Hardcastle laughed by and by, soberly. “You’ll have to take charge of my wits,” he said. “They were never strong.”
Late that afternoon, Rebecca’s ailment left her as if by magic; and Hardcastle, returning from a journey up the far moors, encountered her at the gate.
“Tied to your bed no longer?” he asked dryly.
“I can shift rheumatics as well as one here and there, when the Master’s got rid of his own ailment. But every talk of going to Shepherd Brant’s will make me bedridden, and so I warn you.”
They fell silent presently, yielding to the twilight quiet of the place. Here the flint arrow-head had waited on the gate-top for Hardcastle’s return when October russeted the woods. Here Rebecca had communed with her dead lover through forty years of constancy to feud. They seemed to listen to the rustle of unsubstantial feet.
“The pedlar’s girl should be proud to be among us now,” said Rebecca, her voice low and crooning. “All the years Logie has bided—and vengeance in her hand at last.”
The Master could not rid himself of dread for Causleen. Fast as he beat down one attack, another fear came shadowy at him from behind.
“Garsykes swarms with its scum, and we are few,” he growled. “Who made you a prophet?”
A step sounded up the road, and Hardcastle, turning with quick instinct to defend himself, saw Michael Draycott, his wide, cheery face less full of colour than its wont.
“You, Michael? You look peaky, man.”
“Well, it’s this way. I found my best heifer dead this morning—a fine little roan she was—and a scrawled token by her side. Hemlock grows in the Wilderness. That was the message.”
“A mucky folk,” said Rebecca tranquilly. “They were bred mucky. They couldn’t help it, maybe.”
“As they’d put that on me, I knew naught else would happen to the homestead for a bit; so I stepped up to spend the night at Logie, by your leave.”
“You’ve heard of something planned?”
“Not I; but they’ve let you alone so long that it stands to reason there’s mischief brewing.”
Rebecca was her bustling self again. “You’re no sort of laggard, Michael. For a man so death-shy you do very well—and there’s a game-pie in the oven.”
They kept watch together that night, the Master and Draycott, with a jug of October ale between them. They sipped it sparingly, for it was potent, and they kept wide ears for any sound outside the four stout walls that sheltered them.
Causleen, about the middle of the watch, woke from an evil dream, and shuddered as she lay in the darkness. A rat scampered across the ceiling. In the silence its feet sounded like the tramp of hurrying men, and she lifted herself in panic.
She conquered that. Fear, they had taught her in babyhood, was a shameful thing to harbour. But with the conquering came blinding loneliness, a reaching out for the dead father whose voice she would not hear again. They were kind at Logie, but it was a house of dread. If only her father were laying below-stairs there, his eyes kindling with welcome though his body was outworn. If only he were living. But he lay in the wet earth down yonder, dust to dust.
A man’s tread came down the passage, and halted at her door. She did not know what peril was at hand, but roused herself to meet it.
“Who is it?” she asked sharply.
“Who should it be?”
The relief was instant. No voice she had heard till now had been so strong, so welcome.
“All’s well with Logie?”
“Yes,” said Hardcastle. “All’s well.”
She heard his step go down the corridor, lessening into silence, and a new world came to dawn, after the nightmare that had been. Outside Logie’s walls were skulking folk; but within their six-foot bulk was a man after her own heart.
Twice that night she heard him come to her door again, and halt and repeat his quiet “All’s well,” and her heart warmed to his gruff strength, as she fell into a dreamless sleep.
Dawn was filtering through the shutters when she woke, and her first thought was that Hardcastle would be hungry after his long watch. Dressing hastily she went down, stirred by a simple thrill of joy in the hope that Rebecca would not be astir as yet. Her own hands should prepare the Master’s breakfast.
Smiling gravely at her eagerness, she stepped into the kitchen, and was chilled, somehow, by what she saw. The fire was dead and grey. Michael Draycott sat wakeful, the candle by his side guttering in the thin, peevish draught, and pointed to Hardcastle, who lay back in his hooded chair, so fast asleep that it seemed he would never wake again.
“Speak soft, and don’t ye rouse him,” whispered Michael. “He kept up till the first streak o’ dawn came.”
“Are you lying to me, Michael? Is—is he dead? I would rather hear the truth.”
“You’ll never get less from me. He’s as live as three men put together—or will be, when he wakens from this strong sleep of his.”
She glanced about, half between relief and dread. “I came to give him breakfast.”
“Give him sleep instead. It’s worth more than all the eggs and bacon ever reared in Logie Dale.”
He unbarred the door and beckoned her out into the nipping air that was like balm after the indoors warmth.
“I’m glad I stepped up last night,” he said, “though naught’s happened to Logie, after all. You’re a sensible sort of lass, I fancy.”
He was so downright that Causleen could only laugh—a wan little laugh plucked out from hardship.
“A sensible lass, and not as hard as Rebecca. Well, then, I’ve a warning for you. The Master, as I told you, held his head up to the very minute dawn stepped in. That meant no Garsykes sort would come. Daylight and they were never friends.”
“Yes, Michael?”
“Then he fell back in his chair, and sleep came on him like a wolf. He’s doing too much these days.”
“Is that news to me? The grey cobwebs run across his face. Sometimes he falters in his stride as he comes up Logie-lane, for very weariness.”
“Aye, and he’ll break, one day soon, if he’s not looked after. He never rests by day—riding, or shooting, or what not—and he seldom sleeps o’ nights, by the look of him. No man born o’ woman can carry it for long.”
Causleen remembered the weeks gone by. Her pride had resented Hardcastle’s aloofness, his fits of moodiness. Now she understood, and lifted a child’s penitent face.
“What would you have me do?” she asked.
The man’s big, shy heart found room to speak. “I’d have you marry him as soon as maybe. Rebecca tells me you’re both minded that way.—And, there, I’ve frightened you. An old man had no right to say as much.”
“Yes,” she said. “Tell me——”
“It’s you that’s three parts of his trouble.”
“Then I can go, Michael.”
“He’d only follow, and bring you back. He’s got to that pass, he’d rather Logie went than you.”
They stood together in the stable-yard. Starlings were making a sleepy din among the ivy, and over old Pengables the red of dawn pushed through the mists. The day seemed full of grey foreboding, but Causleen did not ask what was to come. Michael’s blunt simplicity made it sure that he was speaking truth. “He’d rather Logie went than you”—the words were like a throstle’s song in spring.
“Then I will stay,” she said, and smiled on him, and went indoors.
Rebecca had come down, prepared to light the fire and scold her way through household tasks, but even she stood mute at sight of the Master. In all her days she had not seen a living man so dead to sound or motion. There was only the gentle breathing to tell her he was more than the husk of what had been.
She started as Causleen entered, then rasped at the girl to cover her own disquiet.
“Now, don’t you faint away, or any o’ those maidish cantrips. There’s a time and season for ’em, and it isn’t now. Fancied he was dead, I reckon? Well, he’s quick. All the Hardcastles are made that way. Gluttons for sleep they always were and will be.”
The brindled cat had learned Rebecca’s mood at a glance and leaped to the top of a cupboard, where he sat with vain hope that he was safe. Rebecca, in sore and restless trouble, searched for outlet, and her roving glance fell on Jonah. With a twist of the long hearth-brush in her hands, she brought him down, and aimed a wild blow at him in his flight.
“That’s for washing yourself like a dandy, same as if naught was amiss at Logie.”
Then she lit the fire with vicious haste; and, when she looked up again, Causleen saw the slow, thin tears of age trickling down.
“I’m worrited, lass, and don’t ye heed. They can come blazing Logie down every night and all, and welcome. It’s when Garsykes willun’t come, and keeps us at full stretch, I get to my nagging.”
The morning went by on leaden feet. Michael Draycott had gone to the work waiting for him at Broken Firs. The Master slept on, spent and in some far land that seemed neighbour to the grave. The wind stole whining from the moors and through the forest trees. There seemed little hope for Logie.
Causleen could bear it no longer. All trouble was easier to face in the frank open than prisoned by walls that harboured dread. So, when Rebecca had gone to the dairy for a moment, she stole to Hardcastle’s side.
“Dick, do you hear me?” she whispered, longing to hear him answer, yet hoping he would sleep on, to find his strength.
No answer came, except the clack-clack of Rebecca’s pattens on the dairy floor. So then she bent and kissed him, and went out—across the mistal-yard, and up the home pastures, and out into the moors that lay near to Garsykes. She needed the winds of God about her—needed, too, in some half-confessed fashion, to be sentry while the Master slept.
At Logie, Rebecca went on with her cooking and her scouring as if no inner voice was whispering of havoc, soft-footed, stealthy. All she had longed for—all she had prayed, through the lonely years that had gone since they killed her man—was gathering to a head. In her bones she knew it, as she knew “the rheumatics” that was twisting them out of all earthly shape.
It had never been Rebecca’s habit to think that ten thousand such lean swine as the Garsykes Men could have their will of Logie; but a dark cloud of doubt lay between her and the further vision. There was thunder-weather brewing, and it must break before ever Logie came to safety and its own.
The teasing doubt stayed with her, till Jonah came in, a full-grown rat in his mouth, and layed it down before her—in propitiation, as it were.
“Now, bless you, lad,” she cackled. “If I did dust you with a besom, it was for your good. Thwack the male sort, say I—thwack ’em true and often—and they thrive the better for it.”
Jonah played with the half-dead rat for a while, then came purring and bridling against the woman’s skirt.
“Oh, aye, you’ve done well, lad. There never was such a rat for bigness.”
The more she praised him the thicker grew Jonah’s fur, till Rebecca began to laugh shrilly at his antics. She was in a mood to read omens into little matters, and her spirits had risen with a bound. The Garsykes Men were rats, and Jonah had just brought in the first fruits of some coming slaughter.
The rat began to stir fitfully, and Jonah, with a sudden, growling spring, was clawing him to bits when a shadow darkened the kitchen.
Rebecca glanced up to see a little figure standing in the porch, and her whole body stiffened, as a dog’s might. Danger had passed by Logie through the night; but every instinct told her it was on the threshold now.
“I want no baskets, Nita—leastways, none of your weaving.”
“Do not be always scolding little Nita,” pleaded the girl. “She has no baskets to sell this morning—but she has news to give.”
“I want no news, neither. Cannot you see I’m throng with my cooking?”
“My news is for the Master. Go tell him, Rebecca.”
Hardcastle had been stirring in his sleep before she came, and her voice seemed to probe him like a knife. He got to his feet, as if attacked. Dishevelled by the night’s vigil, gaunt with all that Garsykes had put on him since he said them nay, he stood glowering at this flower-fresh visitor.
“What news?” he asked.
“You are all so rough here. I meant it kindly—meant to warn you—but now I will not. Go find the pedlar’s brat if you can.”
He stepped forward, drew her indoors and held her there. “Where is she?”
“Have I fared very well at your hands, that I should tell you? Yet I was forgiving. I could not bear to think of her—where she is—and you to go mad when you heard it later.”
“She’s lying, the lile toad,” said Rebecca, with grim brevity. “She never had heart to think like that, save for one—herself.”
So Nita threw the mask off, and smiled at them. “I was lying when I said that I forgave. I came because I longed to torture Hardcastle of Logie.”
“Where is she?”
“If you shake the life out of me, how can I tell you—even if I would?”
He let her go free, and presently she glanced at him, her grey eyes wide with malice.
“Our Garsykes Men are not good at the fighting, so they hatched another plan. If they could take what Hardcastle holds dearest, and keep her till he paid tribute at long last——”
She halted, watching the sweat break out on the man’s haggard face.
“Where is she?” he repeated.
“Not in Garsykes. You might rouse even your chicken-livered Logie Men to ride through us. She’s in the caves behind our village.”
A gulf seemed to open at Hardcastle’s feet. If this were true—he would not have it true—and through his dazed sickness sounded Nita’s voice, gentle as a dove’s.
“They are long caves and deep. You knew them as a boy?”
“Yes, by God,” he said, towering above her with still and awful menace, “and now I’m going to know them as a man.”
She halted for one last thrust. “It may be too late for paying tribute. They may be out of hand, now I’m not there to whip them into order.”
Then she was gone, swift as an east-wind that had struck to the bone and stayed for no reprisal. The Master halted for a moment, gathering his strength.
“You’ll not go?” said Rebecca, her lean arm clutching him.
“Where she goes, I go, woman. Have you no wits to guide you?”
Rebecca, fear as she might for him, was glad to see him take the Logie way—straight to the open, though he went alone. It was only when he had stepped into the crimson flare of dawn, flooding the porch, that again she drew him back.
“Your two hands, and your head up to the stars, won’t carry far these days. You’d be the better for a gun in your hands, and a candle or two in your pockets. Caves are darksome places.”
He had wit left enough to get a fowling-piece and see to the priming, while she thrust candles and a tinder-box into his pocket.
Then Rebecca listened to his running stride across the cobble-stones to the wind that rose in shrill and bitter menace. There was only Jonah of the men-folk left. He knew it, and sprang to her shoulder.
“Aye, drive your claws in,” she snapped. “We’re all that’s left of Logie, you and me.”
Her glance wandered forlornly round the kitchen till it encountered the dead rat by the hearth. Then her unalterable strength in hardship found its token.
“There’s luck coming, Jonah,” she said, and got about her household tasks again.